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

The present panel wants to attract contributions regarding the role of drawing, painting and graphic visualization in the context of contemporary social scientific research. How can we understand society based on visual documents produced by human agency? To what extent can these be treated as scientific evidence? And how can these be actively engaged with for the production of visual evidence and the communication of research results?

The panel aims to address drawing, painting and graphic representation along three main dimensions:

• Drawing, painting and graphic representation as testimonies of specific situated contexts, practices, and narratives. Dialoguing with established questions within art history and visual culture this dimension enquires in drawings and paintings as found material capable of offering insights into matters of cultural change.
• Drawing, painting and graphic representation as active methods: how can these intentional practices be incorporated within the broader spectrum of visual methods?
• The use of drawings, paintings and graphic visualizations as methods for communicating the results of social scientific research. How can we imagine a future world of social scientific publications where drawings, sketches, aquarelles, comic books, etc. integrate text-based publications and visual essays?

In other words: What can painters, draftspersons, graphic artists, and professionals (e.g. graphic journalists) bring to visual social science? Is the challenge only to learn about the value of their findings — and the way they convey them? Or is it that there is something about their technique — their craft — that visual social scientists need to incorporate into their toolkit?