Good Looks and Guaranteed Sightings: Notes on the Sociology of Seeing

In reviewing the scope of visual sociology, Grady (1996) pointed out that a sociology of seeing would be concerned with seeing in its own right—practices of seeing such as glimpsing, gazing, scanning, and so on. A sociology of seeing, conceived along these lines, would form part of a sociology of the senses—a focus on seeing as sensory experience rather than on objectified visual materials. The sociology of tourism is a particularly good point of departure for considering how a sociology of seeing might be developed by focusing on the interactional details of different kinds of seeing practices. This paper draws on more of a decade of fieldwork on nature tourism. When encountering wildlife, tourists are particularly concerned to get a “good look,” but good looks are defined and achieved in different ways in different tour contexts. In addition, certain kinds of wildlife tours advertise “guaranteed sightings.” Good looks and guaranteed sightings are part of a complex social organization of seeing embodied in the tour context. In this paper, I address interactional dimensions of how looking is done and how sightings are produced and made accountable in whale watching and bird watching tours.

Reference: Grady, John. 1996. “The Scope of Visual Sociology.” Visual Sociology 11(2): 10-24.