Visual sociology between tradition and new frontiers of research

ABSTRACT

Visual studies, although consolidated in European and North American academia, are still developing. The research fields associated with them are also affected by multidisciplinary approaches ranging from the fields of ethno-anthropology, art, communication, sociology, semiology, forming a semantic and epistemological mosaic in continuous evolution. The essay presented here proposes, on the one hand, a reflection on visual culture and, on the other, an introduction to some of the most interesting lines of research in visual studies. In this way we want to deepen the epistemological/methodological value of visual sociology, and at the same time give witness to the achievements and innovative proposals that make this field of study one of the most interesting in social research.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual sociology
• visual cultures
• images
• visual methods
• qualitative research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This word can be understood to be the ‘sphere composed of the set of images that circulate in a certain cultural context, of the technologies with which they are produced, processed, transmitted and archived and of the social uses of which these selfsame images are an object’ (Pinotti & Somaini, 2016, p. 8). This meaning, rather than biosphere (the sphere of natural and social life), describes the visual environment in which today’s life is wrapped up, sometimes trapped, fixed on the impalpable surface of the images. Images, in post-modernism, become the rule, or the medium, through which life gives itself and it gives itself as an associated life, as a living system.

2 For a critical analysis of the role of images in a digital habitat see: Favero, 2018.

3 Jean Baudrillard observes how in post-modern, media and consumer society individuals are captured by the activities of images and have increasingly fewer relations with an external ‘reality’, to the extent that the very concepts of social, political or even of ‘reality’ no longer seem to have any meaning. The hypnotised and media-saturated consciousness of the masses weighs up against a proliferation of images-simulacra that end up by referring only to themselves: a show of mirrors that reflect images projected by other mirrors onto the television, computer screen and consciousness. Images break loose of any certain relationship with the real world, with the outcome that people live in a scopic regime dominated by simulations. The simulacrum, as a process of transforming reality, sets itself inside the tension between the artificial and the natural, and in particular as an expression of the progressive hegemony of technology over nature, in its long process of absorption, reorganisation and simulation of the natural to the benefit of the artificial (Baudrillard, 1988).

4 His criticism of advanced western society and analysis of modern capitalism show a strong reference to the writings of Marx, in particular to Capital, to which Debord refers in the incipit of The Society of the Spectacle, with the linguistic adaptation of détournement. While Marx opens Capital by claiming that ‘the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense collection of commodities’ (Marx, 1948, p. 11), Debord introduces the reader to his own thinking claiming that ‘in societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense collection of spectacles’ (Debord, 2004, p. 53). By paraphrasing Marx, Debord immediately establishes a connection between the spectacle and the economy; he thus reveals that the spectacle is an expression of the forces of production, indeed it is society’s main production. Goods are not purchased to be consumed, but for their symbolic value (the true essence of goods, for Debord, is spectaclisation). The concept of ‘spectacle’ is then the logical link joining the world of goods to the world of media.

5 In the variegated system of knowledges of visual culture studies there are prospects of research aimed at highlighting the nature – always historically, socially, politically and ethnically determined – of every form of production, representation and use of images, through a critical position capable of revealing the ideologies underlying the images. Think for example, of the feminist studies, in which visual criticism weighs up against the crucial matter of the relationship between images and construction of the feminine (Pollock, 1999). The way in which ideology intervenes in visual representations characterises post-colonial studies too. As Rose highlights, "the particular forms of representation produced by specific scopic regimes are important to understand, then, because they are intimately bound into social power relations’ (Rose, 2001, p. 9). As regards Bildwissenschaft, many contributions should be traced back in particular to philosophy, history and art history since – as Boehm reminds us – the iconic turn refers to a period ranging from Pre-modernism to Modernism, when the manner of conceiving art underwent a great change: ‘with Manet, impressionism, and/or again with post-impressionism, there emerged a new model of representation and of visual perception breaking with the previous model of vision that had dominated for many centuries, roughly definable as Renaissance, perspective or normative’ (Crary, 2013, p. 6).

6 To reconstruct a genealogy of the ‘turns’ and analyse the more recent debate on the construction of a Bildwissenschaft see the correspondence between the two academics (Boehm, 2012; Mitchell, 2012). The correspondence reveals strong points but also critical issues in relation to the possibility of writing a history of Bildwissenschaft, since this science does not yet know ‘neither what it is nor what it can be’ (Vargiu, 2012, p. 171). But both academics highlight a common aspect of the two perspectives, that is the conviction that the matter of images touches the foundations of culture and sets brand new and unavoidable problems for science.

7 For a classic example, see Goffman (1979). Based on this research there is also the analysis by John Grady of the advertising pictures in Life magazine between 1936 and 2000 (Grady, 2007, p. 215). Another particular approach to the study on images is the one proposed by Richard Chalfen with reference to family photographs (Chalfen, 1997).

8 The first reflections and experimentations on sociological photography are however thanks to Franco Ferrarotti (1974a), who gives the photographic instrument the role of documentation, moral condemnation, militancy: he welcomes the image into the analysis and interpretation of social dynamics, in the studies on the Roman suburbs (Ferrarotti, 1974b) and on the forms of social exclusion, on the uncontrolled urban development and on unauthorised building works.

