Visual Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Awakening Visions

Visual Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Awakening Visions is an indispensable resource for students, researchers and teachers seeking to use visual sources in their research and understand how images work. This fully updated edition adds questions and activities for studies and many new images and models as well as additional exploration of social and theoretical contexts and examples of current visual and multimodal research.

Due to the proliferation of image-centric social media and the growing potential for ‘fake news’, being able to critically assess media and other visual messages is more important than ever. For researchers embarking on visual research this book offers useful practical guidance and real-world examples from seasoned researchers exploring cultures as varied as: religious cults in Venezuela, the Beer Can Regatta in Darwin, Mapuche Indians in Chile and graffiti artists in Sheffield. It offers an integrated approach to visual research, building compelling case studies using a wide range of visual forms, including: archive images, media samples, maps, objects, video, photographs and drawings alongside traditional qualitative approaches. Examples of the visual construction of ‘place’, representations of social identities and different approaches to analysis are explored in the first section of the book, whilst the essays in the second section highlight the creativity and innovation of four leading visual researchers.

This new edition will prove valuable for both experienced visual researchers and those embarking on visual research in the social sciences for the first time.

Stephen Spencer retired as a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in 2020. His research interests include the visual and popular cultural mediation of social and political values in everyday life, the exploration of ‘race’ and ethnicity, media representation and social identities. He is the author of ‘A Dream Deferred’: Guyana Under the Shadow of Colonialism (Hansib, 2006) and Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation (Second Edition, Routledge, 2014), which concerned the ways in which people are classified and the role of images in popular culture as a means of circulating mythical concepts of ‘race’ and multicultural identity. His more recent research has focused on visual methodologies for research and teaching as well as exploring urban divisions, including Africville in Nova Scotia in 2008 and Sheffield in South Yorkshire in 2013–18. He has also produced short video pieces on consumerism, moral panics, media representation of the Iraq conflict, homeless Aborigines in Darwin and the complex meanings of multiculturalism.