5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

While collaboration has become nearly a prerequisite for considering visual research worthwhile, “collaborative visual research” can mean many different things, and the line between collaboration and exploitation is often thin. In this session, we invite authors to think both creatively and critically about collaborative visual (and other sensory) methods. Drawing from manifestos of convivial methodologies (Berg and Nowicka 2019) on the one hand and the play ethic (Kane 2011) on the other, we ask what it would mean for research to be playfully engaging, spontaneous, creative, and emphatic but also convivially just, based on mutual understanding and respect. We ask for ideas of research that is not only “ethical” in the sense of ticking boxes of ethical commissions preoccupied with legal responsibility but also moral, in line with our, researchers’, consciences, and that is guided by love and solidarity.

This is a regular session.