About the Book
This comprehensive volume provides an unprecedented illustration of the potential for visual methods in psychology. Each chapter explores the set of theoretical, methodological, as well as ethical and analytical issues that shape the ways in which visual qualitative research is conducted in psychology. Using a variety of forms of visual data, including photography, documentary film-making, drawing, internet media, model making and collages, each author endeavors to broaden the scope for understanding experience and subjectivity, using visual qualitative methods.
The contributors to this volume work within a variety of traditions including narrative psychology, personal construct theory, discursive psychology and conversation analysis, phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Each addresses how a particular visual approach has contributed to existing social and psychological theory in their topic area, and clearly outline how they carried out their specific research project. The contributors draw on qualitative sources of verbal data, such as spoken interview, diaries and naturalistic conversation alongside their use of visual material.
This book provides a unique insight into the potential for combining methods in order to create new multi-modal methodologies, and it presents and analyses these with psychology specific questions in mind. The range of topics covered includes sexuality, identity, group processes, child development, forensic psychology, race, and gender, making this volume a vital contribution to psychology, sociology and gender studies.
Table of Contents:
P. Reavey, Back to Experience: Psychology and the Visual. Part 1. Static Media: The Use of Photography in Qualitative Research.A. Radley, Image and Imagination. R. Gill, Bend it Like Beckham: The Challenges of Reading Gender and Visual Culture. L. Del Busso, Using Photographs to Explore the Embodiment of Pleasure in Everyday Life. H. Frith, Narrating Biographical Disruption and Repair: Exploring the Place of Absent Images in Women's Experiences of Cancer and Chemotherapy. A. Majumdar, Using Photographs of Places, Spaces and Objects to Explore South Asian Women's Experiences of Close Relationships and Marriage. Part 2. Moveable Features: Using Facebook and Video in Qualitative Research.L. Goodings, S.D. Brown, Textuality and Visuality in MySpace Communication. J. Motzkau, Picturing the Truth in Video? Seeing and Speaking in Research and Legal Practice. M. Forrester, The Video Camera as a Cultural Object: The Presence of (an)Other. M. Pini, V. Walkerdine, Girls on Film: Video Diaries as 'Autoethniographies'. H. Lomax, Visual Identities: Choreographies of Gaze, Body Movement and Speech in Video Based Mother-Midwife Interaction. Part 3. Community Visions: Action Based Projects and the Use of Visual Methods.K. Johnson, Visualising Mental Health with an LGBT Community Group: Method, Process, Theory. S. Riley, R. Brown, C. Griffin, Y. Morey, Tribal Gatherings: Using Art to Disseminate Research on Club Culture. A. Cassidy, J. Maule, Risk Communication and Participatory Research: 'Fuzzy Felt', Visual Games and Group Discussion of Complex Issues. J. Haaken, Social Action Research, Psychoanalytic Theory and Documentary Filmaking. C. Howarth, Towards a Visual Social Psychology of Identity and Representation: Photographing the Self, Weaving the Family in a Multicultural British Community. H. Bowes-Catton, M. Barker, C. Richards, 'I Didn't Know That I Could Feel so Relaxed in My Body': Using Visual Methods to Research Bisexual People's Embodied Experiences of Identity and Space. A. Iantaffi, Travelling along 'Rivers of Experience': Personal Construct Psychology and Visual Metaphors in Reseach. A. Bridger, Psychogeography and the Study of Social Environments: Extending Visual Methodological Research in Psychology. Part 4. Ethical and Methodological Reflections on Visual Research.D. Hodgetts, K. Chamberlain, S. Groot, Reflections on the Visual in Community Research and Action. K. Gleeson, Polytextual Thematic Analysis for Visual Data – Pinning Down the Analytic. K. Henwood, F. Shirani, M. Finn, Methodological and Analytical Reflections on Visual (Photo-Elicitation) Methods Used in the Men-as-Fathers Study. I. Mountian, R. Lawthorn, A. Kellock, K. Duggan, J. Sixsmith, C. Kagan, J. Hawkins, J. Haworth, A. Siddiquee, C. Worley, D. Brown, J. Griffiths, C. Purcell, On Utilising a Visual Methodology: Shared Reflections and Tensions.
About the Author :
Paula Reavey is a senior lecturer in psychology at London South Bank University. She has published widely on topics relating to child sexual abuse, social
remembering, mental health, space and embodiment, using memory work, discursive approaches and visual methods.
Review :
"Visual Methods in Psychology establishes a major contribution to the growing body of theories on visual methods in psychology. ... The reader is presented with a great diversity of practices and methods of visual data ... (which) expands our understanding of the broad range of possibilities, constraints and of caveats that are in involved in visual practices in research methodology. ... The overall composition of the book is framed as an interpretive guideline by the editor, that enables students, practitioners, researchers and scientists easy access to the content. ... The wide-ranging content of this work offers a diverse spectrum of empirical studies and theories about the intrinsic strengths of visual approaches in psychology research methods that could be invaluable to social work educators and students." - Kees J.M Van Haaster, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands, in The International Journal for Social Work and Social Care Education "This book brings something genuinely new to the rapidly growing field of visual research. In fact, as a collection it provides a real step change in our understanding of the nature, the roles and the potential of visual research methods." - Alan Bryman, Professor of Organizational and Social Research, The University of Leicester, UK "The scope of this text is impressive. It spans a good range of approaches to analysis and theoretical approaches, and covers an engaging array of areas of psychology. What is really commendable is the interpretive framework provided by the editor in framing why and how visual materials have now - eventually - come into use within psychological research. This makes it a very welcome volume that addresses a current gap in methodological debates within psychology." - Erica Burman, Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
