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To cite this article: Richard Winter (1975) Literature and Sociological Theory , Cambridge Journal of Education, 5:1, 30-39,
DOI: 10.1080/0305764750050104
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764750050104
RICHARD WINTER
Professor Hirst's claim that the arts constitute "a unique area of
knowledge"2 is really rather a minimal one. He merely notes that
in aesthetic communication, as in any other "language", there
must be a system of rules for intelligible form and there must
be criteria for appropriate usage. Although his argument seems
at first to be a claim for the value of aesthetic modes (which is
what Professor Reid wants3), it is really nothing of the sort: it is
a statement about the usage of the term "knowledge". Thus
Professor Hirst's argument falls short in an important respect:
by emphasizing the "uniqueness" of the aesthetic mode of knowledge as a distinct "language game", he manages to avoid raising
any questions about the boundaries of different forms of curriculum knowledge, or about existing status relationships between
them.
In contrast, the following argument does raise such questions
because it suggests that literature is a form of knowledge not
in a unique and different way but in a way which is very similar
to, for example, sociology. By examining some recent statements
of sociologists about their work and comparing them with those
of poets and novelists, I hope to suggest that sociology and literature can not be simply distinguished as "science" as opposed
to "art", "analysis" as opposed to "description", or "objective
knowledge" as opposed to "subjective vision". Instead I shall
suggest that sociology and literature are comparable, parallel
traditions of theorizing about the social world. The argument
begins with a critical look at some work in "The Sociology of
Literature" which operates with very simple assumptions about
the ways in which sociology (as "science") is unproblematically
different from, and in a sense cognitively superior to, literature
(as "art"), and can thereby claim to "use" literature for its own,
sociological purposes. The following section puts forward some
conceptual similarities between sociological and literary theorizing, and finally some examples are given of how works of
Richard Winter teaches Sociology at St. Osyth's College,
Clacton.
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