Masters thesis 1:2

SOCIOLOGY IN THE FIELD OF VISION
1
Preface
Visual sociology emerged as a specialized subfield more than 30 years ago
and is founded on the observation that meaning making processes in
everyday life are saturated by visual experience. Underwriting this
observation is the claim that a majority of sociologists have been blind to
the visual dimensions of social life, hence the relevance of visual
sociologists. In this thesis I question the validity of such claims and ask
why visual sociologists have had such difficulty connecting to mainstream
sociological discourse. More precisely I argue that the inability of visual
sociologists to advance from their current position can be found in their
lack of attention to the many and significant inquiries that sociology,
cultural studies, new art history, and visual art have made into vision and
visuality. In contrast to these visually and theoretically diverse means of
soliciting new knowledge about the social, visual sociologists rely on a
very limited and empirical oriented understanding of what the visual has
to offer. Not only is this narrowly scripted outlook a major impediment to
visual sociology, it is also a key to understanding many of the problems
that plague the field. The aim of this thesis is to pinpoint these problems
and to seek solutions elsewhere so that a stronger and more diverse
conceptualization of visual sociology can be brought to fruition.

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INTRODUCTION 3
I: THE CONFIGURATION, LEGITIMATION, AND STATUS OF A NASCENT FIELD 8
QUERYING THE ORIGINS OF VISUAL SOCIOLOGY 8
THE EARLY USE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF IMAGES IN THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY 13
READING THE CONTEXT/GAINING PERSPECTIVE 18
THE NORTH AMERICAN ORIGINS OF VISUAL SOCIOLOGY 19
FRAMING THE COMMON GROUND OF DISSENT 20
CANCELING VICE WITH VIRTUE: A BALANCING OF VOCATIONS? 21
CONTEXTUAL DIFFERENCE: ARGUING THE CASE OF VISUAL FIELDWORK 22
II: PURIFICATION AND DISORDER – CONFLICTING LOYALTIES 26
INSTITUTIONAL ILLEGITIMACY AND THE ENCULTURATION OF A FIELD 26
THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE OF HOWARD S. BECKER 28
LABELING REVISITED, THEORY OR PRAXIS? 29
DEVIANCE AND DISSENT, A COMMUNITY IN THE MAKING 30
PURIFICATION IN VISUAL SOCIOLOGY 31
Q & A 33
DOES THE ORTHODOX MAINSTREAM OPINION REALLY MATTER? 37
III: LOCATING THE FIELD 46
THE ANALYTIC DIVIDE 47
CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGY (THE LOGO-CENTRIC TRADITION) 48
NORTH AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY (THE HANDS-ON & LOGO-CENTRIC APPROACH) 49
BRITISH CULTURAL STUDIES 50
THE TURN TO DIVERSIFICATION 51
IV: VISUAL CULTURE – FINDING COMMON GROUND 54
THE SOCIOLOGICAL RELEVANCE OF VISUAL CULTURE 55
REFLEXIVITY AS A SITE OF DISCOVERY AND EPISTEMIC QUESTIONING 58
THE VISUAL GESTALT: AN ELEMENTARY PROTOTYPE OF HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD 60
EPISTEMIC QUESTIONING AND PERCEPTUAL SHIFTS 61
V: FOUR ONTOLOGIES OF SIGHT - REFLECTIONS ON THE USE OF HISTORY 64
VI: SIGHT AND INSIGHT – FROM PLATO TO BAUDRILLARD 67
VISION IN ANTIQUITY (GREEK) THE AMBIGUOUS SENSE 67
THE BODILY DIVIDE OF SIGHT AND INSIGHT 68
VISION IN RENAISSANCE - THE INSTALLMENT OF THE EYE (I) IN ART AND SCIENCE 71
MODERNITY AND THE ECLIPSE OF VISION: SIGHT AS CULTURAL INSIGHT 75
THE DIALECTICAL IMAGE OF THE CITY AS AESTHETIC FRAGMENTATION 78
THE VISUAL CULTURE OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY – MANAGING SENSE PERCEPTION 79
MODERNITY AND AWAKENING 82
MODERNITY AND WALTER BENJAMIN 83
MASS MEDIA 86
POSTMODERNITY & THE NEW SELF-AWARENESS OF INTELLECTUALS 94
VISUAL CULTURE AND THE CASE OF HISTORICAL AMNESIA 98
VII: CONCLUDING REMARKS 106
BIBLIOGRAPHY 110
APPENDIX: E-MAIL CORRESPONDANCE WITH BECKER, GRADY, HARPER AND WAGNER 112

