Visual Sociology in the

Workplace
HRM3013 WEEK 22
We live in a world of images
What Is Visual Sociology ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5pp_fZDU8I
https://vimeo.com/64099035
What Is Visual Sociology ?
Visual sociology is an area of sociology concerned with the visual dimensions of social life.
VS incorporates visual /aural methods of data gathering and analysis in the work of sociology.
VS tends to be concerned with photography and documentary film-making within a sociological
context
BUT includes the study of all kinds of visual material and the visual social world, and uses all kinds of
visual material in its methodologies.

Can be a particularly effective research approach

A useful tool to make the familiar strange.?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBt95kwNV04
Data collection using recording
technology
Another channel of information - can be studied in detail.
Tape recorder
Camera - film and video cameras
Capture things that are not preserved in researchers' field notes.
Timbre, the music of a voice, inflection, intonation, grunts and groans, pace, and space a raised
eyebrow, the wave of a hand, the blink of an eye - convey meanings easily misunderstood from written
words alone.
Visual recording technology also allows us to manipulate the data
speed up, slow down, repeat, stop, and zoom in on things of interest.
Sociologists can juxtapose events to produce meanings.
Can put cameras in places where one would not put a researcher
where it is dangerous, or where a person would be unwelcome,
Photo elicitation
Another technique of data gathering
Combination of photography and ethnography
Photo elicitation techniques involve using photographs or film as part of the interview
Asking research subjects to discuss the meaning of photographs, films or videos.
Images can be taken specially, or they can be gathered from other sources including archives,
newspaper and television morgues, or corporate collections.

Typically the interviewee's comments or analysis of the visual material is itself recorded, either
on audio tape or video, etc.
Photo voice
Related research method
Researchers give those being studied still or movie cameras.
Research participants are then responsible for making photos or movies
Subsequently analysed either by the researchers or the participants, or both.
Studying visual data produced by
cultures
The second meaning of visual sociology is a discipline to study the visual products of society
attempts to study complex visual communication system through images produced as part of culture
their production, consumption and meaning.
The use and understanding of visual images
Governed by socially established symbolic codes.
Art, photographs, film, video, fonts, advertisements, computer icons, landscape, architecture, work, machines,
fashion, makeup, hair style, facial expressions, tattoos,

Visual images are constructed and may be deconstructed.

Can be read as texts in a variety of ways.
Can be analysed with techniques developed in diverse fields of literary criticism, art theory and criticism, content
analysis, semiotics, deconstructionism, ethnography.
Visual sociologists can categorize and count them;
Ask people about them; or study their use and the social settings in which they are produced and consumed.
Communication with images and media
other than words
A third dimension of visual sociology is
1. use of visual media to communicate sociological understandings to professional and public
audiences,
2. use of visual media within sociological research itself.
Draws on the work of Edward Tufte (2001) Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information
Visual sociology considers the logics of presentation of sociological and anthropological
documentarians and ethnographers like Robert Flaherty, Konrad Lorenz, Margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson, and Frederick Wiseman.
Visual sociology also requires the development of new forms
E.g. data driven computer graphics to represent complex relationships
e.g., changing social networks over time, the primitive accumulation of capital, the flow of labour, relations between theory and
practice
International Visual Sociology Association
(IVSA)
Work to encourage:
Documentary studies of everyday life in contemporary communities
The interpretive analysis of art and popular visual representations of society
Studies about the social impact of advertising and the commercial use of images
The analysis of archival images as sources of data on society and culture
The study of the purpose and the meaning of image-making practices like recreational and family
photography
Places we live.
The housewife
Belief systems
Conscious Design for Today's
Sports Fan
"It is certainly a strange sociological occurrence when a
group of die hard fans can passionately hate a player on a
rival team and then cheer for the same player following a
trade to their team of choice"

Eric Sencindiver
Designer & Sociologist
Hear every voice: NYC and the National
Park Service
http://www.thirteen.org/localparks/hear-every-voice/
So what can VS tell us about the
workplace ?
Work is represented in a huge range of publications
Visual methods, approaches, and resources offer the sociologist
The potential to explore the world of work in great depth
To ask questions about our understanding of the workplace, workers, and work processes
To develop and expand a sociological language of the visual to better understand cultural and other
aspects of work and employment.

Strangleman, Tim (2008) Representations of Labour: Visual Sociology and Work; Sociology Compass, Volume 2, Issue 5, pages
14911505, September 2008
Lewis Hine Photographs New York
@1929
Art and the Industrial Revolution
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wr9r7

Francis Klingender (1947/1972) Art and the Industrial Revolution

Womens work in Wartime
World War Two.
A wonderful tribute to all the different types of work
women did during World War Two with particular
reference to the different types of jobs on the
railways - everything from porters to welders.
Keeping the home front going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8CY5QSHIdE
Women In The Workplace - 1959
Educational Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wLUxzTvp8s
Documentary(2009): China labour and
the largest factory in the world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzlzlPjseao

45 mins Long
Family Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5FjPQYHJvM
Documentaries which displays and
explores the lives and environment of our
immediate ancestors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EGAcDMSX-s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqVwc6nrHjI
A Day in The Life
A Day in The Life
Cathay Pacific Airport Staff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH2Oj8zY0s4
World Best work place at Google

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8wqS7VkAcw
New technology Digital

Pinterest
Discussion
What is Visual Sociology?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5pp_fZDU8I

So what can VS tell us about the workplace ?