Visual Methods in Social Research

Marcus Banks is Professor of Visual Anthropoloigy at the University of Oxford. Having completed a doctorate in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, with a study of Jain people in England and India, he trained as an ethnographic documentary filmmaker at the National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield, UK.

An interdisciplinary guide to the field, this book fuses advanced theory with practical advice and examples to provide all readers with the ultimate resource on visual methods

READING PICTURES The trouble with pictures An introductory example Unnatural vision Reading narratives Formal readings Planning a research project with visual methodsENCOUNTERING THE VISUAL On Television Visual forms produced I: representations of society Interpreting Forest of Bliss Still and moving images Visual forms produced II: representations of knowledge Visualisation Networks Diagrams of Nuer lineages Visual forms encountered Encountering ¿indigenous¿ media The image as evidence ¿Us¿ and ¿them¿?MATERIAL VISION Object and representation The materiality of visual forms Displaying family photographs Exchanged goods Market exchange Size matters Transformations: digitisation and computer-based media Digital manipulation Digital pornography: constraining the virtual Digital pornography: exchange and circulationRESEARCH STRATEGIES Silk thread to plastic bags Researching image use and production in social contexts Watching television Soap opera in India and Egypt Television as social presence Doing things with photographs and films Photo-elicitation with archival images Photo-elicitation with contemporary images Learning from photo-elicitation Film-elicitation Working with archival material Photographic archives and picture libraries Film archivesMAKING IMAGES Observing Creating images for research Documentation A ladder climbed then discarded Documentary exploration Documentary control Collaborative projects Indigenous media collaborations Collaborative after effects Ethics and visual research Ethical review Permissions Returning imagesPRESENTING RESEARCH RESULTS Audiences Presenting photographs The photographic essay Presenting ethnographic and other films Study guides and other contextualisation Databases and digital images Can computer see? Multimedia projects Interacting with Yanomamo CopyrightPERSPECTIVES ON VISUAL RESEARCH The state of visual research The place of visual research The nature of visual research