Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

178

Visibility and Social Orders. on the Construction of Boundaries and Knowledge in the Contemporary Technological Condition

RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture (host committee)

Language: English

In contemporary societies inclusion, exclusion, participation and access to knowledge production are not anymore primarily organized through social status, access to institutions, and exchange structures. This session adresses the question of visibility, which has been neglected as a focus of interaction and a generator of social structures, and as the implications of visual research for sociality and culture remain undertheorized. 
The ubiquity of vernacular knowledge creation and sharing via polymedia channels gives rise to a) new modes of cultural production b) new chances for the recognition of people and issues c) new boundaries e.g. between the spectacular and the boring, the famous and the non-famous. Thus, the visible becomes an increasingly important interface between meanings, milieus, organisations and technologies – as well as an ordering principle of its own. 
For the session, we welcome papers that address the following issues:

• How are boundaries drawn (or erased) visually between nature and culture, between the social and the non-social, the human and non-human and between different categories of people?
• In which ways might the production and distribution of knowledge change  within the context of a general aesthetization of “networked” societies? What are the roles and activities of experts and amateurs and their relationships in the development of cultural skills such as visualization, self-presentation, redaction, distribution in media networks? 
• How far do visibilities and legibilities have the capacity to shape social and cultural orders through technologies, practices, and activism? Which forms of subjectivity are advanced in these contexts?

Posters: