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using works of fiction in sociology courses

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1. This is an idea with a history — there’s an old anthology by Lewis Coser, I think called Sociology Through Literature.

   Kieran

   October 8, 2009 at 6:13 pm
2. Nice post. Here’s a post that is sort of related, with dozens of recommendations (from readers) for teaching org theory/mgt via classic novels: http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/organization-theory-in-novels/

   tf

   October 8, 2009 at 6:23 pm
3. The July 2008 issue of Teaching Sociology includes a paper called “Cultivating a Sociological Perspective Using Nontraditional Texts” by Castellano, DeAngelis, and Clark-Ibanez. There is also a book called Teaching the Novel across the Curriculum that includes two or three chapters by sociologists.

   John

   October 8, 2009 at 6:53 pm
4. Ursula K LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness would be great to read in a gender context. A number of other sci-fi works could be usefully used.

   I know there is also at least one course on Sociology and Kurt Vonnegut. At a minimum, Player Piano is interesting in a history of tech/work context.

   Last, if I ever have to (get to?) teach post-modernist/post-structuralist stuff, I’m throwing in some Borges short stories.

   Dan Hirschman

   October 8, 2009 at 7:49 pm
5. i took a Geography class as an undergrad that was taught entirely through novels. It left a clear imprint on me, and ever since i started grad school, i wanted to incorporate that somehow into some of my teaching. i’m using Lord of the Flies in a social networks class this semester. We haven’t gotten to that part of the syllabus yet, so i’m not positive how it’ll work out, but i’m looking forward to it.

   shrinkingisaac

   October 8, 2009 at 8:46 pm
6. During my undergraduate studies, this was my favorite assignment. I wrote about Fight Club and Nietzche.

   Kate

   October 8, 2009 at 9:37 pm
7. I have students analyze a novel for my sociology of the military course. Works great, as military service is only a fiction for most of them anyway. For the vets, brats, and ROTC kids, they can’t just retreat to their personal narrative for guidance with this assignment.

   makley

   October 8, 2009 at 11:10 pm
8. Tyler Cowen teaches a class on law and literature. For fun I did a post on the shifting reading list. The favorites are the OT, Tolstoy, Melville, Abbott, Verissimo, and Saramago.

   Possible, not very original additions for a sociology/orgtheory context:

   Goldratt and/or Balle – manufacturing management
   Heinlein – Moon and Troopers
   Xenophon Anabasis – not a novel but certainly literature – military org and a sort of ethnography
   Shakespeare of course – Othello and Tempest could work in a course on race, Merchant on law and contracts, etc.
   Austen, Thackeray, Bronte on class, manners, and gender
   Hughes – Tom Brown’s Schooldays for education
   Orhan Pamuk
   Hammett – The Glass Key on politics
   Sinclair – Oil! on entrepreneurship (but I haven’t read it)
   Stephen Marche – Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, entertaining plus I think it works as a sort of critique of the type of study you propose

   I also like lots of the suggestions on the thread linked in the second comment – especially Caine Mutiny for law and military.

   Timothy

   October 8, 2009 at 11:31 pm
9. Atlas Shr… just kidding. I’ve never even read it.

   To Kill a Mockingbird is an obvious classic.

   All Souls is a good memoir that touches on some race and class issues.

   The Last Hurrah might be good for political sociology.

   joshmccabe

   October 9, 2009 at 1:24 am
10. I show movies, but haven’t taught novels. I have no real objection, just haven’t tried it. Coser (who was my grandfather) had a wonderful story about his entry into sociology. He was studying comparative literature at the Sorbonne, and was asked by his advisor if he’d thought of a thesis topic yet. He said he was thinking of comparing novels of the same period from Germany, France, and England, and analyzing what they said about the social structure of each. “Mon dieu,” said the advisor, “nes pas le literature comparative, c’est la sociologie!” So he switched to sociology. (I have no idea, by the way, how true this is, and my French is atrocious so I apologize for the rough quotation!)

    Back to the present: the only thing I worry about is that students often already have trouble separating nonfiction from fiction, opinion from argument, and so on, so if I were to teach a novel I’d want to work hard on explaining that. One novel I’d seriously consider is Tony Eprile’s fabulous The Persistence of Memory, which assigns Borges’s fable of the person with the perfect memory to an obese South African Jew. The novel is far and away the best piece of fiction I’ve read in a decade, and has clear and interesting sociological implications.

    andrewperrin

    October 9, 2009 at 1:37 pm
11. @andrew – There’s a novel based on Funes the Memorious? I know what I’m doing next weekend!

