Telling About Society
304 pages
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10 halftones, 15 line drawings
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5-1/2 x 8-1/2
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© 2007
I Remember, one of French writer Georges Perec’s most famous pieces, consists of 480 numbered paragraphs—each just a few short lines recalling a memory from his childhood. The work has neither a beginning nor an end. Nor does it contain any analysis. But it nonetheless reveals profound truths about French society during the 1940s and 50s.
Taking Perec’s book as its cue, Telling About Society explores the unconventional ways we communicate what we know about society to others. The third in distinguished teacher Howard Becker’s best-selling series of writing guides for social scientists, the book explores the many ways knowledge about society can be shared and interpreted through different forms of telling—fiction, films, photographs, maps, even mathematical models—many of which remain outside the boundaries of conventional social science. Eight case studies, including the photographs of Walker Evans, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, the novels of Jane Austen and Italo Calvino, and the sociology of Erving Goffman, provide convincing support for Becker’s argument: that every way of telling about society is perfect—for some purpose. The trick is, as Becker notes, to discover what purpose is served by doing it this way rather than that.
Taking Perec’s book as its cue, Telling About Society explores the unconventional ways we communicate what we know about society to others. The third in distinguished teacher Howard Becker’s best-selling series of writing guides for social scientists, the book explores the many ways knowledge about society can be shared and interpreted through different forms of telling—fiction, films, photographs, maps, even mathematical models—many of which remain outside the boundaries of conventional social science. Eight case studies, including the photographs of Walker Evans, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, the novels of Jane Austen and Italo Calvino, and the sociology of Erving Goffman, provide convincing support for Becker’s argument: that every way of telling about society is perfect—for some purpose. The trick is, as Becker notes, to discover what purpose is served by doing it this way rather than that.
With Becker’s trademark humor and eminently practical advice, Telling About Society is an ideal guide for social scientists in all fields, for artists interested in saying something about society, and for anyone interested in communicating knowledge in unconventional ways.
“Telling About Society should carry a warning label: ‘Do not start reading unless you’re prepared to spend the next few hours having your horizons broadened and your understanding of social sciences deepened. Further, prepare to abandon any belief that insight and originality are incompatible with clarity, accessibility and plain good writing.’ This book will immediately take its place on my shelves and my students’ reading lists alongside Becker’s Tricks of the Trade as an indispensable introduction to thinking about social science theory and research.”—Larry Gross, professor and director, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California
“From Outsiders to Art Worlds and beyond, the sensei of common sense, quotidian social science, Howie Becker has always been a storyteller, one whose careful—and caring—tales go to the heart of how we tell ourselves who we are and thus come to know, value, and respond to one other. In coming now to tell about story-telling itself in this wondrous and wide-ranging collection, Becker avoids both the metaphysical and metafictional, instead providing nothing less than a multifaceted portrait of the ways (visual and verbal alike) that storytelling weaves of our days a global culture. In turn he tells us ways to parse that culture’s complexity and our own as well. Telling About Society is both a great read and great reading, a set of masterful and surprising improvisations upon grand themes, as if late Chekhov tales played by Duke Ellington.”—Michael Joyce, professor of English and media studies, Vassar College
“Symbolic interaction has for some time needed more discussion of representation as part of social life. Symbolizing has been an assumed part of social processes, but representation itself has been a conceptual black hole in the field. Into this void, sociologists have hurled ideas about representation from the humanities and multiple notions of meaning-making from the social sciences. Now Howard S. Becker’s Telling About Society addresses the absence itself, describing a range of forms of social representation engaged in everyday life. Becker speaks with the same plain talk and disdain for high theory that have kept his work insistently descriptive, forced sociologists to rethink conventional wisdom, and made his writings such a pleasure to read.”—Chandra Mukerji, professor, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego
“How is a photograph like a statistical table? In his characteristically ‘straightforward’ style, Becker starts to delineate and untangle the knottiest paradoxes of representation confronting social scientists, journalists, and artists alike. By imagining sociology as a form of collaborative art work and art as a form of collaborative sociological work, and by focusing on the problematics of reportage that are common to both, this work extends even further the profundity and interdisciplinary breadth of Becker’s corpus. By organizing his own presentation as a hypertextual series of ideas and examples, Becker enlists the reader as an active partner in an ever-deepening meditation on the reciprocal relations among social knowing, the knowers, and the known.”—Mark D. Jacobs, associate professor of sociology and founding director of PhD program in cultural studies, George Mason University
"As with all of Becker’s work, this new book is deceptively simple. The writing is quiet and clear. You are lulled into thinking you are reading a good story, as indeed you are. However, after reading a chapter or two, you realize that you have begun to think of the world differently. This is both a good read and profound theory—a combination very rarely found in sociology. This book makes you rethink representations, maps, and data. It is a tour de force from a writer whose work has shaped the social sciences for decades.”—Susan Leigh Star, Professor, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara University
"Little can be said about the crystal clear language Becker uses and the corresponding clarity of his arguments. . . . It is encouraging--without intending to sound corny--because Becker makes you want to become a better sociologist, which might be the prime intention behind reading such a book in the first place. By the same token, it is safe to say that this book is especially recommendable for graduate students or anybody who is still open to apply other forms of representing social reality."
"Becker's study of methodology is a fantastic resource, assembling new and previously published material of interest to those facing the challenge of doing and reporting on social research. . . . Telling about Society showcases the breadth and depth of his scolarship, drawing together thought from several decades of research, teaching, and creative production."
"Telling About Society presents a deeply worthwhile and generous series of observations collected over more than 20 years. This book would surely spur important discussions in Introduction to Sociology, methods, and advanced graduate courses alike. Telling About Society
maps and gently questions the boundaries of the sociological discipline. Becker should be applauded for bravely attacking (but with subtlety and respect) the standards and conventions of the field."Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I. Ideas
Chapter 1. Telling About Society
Chapter 2. Representations of Society as Organizational Products
Chapter 3. Who Does What?
Chapter 4. The Work Users Do
Chapter 5. Standardization and Innovation
Chapter 6. Summarizing Details
Chapter 7. Reality Aesthetics
Chapter 8. The Morality of Representations
Chapter 1. Telling About Society
Chapter 2. Representations of Society as Organizational Products
Chapter 3. Who Does What?
Chapter 4. The Work Users Do
Chapter 5. Standardization and Innovation
Chapter 6. Summarizing Details
Chapter 7. Reality Aesthetics
Chapter 8. The Morality of Representations
Part II. Examples
Chapter 9. Parables, Ideal Types, and Mathematical Models
Chapter 10. Charts: Thinking with Drawings
Chapter 11. Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography, and Photojournalism
Chapter 12. Drama and Multivocality: Shaw, Churchill, and Shawn
Chapter 13. Goffman, Language, and the Comparative Strategy
Chapter 14. Jane Austen: The Novel as Social Analysis
Chapter 15. Georges Perec's Experiments in Social Description
Chapter 16. Italo Calvino, Urbanologist
Chapter 9. Parables, Ideal Types, and Mathematical Models
Chapter 10. Charts: Thinking with Drawings
Chapter 11. Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography, and Photojournalism
Chapter 12. Drama and Multivocality: Shaw, Churchill, and Shawn
Chapter 13. Goffman, Language, and the Comparative Strategy
Chapter 14. Jane Austen: The Novel as Social Analysis
Chapter 15. Georges Perec's Experiments in Social Description
Chapter 16. Italo Calvino, Urbanologist
Finally . . .
References
Index
References
Index
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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