IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)

690

Visual Methodologies Revisited

Abstract Submissions Closed

RC57 Visual Sociology (host committee)

Language: English

Session Type: Oral

Visual research in general could benefit from a better theoretical and methodological grounding and a more sophisticated analytical set of tools. Visual researchers do seem to have a broad range of theories and analytical frameworks to choose from when trying to make sense of images and visual artifacts: e.g. content analysis, social semiotics, iconology, ethno-methodology, rhetoric. Unfortunately they hardly offer a well-integrated and clear methodology to systematically interrogate visuals with respect to their social and cultural significance, and most methods and frameworks are ill-equipped to handle larger sets of visual data. Furthermore, they are often not fully adapted to deal with the complex nature of visual images, or for that matter with increasingly hybrid multimodal constructions. Whereas the analysis of existing (“found”) visual products can rely on a fairly broad literature and tradition, methodologies for producing and processing (selecting and reordering, analyzing, presenting) visual data are far less explicitly developed and documented. As these issues embody the core aspects and the specific contribution of a more visual social science, scholars in the field should address this matter more vigorously than they have so far. Therefore this panel seeks to provide a forum for the in-depth discussion of a variety of critical aspects with respect to the theoretical and methodological underpinning of visual research in the social sciences. We in particular invite papers that shed light on innovative methodological, typological, theoretical, ethical, or technological aspects of visual research.