Picturing the Social Landscape

: Visual Methods and the Sociological Imagination. (2004). By Caroline Knowles & Paul Sweetman (Eds.). New York: Routledge.

Introduction (1-17) (Knowles & Sweetman)

Three key theoretical approaches to visual images within social research are introduced here: 1) in realist paradigm images are regarded as evidence of the reality, as in photo-journalism. 2)From poststructural perspective, images help to construct reality as a part of regime of truth. 3) From semiotics perspective, existing images are texts through which cultural significances or ideologies are uncovered.

Drawing on conceptual and analytic possibilities of visual methods, Knowles and Sweetman write, "Theory or analysis must involve the rearrangement of popular forms of social knowing so that hitherto unknown and non-apparent things become visible. Theory must involve discovery: uncovering what is not readily apparent, connections between one thing and another, the underlying assuptions from which we operate" (p. 7). [By rearrangement, they mean recontexualization that calls for attention of the invisible in a new context.] They attempt to explore visual images' capacity to reveal what is hidden in the inner mechanism of the ordinary and the taken for granted (p. 7).

In explaining the process of revealing the hidden and connecting the personal and particular with the social and general, the authors center on C. Wright Mills's 'sociological imagination', by which he means a mechanism that links the larger historical and social scenes in which lives are set with individual experience and biography (in cited on 7). The authors assert that a set of techniques of visual strategies allow us to understand how the smallest units of social analysis operate in relation to broader social landscapes and bigger process, thus enabling social imagination. By visual techniques, Knowles and Sweetman mean an analytically charged set of methodologies which incline researchers towards the tracing of connections between things of quite different social scope and scale (p. 8). [This reasoning is not clear to explain why visual methods elicit social imagination. In addtion, they heavily rely on a researcher's gaze or capacity in the interpretaion/analysis process of images. If so, how can the research justify the connection that she or he makes between the personal and the social? ]

With regard to the criticism about polysemic nature and highly subjective analysis of pictorial representations, the authors argue that writing, for instance, is also polysemic and in spite of polysemic nature, images present the content, such as smile or laugu, which are usually erased in a writing process.

Jenks (1995) mentions that pictorial representation is, like all forms of representation, about selection, abstraction and transformation (in cited on 13).

Working with Visible Evidence (John Grady, 18-31)
He argues conventional social science training helps image-based research while images may also intrigue insights: "Something in the picture, or something glanced at in passing that could be pictured, will suggest an idea or hint at a link to a theory. It is from such moments that insight is born and from such insights that full-blown interpretive and research strategies can be constructed" (p. 27). [There are many sources that instigate insight. Then are images just one of them or do they have any advantages? The polysemic nature and wholeness of visual representation may elicit more prolific insight or imagination than other forms, such as poem, story, etc. I need to define characteristics of images against other forms of representation.]

My Visual Diary (Elizabeth Chaplin, 36-48)
Among the reasons for keeping a daily photographic diary, Chaplin mentions to look critically, abstractly and actively and to intervene taken-for-granted views. Cultural studies emphasizes that images are polysemic, thus its meaning floats. However, Chaplin points out that photographs, a special kind of images, are in debate in that the 'camera' produces a trace or record what has been photographed. To her, the photographic trace is a record of something which could have been recorded differently and open to many different interpretations. She asserts that the degree of objectivity and subjectivity involved in each photograph varies image to image (p. 47).

Reflecting the Self (Ruth Holliday, 49-64)
It is about the author's reflection on a video-diary project that was conducted with nine 'respondents' to examine the performative nature of queer identities.

Holliday underpins that video-diaries provide respondents with potential for greater reflection and editorial control over the materials disclosed. Observing two styles of the material submitted, she argues that self-conscious appears to be the result of performing in front of a known other while relative candor springs up more when the video is taken by themselves. She furthers the confessional aspect of video diaries on the ground of our relation to media productions: because we are more conditioned as a viewer than a producer, we imagine ourselves as audience for our own productions, thus diarists becomes confessional through a narcissistic identification with an imagined viewer (p. 53). Holliday cites Michael Renov to support her idea. Renov (1996) argues that video is a particulary confessional medium.

"confessional discourse of the diaristic sort addresses itself to an absent imaginary other...In the case of video confessions, the virtual presence of a partner--the imagined other effectuated by the technology--turns out to be a more powerful facilitator of emotion than flesh-and-blood interlocutors. Camera operators, sound booms, cables, and clapperboards are hardly a boon to soul confession" (88-89; in cited on 52).

Holliday foregrounds the concept of reflexivity, which has been centered on methodological debates in ethnographic and anthropological studies. Grounded in modernity, reflexivity, she asserts, relies on a stable sense of self and an internal process of self-examination. However, she contends that as in the mirror/camera lens, the self is reflected back from an external location, thus reflexivity should be regarded as external positions, understandings and explanations. Furthermore, she argues that (auto)biography, as a form of reflexive research, may reprivilege 'authorial authority', typically when the research is based on the experience or identity of the researcher, because it constitutes a kind of moral and political high ground from which critical analysis is less important than experience (p. 57).

Opposing the notion that the camera lens reflects the world, she argues it 'refracts' it through the process of selection, eduting and the production of multiple interpretative positions. Through the 'refraction' of the camera lens, she maintains, the centrality of the academic researcher in the production of social realities diminishes.

Imaging the Intangible (Tony Wincup, 79-92)
He asserts that without memory our life consists of momentary experiences with little relation to each other while memory itself is 'slippery and fragile', thereby we tend to keep personal mnemonic objects as a means of sustaining our memory and identity. Wincup suggests that such identity is constructed more circuitously by witnessing others and comparing with our own than by looking inwards at oneself. In this regard, Bourdieu (1984:172, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste) writes, "social identity is defined and asserted through difference" (as cited in Wincup on 82).

Wipcup regards a photograph as a sign, of which the connotations are constructed between the photographer and viewers, thus possession multivocality, and pays particular attention to the role of a photograph that visualizes intangible concepts through tangible elements within its frame. In this matter, he writes, "Through symbolic cultural patterning, tangible objects constitute a significant and lasting medium of intangibl social expression" (p.91).

Telling the story of Linda Lord through Photographs (Ana Maria Mauad and Alicia Rouverol, 178-192)
In this chapter discussed are the significance of a personal story in building historical contexts--as Steven Biel argues, "it is the individual stories, uncovered through oral history, that often challenge our historical generalization" (p. 179)--as well as the intertextual power of a combination of images and text. The authors state that images and texts, taken together, generates a dialogue between the two elements to the extent that they collectively tell a cohesive narrative. Through this intertexuality between text and images, they argue, researchers can gain particular insights and create new understanding of a subject, and write, "It is also the photographs--by revealing multiple stories, contrasts and contradictions, ambiguities and uncertainties--enrich the analysis, deepen and complicate the story we can tell through words" (p.188). To these authors, it is the multiplicity and polyphony of images that widen our knowledge.