    Dan Hirschman

    October 9, 2009 at 1:54 pm
12. I think fiction in combination with academic work is very helpful. Reading Ivo Andric’s masterpiece ‘The Bridge on the Drina’ gave me an excellent paralell to academic economics concerning the evolution from one governance system to another, the effect of reducing transaction costs and change from personal to impersonal exchange (he has some wonderful stories about how the serfs where negotiating loan deals, for instance, before the introduction of modern banking.), not to mention the effect of reduced transportation costs on commerce, education, and social movements.

    And it got the Nobel in litterature, of course.

    Tord Steiro

    October 9, 2009 at 4:11 pm
13. One of the best assignments I received as an undergrad was to compare Richard Price’s Clockers and Mitch Duneier’s Sidewalk.

    Elizabeth

    October 9, 2009 at 6:32 pm
14. I use fiction in my ethnic and race relations course. The best, by far, is Recitatif by Toni Morrison. The story is of two girls who meet at a home and tells about their interactions through out their lives. The story says one of the girls is black and the other is white. It never says which is which. I have them read the story, and then have them get in groups and come to a decision about which is black and which is white. They all agree that it bugged them to no end that they couldn’t figure it out. This leads to a discussion of how we need to know race in order to make sense of interactions (you can pair this well with Stephen Colbert’s interview of NAACP’s Jealous where Colbert says he’s colorblind but needs to be able to check the mental box of race in order to know how to respond to Jealous, what to pay attention to, what to expect — available on Colbert’s website). Then, I have students tell me how they decided who was black and who was white and write their arguments on the board. This leads to a discussion of intersectionality — a lot of the evidence is sexuality and class-based. It is excellent, and sets up class wonderfully for the rest of the semester. I refer to it several times. And, students realize that they too were stressed when they couldn’t figure out the race of the characters.

    I generally use short stories and poetry. For Muslims after 9/11, the spoken word poetry of Suheir Hammad (“Mike Check” and “First Writing Since”) has been popular. Others used:

    Michele Serros’ “Mi Problema” and “Annie Says” (poetry)
    Randa Jarrar “A Frame for the Sky” (short story)
    Marie G. Lee “Summer of My Korean Soldier.” (short story)
    Mamle Kabu, “Human Mathematics” (short story) –this one I also highly recommend for intersections and bi-racial topics (boundary maintenance)
    Rishi Reddi “Karma” (short story)

    I also use podcasts. Radiolab has a great series on race that students really enjoy listening to.

    pitse1eh

    October 10, 2009 at 1:55 am
15. Oh, and I’m planning on using Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo in my social strat class in the Spring. This will be my first time using full book length fiction, so I need to figure out how I’m going to weave it throughout the course.

    pitse1eh

    October 10, 2009 at 2:03 am
16. …and economists could assign The Grapes of Wrath.
    North of the border, George Elliot Clark’s George and Rue would make the list.

    David Chen

    October 10, 2009 at 5:21 pm
17. @David: economists regularly assign fiction for introductory classes.

    –Andy, feeling mischievous :)

    andrewperrin

    October 11, 2009 at 1:31 pm
18. I’m an ex-literature student with an interest in org sociology, and most of my student work was focused on understanding societies, social groups, etc. via literature.

    Really, all lit can be made to speak of its social context if you work at it, Fredric Jameson is a good guide though.

    Off the top of my head -
    Race in US – James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Walter Mosley, etc.
    European – decline of feudal/absolutist social structures – the Gothic form! cf. Witold Gombrowicz (Pl), Possessed, Matthew Lewis (GB), The Monk, Yeats’s Sept 1913, etc
    Some good contemporary writers on gender are Adrienne Rich & Doris Lessing.
    Dracula’s a good one as well – brimming with issues of race, gender, sexuality etc.
    Conrad on colonialism.

    daramcq

    October 11, 2009 at 9:55 pm
19. To Kill A Mockingbird is outdated as a novel and a movie-here’s a good argument for why it shouldn’t be taught anymore;

