Transcript Visual Research Methods The everyday is extraordinary

Visual Research Methods
The everyday is extraordinary
Why Visual Methods?
• Increasingly visual ‘ocularcentric’ culture
• shift from modernity to post modernity
• Jenks argues that ‘looking, seeing and knowing
have become perilously intertwined.’ rendering
our world as primarily a ‘seen’ phenomenon’
(1995 :1-2)
• However 'the study and use of visual images is
only of use within broader sociological research
enterprises, rather than as ends in themselves.’
(Bank, M 2001: 178)
Research into Images
1. What is the image of, what is its content?
2. Who took it or made it, when and why?
3. How do others come to have it, how do
they read it, what do they do with it?
Marcus Banks (2001) Visual Methods in Social Research, Sage p7
Approaches to the Image
• Images as evidence – as witness to
important events - family snaps
• As representations of society, nation,
citizenship
• As ideological – dividing into an ‘us’ and
‘them’
• Constructing visual identities – images as
material visual forms.
• Images in context of use
Consider the Image
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there is no ‘one-way’ visual method or perspective that has ascendancy over all other
ways of sense making.
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we don’t ‘see’, we ‘perceive’ since the former is a biological norm and the latter
culturally and psychologically informed.
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the visual, as objects and images, exists materially in the world but gain meaning
from humans.
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all images are regarded as polysemic
images can be ‘researcher found’ (generated by others) or ‘researcher
generated’ (created by the researcher). Both are integral to the visual research
process.
A photograph does not show how things look. It is an image produced by a
mechanical device, at a very specific moment, in a particular context by a person
working within a set of personal parameters
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(based on notes produced by visual sociologist Jon Prosser, Leeds Met 2006)
Reading images?
• The term ‘reading’ implies an implicit message
being conveyed in the image
• In fact ‘reading’ relies on accumulated cultural
knowledge (cultural capital) which the individual
has access to.
• There are also as Hall (1978) has pointed out
different reading positions which are inherently
political.
• Hegemonic, Negotiated and Oppositional
Using Images
• Barthes concept of 'rhetoric of the image'
• Images as complex conventional codes
• Rhetoric is often contrasted with rationality
and allied with radical relativism or nihilism
• but... All discourse is unavoidably
rhetorical
• This presentation illustrates the power of
images to condition our thinking
Use of Visual Tropes
our understanding of reality is
fundamentally relational.
Reality is framed within
systems of analogy.
Figures of speech enable us to
see one thing in terms of
another
Visual tropes act in the same
way
Eyes on the City
Buildings can be concrete boundary
markers, sites of contention, statements
of identity
Critical Visual Methods
• myth of objectivity
• Ethical concerns – exploitation or collaboration?
• Obtrusiveness of video recording
 Immediacy and complexity of the material
gathered
• 'the study and use of visual images is only of
use within broader sociological research
enterprises, rather than as ends in themselves.’
(Bank, M 2001: 178)
Deep and Surface Structure
Denotation
Connotation
Myth
E.g. Barthes
Mythologies 1953
Street performers
La Rambla,
Barcelona –
parody of the cult
of white celebrity –
whiter than white
minstrels?
The Circuit of Culture
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Production – campaigns, intentions
Regulation – hegemony and social control
Consumption – desire economy - distinction
Identity – constant negotiation
Representation – political, basis for social meanings,
regimes of thought, discourses eg tourism, law and order,
anthropological etc..
Photograph by Panizza Allmark – Edith
Cowan University, WA
Photograph by Panizza Allmark – Edith
Cowan University, WA
Artefacts - Moral Panics
Genealogy of a 'moral panic' – evidence from
diverse sources
1. Historical
2. Current
Media
3. Observation
Tourism, commodification and white public drinking
' I lie down here sometimes'
This is a kitchen…
' yeah when he's drunk'
This is my brother in law
- he gets the newspaper everyday..
Competing business interests vie for the
small parcel of land ..
