Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Visual Sociology With Dennis Zuev in Ge
Visual Sociology With Dennis Zuev in Ge
Visual Sociology With Dennis Zuev in Ge
DOI: 10.1111/b.9781405124331.2007.x
The starting premise of visual sociology is that what we see and how we record,
interpret, and react to what we see in the social world is no less important than what
we say and how we record, interpret, and react to what we say about the social reality.
One of the grounding ideas of visual sociology is that “valid scientific insight in
society can be acquired by observing, analyzing and theorizing its visual
manifestations: behavior of people and material products of culture” (Pauwels 2010:
546). Visual sociology aims to normalize the use of visual imagery as a valid and
relevant type of data for sociological research. Visual sociology allows for using
mixed methods, where quantitative and qualitative ones show different aspects of the
studied phenomenon. Some recent studies on modern media, such as YouTube,
demonstrate that both quantitative and qualitative methods can be combined (Vergani
& Zuev 2011). One of the important postulates in sociological analyses is
consideration of image as data, and not as an illustration or embellishment of a
sociological argument. A single image, a sequence of images, and even a repository of
images cannot serve as visual sociology arguments in themselves without analyzing
them utilizing sociological theory (thereby also developing the theoretical tool).
Visual sociological analysis can be also presented with no images at all. Radically
speaking, visual sociology can even analyze non-visual data, for example, when
interviewing people on how they create, interpret, and circulate images. In this case
visual sociologists analyze data related to the social world around images and not
specific images themselves.
Visual sociology can be seen as standing on the shoulders of some of the works that
were based on photographic and ethnographic studies, such as “Balinese Character”
by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (1942) and “Gender Advertisements” by
Erving Goffman (1987). Goffman's study on frames and frame-analysis, with
“frames” understood as contextual packages within which an image is presented to the
viewer, has been even more important in terms of methodological guidelines it
provided for future analysis of the visual data.
Visual sociology has remained on the margins of mainstream sociology journals and
mainstream sociology in general. However, recently, with the proclaimed visual and
iconic turns, some of prominent sociologists have directed their attention to the
increasing importance of visual methodologies (see Sztompka 2008), iconic
phenomena of contemporary culture (Alexander 2010), or at least have demonstrated
a willingness to point at the important status of visuals for micro-sociological research
(see Collins 2004). Some of the most recent volumes dedicated to visual sociology
have been dedicated to diverse social issues such as ethnic conflicts, perception of
urban landscape, collective identities, and gender (Nathansohn and Zuev 2012) or
have focused on a particular method such as participatory video used in different
contexts (see Milne et al. 2012).
The variety of social issues that have been studied within visual sociology
demonstrates the need to normalize visual analysis as an integral part of modern
sociological research. Such normalization also means that to prove most efficient
methods of visual sociology should be utilized in conjunction with other methods of
social enquiry. Such a conjuncture can allow a more nuanced attention to the
ambivalent nature of the photographic image, to the socio-historical contexts of the
image, and to any commentary that may be provided by producers and consumers of
the image.
Many of the classic fields of inquiry in sociology have already been looked at through
the lens of visual sociology: class, gender, nationalism and multiculturalism, ethno-
racial relations, work and organizations, urbanism and family, to name a few. Visual
sociology is shown to be relevant also in more recent fields of inquiry, such as protest
and social movements (Doerr & Teune, forthcoming) and most prominently in the
study of new media (Vergani & Zuev 2012).
One of the methodological strands in sociology that has employed visual data has
been ethnomethodology, which has been preoccupied with the practices of
visualization and practices of seeing among other topics. The photographic practice
and practices of visualization as an object of sociological interest is perhaps best
represented in Bourdieu's Photography: A Middle-brow art (Bourdieu et al. 1990).
The subject of the book is not photographs but picture-taking as a social practice.
Bourdieu shows how photographic practice of family photos may increase group
solidarity, and suggests that people engaged in different types of photographic
activities can delimit class boundaries.
Visual sociology is concerned with studying the seen as well as the unseen aspects of
social reality with the use of tools that allow production, collection, and analysis of
visual data. These tools include photo documentary, PEI, participatory video, and
photography, data generated by the research subjects, as well as other classical
methods such as surveys, interviews, and participant-observation. The visual data can
also include three-dimensional data, such as objects and setting, about which
sociologically relevant inferences can be made. One of the challenging techniques of
collecting original data, which has been actively promoted and elaborated on by
visual sociologists (Schwartz 1989; Harper 2002) is PEI. PEI involves the use of
images produced by researcher or the research subjects to facilitate elicitation of
information that without the use of images would not have been extracted. It can
engage individual or group responses on different topics and it provides an
equilibrated visual-oral research tool.
There are also other oppositions to using visual data in visual sociology analysis. For
instance, Emmison and Smith direct the visual sociological concern towards “what
can be seen rather than what has been photographed” (2007: 17). They argue that the
features of the social world do not have to be materialized in order to be analyzed, and
contend that the necessity to provide visual images is not always necessary for the
visual enquiry. While such prominent advocates of visual sociology as Douglas
Harper argue for a wider use of the photographic images as the source of data,
Emmison and Smith represent the strand favoring the use of living visual data (body,
gazes, gestures, postures, displays, three-dimensional material objects). Thus, they
contribute to the strand of qualitative sociological research that follows the tradition
of analysis of non-reactive measures (Webb et al. 1966) or the use of visual data
exemplified by Schwartz and Jacobs in their study on the “signs of prohibition”
(1979).
The second group works under the International Sociological Association (ISA). This
Thematic Group on Visual Sociology (TG05) was established by Dennis Zuev and
Regev Nathansohn and had its inaugural sessions in 2008 at the 1st ISA Forum of
Sociology in Barcelona with the first elected president Regev Nathansohn (2010–14).
ISA's TG05 organizes sessions at ISA World Forums and ISA World Congresses
every two years and publishes biannual newsletters. Currently, major research
journals related to the field of visual sociology are Visual Studies, Visual
Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Review, Visual Communication, Journal of Visual
Culture, and Visual Methodologies. At the time of writing in 2012 the only institution
offering a PhD in visual sociology was Goldsmiths College, University of London.