The problematic polarity between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ later becomes definitive of sociology. This generates a vantage point in which sociology is the dominant narrative, explaining the various forms and expressions of utopianism in their social contexts as part of cultural anthropology or the history and sociology of culture. If utopia is the expression of what is missing, of the experience of lack in any given society or culture, then a proper understanding of any society must include the consideration of unfulfilled aspirations which it produces. The sociology of utopia defines the legitimate relation between the two. Wells suggests something else. He argues that ‘sociologists cannot help making Utopias; though they avoid the word, though they deny the idea with passion, their very silences shape a Utopia’. We must consider the utopian assumptions, the assumptions about what should be, in sociology. That is, rather than confining ourselves to the sociology of utopia, we must consider sociology as utopia, as well as utopia as sociology. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 66-67

[…] literary utopias are always intended – and predominantly read – as a criticism of the present, and thus also embed a sociology of the originating society. They represent and explain the institutions and practices of the society from which they arise, offering accounts of how its substantive irrationalities produce negative outcomes. They contain narratives of the place in history of both originating and alternative societies, of how we got here and how we might get there. They delineate the future as a criticism of the present, and also, as Beaumont emphasizes, reconstruct the present as the prehistory of the future. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 75

Sociology and utopia are similarly engaged in making explicit the processes and relations embedded in the social imaginary, while themselves forming part of it. But they do this in slightly different ways. Sociology foregrounds what utopia backgrounds, while utopia foregrounds what sociology represses. Sociological models are explicitly holistic, descriptive, explanatory and present (or past) oriented. They are, necessarily, imaginary: any model of how society works entails an imaginary reconstitution of society. Sociological models are sometimes explicitly critical, normative and prescriptive, but more usually implicitly so: our very silences shape utopias. Utopian models are explicitly holistic, imaginary, critical, normative, prescriptive and (often) future-oriented. Nevertheless, most of them contain descriptions of present conditions, not just as a foil for the better utopia but as an explanation of how social processes work and therefore what needs to change. In this sense, they are present-oriented. But utopia involves the imaginary reconstitution of society in a slightly different sense: it is the imagining of a reconstituted society, society imagined otherwise, rather than merely society imagined. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 83-84