Criticisms of this approach
• Potentially video as another link in chain
• 'victimist gaze'
• Visual medium appears transparent but
selectively filmed and edited –
• hence mediated by researcher
• increases ethical problems
• temptation to include unsolicited material
advantages
• comes to the viewer directly as
perception.,
• they have an apparent immediacy and
realism which is different from that
apprehended in the 'interiority' of our
thoughts when we read a book.' (Jacka, T
& Petkovic J. 2000
• picks up non-verbal codes
disadvantages
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accessibility
subject may be more self-conscious
myth of transparency
time consuming
ethical issues – permissions (covert
filming)
• lack of quality
3. Collaboration
'Fieldwork should be a two-way
engagement in which the subjectivity of
the 'other' has the opportunity for selfassertion and the political nature of the
definition of 'otherness' would be exposed
and thereby open to resistance,
negotiation and redefinition.' (Carol
Warren 1982)
The Northern Territory's
alcohol consumption is
one of the highest in the
world, and certainly the
highest in Australia. In
2001 the alcohol
consumption rate was
estimated at 1120
standard drinks per
person per year.
Up to 35% of Indigenous men do
not drink alcohol compared with
12% of non-Indigenous men.
29% to 80% of Indigenous
women do not drink alcohol
compared with 19% to 25% of
non- Indigenous women.
In the Northern Territory, 75% of
Aboriginal people do not drink
alcohol at all.
Media Saturation
Images as Propaganda
Spectacles Seen & Unseen
visualising consensus
Shop window in California June 1991 – during Desert Storm campaign
Bricolage and Visual Identity
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Advertising to reduce the road toll – Grey Advertising campaign for
Transport Accident Commission in Victoria, 1990
Under the Skin of multiculturalism
Links to real media video clips
Identities
Arrival
Introduction
Divided City
Ethnic Competition
No limits
A sense of Identity
Media Representation
Assimilation
Bibliography
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Banks, M (1995) ‘Visual research methods’ Social Research Update Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Winter 1995
Banks, M (2000) Visual Methods in Social Research, Sage
Barthes, R (1982) Image, Music, Text, Flamingo
Barthes, R, (1972) Mythologies, Paladin
Chandler, D. 'Semiotics For Beginners'. [WWW] URL: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html
Floch, Jean-Marie (2000): Visual Identities (trans. Pierre Van Osselaer & Alec McHoul). London: Continuum
Forceville, Charles (1996): Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London: Routledge
Foucault, Michel (1970): The Order of Things. London: Tavistock
Grey Advertising Campaign (1994) Transport Accident Commission of Victoria
Hall, Stuart ([1973] 1980): 'Encoding/decoding'. In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Ed.): Culture, Media, Language: Working
Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 London: Hutchinson, pp. 128-38
Jacka, T & Petkovic J. (2000) Ethnography and Video: Researching Women in China's Floating Population, Intersections, back issues,
Parts 1 & 2 [Available Online]http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/back_issues/tampt1.html (Accessed 2/1/05)
Jenks, C. (Ed.) (1995) Visual Culture, Routledge
Mitchell, WJT (1995) Picture Theory, University of Chicago Press
Prosser Jon (2006) Working Paper: Researching with visual images: Some guidance notes and a glossary for beginners Real Life
Methods [email protected] University of Manchester & University of Leeds, July 2006
Rose (2001) Visual Methodologies, Sage
Spencer, S (2006) Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation, Routledge
Spencer, S (2005) Contested Homelands: Darwin's 'itinerant problem' in Pacific Journalism Review, Auckland University: New Zealand
Also Available Online http://www.pariahnt.org/onemiledam/pages/Framing_the_Fringe_Dwellers.htm
Spencer, S (2005) 'Framing the Fringe Dwellers': Visual Methods for Research & Teaching Race & Ethnicity: A Sample Case Study, in CSAP Monograph
Woodward, K (1997) Identity & Difference, Sage