The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods

Luc Pauwels,Dawn Mannay

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526416988
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Forschung im Bildungswesen

The second, thoroughly revised and expanded, edition of The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Method s presents a wide-ranging exploration and overview of the field today.As in its first edition, the Handbook does not aim to present a consistent view or voice, but rather to exemplify diversity and contradictions in perspectives and techniques.

The selection of chapters from the first edition have been fully updated to reflect current developments. New chapters to the second edition cover key topics including picture-sorting techniques, creative methods using artefacts, visual framing analysis, therapeutic uses of images, and various emerging digital technologies and online practices.At the core of all contributions are theoretical and methodological debates about the meanings and study of the visual, presented in vibrant accounts of research design, analytical techniques, fieldwork encounters and data presentation.

This handbook presents a unique survey of the discipline that will be essential reading for scholars and students across the social and behavioural sciences, arts and humanities, and far beyond these disciplinary boundaries.

The Handbook is organized into seven main sections:

PART 1: FRAMING THE FIELD OF VISUAL RESEARCH
PART 2: VISUAL AND SPATIAL DATA PRODUCTION METHODS AND TECHNOLOGIES
PART 3: PARTICIPATORY AND SUBJECT-CENTERED APPROACHES
PART 4: ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS AND PERSPECTIVES
PART 5: MULTIMODAL AND MULTISENSORIAL RESEARCH
PART 6: RESEARCHING ONLINE PRACTICES
PART 7: COMMUNICATING THE VISUAL: FORMATS AND CONCERNS

1 Visual Dialogues Across Different Schools of Thought

Luc Pauwels and Dawn Mannay

This opening chapter provides an insight into the rationale for bringing together the second edition of The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods. It reflects on the current state of the field and its challenges, before setting out the aims and scope of the current volume, as grounded in the first edition. This is followed by an overview of the individual sections and their chapters, examining the ways in which they connect to core themes in visual studies, methodologies and practices, housed within an ocularcentric culture (Jay, 1994) where visual and multimodal materials both represent and create our understandings of social worlds.

Visual Research in a Visual Culture

Contemporary visual methods involve scrutinizing visually observable aspects of society as a gateway to the deeper traits of culture; they also include using visual means to visualize the material, immaterial and conceptual, generating a more nuanced understanding of social worlds. Therefore, visual research concerns not only a study ‘about’ the visual, but also working ‘through’ visuals and visualizations (Pauwels, 2006, 2015). Its efforts are not confined to the visible world, as they intimately relate to visualizing the invisible and the (in)conceivable.

The salience of visual methods and visual research is often supported by the belief that we are living in an increasingly dominant visual culture. Unfortunately, the term ‘visual’ in ‘visual culture’ is often equated with ‘images’ and even further reduced to the products of visual ‘media'. However, the ‘visual’ aspect of our world does not manifest itself uniquely in visual media; rather, it actively pervades our daily lives. Visual culture includes visual aspects, objects and ‘performances’ – for example, architecture, fashion and forms of interaction – which are accessible through direct observation drawing on an array of our senses (Pauwels, 2013). These elements are only partially available through images, and the remainder depend on appropriate ways – visual and multimodal data production methods – to make them accessible and knowable. Consequenty, visual culture should not be narrowed down to ‘image culture'; nor should visual research be reduced to ‘image-based inquiry', or even further to ‘lens-based research'.

The study of visual culture requires an analysis of visual cultural products and immaterial visual traits. The immaterial side of visual culture is often referred to as ‘visuality’ or the culturally determined manner of looking at things, which defines ‘what’ we see and ‘how’ we see it. A thorough study of manifestations of visual culture and image culture requires that the researcher takes into account three distinct, yet interrelated, aspects:

• – researching the Production Context (the who, what, where, when, how and why; for example, through ethnographic research, interviews and surveys);
• – researching the Visual Artefact or Phenomenon (through content-related and formal analysis, focusing on, among other things, technology, characteristics of the medium, genre and style);
• – researching the Utilization Context (for example, through audience analysis, and with a focus on disclosing situational factors, subcultural connotations and political implications).

According to Rose (2016), many theoretical disputes about visual culture, visuality and visual objects are concerned with which of these aspects – production, image/artefact, audience/uses – is most important, and why. For example, some scholars concentrate exclusively on the intentions of the author or producer. Arguably, this approach is losing ground in current scholarship, among claims that it holds little relevance if ‘the author is dead’ or has been swallowed up by a large group of actors or an institutional apparatus (Lomax, 2012). Consequently, the effects of the visual product may reside in other modalities, such as the distribution of labour and economic requirements. Many contemporary researchers are inclined to shift the emphasis to the user context of visuals, and to the study of ‘active’ consumers and audiences who use visuals under particular conditions and in a context involving many other visual aspects and impressions that interact (intertextuality) (Pauwels, 2013: 227–228). Nonetheless, the intentions of the author or producer remain an interesting and essential aspect of visual analysis of found materials, and they are often centralized in participatory approaches where participants produce visual materials and their subjective meaning making is privileged (Mannay, 2010, 2016).

