Reframing Visual Social Science
Towards a More Visual Sociology and Anthropology

A guide to the methods and techniques used to visually study and communicate culture and society.

Luc Pauwels (Author)

9781107008076, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 August 2015

350 pages, 113 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.64 kg

'Reframing Visual Social Science offers a fresh, powerful and theoretically sophisticated perspective on the visual turn that's been reshaping social research for the past fifteen years. Focusing on the seam between visual evidence and visual representation, Pauwels examines a cluster of contrasting points of view that can discourage or distort visual approaches to the social sciences. Rather than pushing these contradictions aside, however, Pauwels embraces them as opportunities for systematic analysis. Through a combination of case studies and theoretical essays, he articulates that analysis as a comprehensive framework for understanding materials and research practices that are all too often treated sui generis - including photographic field work, ethnographic film, the analysis of found photographs, participatory media projects, and image-rich research reporting. The result is a path-breaking book that links existing treatments of visual social research with new possibilities and perspectives and has a great deal to offer both beginning and mature scholars.' Jon Wagner, Professor Emeritus, School of Education, University of California, Davis

The burgeoning field of 'visual social science' is rooted in the idea that valid scientific insight into culture and society can be acquired by observing, analyzing and theorizing its visual manifestations: visible behavior of people and material products of culture. Reframing Visual Social Science provides a well-balanced, critical-constructive and systematic overview of existing and emerging modes of visual social and cultural research. The book includes integrated models and conceptual frameworks, analytical approaches to scrutinizing existing imagery and multimodal phenomena, a systematic presentation of more active ways and formats of visual scholarly production and communication, and a number of case studies which exemplify the broad fields of application. Finally, visual social research is situated within a wider perspective by addressing the issue of ethics; by presenting a generic approach to producing, selecting and using visual representations; and through discussing the specific challenges and opportunities of a 'more visual' social science.

Part I. Remodelling Visual Social Science: 1. Prologue and outline: (re)framing visual social science?
2. An integrated framework for conducting and assessing visual social research
Part II. The Visual Researcher as Collector and Interpreter: 3. Researching 'found' or 'pre-existing' visual materials
4. A visual and multimodal model for analyzing online environments
Part III. The Visual Researcher as Producer, Facilitator and Communicator: 5. The mimetic mode: from exploratory to systematic visual data production
6. Visual elicitation techniques, respondent-generated image production and 'participatory' visual activism
7. The 'visual essay' as a scholarly format: art meets (social) science?
8. Social scientific filmmaking and multimedia production: key features and debates
Part IV. Applications/Case Studies: 9. Family photography as a social practice: from the analogue to the digital networked world
10. A visual study of corporate culture: the workplace as metaphor
11. Health communication in South Africa: a visual study of posters, billboards and grassroots media
Part V. Visual Research in a Wider Perspective: 12. Ethics of visual research in the offline and online world
13. A meta-disciplinary framework for producing and assessing visual representations
14. Advancing visual research: pending issues and future directions.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Social research & statistics [JHBC], Social theory [JHBA], Media studies [JFD], Cultural studies [JFC]