2nd Edition
Visual Research Methods in the Social Sciences Awakening Visions
Visual Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Awakening Visions is an indispensable resource for students, researchers and teachers seeking to use visual sources in their research and understand how images work. This fully updated edition adds questions and activities for studies and many new images and models as well as additional exploration of social and theoretical contexts and examples of current visual and multimodal research.
Due to the proliferation of image-centric social media and the growing potential for ‘fake news’, being able to critically assess media and other visual messages is more important than ever. For researchers embarking on visual research this book offers useful practical guidance and real-world examples from seasoned researchers exploring cultures as varied as: religious cults in Venezuela, the Beer Can Regatta in Darwin, Mapuche Indians in Chile and graffiti artists in Sheffield. It offers an integrated approach to visual research, building compelling case studies using a wide range of visual forms, including: archive images, media samples, maps, objects, video, photographs and drawings alongside traditional qualitative approaches. Examples of the visual construction of ‘place’, representations of social identities and different approaches to analysis are explored in the first section of the book, whilst the essays in the second section highlight the creativity and innovation of four leading visual researchers.
This new edition will prove valuable for both experienced visual researchers and those embarking on visual research in the social sciences for the first time.
Introduction
Section I: Visual research and social realities
1. Visualising social life
An Evolving Visual Culture
Urban Visions
The Cultural Imaginary
Is seeing believing
Images as Evidence: Seen and Unseen
Photographs as ‘Specified Generalisations’
Poetics of the visual
Indeterminacy: pareidolia and aberrant decoding
Intertextuality
The Photograph as Proof of Existence – The Enigma of the Image
Scopic Regimes: Surveillance, spectacles and simulations
Technologies: Tools of Oppression or Liberation?
Benefits of visual approaches
Summary
2. The Research Process and Visual Methods
Ontology
Epistemology
Methodologies - Getting started
Phenomenology
Ethnography
Case studies
Using multiple levels of visual research
Representation/reading strategies1
Narrative research
Video: Intersubjective strategies1
Awakening vision: developing visual research in sociology
Ethics and visual research9
Methodologies in Action
- Autophotography, photo-elicitation - Mapuche Transition from Rural to Urban Context in Chile – Emma Louise Owen
- Photo-Documentation and Photo-Essays - Landscape Painters: Urban Art and Graffiti - Dave Surridge
3. Mapping society: a ‘sense of place’
Sense of place
Maps in visual research
Mapping Inner-city sense of place
Into the Divide: Community Identities and the Visualisation of Place
Locating the site
Exploring the city
Signs of diversity – spectres of multiculturalism29
Pandemic Space - The ‘Inertia of the Real’
Video ethnography: walking with a camera
Contested Spaces: 1 Africville
Contested Spaces: 2 Halfeti – Only the Fish Shall Visit
Contested Spaces 3: Wadjemup / Rottnest Island
Traumascapes: Towers on Fire
Country – Far from Nature
4. Visualising identity
Nationality, Race and Ethnicity
Visual Representations of Age Identity
Collective Symbols of Identity
El Charro – Mexican iconography
Uneasy Symbols – Signs of Dissent
Seeing Things: Entangled in Material Culture
Visual identity and product attributes
Body projects25
5. Visual analysis
Modalities & Sites
The Intersubjective and Inter-objective Aspects of Images
Image, Time & Memory
Understanding Forms of Visual Analysis
Semiotic Analysis
Paradigms and syntagms
Denotation and Connotation
Operation Margarine
Forms of discourse analysis
Using Archive Images
Content Analysis
Electronic Digital Aids to Analysis
Section II: Research practices in focus
6. Framing a photogaphie feìminine: photography of the city
Panizza Allmark
7. Mixing mediums and methods: practice-led research into interactive screen-based production and reception
Sarah Atkinson
8. Photography as process, documentary photographing as discourse
Roger Brown
9. Research as an eclectic assemblage: Notes on a visual ethnography of the cult of María Lionza (Venezuela, Barcelona, and the internet)
Roger Canals
Biography
Stephen Spencer retired as a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in 2020. His research interests include the visual and popular cultural mediation of social and political values in everyday life, the exploration of ‘race’ and ethnicity, media representation and social identities. He is the author of ‘A Dream Deferred’: Guyana Under the Shadow of Colonialism (Hansib, 2006) and Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation (Second Edition, Routledge, 2014), which concerned the ways in which people are classified and the role of images in popular culture as a means of circulating mythical concepts of ‘race’ and multicultural identity. His more recent research has focused on visual methodologies for research and teaching as well as exploring urban divisions, including Africville in Nova Scotia in 2008 and Sheffield in South Yorkshire in 2013–18. He has also produced short video pieces on consumerism, moral panics, media representation of the Iraq conflict, homeless Aborigines in Darwin and the complex meanings of multiculturalism.
"This is such an energising and thoughtful exploration of visual methods in their myriad forms. Written accessibly, and blending theoretical and critical discussions with practical advice, Stephen Spencer’s book is a must for any researcher using visual methods for the first time, or seeking to develop their visual skillset."
Jon Dean , Associate Professor in Politics and Sociology, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
