Stimulating Political Imagination With Arts-Based Methods: The Case of Utopia Consultation

Abstract

In this article, we identify ways to methodologically stimulate political imagination in sociological research by exploring an art concept called ‘utopia consultation’ and related arts-based exercises. We investigate how political imagination can be stimulated and practised through arts-based research methods in sociology, and what tangible tools arts-based research offers for studying the intangible. Our analysis builds on recent work on utopia, understood as a tool rather than a blueprint, and sociology of the future, which focuses on the future as an analytical category. We draw on 18 one-on-one utopia consultation sessions conducted in 3 upper secondary schools in Finland, and 3 facilitated collective discussions with the participants in each education institution to discuss their experiences of the one-on-one utopia consultations. Based on our analysis, we suggest four key methodological practices for stimulating political imagination: dialogue, play, cultivating a hopeful orientation to the not-yet, and collective utopian negotiation. We advance sociological discussions of methodology around utopia and political imagination, and contribute to sociological work on the intangibility of discovering the not-yet through arts-based methods by identifying tangible practices and tools for studying the intangible.