Introduction

Methodology or the methodological imagination more broadly understood is about how we may possibly obtain interesting knowledge - 'stories' and not just dull 'information', as C. Wright Mills famously stated - about social life. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book consists of a range of chapters that in various ways describe how to develop, expand and challenge conventional social scientific methodology by way of literary, poetic and other alternative or unusual sources of inspiration. It addresses issues in teaching social research methods, which can be seen by students as abstract and unrelated to the substantive topics of sociology. The book shows that how personal experience - wrapped in a poetic framework - may be reported in an unconventional representational form that reveals something interesting about contemporary society.