In essence, all these aspects provide potentially interesting insights, but depending on the specific research question, the emphasis can, exclusively or not, be located in one or more of these approaches. The various methods that are available will, to a greater or lesser extent, be suitable for bringing particular features to the fore. For example, semiotic analysis and content analysis are primarily suitable for the exploration of visual objects themselves, while ethnographic and ethnomethodological research is more appropriate for studying practices, experiences and processes relating to the creation and utilization of those objects. An ill-considered choice and combination of methods, as well as the restriction of research to just one of the three areas of attention, inevitably results in a partial ignorance of the wider issues and cultural richness of the visual. Looking comprehensively at visual objects, and at their social conditions and effects, requires that researchers apply reflexivity in their research, exploring and taking into account their own manner of looking.

Although the visual as an object of study should not be reduced to the study of ‘image culture', ‘images’ and many other types of visual representations continue to fulfil a central role in ‘visual studies’ and within visual culture(s). They do so in three respects: as a medium for the reproduction of other cultural products, as a dominant visual cultural product in itself, and as a scientific and educational means of communication and research (Pauwels, 2013).

After many decades of steadily increasing visual activities in many different fields of knowledge production, the relative lack of integration and cumulative development with respect to the findings and practices of visual methods, especially within and across the social and behavioural sciences, and the humanities remains problematic. Visual methods and approaches seem to be appropriated, reinvented and relabelled from myriad theoretical and disciplinary positions without gaining much methodological depth, and often without reference to, or knowledge of, previous scholarship in the field (Pauwels, 2010: 546). Accordingly, this practice has seen visual methodologies ‘reinvented over and over again, often with little consideration of what went before or of what is going on in the parallel worlds of neighbouring approaches’ (Mannay, 2016: 129).

Therefore, visual scholarly activities should become not only more ‘integrated’ but also more ‘inclusive’ in terms of subject areas, disciplinary perspectives, media, modes and sensory experiences. Examining recent efforts, which are well represented in this book, visual research across a growing range of disciplines is becoming more inclusive. This is apparent in terms of visual and visualized ‘referents', including a range of concepts, abstract processes, visualizations of the invisible; in media that have moved beyond photography and film to include drawings, maps, artefacts, all sorts of sensors and scanners; and in the fields of enquiry in which the visual now features, including the everyday, science communication, health research, arts practices and professional worlds.

The visual in society, as well as in the various academic disciplines, is so omnipresent that it is simply taken for granted rather than considered a core domain of attention and competency development. However, there is still a substantial task ahead in terms of making the visual more ‘visible’ as a particular field of study and expertise, and with respect to adopting and adapting visual technologies as instruments for innovative and ethical research. Both the mimetic and reproductive faculties of visual media, and their expressive capabilities, should be further explored as unique data sources and opportunities for novel ways of scholarly communication, as well as instruments to help induce positive social change.

Although visual methods hold many promising prospects for the study of culture and society, they do not constitute an unproblematic route to valuable data and well-founded results. Such methods require the further development of disciplinary-informed visual competencies among researchers, and more explicit and integrated methodologies.

Renewing the Visual Dialogue

In introducing the first edition of The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods, Eric Margolis and Luc Pauwels (2011: xxi) argued that ‘the future of visual research will depend on the continued effort to cross disciplinary boundaries and engage in constructive dialogue with different schools of thought'. This cross-disciplinary pursuit is echoed in the second edition, where we engage with the accounts of researchers working in different traditions, including anthropology, art and design, communication, cultural studies, education, film and media studies, geography, gender studies, history, literature, photography, journalism, psychology and sociology. Consequently, the volume brings together distinct scholarly traditions, providing an opportunity for reflection across disciplinary boundaries, and for shedding new light on common problems and opportunities stimulated by research in the field of visual studies. Scholars of disciplines and fields of enquiry not directly represented in this book may nevertheless find inspiration, guidance and encouragement to take forward their interests in visual research methods.

The volume introduces a range of contexts and sites. The authors have been drawn from a wide geographical spread, representing an international interest in the visual and including the nations of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, North America, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. The sites of interest are equally varied and the authors offer insights into the natural environment, historical archives, social media, food packaging and therapeutic practice – to name but a few. In exposing readers to these different disciplinary practices and research contexts, we hope to encourage them to reflect on how this knowledge can inform their own visual fields of interest.

The book welcomes back 25 of the original authors from the first edition, who have updated and, in some cases, completely re-written their foundational contributions. They are joined by 31 new contributors to the second edition, who offer fresh perspectives and extend the knowledge base by reflecting on their innovative work in visual studies and methodologies. Authors in the collection are both well-known names in the field of visual research and scholars who are relatively new academic voices. In editing this collection, we have gained a wealth of knowledge, developed more nuanced understandings of visual research methods, and at the same time gained a deeper appreciation of different research approaches, perspectives and applications.

As in its first edition, the Handbook does not aim to present a consistent view or voice, but rather to exemplify diversity and contradictions in perspectives and techniques. It is noteworthy, then, that the authors in this collection have brought opportunities for the reader to reflect on, challenge and extend their own thinking on visual research methods, and complicate their understandings of epistemology, methodology, reflexivity and ontology. Crucially, at the core of these chapters are theoretical and methodological debates about the meanings and study of the visual, presented in vibrant accounts of research design, analytical techniques, fieldwork encounters and data presentation.

The following 44 chapters of this Handbook have been arranged in seven parts, each hosting chapters that deal with a particular theme. These themes are inevitably interrelated, but shifting the focus to each aspect has enabled an emphasis on specific elements of visual research methods. The book aims to provide the reader with an in-depth understanding of all of these important areas, to sketch out a picture of key studies, approaches and recommendations in the contemporary visual landscap...