The social life of things: materiality, metallization and mobility This approach as three key characteristics: – Treats images as material Objects materiality = how they (photos) look and feel, their shape and volume, weight and texture – Its understanding Of how the material qualities Of an image intervene in the world, particularly the world of people -? the significance of an Object does not pre-exist its social life; What is done With an image rather than its inherent meaning, that gives it significance; there is a range of potential meaning which are latent until embroiled in a specific context BUT the significance of objects are not entirely determined by the meanings people place on them
MISSING PAGE – The rationalizations of objects (Thomas) = in its social life and travels an object passes through different cultural contexts which may modify or even transform what it means – Visual economy (Poole) = the notion of an economy in which photographs are central – conveys a sense of both the circulation of images between places and the structured effects of that circulation 3. I-low to observe the social life of images – Reliance on ethnography and interviews of contemporary anthropological work 3. 1 Pinpointing images – The anthrop. Approach chooses to work with images it thinks will have effects n the world – Limitations to sort Of images -? focus on solid objects that don’t usually change form as they travel 3. The materiality of the visual object Three aspects: – Visual form – Material form – Presentational form particular importance to those material qualities that the viewers emphasize or enact 3. 3 What is done with a visual object in a particular location – Important to consider how an individual image is placed in relation to other objects – How are images looked at in that context – which most likely involves a lot more than just looking – Who does vat with visual objects (e. . Differences in gender) – Biographies Of Objects -? local appropriations Of the photographic medium and some of the rules and conventions that governed those appropriations 3. 4 The mobility Of the visual Object: where it travels – Clear conventions shaping this movement (e. G. Tit family photographs) 3. 5 The effect Of the visual Object: putting it all together – Complex – Can be interpreted using discourse analysis . Sometimes the purpose of their mobility is to extend a meaning or value attached to an object in one place, to another place (responding to Thomas’ rationalizations) 3. Reflexivity and the anthropological approach – The reflexivity of this approach is of a particular kind, It might be described as less autobiographical and more situational. It works from specific moments of relation or surprise between the researcher and the researched, in order to mark the constructed nature tooth researcher’s account 4.
The anthropological approach: an assessment – Possibly pays more attention to the full range of qualities possessed by visual objects compared to other methods – Concept of rationalizations was intended to enable the discussion of power relations as they play out wrought the movement of objects – Attention to several sites and modalities technological and compositional, social, site of audience, site of production – Limitations of huge amount of time necessary to conduct research – Plunging into the specificities Of case studies without considering their wider theoretical relevance is a limited tactic – Assumption of moving objects always being reconsolidated – Not all visual materials are equally thinkable as Objects Chapter II: Making Photographs as Part Of a Research Project: Photo elicitation, photo documentation, and other uses of photos 1.
Making photographs as part off research project: an introduction – These methods do not work with ‘found’ images that already exist distinct from a research project -? work with images that are made as part of a research project , images are made by the researcher or the people being researched -? images used actively in the research process alongside evidence generated by e. G. Interviews or ethnographic fieldwork – There is not clearly established methodological framework to discuss the uses of photography in social science research Rose creates two groups tot methods, distinguished by the way in which the qualities attributed to photographs are put to work in a research project Group 1.
Photos are subordinated in some way to the researchers interpretations -? photos are supportive photo-elicitation and photo-documentation Group 2. Photos are seen as excessive to the researcher’s interpretive ivory -? includes studies verse the specific visual qualities of photos are allowed to display themselves rather on their own terms, thus acting as a visual supplement to the written text of the researcher – Methods are not always directed at examining the social effect of visual materials – Question of research ethics is such more overt in the methods than others research ethics is precisely about ensuring that the social relations Of a research project are ethical 2. Lasing photos to support social science research 2. Photo-Elicitation – Based on the simple idea Of inserting a photograph into a research interview – Photo can be taken by researcher or researched . There are six stages once the initial research question has been formulated: 1. An initial interview or series of interviews is conducted with interviewees 2. Interviewees are then given a camera, and some guidance about what sort of photographs to take and how many 3. The photos are developed and interviewees may be asked to write something about the photos before they meet the researcher again 4. Researcher then conducts another interview”s) with the interviewees, discussing the photos with them in detail . This stage is vital for clarifying that photos taken by inter. Issues mean to them 5, The interview material and photographs are then interpreted using conventional social science techniques 6, The finished research tends to be presented such that the talk about the photos between the researcher and the researched takes precedence ever the photos themselves – Insightful research method because: gives detailed information about how informants see their world allows interviewees to reflect on things they do not usually think about -? only through interviewing can the information carried by a photo be accessed by a researcher 2. 2 Photo-Documentation – Photos are made systematically by the researcher in order to provide data that the researcher then analyses – Key: the careful conceptualization of the link between the research topic and the photographs being taken -? e. G. Y using shooting scripts (lists of sub-questions generated by the overall question and hey guide a first go at taking photographs relevant to the research question) -? adding field notes to each photos: factual information (date, time, location) but also a paragraph or two of commentary on how each photo relates to the shooting script questions – Second stage: attaching codes to photos, allowing researcher to start comparisons from this process further codes begin to emerge – Third stage: to develop a second shooting script in order to develop and refine insights generated by the first – Method developed by comparing it to a grounded theory approach . Alluding iteratively trot detailed tiled evidence Significance of patterns in photographs depends on systematic coding of what they show , used as descriptive devices, the meaning of which must be established by the researcher -? photos serve to confirm and validate analysis – Photo-documentation and photo-elicitation using photographs to the same ends: as evidence in the researcher’s argument 3.
