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Visual Social Research Methods

Beyond Talk and Text

Visual Social Research Methods:

Beyond Talk and Text

Why Study Visual Methods?

● Thinking about research methods always involves

thinking about what the world is like, and about how we can gain knowledge of it:

Ontology – What is the world like? What is real?

Epistemology – How can we gain knowledge of the world?

● When we make decisions about what research methods

to use we are actually answering these questions, perhaps without realising.

► Do the conventional methods exclude anything?

► Are there things that are significant in our lives but don’t

get acknowledged in social research?

► Do our methods over-simplify reality?

► Do they filter out certain elements of our experience and

make them invisible?

► If so, then how can these things be brought back in and

made visible again?

The argument: unusual methods can help to make

social science less ‘reductive’ (less over-simplified).

■ One ‘reduction’ of reality that social science has often been accused of is a reduction to language.

■ It sometimes seems as though social life consists only of what is spoken or written , as most methods rely mainly upon what people say.

■ But what about the ‘data’ of the other senses?

■ What of sight, smell, touch and hearing – are these forms of experience reducible to language?

If not, then why are they so often neglected by our social research methods?

● E.g. is our social world exclusively linguistic? Or is it also

material and sensory , and therefore visual?

● Isn’t our visual perception

shaped by our culture and society? And aren’t our social actions partly shaped by our visual experience?

● Therefore, aren’t the visual

dimensions of our lives socially significant?

The argument: visual data can help to make social science less dependent upon language.

● If there is any doubt about the

role of visual experience in organising everyday social life:

► consider the routine exclusion that confronts the visually impaired in all societies.

► try living for a single day without the use of sight.

● If there is any doubt as to how much communication takes

place through visual interaction :

► consider the silent films of Charlie Chaplin and the subtlety of the meanings and identities depicted.

“Of the special sense-organs, the eye has a

uniquely sociological function. The union and the

interaction of individuals is based upon mutual

glances.” (From ‘Soziologic’, cited in Goffman 1963, p. 93).

So visual perception is a social as well as a physical phenomenon.

On this basis one can imagine a ‘sociology of eye contact’,or even a ‘sociology of smiles’,

i.e. Social relationships can be analysed in terms of the visual aspects of social interaction.

Visual Perception is a Social Phenomenon

John Berger (1972) – ‘Ways of Seeing’

● “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world… The way we see things is affected by what we know or believe.”

● Berger argues that ‘ways of seeing’ are socially conditioned – our perception depends upon our social existence. What we see depends upon what we are (i.e. how we live).

Walter Benjamin (1936) – ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’

● “During long periods of history, the mode of human sense-perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense- perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.”

The ‘Sensory Turn’ in the social sciences

● ‘ This is the time of the senses ’ ( Beyond Text , June 2007)

● According to the anthropologist David Howes, we are witnessing a ‘sensorial revolution’ in social science, equivalent to the ‘textual revolution’ of the 1970’s.

● At the forefront of this is a renewed interest in ‘the visual’, i.e. visual data and visual ways of doing social research.

● At the same time, visual ethnography and visual sociology are increasingly seen as more than just the use of photographs and images in research…

What is Visual Sociology?

● Until recently visual sociology was a marginal sub-field of sociology, largely detached from the mainstream.

● But the broadening of visual sociology beyond the study of images (as part of the ‘sensory turn’) has reconnected it to the core questions of sociology.

● “Ideas about display, status and interaction allow us to tap into the rich vein of Goffmanian interactionism. Ideas about surveillance, visibility and privacy bring to mind Elias and Foucault. Readings of objects, buildings and places allow reference to Levi-Strauss on nature/culture or to postmodern theory on architecture, and so on.” (Emmison and Smith 2000, ix).

■ Visual sociology is more than just the study of photographs and images. (Emmison and Smith 2000, ix).

■ The sociological study of ‘the

seen and the observable’. i.e. the whole field of visual experience.

■ This would include:

● objects ● buildings ● interiors ● environments ● bodies and movements ● as well as 2-dimensional images.

■ Therefore ‘the visual’ links: ► the body and senses ► space and materiality ► culture and meaning

The importance of ‘the Visual’

● There are 2 main arguments for why social science

should take visual research seriously:

i) The Post-modern argument.

ii) The Ontological argument.