    “The Case against To Kill a Mockingbird”
    Critic: Isaac Saney
    Source: Race & Class 45, no. 1 (July-September 2003): 99-110.
    Criticism about: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1926-), also known as:
    (Nelle) Harper Lee, Nelle Harper Lee, Harper Nell Lee, Nell Harper Lee
    Nationality: American
    (essay date July-September 2003) In the following essay, Saney discusses the
    media’s response to the 1996 banning of To Kill a Mockingbird from the standard
    curricula of public schools in Nova Scotia.)
    For many years the Black Educators’ Association and parents, amongst others,
    have lobbied the Nova Scotia Department of Education and school boards to
    remove various books from the school curriculum and school use. Similar
    initiatives have taken place in New Brunswick and other provinces across
    Canada. Pressure from the community forced the Department of Education to
    face up to its social responsibility to provide enlightened education and teaching
    materials and address the issue of restricting racist materials in the province’s
    classrooms, in the same way that pressure had forced the government to
    abandon its legislated policy of segregated schooling for the African Nova
    Scotian population, a policy only formally ended in the 1950s. In 1996, after
    intensive community pressure, three works–To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper
    Lee; In the Heat of the Night by John Dudley Ball; and Underground to Canada
    by Barbara Smucker–were taken off the authorized list of texts recommended by
    the Department of Education. They can no longer be purchased from the
    provincial government.
    Six years later, in March 2002, the African-Nova Scotian ad hoc advisory
    committee (a committee of parents and educators) of the Tri-County district,
    which runs schools in southwestern Nova Scotia, recommended that the three
    works should be removed from school use altogether. Many educators consider
    these demands as minimal and as barely beginning to address the serious
    inequalities which continue to pervade the education system. Members of the
    Black Educators’ Association (BEA) again seconded this specific
    recommendation. In the words of BEA director Gerry Clarke, a former school
    principal: ‘It’s demeaning and offensive to those students who have to put up with
    this.’ Indeed, a 2000 report on To Kill a Mockingbird laid out the community’s
    concerns:
    In this novel, African-Canadian students are presented with language that
    portrays all the stereotypical generalizations that demean them as a people.
    While the White student and White teacher may misconstrue it as language of an
    earlier era or the way it was, this language is still widely used today and the book
    serves as a tool to reinforce its usage even further … The terminology in this
    novel subjects students to humiliating experiences that rob them of their selfrespect
    and the respect of their peers. The word ‘Nigger’ is used 48 times [in] the
    novel … There are many available books which reflect the past history of African-
    Canadians or Americans without subjecting African-Canadian learners to this
    type of degradation … We believe that the English Language Arts curriculum in
    Nova Scotia must enable all students to feel comfortable with ideas, feelings and
    experiences presented without fear of humiliation … To Kill a Mockingbird is
    clearly a book that no longer meets these goals and therefore must no longer be
    used for classroom instruction.1
    The recommendation to remove the books was initially agreed to by the Tri-
    County School Board which ordered the works removed from school use in
    Shelburne, Yarmouth and Digby counties. However, pandemonium broke loose
    all over the printed press, radio and television media, nationally and
    internationally. In the main Canadian and provincial newspapers, some twentyeight
    articles appeared. When the educators explained that the works used
    abusive and racist language and perpetuated demeaning stereotypical images
    and generalisations, emphasising that the books did not meet the needs of ‘all
    students’, the Canadian monopoly-controlled news media immediately took what
    had been said out of context and declared that the Black community had
    embraced ‘book banning’ and ‘censorship’. Opposition to the books, especially
    To Kill a Mockingbird, was likened to ‘the gathering shadow of oppression’.2
    Thus, the media gave far more coverage to this distortion than to the substance
    of the Black community’s recommendations.
    The National Post went so far as to survey such leading American literary figures
    as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on the merits of To Kill a Mockingbird, citing
    its use in city-wide reading contests ‘as springboards for citywide discussions’ for
    its ‘message of acceptance [of] people of other races than your own’. It then
    argued, how could Nova Scotia have a different policy to the United States,
    asserting that ‘[t]here are more blacks in Chicago than there are people in Nova
    Scotia’.3 An accompanying editorial declared that racism was a matter of the past
    and blamed ‘the anti-racism industry’ for obscuring the ‘historical content in which
    overt racism once thrived’.4 National Post columnist Robert Fulford likewise
