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The literary author as a sociologist? Among French Peasants by August Strindberg

In his account of the early history of sociology, Between Literature and Science, Wolf Lepenies describes how the relationship between literature and social science has changed over time. While sociology and literature today constitute two distinct genres, with very little interaction or overlap, the situation was different in the 1800s. A social scientist was supposed to write well, and authors of fiction were often very interested in society, to the point of sometimes viewing themselves as social scientists. As examples of authors who viewed their literary work also as a form of social science, Lepenies (1988) mentions Balzac and Zola. Balzac originally wanted to call Comédie Humaine for Etudes Sociales, and Zola once described his novels as a form of ‘sociologie pratique’ (pp. 4–7). In this short essay, I want to discuss a work that belongs to a related category, but one that Lepenies does not discuss. It consists of works in social science that have been written by literary authors. Two famous examples from this type of genre are Chekhov’s study of prisoners in Sakhalin Island (2007[1894]) and Jack London’s account of the London poor in The People of the Abyss (1903). Less known, but equally interesting, I will argue, is August Strindberg’s Among French Peasants: Subjective Travel Notes (Bland franska bönder: Subjektiva reseskildringar; 1889). These types of works are interesting to sociologists for a number of reasons. One is mainly historical and has to do with the way that they relate to the social science of their time. A related question is if this type of studies can be regarded as studies in sociology today. There is finally the most important question of all: can they teach us something today?1 Before addressing these issues at some length, I will say something about how Strindberg came to write Among French Peasants and what its contents are. The main