Telling About Society

by Howard S. Becker

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.

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.

Genres: Sociology, Writing, Nonfiction, Social Science

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 5, 2007

About the author

Howard Saul Becker was an American sociologist who taught at Northwestern University.

Reviews

[Bilal Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toplumsal etkileşimler, insan etkileşimi ve bireylerin iletişimi üzerine değil, yöntem üzerine bir inceleme. Toplum nasıl anlatılır,anlatma biçimleri üzerine bir çalışma, araştırma nesnesi toplum olduğunda seçilecek araç ve temsiller üzerine kitap. Doğrudan gözlem, anket, tablo, grafik, haritalar, fotoğraflar, heykeller, filmler ve kitaplar söz konusu araçlar ve temsillerdir.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Becker writes about different ways in which we can tell the stories of our social world. This can range from photography to complex mathematical models - neither is inherently better than the other, but tell different elements and communicate to different audiences. This has been useful for me in terms of presenting research in different forms - from photographs, to charts to written biographies within a sociological context

[Jan D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the other H.S. Becker books a good read. It shows how society can be represented in different ways and how communities of makers and users of representations work together and distribute the work (and freedom) of interpretation between each other. It gives plenty of examples: ethnographies but also novels, mathematical models, graphs, literary experiments etc. This part was interesting, however it had no arc and was more a collection (in case you are of the type who reads books linearly)

[Alex Aguilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es díficil clasificar a este libro. Me agrada el núcleo argumental principal del mismo: que existen diferentes maneras más allá de la normatividad teórica y metodológica de la academia para poder hablar de lo social. Ya sea a través del teatro, cine, novelas o fotografías. Lo que me queda suelto es la solidez epistemológica de que dichas disciplinas puedan POR SÍ SOLAS sustentar la el rigor científico de lo social. Aunque al principio habla de dichas construcciones epistemológicas de lo hechos y las representaciones, sus ejemplos en los apartados no me parecen del todo bastos para decir que por sí solos puede sustentarse la científicidad de la misma. Eso, ni mucho menos quiere decir que solo debamos y podamos hablar de lo social a través de los límites de la ciencia, sino que claramente impulsa a lo que ya Charles Wright Mills había tipificado como imaginación sociológica. Sé que mi reseña queda bastante pobre. Lo que pasa es que había realizado un escrito mucho más largo que no se subió y ante la pereza seré bastante superficial de la misma. Creo de igual forma que debería dedicarle una segunda lectura con mayor detenimiento con el fin de saber si mis preocupaciones que se desprendieron en primera instancia puedan ser respondidas.

[Bill Kaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Telling About Society for the 2024 All Arou1nd the Year in 52 Books. The prompt was: A book that is not a novel.

With the exception of two authors (Michael Parker/The Watery Part of the World/ATY Prompt 23/novel) and (Marlena Fiol/Nothing Bad Between Us/ATY Prompt 9/memoir), I haven’t had a personal relationship with the authors of any of the other books that I have read for the 2024 ATY Book Challenge other than the relationship that I had with Howard Becker. Howie was my dissertation supervisor, mentor, and friend. Though I earned my doctorate in 1998, I have continued to come back to his ethnographies (e.g. Outsiders, Boys in White), sociological studies (e.g. Art Worlds) and several ”expert” reflections on different aspects of “doing social science.” Telling About Society is one of these reflections.

There are several reasons that I choose to reread this book. (rite of passage, Howie’s recent death, two on-going writing projects, and a guide to doing a broad comparative analysis of all the books that I have or will read in the ATY Book Challenge.)

To be continued:

[Ronaldo Lima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livro muito interessante do Becker que explicita algo que nós cientistas sociais muitas vezes nos recusamos a admitir: a ciência, e mais especificamente a sociologia, é narrativa.

Dessa forma o livro apresenta de forma concisa uma abertura para diversas formas de narrativas sobre a realidade social. Isso possibilita a formação dos mais diversos campos de estudo sobre um fazer sociológico que está muito além da análise estrutural pura.

O livro ainda apresenta certas análises superficiais de conceitos centrais e se desvia em certos momentos para o que, ao meu ver, é bem menos vital no debate que ele se propõe que são as formas de representação de dados sociológicos. Gráficos, tabelas, estatísticas tudo isso seria melhor trabalhado em outra abordagem, acredito eu. Mas, não as formas mais subjetivas de fazer sociologia, nisso, o debate de Howard Becker é riquíssimo.

[Thomas Verbal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for the first time in summer 2016 before starting my MA in Visual sociology, and although I couldn’t totally get his point yet, the tension between makers and users of representations did have an echo.

Eight years later I’ve re-read it and god how I love Becker’s examples and ways of sharing his own understanding of photographs. A little gem for all those who aim to attempt representing the social world in unconventional ways.

[Johanne Hortman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love u howard becker but i can’t give it a 5 just because it took me so long to finish!!! There are some gems of knowledge and ways of understanding scholarly work in this book that I won’t ever forget though!!!

highly recommend to fellow social scientists

[Allison Li · Rating 3 out of 5]

书的内容本是不错的，但是讲一个故事/举一个例子超过1整页(whatever the size)美国本科生都是看不下去的，超过4页还不知道讲这事是为了说明什么的，连我这个来自习惯迂回表达方式的国度的研究生都觉得超过了接受的极限。