| |
Time: 8 hours
Level: Introductory
| |
| |
 Introduction Resource- How do social scientists use visual images?
| |
| |
- 1.1 Why look at photographs? Resource
- This unit is an introduction to analysing and interpreting photographs as social data. Most of us look at photographs almost every day of our lives: in the media, on billboards, perhaps in a gallery, even...
- 1.2 The immediacy of the still photograph Resource
- Let's begin with an example that links an historical event to a photograph. Take a moment to think about the pictures you keep in your ‘mind's eye’. Now think about the Vietnam War for a few seconds. Try...
- 1.3 Nick Ut's 1972 Vietnam war photograph Resource
- The fact that still images can seem to express or crystallise important ideas about society and history is, in itself, of importance to us as social scientists, for we are concerned with the processes...
- 1.4 The context of photographs Resource
- When this picture first appeared in newspapers and magazines in 1972, it was to be found next to a caption and in many cases a supporting article as well. The caption text might have been simply descriptive...
| |
| | 2 Social science approaches to the documentary photograph
- 2.1 Photographs as documentary evidence Resource
- As the discussion of context makes clear, we can begin to ask many questions about the role that images may play in the social sciences. Photographs are documents and like other documentary records they...
- 2.2 Theories, documents and knowledge Resource
- Documentary evidence is often messy and inconsistent, and even where it seems to be ‘factual’ (for example in the form of official records) its precise meaning in terms of wider social processes is far...
- 2.3 Realist and conventionalist approaches Resource
- In most modern, urban, industrial societies, still images surround people for much of their daily lives: at home, at work, during leisure, while travelling. Does the evidence they offer differ fundamentally...
- 2.4 Looking closely at photographs for social data Resource
- Look at the photographs of a wedding group in Figures 2 and 3. They were taken at intervals of about 100 years. Let us focus on the concept of identity.
- The 1990s wedding photograph Resource
- Now let us look at the 1990s image. This too depicts a wedding. What makes it different from that of 1900? Some aspects of the two pictures are really quite similar, for instance, the centrality of the...
| |
| | 3 Photographs and social science concepts
- 3.1 Photographic content and context Resource
- Can we analyse photographs to tell us something valid about gender, ethnicity, class and nationality? As the wedding pictures example begins to suggest, there are traces of social facts embedded in the...
- 3.2 Looking at the family Resource
- Look at the photographs in Figures 4 and 5. They depict families in different settings. How would we apply a content/context analysis to them? Make notes on the pictures, particularly with respect to how...
- Looking at the family: the 1950s Resource
- Family photographs may be taken as records, for advertising purposes, or indeed as mementos. Now look at an example drawn from the 1950s (Figure 6). How would you analyse this image? Think about what it...
| |
| |
- 4.1 Are photographs truthful? Resource
- In this unit, we've looked at several examples of the social processes of identity construction and a number of dimensions of identity. Our discussion has indicated that we cannot try to understand the...
- 4.2 Nation and identity Resource
- Yet even if photographs are an ‘evidential trace’ of the reality they depict, they are far from perfect in this respect. Because a photograph could always have been made differently it cannot be ‘the whole...
- Family meal photographs: 1930s and 1990s Resource
- As a final exercise, look at the photographs given in Figures 9 and 10, which depict family meals in the late 1930s and the 1990s. Using concepts about gender, class and national identity, combined with...
| |
| |
- 5 Conclusion Resource
- Photographs can be used as documentary data in the social sciences. Although they may seem to have a special relation to the events they depict, the social processes of image construction must be considered...
| |
| | References and Acknowledgements | |
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, content on this site is made available
OPML Feed
