What does Sociology look like?

What does sociology look like? This is a perennial problem for publishers of introductory textbooks and convenors of sociology programmes alike: how to represent in one striking, memorable image the complexities, contradictions and controversies which characterise this amazing discipline. Unfortunately, stock-shot pictures of happy paper people holding hands around the globe really don’t capture the essence sociology at its formidable, challenging best. The sociological imagination is restless and critical. It abjures conventional, comfortable, common-sense views and assumptions. It seeks to know the social world in all its difficult complexity, and that implies a focus on conflict and contingency as much as on consensus.

This is what we’ve tried to reflect in our logo-figure. Her whole is formed from a multitude of social concerns, existing in tension with each other: gender and work (paid and unpaid); wealth and poverty and social class; power and politics; globalisation and imperialism; technology and ecology; ethnicity; self-presentation and physical embodiment. She exhibits many ambiguities and uncertainties – does that T-shirt reveal a commitment to Marxist politics, or is it just a postmodern fashion statement? Does the baby she is holding connote motherhood or faith? And how do all those divergent elements of her being intersect with each other? And while she gives some social concerns a visible presence, others are conspicuous in their absence: what about age, disability, sexuality? Aren’t these important social factors too? And she is located, historically and culturally. Her composite form alludes to the frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan, and – perhaps more significantly – to Dadaism: a product of modernity which sought to cast a critical eye over modernity. And that sounds very like sociology. 

So have we produced the definitive image of sociology? No: there cannot and should not ever be such an image. Sociology, like society, is always dialogical: fluid, shifting, dynamic. But perhaps we have captured some of the complexities, contradictions and controversies: and with a bit of luck, we’ll also start a few conversations, and then we’ll really be getting somewhere.