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This article explores the involvement of H.G. Wells in the early institutional development of sociology in Britain. It addresses Wells's aspiration to a Chair of Sociology as the context for his claim that that 'the creation of utopias - and their exhaustive criticism - is the proper and distinctive method of sociology', and the implications of a hundred years of suppression of utopianism and normativity within the discipline. It argues that Wells was substantially right, and that if sociology embraced the more utopian method of the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, it would inform a greater range of social alternatives for confronting ecological and economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having taken taking as one of its starting points a concern to avoid fetishising method – or employing any form of method for its own sake – this paper then argues that visual methods of research may be particularly helpful in investigating areas that are difficult otherwise to verbalise or articulate. These include Bourdieu's understanding of habitus; our predisposed ways of being, acting and operating in the social environment that Bourdieu himself suggests are ‘beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit’ (Bourdieu, 1977 : 94). Having outlined what Bourdieu means by habitus and considered some of the difficulties surrounding its operationalisation, the paper goes on to consider Bourdieu's own use of photography and understanding of photographic practice. It is then argued that we can move beyond Bourdieu's position by employing visual methods specifically to uncover and illuminate aspects of habitus. Where research participants are directly involved in this process this also means that visual methods can be potentially transformative, allowing for the development of forms of critical self-awareness amongst research participants of the sort that Bourdieu attributes to ‘socioanalysis’ ( Bourdieu, 1999 : 611). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]