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Introduction
There exist several accounts of the visual within the field of sociology. These typically
fall into one or two categories, either framing the visual as the subject of analysis or as a
method of sociological inquiry. The first approach is typically conceived as the most
prevalent and legitimate means of addressing the visual. It gains its legitimacy from
researchers who refrain from the process, labors and hazards of creating imagery that
expresses, contains, illustrates or otherwise addresses the subject matter under
investigation.1
More specifically this tradition produces a visually detached and logo-
centric account of visual culture.2
In contrast, practitioners of the second, less prevalent hands-on approach
produce their own image material.3
A common observation is that followers of this
approach, i.e. visual sociologists, do not enjoy the same status as their visually detached
companions.4
Several attempts seeking to account for the lesser status of the hands-on
approach to visual inquiry have been made, and for various reasons it has been argued
that the lesser status of the field is related to the almost exclusive use of photography by
hands-on practitioners. Emmison and Smith (2000), for example attribute the lack of
legitimacy and marginalization of visual sociologists to their “inability to see beyond the
use of photography”; a fact they go as far as to advocate as being, “a major impediment
to the development of a vibrant tradition in visual research.”5
Somewhat similarly,
Cheatwood & Stasz argue that it is not until visual sociology emerges as a field in the
1970s, that the need to legitimize itself through its long lost ‘parent’, photography, arises;
1
E.g. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1986). Erving Goffman,
Gender Advertisements, Communications and Culture (London: Macmillan, 1979)., Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The
Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Paul
Virilio, A Landscape of Events (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).
2
There are many different versions of logo-centrism, each involves a search for "presence"- for the most true, real,
valuable, or appropriate.
3
E.g. J. Prosser, Image-Based Research : A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers (London ; Bristol, PA: Falmer
Press, 1998). Michael Emmison and Philip Smith, Researching the Visual : Images, Objects, Contexts and Interactions
in Social and Cultural Inquiry, Introducing Qualitative Methods (London: SAGE, 2000)., Howard S. Becker,
"Photography and Sociology," Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 1, no. 1 (1974).
4
In most literature the term visual sociologist typically confers a hands-on approach rather than a logo-centric
approach. The hands-on approach, in other words, is given considerable more emphasis than the logo-centric. However,
one is not less or more than the other. They simply covey two different ways of practicing visual sociology. Neither of
which, in principle, are mutually exclusive. The International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) is the primary
forum for hands-on practitioners, constisting of more than 300 members. The majority of IVSA’s members are actively
engaged in promoting visual sociology and contribute regularly to its listserve which provides instant access to an
otherwise geographically isolated community. The IVSA has been in existence since 1983 and publishes the bi-annual
journal Visual Studies (SAGE Press), previously named Visual Sociology. Other organizations such as the British
Visual Sociology Study Group have since formed and are more or less modeled on the same framework as the IVSA
with annual meetings, newsletters, etc,. see also www.visualsociology.org and www.visualsociology.co.uk.
5
Emmison and Smith, Researching the Visual : Images, Objects, Contexts and Interactions in Social and Cultural
Inquiry, 2.

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hence, the monopoly of the camera is seen as a historically contingent construct. This
contingency is framed in an even broader epistemological perspective by Fyfe & Law
(1988) who note that: “Sociology does not have and has never possessed a generally
agreed set of methods for identifying, discriminating and counting what it takes to be
significant objects of study, and it may be that the meaning and lack of significance
assigned to the visual reflect paradigmatic struggle within the discipline.”6
Shy of intimating that the illegitimate status of the field is due to visual research
being historically defined by a handful of successful and narrowly scripted attempts to
establish an operative paradigm through photography, due credit to denigration should
also be given to those who have seen the status of their field threatened by hands-on
practitioners. Here, the admittedly common and superficially attractive observation is that
the legitimacy of the field is weakened by orthodox editors who argue that the costs of
publishing visual based research, especially the reproduction of image material, are too
high. Suggesting this is a myth, Howard S. Becker (1986) recalls how his prejudice that
the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) refused to publish any other image material
than portraits of deceased members of the University of Chicago Sociology Department
proved wrong when he was given the opportunity to publish an article in AJS that
contained controversial imagery, with no questions asked.7
Despite the occasional
testimonial anomaly such as Becker’s, an increasing amount of literature in the field
supports the observation that visual sociology is experiencing a paradigmatic crisis in
which it cannot be satisfied with the critique of an obviously limited methodological
praxis on the one hand and concomitantly be so paralyzed on the other by its illegitimate
status that it is incapable of exploring new methodological terrain.
Building on these observations the thesis is divided into two parts: the first part
(Chapters I and II) deconstructs the history, marginalization and internal dynamics of
visual sociology as well as its ongoing fixation with documentary photography, while the
second (Chapters III through VI) reconstructs by introducing European logo-centric
perspectives that have either been ignored or overlooked by hands-on practitioners and
which situate visual inquiry as a predominantly reflexive endeavor.
6
Gordon Fyfe and John Law, Picturing Power : Visual Depiction and Social Relations, Sociological Review
Monograph (London ; New York: Routledge, 1988), 4.
7
Howard S. Becker, Writing for Social Scientists : How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article, Chicago
Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 106, Howard S. Becker,
Doing Things Together : Selected Papers (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1986).

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Chapter I begins with a historical contextualization of how visual sociologists see
themselves defined and by whom. Here the anchoring of their collective vocational
identity as synonymous with documentary photography is scrutinized through an in-depth
inquiry into how hands-on practitioners have sought to historicize the field. Besides
bringing the most commonly canonized figures of visual sociology (re: documentary
photographers) to the fore, special attention is given to Clarice Stasz’ (1979) essay “The
Early History of Visual Sociology.” Stasz’ essay is important in the sense in that it deals
exclusively with the origins of photography in sociology. Like the majority of those who
sought inspiration in Howard S. Becker’s seminal article “Photography and Society”
(1974), her essay marks a significant contribution toward framing the narrative of visual
sociology within a very limited conception of the overall visual and theoretical
perspectives available. As I suggest, this limited outlook has less to do with what Becker
was trying to say than it does with the fact that visual sociology was born out of a
specifically and relatively isolated North American sociological context, hence the
gaping absence of European traditions of visual inquiry and of visual art.
Chapter II focuses on the marginalization and internal dynamics of visual
sociology. Here I address the observation that hands-on practitioners often portray
mainstream sociologists as the root cause of their marginalization, even though there is
no evidence to support this view. As I show in Chapter II, a possible explanation for
these unsubstantiated allegations can be found in a close reading of Howard S. Becker’s
(1974) article in which he inadvertently can be said to have encouraged an influx of
persons who were more interested in trying to make sense of themselves rather than
pursue a creative vision of what they as individuals believed the visual could bring to
sociology. Hence, it is fair to assume that the claims to denigration that hands-on
practitioners use to label themselves as illegitimate and marginalized, in equal measure
function as a collective defense against painful experiences that they as individuals have
gained prior to entering the field. More fundamentally I suggest that both the limited
methodological perspective and the pre-emptive response of the field to a criticism that
does not exist are native to the way contemporary visual sociologists have come to define
themselves, and that they, as such, point to underlying concerns that are internal to the
field and its group dynamics.
Apart from this, the claims that have led hands-on practitioners to label
themselves illegitimate and marginalized suggest the presence of a much less accessible
and disquieting kind of denigration, namely the kind that goes on behind closed doors. In

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the last half of Chapter II, I explore whether this is the case by asking the four most
prolific authors (Howard S. Becker, Douglas Harper, John Grady and Jon Wagner) what
they make of the fact that there is no evidence to support these claims. Acknowledging
this lack of evidence, they share their experiences by providing inside accounts of how
image-based research has been ostracized by the mainstream community. While the
insights offered by these authors mark a significant contribution to understanding the
marginal status of visual sociologists, they are by no means equal to a eulogy of the
analysis that hands-on practitioners subscribe to a purified self-image. Contrarily, and as
I show in this thesis, the illegitimate status of visual sociology can only be understood
through an interpellation of problems that are at once internal and external to the field.
Above all it should be noted that the aim of Part I is to bring these problems into the open
and ask why hands-on practitioners have been so stubbornly reluctant to explore anything
other than still photography.
Part II addresses the longstanding neglect of hands-on practitioners to incorporate
European traditions of visual inquiry into their research. Contextualizing this neglect is a
brief comparison in Chapter III of North American with Continental European sociology
and British Cultural Studies. Contrary to visual sociology, these latter traditions rely on
hermeneutic analysis (as opposed to the quasi-scientific collection of ‘data’) to illuminate
the visual dimensions of social life. In addition to having yielded a considerable body of
knowledge on how the visual permeates social relations and meaning making processes,
many of the authors associated with European traditions of visual inquiry have also either
influenced and/or been influenced by the field of visual art. The guiding thread under
which the import of these traditions takes place is the concept of visual culture. Visual
culture is here broadly understood as an alignment of sociological and artistic concerns
that capture an visually and theoretically diverse conceptualization of knowledge.
Besides pointing to the fact that vision and visuality are embedded in systems of
representation, the concept of visual culture also suggests that changes in these systems
(typically issued by societal transformations such as urbanization or technological
breakthroughs) are linked to changes in sense perception and vice versa. Aided by Gestalt
psychology and Thomas S. Kuhn’s philosophy of science, chapter IV examines how
societal and perceptual change link to situations in which a shift within the knower and
the known take place. As argued, these shifts solicit a template for epistemic questioning
that entail both logo-centric and visual practices. The examples provided by Gestalt
psychology, however, are only idealizations, not substitutes, of how epistemic

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questioning unfolds in realworld events - which is what we set out to explore in chapters
V & VI.
Chapters V & VI introduce highlights from four historical periods of visual
culture as means of contextualizing seeing and thinking as fundamentally interrelated
concepts of sociological thought. My reason for bringing these highlights into the
discussion is twofold: firstly they address the fact that a historical understanding of the
events and developments that go before the establishment of sociology as a discipline and
which lie beyond the scope of photography are either often absent or easily glossed over
by hands-on practitioners of visual sociology; secondly they make clear that visual
culture is under constant transformation and therefore not subject to one mode of
investigation only. Because visual sociology defines itself by the privilege it assigns to
vision and visual investigation, it is important these omissions be addressed. Hence, the
aim of Part II is to introduce visual sociologists to other fields and practices that have the
visual as their focus so that they can better legitimate their efforts as ones that relate to
present concerns. Briefly stated, these concerns are: a) to explore how the visible exerts a
powerful presence in everyday life and how our understanding and actions are coerced by
this presence and b) to posit this visual presence as a means whereby hands-on
practitioners can connect to both classical and contemporary social theory and to visual
art. In short, in this thesis I argue that the future plight of visual sociology rests with the
abilty of its practitioners to reorient their focus to a much more diversified and complex
understaning of what the visual has to offer.

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Part I: Deconstructing Visual Sociology
I: The Configuration, Legitimation, and Status of a Nascent Field
Querying the Origins of Visual Sociology
Many have had their say on the origins of visual sociology (Becker (1974), Chaplin
(1996), Harper (1989, 1994, 1998), Lapenta (2005), Prosser (1998), Wagner (1979)).
However, one of the few bodies of research that deals exclusively with this theme is
Clarice Stasz’ (1979) essay, “The Early History of Visual Sociology.” In this seminal
essay, Stasz provides an outline and survey of the origins, use, and not least, the
disappearance and re-appearance of photography in sociology. Besides the now almost
standard reference to visual anthropology and especially to Bateson & Mead’s historic
monograph, Balinese Character (1942), Stasz remarks that the most common visual
denominator highlighting the origin of the field is documentary photography. This
approach, she writes, is exemplified by Curry and Clarke’s introduction where the
photographic work of Jacob A. Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange is
singled out as consummate to the way the field seeks to define itself.8
A particularly
poignant feature, as laid out by Curry and Clarke, is the intent of this tradition to bring
about reform by mobilizing a politicized vision of so-called ‘objective’ visual criteria.
While all of these early social documentary photographers can be classified under
the rubric of social reformers, a shift appears from the early years of Riis and Hine to
those of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers (1935-44) and again
from the FSA to the visual sociologists of the 1970’s. This shift is characterized, among
other things, as a move away from the shocking, and often staged, imagery of Riis and
Hine to the more subtle but no less hard hitting social commentary of the FSA
photographers, to the much more subtle, ethnographic and somewhat academically
entrenched meanderings of visual sociologists from the 1970’s onward. Nonetheless, the
first and perhaps most memorable use of the camera in the tradition that would later come
to be known under the heading of social reform is Riis’ How the Other Half Lives (1890).
8
See also T. J. Curry and A. C. Clarke, Introducing Visual Sociology (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1977), 15.

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In this groundbreaking work, Riis turned his camera to the appalling slum
conditions of New York City tenants and became highly influential in bringing about the
first building codes and apartment regulations - even though “he opposed, to the end of
his life, such anodyne propositions as public housing and municipal land ownership.”9
Much along the same line of inquiry and equally driven by personal outrage over the
squalid conditions of the poor is Lewis Hine. Hine had already established himself as an
accomplished photographer, appearing regularly in Charities and Commons, a New York
weekly dedicated to social reform, and commissioning work from World’s Work,
Everybody’s and the Russell Sage Foundation when the National Child Labor Committee
(NCLC) hired him in 1907. With his work for the NCLC, Hine became influential in
passing the first child labor laws by capturing on film the harsh realities of child labor in
the New South’s industrial complex.10
There exists, however, an earlier example of
photographs of child workers and sweatshops in the American Journal of Sociology by
Annie Marion MacLean, The Sweatshop Summer p.289-309 (1903. Nov. Vol. IX. No.3),
which documents both the hardship and elaborates on the attempts by trade organizations
to end this debilitating praxis. It therefore seems odd that it is Hine alone who is credited
for bringing about change when in fact he published his photographs 6 years later in
1909.11
For some commentators such as Susan Sontag and John Tagg, the work of Riis
(who worked as a NYPD reporter) shares an affinity with the infamous Arthur Fellig
(1899-1968) a.k.a. Weegee, who was a contemporary of Riis and whose images can be
viewed as pioneering the tradition of journalistic muckraking. However, it should be
noted that the images of both Riis and Hine represent a much more ‘socially conscious’
and impassioned kind of muckraking than that which is typically assigned to the brazen
imagery of Weegee.12
In contrast the images of Riis and Hines conjure humanist ideals as
a means of skillfully appropriating a socially indignant reality.
9
Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, ed. Luc Sante, Penguin Classics
(New York: Penguin Books, 1997). http://site.ebrary.com/lib/royallibrary/Doc?id=5004931&page=11. Note: Actually
Riis was far from an accomplished photographer, he once set a building on fire with his flash, which is probably why
he hired photographers to do much of his camera work. The radical novelty of Riis was that he acknowledged and used
photography as evidence in showing to his middle class audience the appaling conditions of the poor.
10
Lewis Wickes Hine and John R. Kemp, Lewis Hine: Photographs of Child Labor in the New South (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1986).
11
Note: MacLean’s images were taken from the Chicago Tribune but faulted by Stasz as being both frivolous and banal
because they according to Stasz did not “provide much flavor of the work setting.” Stasz, C. p.124
12
Weegee worked as a freelance crime scene photographer in NYC and was famous, among other things, for staging
outlandish photo-ops. Weegee’s images inspired the aesthetics and mood of what would later be known as Film Noir
e.g., The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), and Touch of Evil (1957).

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Nevertheless, and as Susan Sontag rightly points out, despite its high moral
ground, this strand of documentary photography is imperious in the sense that “no reality
is exempt from appropriation, neither one that is scandalous (and should be corrected)
nor one that is merely beautiful (or could be made so by the camera).”13
Ideally speaking,
the aim of this tradition is also its Achilles heel since it seeks “to make these two realities
cognate, as illustrated by the title of an interview with Hine in 1920, ‘Treating Labor
Artistically’”;14
thus intimating that the problem with beautification of social injustice is
that it fosters an imbalance of priorities. Not only does it elevate the producer to the
pinnacle of cultural production, it also facilitates an objectification and removal of the
subject from the collective conscious.15
Allen Sekula voices a similar critique in his essay
“On the Invention of Photographic Meaning”, when he compares the work of Hine with
Stieglitz, a critique Sekula forcefully expands to embody the media of photography
itself.16
Representing a much more subtle but no less problematic body of work are
Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange who worked in the tradition of social reform that
became synonymous with the FSA. To an unmatched degree, it is the work of the FSA
that is seen as part and parcel of the tradition of documentary photography with which
many visual sociologists identify.
The FSA was initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt (b.1882-1945) and created in the
US Department of Agriculture (1935-1943) as a New Deal program designed to assist
poor farmers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was
well aware of the efficacy of photography in pursuing a political agenda (i.e. his cousin
Theodore Roosevelt (b.1858-1919), who had befriended Riis when he was commissioner
of NYC (1895-96), helped push new building legislation on the backdrop of Riis’
images.) During the eight-year existence of the FSA and before the unit moved to the
Office of War Information, the special photographic section of the FSA created 270.000
documentary still photographs under the stewardship of Roy Emerson Stryker (a former
student of Hines’). From a government office in Washington, Stryker and his team
supplied pictures to New Dealers in various departments, to reports and exhibits, to
newspapers and the flourishing photographically illustrated magazines. However, what is
13
Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 56-64.
14
Ibid.
15
Which ultimately lends explanation to the present day phenomena of compassion fatique.
16
Allan Sekula, Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973-1983 (Press of the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design, 1984).

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less known or conveniently silenced by visual sociologists, is that Stryker, “whose
original conception it was to go beyond his narrow brief and begin to accumulate ‘a
pictorial encyclopedia of American agriculture,’ issued regular and detailed shooting
scripts to his photographers. Stryker was the first to see these contact sheets; he
categorized, filed and selected the work the photographers sent in and is said to have
‘killed’, by punching holes in the negatives, 100.000 of the 270.000 pictures taken at a
cost of nearly a million dollars in the eight years of the Department’s existence. The total
world view of the FSA file was, therefore, predominantly Stryker’s.”17
Compounding this shaky position even further is the fact that when the FSA came
under Congressional fire in 1941 following Pearl Harbor, Stryker began calling for:
“Pictures of men, women and children who appear as if they really believed in the US.
Get people with a little spirit. Too many in our file now paint the US as an old person’s
home and that just about everyone is too old to work and malnourished to care much
what happens…We particularly need young men and women who work in our
factories… More contented-looking old couples – woman sewing, man reading.” (Ibid).
In other words there ought to be a great deal of concern when visual sociologists model
their self-image on the work of an unabashedly propagandistic institution such as the
FSA. To be fair, and unlike Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans left the FSA after only 2
years in 1937, unable to identify with the ethos of the organization and Stryker’s way of
running it.18
Given the conditions under which photographers were made to work and
given that images were uncritically disseminated to fit the whims of the political agenda
on Capitol Hill, I think it safe to say that it would be much more ethically concerting if
visual sociologists identified with photographers such as Evans, rather than with Stryker
and the FSA.19
In this respect, Clarice Stasz provides a refreshing take on the early
history of visual sociology. I will now turn to provide an in-depth discussion of her
contribution and how it ties to the self-image of field. It should be noted that the reason I
engage in a discussion of Stasz’ contribution in the first place is because it is one that is
increasingly cited.
17
John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis, Minn.: University
of Minnesota Press, 1988), 169-70. See also Sontag, On Photography, 62. for similar line of argument.
18
Evans was greatly inspired by the uncompromising literary realism of Flaubert. In 1941 he and James Agee
published an acclaimed account of their journey through rural Appalachia during the Great Depression called Let Us
Now Praise Famous Men.
19
For an “uncritical” and somewhat disconcerting account of Strykers’s use of shooting scripts see Grady’s reference
to Suchar (1997:36) in J. Grady, "Becoming a Visual Sociologist," Sociological imagination 38, no. 1-2 (2001): 96.

