Formal capacities and relational understandings: Greed in literature, art and sociology

Abstract In considering the uses of literature for the sociologist, we recognize that literature, art, and sociology all depict relationships. Producers (authors, artists, sociologists) craft relationships into cultural objects (novels, paintings, monographs); thereupon, receivers (readers, viewers) draw or infer relationships from these objects; producers, objects, receivers mutually construct and reconstruct one another over time. Literature, art, and sociology have different formal properties, however, and these different capacities shape how the receivers infer relationships from them. This article takes the example of greed to analyze sociological, artistic, and literary objectifications and to illuminate how the three genres’ distinctive formal properties influence their specific capacities to engender relational understanding. This analysis indicates why sociologists should view none of these genres as a subset of another