    converted the recommendation that the book not be used by teachers in the
    classroom into a call to ban the ‘much-loved book’ and fulminated how those who
    had been oppressed were now calling for ‘censorship’ ‘for the sole reason that
    they [the books] contain this intolerable word (“Nigger”)’. Referring to comments
    by the BEA’s Brenda Clarke, he declared: ‘Beware of those who believe they can
    manage the self-esteem of others by denying them books. She demonstrates
    that the impulse to censor never dies, it just changes targets.’5 The Globe and
    Mail in its editorial, published on the same day and under the identical title as the
    National Post’s, termed Harper Lee’s book a ‘wonderful teaching tool’ and also
    called for Canadians to emulate Chicago, which ‘felt it would encourage greater
    racial understanding’.6 Consequently, after the media frenzy and the intervention
    of the minister of education, Jane Purves, the Tri-County school board changed
    its stand on 30 May 2002 in a 6-2 vote.
    The arguments advanced by the Black community were consistently presented in
    a non-serious, even risible, light so as to give the impression that the Black
    educators and parents are ignorant of the merits of literature, mere emotional
    whiners and complainers, belonging to a hot-headed fringe. For example, after
    the decision was made to keep the books in the curriculum, the Halifax Daily
    News in an editorial was ‘relieved cooler heads have prevailed’, reproducing the
    racist notions of inherent Black emotionality versus the rationality of white
    society.7
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    Editorialists were especially incensed that To Kill a Mockingbird had come
    under criticism. The book was lauded as a classic, a paragon of anti-racist
    literature and, therefore, untouchable and sacrosanct.8 The Black community was
    chided for being overly sensitive to the use of racial slurs and for its failure
    appreciate the context and message of the novel. What was ignored was that the
    use of racist epithets or negative and debased imagery is not the only basis upon
    which to determine the racist or anti-racist character of a book. Jane Kansas, a
    columnist for the Halifax Daily News, typified the prevailing mindset. She, along
    with other partisans of the book, invoked the lecture Miss Maudie Atkinson
    delivers to Atticus Finch’s daughter, Scout, on why it is ‘a sin to kill a
    mockingbird’. This ‘homily’ was extolled as the most eloquent literary anti-racist
    statement.9 Indeed, the lines define the book:
    ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat
    up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their
    hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’10
    However, Kansas and others failed to explore the obvious meaning behind these
    words. Is not the mockingbird a metaphor for the entire African American
    population? Do these lines, as the partisans of the book assert, embody the
    loftiest ideals and sentiments? Harper Lee’s motives notwithstanding, they are
    not a paean to the intrinsic equality and humanity of all peoples, nor do they
    acknowledge that Blacks are endowed with the same worth and rights as whites.
    What these lines say is that Black people are useful and harmless creatures–
    akin to decorous pets–that should not be treated brutally. This is reminiscent of
    the thinking that pervaded certain sectors of the abolition movement against
    slavery which did not extol the equality of Africans, but paralleled the propaganda
    of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, arguing that just as one
    should not treat one’s horse, ox or dog cruelly, one should not treat one’s Black
    cruelly.11 By foisting this mockingbird image on African Americans, the novel
    does not challenge the insidious conception of superior versus inferior ‘races’, the
    notion of those meant to rule versus those meant to be ruled. What it attacks are
    the worst–particularly violent–excesses of the racist social order, leaving the
    racist social order itself intact. In short, as Malcolm X would probably have said, it
    presents the outlook of the ‘enlightened’ versus the ‘unenlightened’ slave owner,
    who wishes to preserve the value of his human property, the beasts of burden, to
    labour for his benefit, enjoyment and profit.
    Central to the view that To Kill a Mockingbird is a solid and inherently anti-racist
    work is the role of Atticus Finch, the white lawyer who defends Tom Robinson,
    the Black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Indeed, Atticus goes
    so far as to save Tom from a lynching.12 However, this act has no historical
    foundation. The acclaimed exhibition Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography
    in America, sponsored by the Roth-Horowitz Gallery and the New York Historical
    Society, documented more than 600 incidents of lynching. This landmark
    exposition and study established that ‘lynchers tended to be ordinary people and
    respectable people, few of whom had any difficulties justifying their atrocities in
    the name of maintaining the social and racial order and the purity of the Anglo-
    Saxon race’.13 In two years of investigation, the exhibit researchers found no
    evidence of intervention by a white person to stop even a single lynching.