1. The postmodern argument:

► Suggests that we have entered a new historical era in which the visual has become a much more important aspect of social life…

► Historical sociologists point to the key role of writing and printing press in the emergence of bureaucratic industrial societies (Benedict Anderson, 1991).

► Some have suggested that if writing was fundamental to modern society, then visual images are fundamental in post-modern society.

► According to the sociologist Scott Lash (1988) the ‘cultural logic’ of post-modernity has seen a heightened visual sensibility replace a literary/textual one.

■ Scott Lash claims that we now live in what he calls an ‘image-based’ culture founded on ‘spectacle’.

■ ‘Spectacle’ = forceful visual impacts upon the human consciousness.

■ These are different in nature from the meanings mediated through language.

The argument: Images have replaced texts as the dominant cultural form in contemporary societies.

► The critical theorist Walter Benjamin argued that:

“In the photograph, a space informed by human consciousness gives way to a space informed by the unconscious.” (1985, p. 243).

► If this is true then there is something unique about visual experience.

► In which case we need to use specifically visual methods in order to properly grasp our visual social world.

… the importance of ‘the Visual’

2. The Ontological Argument:

► Suggests that the Visual has always been central to social life and to human cultures.

► Anthropological studies of traditional societies have shown the key role of visual communication in practices of ritual, symbolism, totemism, and everyday life.

► Richard Sennett (1977) has shown that the public life of early modern Europe was dominated by visible markers of identity, status and belief , in the form of clothing, make-up and insignia.

► It can also be argued that sociology has always incorporated elements of visual analysis, often without acknowledging it.

► Some examples:

● Georg Simmel’s (1921) sociological phenomenology of the modern city.

● Dick Hebdige (1979) ‘Subculture: The Meaning of Style’.

● Erving Goffman (1979) ‘Gender Advertisements’.

● Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘Habitus’.

► So ‘the visual’ is of tremendous significance in social life and social research, but what is ‘visual data’ and how can we make sense of it?

Visual Social Research Methods:

Types of Visual Data

What is Visual Data?

● Until fairly recently ‘visual data’

essentially meant photographs , and ‘visual methods’ meant the use of photographs in social research.

● But there have recently been

influential attempts to broaden the definition of visual data and visual research.

Emmison and Smith (2000, 107) have argued that ‘visual research must break free from the tyranny of the photograph’.

They suggest that ‘visual data’ encompasses

‘the whole field of the seen and the observed’.

On this broad definition, ‘visual data’ could include:

● Photos ● maps ● signs

● living rooms ● displays

● statues ● newspapers

● art galleries ● bodies

● shopping centres

● tattoos ● clothing

● cartoons ● hairstyles

● gestures ● buildings

● facial expressions

● gardens ● etc.

So the visual field is enormously rich and diverse,

reflecting the sheer heterogeneity of visual experience.

► This means that visual

research has immense potential.

► But it also means that it

is easy for a researcher to be overwhelmed by the diversity of visual culture.

... what is Visual Data?

It is useful to subdivide visual data into 4 main types:

1) 2-Dimensional visual data.

2) 3-Dimensional visual data.

3) ‘Lived’ visual data.

4) ‘Living’ visual data.

2-Dimensional Visual Data…

2-D visual data means flat visual ‘images’.

These are usually classified as either:

► produced/existing images.

► images produced by the

researcher.

i) ‘Existing Images’

These are images produced by the research subjects (i.e. the people being researched) and could include:

● photographs ● drawings, sketches, pictures ● ‘visual diaries’

… ‘existing images’

Existing Images may be images that were produced in the past by the researchees (e.g. old photos).

Or they could be images which the researchees have produced for the research (e.g. visual diaries).

► This method can help to create a collaborative relationship between the researcher and the researched, which may be very empowering and produce highly insightful ‘data’.

These images can then be used by the researcher as a valuable resource to help them to make sense of the social worlds of those who produced the images.

►How are the research participants’ biography, identity, and

view of the world expressed (and constructed) through the

images they choose to produce, keep, or share?

This can also be a very useful way for the researcher to

question and reflect upon what the research participants

may have told them, and to come to a more critical and

reflexive understanding.