Subject: Jon Wagner comes to Rutgers
If you are near Rutgers (NJ), consider coming to a day of Visual Sociology.
Jon Wagner, former president of the International Visual Sociology Assn. and
image editor of Contexts Magazine, will give a talk in the Sociology Department
Friday, March 5.
Image as Thought and Afterthought:
Reconsidering the Visual Substance of Social Research
The talk is in room A256 Lucy Stone Hall at 10 am.
There will be informal conversation early in the afternoon.
At 2, Jon will lead a short workshop.
Abstract of talk
Jon Wagner
University of California, Davis
What's more important to doing good social research, words, numbers
or images? Most social researchers would say that it's words and
numbers. That's what they are trained to think critically about and
to use with care and precision in representing social reality. But
the words and numbers used by social researchers are embedded
routinely in visual, material artifacts. They're words and numbers
that are more visible than not, looked at more than listened to.
What questions does that raise about the visual substance of social
research? What parallels appear between camera work and photocopying,
figures and drawings, theories and pictures? And how do different
ways of looking and seeing shape how we think about culture, social
organization, and social research itself?
In most accounts of the social sciences, the visual substance of
social research is relegated to a small, discrete dimension of social
life or linked exclusively to fieldwork with cameras and video
recorders. A contrasting image appears if we look closely at how
social researchers actually go about their work. They finger
keyboards to make letters visible on computer screens. They draw
black lines through errant or extraneous phrases on a printed page,
or circle numbers in a table of correlations. They take a book off a
shelf and thumb through its pages, looking for a familiar passage, a
figure that illustrates a concept, or a citation that can identify
words written by yet another researcher. Social researchers
transcribe audio recordings into visible transcripts and translate
personal observations of what they're read in the library or seen in
the field into visible and durable notes. They then organize these
notes in virtual or material folders that can be hidden or called
into view as needed. And while all this is regarded in some quarters
as the "life of the mind," the status, their job security and renown
depends primarily on that small part of all they think that they can
insinuate into artifacts of visible, material culture, research
publications and grant proposals in particular.
Paying more attention to the visual substance of their own work might
help social researchers improve their craft. That could be
worthwhile in and of itself, but an added benefit for scholars - -and
for those who read their works - is a deeper understanding of the
profound interdependence of the visual, the material and the symbolic
in experienced culture and social life.
For information on IVSA and its August 2004 conference in San Francisco:
http://wwhw.visualsociology.org
--
Judith J. Friedman
Dept. of Sociology
Rutgers University
54 Joyce Kilmer
Ave.
Piscataway,NJ 08854
732.247.9791
FAX 732.445.0974
A Justice Site
jeannecurran@habermas.org
SHARING VISUAL SOCIOLOGY WITH THE LOCAL COMMUNITY