    Perhaps the most egregious characteristic of the novel is the denial of the
    historical agency of Black people. They are robbed of their role as subjects of
    history, reduced to mere objects who are passive hapless victims; mere
    spectators and bystanders in the struggle against their own oppression and
    exploitation. There’s the rub! The novel and its supporters deny that Black people
    have been the central actors in their movement for liberation and justice, from
    widespread African resistance to, and revolts against, slavery and colonialism to
    the twentieth century’s mass movements challenging segregation, discrimination
    and imperialism. Yet, To Kill a Mockingbird confounds the relationship between
    whites of conscience and the struggles of the Black community. The novel is set
    in the 1930s and portrays Blacks as somnolent, awaiting someone from outside
    to take up and fight for the cause of justice. It is as if the Scottsboro case–in
    which nine young Black men traveling on a freight train in search of work were
    wrongfully convicted of raping two white women who were riding the same freight
    train–never happened. The trial was a ‘legal lynching carried through with the
    cooperation of the courts and the law enforcement agencies’.14 All but one were
    sentenced to death; the jury was hung on whether the ninth one should be
    sentenced to life imprisonment or death. The germane point is that a maelstrom
    of activity swept through African American communities, both North and South.
    They organized, agitated, petitioned and marched in support of and to free the
    nine young men. To Kill a Mockingbird gives no inkling of this mass protest and
    instead creates the indelible impression that the entire Black community existed
    in a complete state of paralysis. It was African North Americans who took up the
    task of confronting and organizing against racism, who through weal and woe,
    trial and tribulation, carried on–and still carry on the battle for equal rights and
    dignity. Those whites who did, and do, make significant contributions gave, and
    give, their solidarity in response.
    However, this necessary historical contextualization for dealing adequately with
    the book rarely occurs in the classroom. Thus, the images and messages of To
    Kill a Mockingbird are given new life, despite the reality that–as in the case of
    Uncle Tom’s Cabin–these motifs have long since outlived any positive and
    progressive purpose and are not only useless for today’s task of building a
    society based on true equality, but, indeed, are a detriment and a retrogressive
    block. Furthermore, there has been considerable resistance to the incorporation
    of available literature reflecting both the African American and African Nova
    Scotian experience. Repeated suggestions have been made to include in the
    curriculum, for example, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; Native Son by Richard
    Wright; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: The
    Autobiography of Malcolm X; Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison;
    Whylah Falls by George Elliot Clarke and Consecrated Ground by George Boyd.
    The last two authors are award-winning Black Nova Scotians. Indeed, Clarke
    was the 2002 recipient of Canada’s most prestigious literary prize, the Governor
    General’s Award.
    Conclusion
    The hardworking and humble educators and parents, selfless volunteer
    contributors of their time and energies, who made these recommendations
    honestly and honorably, had to contend with the stigma of being called ‘benign
    censors’ as they were shamelessly branded. Their well-reasoned and reasonable
    opposition, based on a clear and sound understanding of history and education,
    was caricatured and demeaned. The dominant media, within and without Nova
    Scotia, affirmed that the degrading portrayal of an entire people, the continual
    depiction of servitude and the negation of historical agency are the hallmarks of
    classic literature. What prevailed were the outdated ideas of the nineteenth
    century, affinity and devotion to paternalistic conceptions of society; a reflection
    of the imbalance of power and marginalization embedded in the status quo.
    In short, the media’s response amounted to a defense of ‘freedom’ for racist
    literature. The issue cannot be reduced to a matter of technical arguments and
    justifications or the advocating of a parallel ‘anti-racist’ curriculum. The racists
    today masquerade as ‘anti-racists’, the opponents of ‘hate literature’. The media’s
    editorializing against all ‘censorship’ and ‘banning’ includes vigorous hostility to
    the censorship and banning of racism. Its advocacy of freedom of speech
    includes freedom of speech for racists and fascists. There cannot be the slightest
    mystery about how racism works, particularly its intertwining with the state.
    Neither fully curable nor manageable in the present social order, racism cannot
    be tackled at leisure; it must be combated in all its forms, without pause.
    However, in this struggle educators and writers must not forget that they are not
    dealing with an honorable media; that dirty and ruthless political warfare is being
    waged over the question of racism on the front of literature and ideology.

    Neville A. Ross

    November 1, 2009 at 4:30 am