12
Fig. 1 Series of “killed” FSA images, Roy Emerson Stryker. Library of Congress. (1935-43)
Fig. 2 John Baldessari (1984-88) 20
20
Baldessari (1931-) is a California based conceptual artist who pioneered bringing images from mass media and B-
films into an art context. The circles painted on the still images question the trival meanings of popular culture and the
gaze of the viewer by taking the form of an openended cliché. While the similarities between Stryker’s ‘killed’ images

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The Early Use and Disappearance of Images in the American Journal of Sociology
Stasz, whose errand is another than a casual rehashing of the already well known and
iconic, sidesteps Riis, Hine, Bateson & Mead, and even the FSA and focuses on the much
earlier use and subsequent disappearance of photography in the American Journal of
Sociology. As she writes: “What most have missed is that sociology itself had a brief
encounter with photography, long before the FSA and the Bateson-Mead collaboration.
Pull a turn-of-the-century volume of the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) off the
library shelf, blow off the dust, and open it up. You will find something virtually unseen
in sociology journals in recent decades – photographs. Between 1897 and 1916 (volumes
2 through 21 of AJS) thirty-one articles used 244 photographs as illustration and evidence
in their discussions.”21
This said, “articles where a photograph is used to illustrate a
mechanical object under discussion, such as Chapin’s (1950) tinkertoy model of
sociometric structure, as well as pictures of prominent, usually deceased sociologists,”
have been omitted.22
Fig. 3 F.S. Chapin, American Journal of Sociology Vol 56, No.3. (Nov. 1950)
While this limits her study in clearly defined terms to conventions of documentary
photography, it also petitions a critical inspection of what this means for the historical
consciousness of the field. It is certainly not unreasonable to argue that the unintended
and Baldessari’s conceptual puns are coincidental, they also convey strikingly similar features from which one could
spin interesting observations.
21
Cheatwood & Stasz, "The Early History of Visual Sociology," in Images of Information : Still Photography in the
Social Sciences, ed. Jon Wagner, Sage Focus Editions (Sage, 1979), 119-20.
22
Ibid.

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consequence of denigrating original attempts at visualization, such as Chapin’s
sociometric ‘tinker-toy’ model, to the ranks of obituaries of prominent sociologists, has
been instrumental in positing her historical case study as one of the most important pieces
of writing yet to anchor the mainstream visual doxa of documentary photography. Under
any circumstance it would be a hard-pressed act to argue that Stasz pursues a visually
diverse and inclusive sociology when, in fact, she excludes or finds other means of
visualization indifferent to the cause of legitimating a very narrowly defined historic
framework of documentary conventions. Nonetheless, it is this framework that outlines
the bulk of visual sociology and it is this framework around which Stasz builds her
historical scaffolding.
Because Stasz suggests that scientifically questionable ideals such as
methodological monism and nomothetic abstraction are legitimate, her essay is not
entirely unproblematic. Support for these ideals becomes particularly clear in her
reference to the most commonly preferred approach by visual sociologists, an approach
Heider has dubbed “ethnographicness” and which, according to Stasz, defines the field
and its “scientific value” according to a certain set of qualities. “Among these qualities
are: images informed by ethnography and integrated with printed materials and produced
with minimal distortions of behavior as a result of camera presence, basic technical
competence, and most important, the framing of activities within a definable context. The
latter point means that images include as much as possible whole bodies within the full
frame of activity for a particular situation. Thus, these images retain their scientific value
today.” From this, it is fairly easy to deduct that the scientific value assigned to images
by Stasz are based on the ability of the visual sociologist to emulate objective criteria that
we normally associate with natural science. It is from this position she concludes “that
the basis for a visual sociology was present at the time.”23
Stasz, however, undermines
her own conclusion when she concomitantly highlights that two thirds of the thirty-one
articles printed in AJS between 1896-1916 “employed photographs in a way that
contemporary visual sociologists would question. Crassly manipulated prints,
iconographic poses, inconsistent before-and-after pictures, portraits out of context, and
images based on clumsy techniques are among the styles of shooting and presentation
considered today to be inappropriate in careful research reporting. They would be good
23
Ibid, p.131.

