Visual Elicitation and Abduction: A Way to Support Diversity of Interpretation

Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 09:00-10:45
Location: FSE013 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
RC57 Visual Sociology (host committee)

Language: English and French

How can we keep people's interpretations open without locking them into the situation created by an interview or focus group?

The use of images offers the possibility of minimizing these limitations. In order to foster this perspective, this participatory workshop concentrates on exposing a method that exploits the ways in which images can open up meaning.

On a theoretical level, this contribution proposes a way of disrupting conventional representation, to sustain deteritorialisation as Deleuze an Guattari (1972) conceptualized it.

In concrete terms, people are first asked to show what attracts them in a picture by tracing lines or masking parts of it. The types of reasoning that underlines this tracing is then questioned verbally with the people.

The session will be illustrated by cases where this methodology of tracing was used in order to explore underestimated social interpretation of meaning. After an illustrated reminder of how the logic of abduction unfolds, the participants will have the possibility to practice this method. A corpus of non-moving images will be made available. Participants can bring their own pictures too. The workshop format is open to all types of still images.

Session Organizer:
Mathias BLANC, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Oral Presentations
Collaging on Emotions at University
Micol PIZZOLATI, University of Bergamo, Italy
Trace Yourself: Layers of Interpretation in Autobiographical Photo Tracings
Monica SASSATELLI, University of Bologna, Italy
Rooms with a View: Images of Academic Writing
Elisabeth SIMBÜRGER, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile
Visual and Verbal Rhetoric about Teachers in Chile: An Opera in Two Acts.
Karin ROA TAMPE, Universidad de los Andes, Chile, Chile
Images As Tools for Social Research
Maria FOBERT VEUTRO, Kore University of Enna (Sicily), Italy
Schooling, Five Years Later: Images, Trajectories and Perspectives of Young Graduates
Suzana FELDENS SCHWERTNER, Universidade do Vale do Taquari - Univates, Brazil; Gustavo FISCHMAN, United States
See more of: RC57 Visual Sociology
See more of: Research Committees