Visual sociology

Visual sociology is an area of sociology concerned with the visual dimensions of social life. This subdiscipline is nurtured by the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), which holds annual conferences and publishes the journal, Visual Studies.

Because of the interests of its founders, the IVSA tends to be concerned with photography and documentary filmmaking within a sociological context. However, visual sociology – theoretically at least – includes the study of all kinds of visual material and the visual social world, and uses all kinds of visual material in its methodologies.

Similarly, the newly formed British Sociological Association Visual Sociology Study Group offers UK-based researchers and academics working in a broad range of sub-disciplines within sociological fields a network in which to explore existing and emerging visual research methods and methodologies.

There are at least three approaches to doing visual sociology:

In this context, the camera is analogous to a tape recorder. Film and video cameras are particularly well suited as data gathering technologies for experiments and small group interactions, classroom studies, ethnography, participant observation, oral history, the use of urban space, etc. The tape recorder captures things that are not preserved in even the best researchers' field notes. Similarly, tape recordings preserve audible data not available in even the most carefully annotated transcripts: timbre, the music of a voice, inflection, intonation, grunts and groans, pace, and space convey meanings easily (mis)understood but not easily gleaned from written words alone. By opening another channel of information, visual recordings preserve still more information. For instance, the raised eyebrow, the wave of a hand, the blink of an eye might convert the apparent meaning of words into their opposite, convey irony, sarcasm, or contradiction. So, regardless of how one analyzes the data or what is done with the visual record, sociologists can use cameras to record and preserve data of interest so it can be studied in detail.

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