Methodological dilemmas or promises? The sociological imagination and globalization

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore some of methodological promises in researching globalization through stories and story-telling connecting micro and macro contexts of the everyday lived experience of globalization. The discussion is premised on the necessity to first and foremost keep in mind the principles of a sociological imagination (Mills, 1959) as they provide a solid ground on which to consider methodological directions for the study of globalization. I ground the discussion in the necessity to consider what a sociological imagination (Mills, 1959; Gordon, 2008; Smart, 2010) can offer as a methodological trope that acknowledges the complexity of globalization and its everyday lived reality. The operationalization and activation of a sociological imagination is methodologically translated in the endeavour to work with individual stories as a way to explore and disentangle the collective impacts and effects of globalization and the way it is experienced. This approach offers the possibility to explore individual biographies that can be connected to global economic, political and socio-cultural structures. Drawing on my empirical interest in working with stories, I present some methodological examples of ways of working with stories to explore meaning-making processes especially in questions of identity, migration and diaspora. Even if the chapter offers some methodological suggestions and notably in using objects and artefacts, it does not intend to propose methodological solutions but instead presents a framework grounded in a sociological imagination.