15
illustrations for that as yet unwritten book every social science student would be required
to read before graduation, How to Lie with Photographs.”24
While I agree with Elizabeth Chaplin that “some photographs – in conjunction
with captions and text – do give a less fictitious and more empirically informative
account than others,”25
I also contend that Stasz fails to recognize that the vocabulary of
photography, like any human utterance, is permeated by being at once true and false, fact
and fiction, real and imaginary.26
Let us be frank. Photographs always lie and people who
think otherwise can surely be expected to be the one’s lying about photographs.
Photography is therefore better understood as a construct open to a wide range of
interpretation, to gestures of contextual understanding and subjective misgivings, rather
than a generalized and repetitive means of conjuring dated notions of ‘objective’ truth. It
therefore strikes me as puzzling when Stasz, amid all her talk about technical adept ways
of framing an image to fit a narrowly defined set of ‘research standards’, fails to
recognize that she concomitantly opens the backdoor to the same quasi-positivistic
concepts of ‘scientific’ truth that were instrumental in debunking visual based inquiry to
begin. Stasz therefore inadvertently winds-up subscribing to a double standard by
offering the same kind of answers that she faults others for having. While Stasz’ aesthetic
and epistemological preferences leave little or no room for alternative visual practices,
her exploration and analysis of early social documentary photography in AJS marks a
significant contribution to understanding the mainstream conception of the field and its
problematic status.
To begin, Stasz identifies what she calls a curious gap in the distribution of visual
articles between 1905 and 1909 in the AJS. “Twenty articles appear between 1896 and
1904; none between 1905 and 1909; and ten more between 1910 and 1915. All but one of
the last group are from the Chicago housing series.”27
As Stasz notes this gap correlates
with a marked change in the editorial policy of the AJS. More particularly the change,
which affected both the physical format and the tone of the AJS, was brought about by
editor Albion Small. Reminiscing over his prior experience of the field in 1905, Small
contends that sociology is “nothing more that wistful advertisement of a hiatus in
knowledge … a science without a problem, a method and a message.”28
The solution
24
Ibid.128
25
Elizabeth Chaplin, Sociology and Visual Representation (London ; New York: Routledge, 1994), 204.
26
The image, in other words, is the object that bridges the gap between science fiction and science fact.
27
Stasz, "The Early History of Visual Sociology," 139.
28
Ibid.132 see also A. W. Small, "A Decade of Sociology," The American Journal of Sociology 11, no. 1 (1905): 2.

16
according to Small is to correct this problem by insisting that sociology is “a pure
science” and that the “attitude of sociologists toward their problem is precisely that of the
chemist, of physicist, or of physiologist toward his.”29
In Small’s opinion, it is an
absolute necessity that sociology move “out of amateurishness, not to say quackery, and
advance toward responsible scientific procedure.”30
Moreover in a review of the first fifty
years of the AJS, Shana notes that Small defines ‘responsible’ and ‘scientific’ by
excluding papers devoted to social reform while multiplying the amount “space devoted
to statistical studies of population and methodology, as well as theoretical discussions of
social psychology.”31
From this, Stasz concludes that “part of the disappearance of the
visual may be linked to the victory of the pure over applied sociologists in control over
the discipline, for most illustrated articles dealt with amelioration directly or by
implication.”32
Another important factor to be considered is that early visual sociologists varied
from their logo-centric peers in terms of gender. Stasz has identified that “while in the
first twenty-one volumes of the AJS an average of 12% of the authors were women, this
was true for fully 50% of the visually oriented group.”33
Thus, from gender studies and
feminist theory that deal explicitly with how gender relates to technology, and here I am
especially thinking about the writings of Donna Haraway (1991), Judith Wajcman
(1991), Cynthia Cockburn and Susan Ormrod (1993), we are able to infer that the
association of females and photography could indeed be viewed as having been
instrumental in debunking the visual as an inferior and frivolous mode of inquiry.
Similarly, Stasz, suggest that the disappearance of images follow “the cultural tendency
in Western society to ignore innovations made by women until powerful men take them
up.”34
From this, she infers that “none of the men associated with visual sociology at the
time had the status in the discipline to buck those pressing for causal analysis, high-level
generalizations, and statistical reports.”35
Besides pointing to a causal relationship
between the subordination of women and the denigration of images, Stasz provides other
29
Ibid. see also Ibid.: 4.
30
Ibid. see also ———, "Points of Agreement among Sociologists," The American Journal of Sociology 12, no. 5
(1907): 637.
31
32
See both Chaplin, Sociology and Visual Representation, 199. and Stasz, "The Early History of Visual Sociology,"
132.
33
34
Ibid.133
35
Ibid.