9 Among the most recent studies worthy of note are: the investigation performed on food cultures of different Bolognese families, conducted with Faccioli (Harper & Faccioli, 2009); Visual Sociology (2012), that delineates the scenario of visual sociology and acts as a bridge between visual sociology and anthropology; and the study on the meaning of the symbols of fascism on architecture in the city of Rome (Harper & Mattioli, 2014). With reference to the latter, I had the pleasure of previewing the project and strolling with Doug through some areas of Rome: our roles were almost overturned, he was guiding me, pointing out low reliefs on some palazzos of the streets that I usually crossed on my way to university. His documentary curiosity led me to raise my gaze and observe those historical and tacitly symbolic elements that accompanied my walks, often ‘camouflaged’ or simply less known and visible than the impressive, fascist architecture in the classical style.

10 In Telling about society (Becker, 2007) reserves a special space for photography as an object capable of taking on various meanings depending on the context in which it is presented: in this lies the substantial difference between documentary photography, photojournalism and visual sociology, three apparently similar areas, but profoundly distant in their objectives and in practice. In particular, Becker notes how documentary photography has provided sociologists with special information about the world, to then be interpreted with scientific rigour and according to an empirical process; furthermore, he notes that if photographers had used reference theories, their work would have turned out to be even more interesting and incisive at the intellectual level. His reflections in any case infer that the image takes on sociological validity only when included as an integrated element in a scientific research project. It is the context that gives meaning to images (Becker, 1995, p. 9) and this applies to photographs as it does to all cultural objects.

11 The Italian tradition is especially tied to the paradigms of phenomenology, Goffmanesque sociology, grounded theory and sociology comprising that of Weber. See: Cavallaro (2015), Ciampi (2015); Faccioli and Losacco (2010).

12 Precisely because it inherits the principles, vocation and method of qualitative sociology, visual sociology observes the social actor in their entirety, as part of a whole, in which they are not annulled, but on the contrary express all their uniqueness, their ‘diversity’. Every individual is therefore studied in their capacity to express the universal (the culture of reference, the context to which they belong, the historical moment in which they live and act) that they interpret through their experience. The Other is new territory, because what is actually human in humankind is their unpredictability: but precisely on the doxa, on the changing knowledge provided by the social actor, hinges the original moment from which the sociological instance arises, which must raise new problems and open new prospects of investigation.

13 A more radical version of collaborative visual sociology, named photo-voice, places cameras in the hands of research subjects, to hopefully capture their unstated points of view, and then, for this new self-awareness to become the basis of imagined or actual social emancipation (Harper, 2016).

14 The work of Sol Worth and John Adair, Through Navajo Eyes (1972), is considered to be a classic. Chalfen, who was part of that research, underlined a few issues, including the phase of educating the subjects to use the instrumentation, the overall size and weight of the instrumentation and the costs of developing the film. They were ‘variables’ that affected the creation of the end product and required planning the shooting, to the detriment of the spontaneity that this technique requires in visual production. Today’s digital technology, thanks to the progressive miniaturisation of the instrumentation, allows eliminating many technical-organisational problems and reducing the costs of purchase, which is why research based on native image-making could be done by asking the subjects involved to use their own smartphone. This is what happens in sociological studies on daily life, in which the images produced most likely represent daily life in how it plays out, in a much closer manner to the actual subjective experience (Faccioli & Losacco, 2010).

15 This approach is central in the Project entitled ‘Inhabiting uncertainty. A multifaceted study on the relationship between social attitudes and lifestyles in pandemic spaces’, funded by the Ministry of University and Research to Marina Ciampi, as Principal Investigator. The research, through mixed methods (quantitative, qualitative and visual), investigates the transformations of the housing experience lived by young people during and after the pandemic. This essay will be an integral part of the project.

16 The research by Malinowski (1922) has to be remembered, in which a relationship of profound participation of the academic is made in the community life of the society-subject of study. Likewise the research by Whyte (1943), a milestone in understanding the method of participant observation and the potential of a flexible research pathway allowing a growth in investigative potential for the sociological theory and methodology.

17 See Collier and Collier (1986) and Becker (1981) as basic texts in order to acquire the principles on which this technique is based.

18 The use of visual methods has grown also within the geographic perspective, in order to build new gazes onto places and promote the use of the image as a form of production of situated knowledge.

19 To study the theoretical assumptions and principles of the techniques of visual analysis (photographs or films), see: Ciampi (2015); Faccioli and Losacco (2010); Frisina (2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marina Ciampi

Marina Ciampi is Associate Professor of General Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Faculty of Political Science, Sociology, Communication of Sapienza – University of Rome, where she teaches Institutions of Sociology and Social sustainability and visuals. Research and practice. Member of PhD Board in ‘Applied Social Sciences’, she is head of the ‘Visual Research Unit’ at the same Department, in co-operation with the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Centre (ViDi) – University of Antwerp.