Vissoc.org.uk
Visual Sociology
Welcome to the Visual Sociology website. This is a site which, we hope,
will provide food for thought about the visual (and indeed 'whole body' approaches) to sociology.
Although promoting the value of visual methods to a discipline which is still governed by positivist and logocentric approaches may be important,
any approach to the visual cannot properly exist in isolation from the other senses,
or the traditions of thinking and representation with which western culture is imbued.
A key aim is to encourage a careful look at everyday sights, the things which make up
our lives rather than the spectacles, the grand displays, to which the social scientist is so often seduced.
'... Why do visual sociologists like to look? What do we like to look at? What are we afraid to look at? What is the role of desire in the work of visual sociology?
Does visual sociology manifest a desire to penetrate to the core of society?
Do we enjoy the Flâneur's search for secret places?
Are we attracted to glossy surfaces? Are there things we are afraid to see?
I am not sure visual sociologists ask themselves often enough or deeply enough why we like to look.
Once the issue of dispassionate social science has been debunked with the recognition that like everyone
visual sociologists have dirty eyes, a second issue arises. It all too clear that the gaze of visual sociology cannot be raceless, genderless, classless.
Eric Margolis (2003) Blind Spots:
Thoughts for Visual Sociology Upon Reading Martin Jay's Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought
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