Visual Methods in Social Research

The Second Edition of this popular text confirms the book's status as an important forerunner in the field of visual methods. Combining the theoretical, practical and technical the authors discuss changing technologies, the role of the internet and the impact of social media. Presenting an interdisciplinary guide to visual methods they explore both the creation and interpretation of visual images and their use within different methodological approaches. This clear, articulate book is full of practical tips on publishing and presenting the results of visual research and how to use film and photographic archives. This book will be an indispensable guide for anyone using or creating visual images in their research.

Table of Contents:
READING PICTURES The trouble with pictures An introductory example Unnatural vision Reading narratives Formal readings Planning a research project with visual methods ENCOUNTERING THE VISUAL On Television Visual forms produced I: representations of society Interpreting Forest of Bliss Still and moving images Visual forms produced II: representations of knowledge Visualisation Networks Diagrams of Nuer lineages Visual forms encountered Encountering ′indigenous′ media The image as evidence ′Us′ and ′them′? MATERIAL VISION Object and representation The materiality of visual forms Displaying family photographs Exchanged goods Market exchange Size matters Transformations: digitisation and computer-based media Digital manipulation Digital pornography: constraining the virtual Digital pornography: exchange and circulation RESEARCH STRATEGIES Silk thread to plastic bags Researching image use and production in social contexts Watching television Soap opera in India and Egypt Television as social presence Doing things with photographs and films Photo-elicitation with archival images Photo-elicitation with contemporary images Learning from photo-elicitation Film-elicitation Working with archival material Photographic archives and picture libraries Film archives MAKING IMAGES Observing Creating images for research Documentation A ladder climbed then discarded Documentary exploration Documentary control Collaborative projects Indigenous media collaborations Collaborative after effects Ethics and visual research Ethical review Permissions Returning images PRESENTING RESEARCH RESULTS Audiences Presenting photographs The photographic essay Presenting ethnographic and other films Study guides and other contextualisation Databases and digital images Can computer see? Multimedia projects Interacting with Yanomamo Copyright PERSPECTIVES ON VISUAL RESEARCH The state of visual research The place of visual research The nature of visual research

About the Author :
Marcus Banks was Professor of Visual Anthropology 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 was 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 published on documentary film forms and film practice in colonial India, and was conducting research on image production and use in forensic science practice. David Zeitlyn is Professor is Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He has been working with Mambila people in Cameroon since 1985 on various research topics including traditional religion, sociolinguistics, kinship and history. In 2003/4 he was the Evans-Prichard Lecturer at All Souls College, Oxford presenting a series of lectures on the life-history of Diko Madeleine, the first wife of Chief Konaka of Somié village (see http://www.mambila.info/Diko_Web/). In recent years he started to work with Cameroonian photographers. In 2005 this led as part of Africa′05, to an exhibition of two Cameroonian studio photographers at the National Portrait Gallery, London in a display called ′Cameroon-London′. Some images from an earlier showing in Cameroon are online at http://www.mambila.info/Photography/Photo_Show/.  More recently he has worked with the British Library′s ′Endangered Archives Programme′ to create an archive of the contents of the studio of Toussele Jacques, a photographer from Mbouda in Cameroon.   He has long standing interests in multimedia and how internet technologies can be used to illuminate and access museum collections and archives. His work on Mambila spider divination as a ′technology of choice making′ led to some pioneering observational work on how library users choose which books to read.

Review :
This continues to be a key text for work with and on the visual. Highly recommended and not to be missed by anybody wanting to understand what images mean, both practically and theoretically. A classic text for undergraduates and practitioners interested in using visual materials in social research. The emphasis on theory and practice makes it an enduring work for anyone approaching visual sociology or visual anthropology. This excellent new edition provides a clearly structured and accessible introduction to the research potential of the visual, as both object of study and method. It is richly illustrated with examples, from archival photographs and ethnographic films to new social media, which demonstrate how a critical and reflexive visual sensibility can expand the social research imagination. This revised edition of Visual Methods in Social Research builds on earlier strengths with a series of welcome and contemporary updates. Well structured, engagingly written and full of helpful methodological scaffolding, this enjoyable guide will be of great help to scholars and students committed to developing their visual literacy. The book sets out to provide views from an anthropological base, in relation to the visual, that would be useful for researchers across diverse disciplines such as sociology, education, health, and cultural geography. The first edition of Visual Methods in Social Research was presented to readers where the visual path was less travelled, now it has become a path far more travelled, across disciplines and approaches. For this reason, a second edition was timely and I am sure that it will provide a useful map and guide for students, researchers and practitioners who incorporate visual materials in their projects. ????????????????????? ???????????