Visual Methods in Social Research

There has been an explosion of interest in visual culture - coming largely from work in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies and while there are a number of practical and technical manuals available for film, photographic and other visual media, there is a dearth of writing that combines both the practical and the technical. This book redresses this with a balanced approach that is written primarily for students in the social sciences who wish to use visual materials in the course of empirical, qualitative field research. It should also be of interest to experienced researchers who wish to expand their methodological approaches. Visual methods provides empirical approaches to both image creation and image analysis, drawing on a wide range of examples: from research conducted on Egyptian television soap opera, to the sale of ethnographic photographs in London auction houses, to pornographic images on the Web. New technologies are also included, with image digitization and computer-based multimedia extensively covered. There are sections on using film and photographic archives, and useful practical advice on publishing and presenting the results of visual research. Marcus Banks stresses the material nature of visual media, as objects that are entangled in social relations and argues for a humanistic, engaged and reflexive approach to social research. This book will be an indispensable guide for the use and study of social images.

Table of Contents:
Reading Pictures Encountering the Visual Material Vision Research Strategies Making Images Presenting Research Results Perspectives on Visual Research

About the Author :
Marcus Banks is Professor of Visual Anthropoloigy at the University of Oxford. Having completed a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, with a study of Jain people in England and India, he trained as an ethnographic documentary filmmaker at the National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield, UK.   He is the author Using Visual Data in Qualitative Research (2007) and co-editor of Rethinking Visual Anthropology (1997, with Howard Morphy), and Made to be Seen: Perspectives on the History of Visual Anthropology (2011, with Jay Ruby), as well as publishing numerous papers on visual research.   He has published on documentary film forms and film practice in colonial India, and is currently conducting research on image production and use in forensic science practice.

Review :
'Banks provides a new and accessible introduction and approach to the visual in research. Importantly, it departs from the positivist approach that has limited visual research texts in the past to offer students and researchers and up-to-date framework by which to integrate visual methods into their own work. I would recommend Visual Methods in Social Research both as a course text or as reference for more advanced researchers' - Ethnos