Using photos to supplement social science research – Two things that photos can be asked to do: involve ‘specified generalization’ and ‘texture’ MM Photographs as ‘specified generalization’ Photos intended as a parallel source of understanding, to be ‘read on their own terms’ – The effect Of photos is to affirm the veracity(accuracy) Of a text – Not used as evidence for the researchers arguments, but work more actively to convince us that those arguments are correct 3. 2 Photographs that capture ‘texture’ – Photos can convey the ;feel’ of specific locations very effectively – Can carry a lot of visual information, show details in a moment that would take pages profiting to describe – Show us things that are hard to describe in writing at all 3. 3 Some practical considerations .
Photos used need to be good these methods require a fairly high level of photographic skill really to be effective 2. Both these methods require good quality reproduction (e. G. In journals) significant problem for these supplemental strategies in particular, which rely on the power of visual images to do work – Researchers cannot undermine the need for guidance which readers could need to treat the photos they are offered 4. Research ethics and reflexivity when making images as part of a research project – It is clear that doing research with photos means making a record of identifiable people doing specific things – How that record is made and what is then done with it therefore matters 4. Collaborative research – Means doing research with your respondents or informants, rather than on them – Means acknowledging their own skills and understandings and being open to those skills and understanding mediating and altering your own – Process of collaboration has to extend beyond the site and moment of producing an image, to the sites Of its content and audience as well – More sustained forms of collaboration -? when researchers seek to involve their subjects in sections on how to shoot and what or when subjects themselves are given cameras to photograph what they think is most appropriate 4. 2 Reflexivity – Effective collaboration requires reflexive vigilance – Means the careful awareness of what the researcher is doing, why, and with what possible consequences in terms of power relations between researcher and researched 4. 3 permissions – More specific technique for ensuring that research is ethical – Should be used in the context of ongoing reflection on research strategies – Two sorts: 1.
One at the site of image production (regardless of whether photos are Ewing taken by researcher or researched) Involves permission to reproduce photographs at sites of audience – Permission can range from casual verbal request to written permission granted only after extensive discussion Chapter 4 Content Analysis: Counting what you think you see 1. An introduction – It is claimed that CA can reveal empirical results that might otherwise be overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of material under analysis – It is claimed that CA prevents a certain sort of ‘bias’ since it avoid that a researcher goes through images in order to confirm what they think they already know – It is claimed hat CA is able to discover patterns that are too subtle to be visible on casual inspection 2.
Four steps to content analysis – Method tot content analysis is based on counting the frequency of certain visual elements in a clearly defined sample of images and then analyzing those frequencies 2. 1 Finding your images – Must be appropriate to the question being asked – Reliance on sampling procedure since most content analyses work with large datasets -? one of the strengths of CA should be both representative and significant -? possible samples include random, stratified, systematic, cluster – Choice of impaling method depends on the implications of the research question – Sample size -? depends on the amount Of variation among all the relevant images 2. Devising categories for coding – Coding means attaching a set of descriptive labels to the images -? crucial stage – Much Of the rigor Of classic CA relies on the Structure Of categories used in the coding process, because the categories should be apparently objective in a number of ways and therefore only describe what is ‘really” there in text or image – Coding categories used must have a number of characteristics: -? exhaustive, exclusive, enlightening the images must be reduced to a number of component parts – Key point which can be labeled in a way that has some analytic significance , codes used must depend on a theorized connection between image and the broader cultural context in which its meaning is made (theorized because making this connection entails drawing on a theoretical and empirical understanding of the images under consideration ; it is on the integrity of this link that the codes can be judged as valid 2. 3 Coding the images – Coding categories must be completely unambiguous Ђ? others at different times using the same categories must be able to end up coding the exact same way -? this is what would make the process replicable 2. Analysis: the results – Counting number of codes attached to each image in order to produce a quantitative account of their content – Common use of frequencies is to compare them with some other value (e. G. Time) – A more sophisticated analysis can be developed by exploring the relations between different coding categories -? quantitative measures: associations, cross-tabulations, correlations been two rabbles, multivariate analysis -? quantitative interpretations – CA is a technique which produce results that need to be interpreted through an understanding Of how codes in an image connect to the Wider context Within which that image makes sense 2. Assessment – CA offers a clear method for engaging systematically with large numbers of images – Disadvantages: , tendency to assume that if something occurs very often, it is more important BUT certain representations of what is visible depend on other things being constructed as their invisible opposite: CA is incapable tot addressing these invisibilities others -? CA does not discriminate between occurrences of a code CA breaks images into parts and has no way of handling any interconnections that may exist between its parts, other than by statistical correlation -? CA is not able to articulate expressive content of an image (very hard to evoke the mood of an image through codes) -? CA focuses on the meaning of the image itself but ignores two other sites at which an image’s meanings are made: site of its production and the site of its audience Chapter 7 Discourse Analysis l: Text intellectuality and content Faculty humans subjects are produced, subjectivity is constructed through particular processes – Discourse = groups of statements which structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking; ‘ a particular form of language with its own rules and conventions and the institutions within which the discourse is produced and circulated’ .
