Reframing Visual Social Science : Towards a More Visual Sociology and Anthropology

Abstract

The burgeoning field of 'visual social science' is rooted in the idea that valid scientific insight into culture and society can be acquired by observing, analyzing and theorizing its visual manifestations: visible behavior of people and material products of culture. Reframing Visual Social Science provides a well-balanced, critical-constructive and systematic overview of existing and emerging modes of visual social and cultural research. The book includes integrated models and conceptual frameworks, analytical approaches to scrutinizing existing imagery and multimodal phenomena, a systematic presentation of more active ways and formats of visual scholarly production and communication, and a number of case studies which exemplify the broad fields of application. Finally, visual social research is situated within a wider perspective by addressing the issue of ethics; by presenting a generic approach to producing, selecting and using visual representations; and through discussing the specific challenges and opportunities of a 'more visual' social science.