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

Inna Perheentupa and Pilvi Porkola
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Inna Perheentupa: University of Turku, Finland
Pilvi Porkola: University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland

Sociological Research Online, 2025, vol. 30, issue 2, 452-468

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.

Keywords: arts-based research; participatory research; political imagination; sociological methodology; utopia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:30:y:2025:i:2:p:452-468

DOI: 10.1177/13607804241286416

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