Visual Methods in Social Research

by Marcus Banks, David Zeitlyn

The Second Edition of this popular text confirms the book’s status as an important forerunner in the field of visual methods.

Combining the theoretical, practical and technical the authors discuss changing technologies, the role of the internet and the impact of social media. Presenting an interdisciplinary guide to visual methods they explore both the creation and interpretation of visual images and their use within different methodological approaches.

This clear, articulate book is full of practical tips on publishing and presenting the results of visual research and how to use film and photographic archives.

This book will be an indispensable guide for anyone using or creating visual images in their research.

Genres: Anthropology, Sociology

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Alexander Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although there is a lot of useful information in this book, and it's somewhat well organized, it is not the book it promises to be. This book opens claiming it is a book considering lots of methodological breadth even if primarily focusing on pictures, and is an introduction to "visual methods in social research" broadly. It is not that. Largely this is a rigorous perspective of ethnography of imagery in a largely offline world. Granted, this book was published very early for online methodology, and it doesn't deal very much with digitally native imagery. That said, the Internet did exist, and I expected a little more about it. Instead it primarily focuses on cultural differences between India and Jains with respect to European/US expectations of images.

Secondly, there were many supposedly core topics as described by the author (e.g. the necessary difference in form and content of images) but yet the author does not define these concepts or attempt to describe what they are thoroughly in practice.

So, long story short: reader be warned this is primarily for the classically ethnographic methodological approach and, is not in fact, a general introduction, and it is not quite so introductory as it intends to be.

[Krystl Louwagie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2007 review:

The title explains this book. But it was, for the most part, boring and didn't introduce a lot of new or original ideas for me.