Intellectuality refers to the way that the meanings of any one discursive image or text depend not only on that one text or image, but also on the meanings carried by other images and texts – Discursive formation = the way meanings are connected together in a reticular discourse; regularities in a discourse – Power , discourse is powerful but in a particular way, because it is productive. It disciplines its subjects into certain ways outthinking and acting but this is not simply repressive, it does not impose rules for thought and behavior on a pre-existing human agent. Human subjects are produced through discourses, our sense of self is made through the operation of discourse. – For Faculty -? power is not imposed top-down; it is everywhere since discourse too is everywhere. MISSING PAGES 144/145 definitions of power/knowledge and regimes of truth . Discourse analysis I and discourse analysis II D. A.
I = tends to pay more attention to the notion of discourse as articulated through various kinds Of visual images and verbal texts than it does to the practices entailed by specific discourse; most concerned with discourse, discursive formation and their productivity this type Of discourse if especially concerned with the social modality of the image site D. A. II = tends to pay more attention to the practices of institutions than it does to the visual images and verbal texts; more explicitly concerned with issues of rower, regimes of truth, institutions and technologies -? Discussed later -? these two methodological emphases produce different kinds of research work 3. Finding your sources – Discourses are articulated through a huge range of images, texts, and practices and any and all of these are legitimate sources for a discourse analysis 3. Finding your sources: in general – Thinking about sources that are likely to be productive or particularly interesting or provide theoretically relevant results – Sources that others have often used – Locating and accessing previously unused material D. A_ can be very interesting when it brings together, in a convincing way, material that had previously been seen as quite unrelated – D. A. Depends not on the quantity Of material analyses but the quality 3. 2 Binding your sources: iconography – Iconography = a method developed by art historian Pompanos; the branch Of history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works Of art, as opposed to their form.
This meaning is to be established by referring the the understandings of symbols and sign in a painting that its contemporary audiences would have had requires a grasp of the historically specific intellectuality on which meanings depends – Levels of interpretation Primary (or pre-iconographic): elementary interpretation Secondary: addresses images that have a specific symbolic resonance -? Third level: is brought on to bear on visual images in order to explore their general cultural significance – The cosmological or intrinsic meaning of an image is apprehended by ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude tot a nation, a period, a class, etc – qualified by one personality and condensed into en work – Iconography needs thorough grounding in historical context to be successful – As defined by Pompanos this method is not a Fasciculation method since it suggests that this analysis could show how the ‘essential tendencies of the human mind’ were translated into visual themes and concepts – BUT according to Faculty there is no such thing as ‘essential tendencies’ because human subjectivity is entirely constructed 4. D. A. I’ The production and rhetorical organization of discourse 4. Exploring the rhetorical organization of discourse itself – First step in this interpretative recess: try to forget all preconceptions you might hue about the materials you are working with – Pre-existing categories must be held in suspense; we must show that they do not come by themselves but are always the result Of a construction the rules of which must be known and the justifications of which must be scrutinized – For visual images -? may be that the tools Of detailed description offered by compositional interpretation have a role to play here, in making you look very carefully at every element Of an image, and at their interrelation – Important to consider how a particular discourse works to erasure how does it produce effects of truth? . Another emphasis in D. A. S the complexity and contradiction internal to discourses; discursive formations have structures but that does not necessarily imply that they are logical or coherent; part of the power of a specific discursive formation may rest precisely on the multiplicity of different arguments that can be produced in its terms – Interpretative repertoire = systematically related sets of terms that are often used with stylistic and grammatical coherence and often organized around one or more central metaphors; they develop historically and make up an important part of the ‘common sense’ of a culture, although some are specific to institutional domains -? are like mini discourses and tend to be quite specific to particular social situations – DAD also involves reading for what is not seen or said; absences can be as productive as explicit naming – D,A.
