Abstract

SABIDO RAMOS, Olga. The forgotten sociological imagination of the women founders. Rev. Mex. Sociol [online]. 2025, vol.87, n.3, pp.489-516.  Epub Aug 08, 2025. ISSN 2594-0651.  https://doi.org/10.22201/iis.01882503p.2025.3.62950.

This article recovers three sociological novelists: Harriet Martineau, Beatrice Potter Webb, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to demonstrate how they inherited devices of sociological imagination for creative theorizing. It recovers the writings in which this triad offers a methodological legacy for cultivating a relevant narrative style in sociological research, with particular performance in the study of emotions and sensory experiences. It highlights how each reflects on the relationship between literature and sociology, as well as the scope of this link. Martineau establishes that literary fiction is an explanatory and pedagogical resource for theory; Potter Webb substantiates the use of the diary for scriptural practice in sociological research; Gilman argues how literature is a means of sociological imagination that enables the denunciation and projection of feminist utopias. The article highlights the need to bring back this forgotten heritage of sociological imagination.

Keywords : theorizing; literature; women founders; imagination; emotions; sensations.

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