17
equally intriguing insights into mechanisms that contributed to the devaluation and
subsequent disappearance of visual inquiry in AJS.
One such mechanism is the ongoing power struggle to set a particular discursive
policy in academia. In admittedly simple terms, it refers to establishing a set of restrictive
discursive policies through which institutions provide individuals access to speak in a
jargon that separates institutionally legitimate forms from non-institutional and
illegitimate forms of academic inquiry. As Kuhn (1970), Bourdieu , and Rorty (1994 in
Seidman) have pointed out, this gatekeeper function is fraught with both ideological and
epistemological disputes that, when seen in a greater perspective, represent an ongoing
struggle for power and privilege in delimiting what can and what cannot be said in the
name of science. In this regard, it is interesting, as Stasz notes, that early visual
sociologists departed markedly from their peers in terms of “academic affiliation.”
During the first decade of publication, half of the AJS’ authors did not hold an
academic degree, while only one third held non-academic positions after the shift in
editorial policy in 1905. Furthermore, less than a third of the visual authors held regular
sociology department affiliations and forty percent were in non-academic jobs. Like
nonacademic sociologists today, many were employed in research for government bodies
such as the census bureau and as administrators in various NGO organizations. Hence,
the editorial policy of Small not only reflected the disappearance of visual material from
AJS it also mirrored an academic environment from which women and certain modes of
knowledge would find themselves excluded.
What is left is the brief 1909-1916 resurgence of visual articles in AJS. Shedding
light on this resurgence, Stasz makes the interesting observation that all of the visual
contributors of this period are affiliated with the University of Chicago School of Civics
and Philanthropy, a forerunner of the Social Work School; she also notes that all but one
of these articles belong to the Chicago housing series. However, both of these
observations only become pertinent when tied to another equally significant fact, namely
the fact that the AJS was also housed at the University of Chicago. In this respect, Stasz
suggests that the strong institutional ties between the journal and its contributors provide
an important clue as to why Small decided to print this series at all. Another important
element that probably swayed Small to stray from his editorial policy was that the series
was sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation, whose director, Edith Abbott, was a

18
prominent and influential intellectual figure in the city and the university at the time.36
Besides the undoubtedly massive influence that these institutional ties yielded, Stasz
points out that Small could hardly have had difficulty in accepting the reports of the
housing project, “which were filled with the tables and maps he thought essential to
respectable research.”37
Under any circumstance, if we accept that the trajectory and
decline of visually assisted inquiry in AJS is indicative of a greater non-visually oriented
logo-centric trend, then Stasz provides a firsthand account of the conditions and events
that underpin this trend. As such, she brings to future generations of visual sociologists
an insight into some of the problems that they as a specialized subfield are bound to face
in one way or the other.
Reading the Context/Gaining Perspective
Stasz’ essay is part of a larger compilation of texts by US based authors devoted to
exploring the use of still photography in visual sociology.38
In the pending discussion it is
important to keep in mind that the work of Stasz as well as the majority of authors who
contributed to this body of text was greatly inspired by Howard S. Becker’s lead article,
Photography and Sociology, which was the first to define visual sociology within the
accepted conventions of sociology. As such, it is no coincidence that Becker who
published his article five years prior in volume 1, number 1 (1974) of Studies in the
Anthropology of Visual Communication – the first journal in either sociology or
anthropology devoted to the study of visual communication – figures prominently on the
front cover of the compilation as the author of the preface. Nor is it a coincidence when
Stasz writes, that the idea for her essay germinated during a discussion with Becker, who
along with Derral Cheatwood and Richard Quinney provided helpful comments and
suggestions.39
In many ways this lead position is indicative of the authority assigned to
Becker by others in the field as its founding father. Attributing to this consensus are Jon
Prosser (1998), Gold (1997), Emmison and Smith (2000), Harper (1989, 1998), Wagner
(1979, 2004), and Lapenta (2005) to name a few. We can therefore say that Becker is for
36
Ibid. 133-134
37
Ibid.
38
Jon Wagner, Images of Information : Still Photography in the Social Sciences, Sage Focus Editions (Beverly Hills:
Sage Publications, 1979).
39
Stasz, C. in Ibid., 119 authors note.

19
visual sociology what Bateson & Mead (1948) are for visual anthropology.40
Although
Becker, as well as Bateson & Mead can be viewed as authorative and traditional figures
in their parent disciplines who made substantive and pioneering bids to advance image-
based research, neither succeeded in creating an upsurge of interest from their logo-
centric peers. They did however leave a legacy of ideas that have since guided and
underpinned both the visual and theoretical trajectory of visual sociology.
Becker’s lead article provides an important key to understanding both the
problems and potentials facing visual sociology in its present day form. In the following I
discuss how Becker’s article came to influence and limit the subject matter and
methodology of visual sociology. Central to this discussion is the analysis of Becker’s
intellectual heritage in North American sociology and the extent to which the reception of
this heritage came to permeate the self-image of visual sociologists. Besides giving a
comprehensive understanding of the formation of the ethos of the field it is also means of
showing how this self-image is rooted in a very different intellectual tradition than that
typically associated with logo-centric European visual inquiry.41
The North American Origins of Visual Sociology
As already noted, Becker’s contribution as well as the bulk of literature in the field is
grounded in North American sociology - meaning that North America is the place that
has proven most sympathetic to the dissemination of a hands-on approach to image-based
research in social science. To this, Jon Prosser, suggests, “it is probable, that North
American researchers who use images are more able than others around the globe to
create and maintain their own academic community which is sufficiently robust to
40
Anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were the first to base a large scale research project on still
photography. Not only are they are considered to be the founders of visual anthropology, their famous and much
celebrated 1942 study, Balinese Character, remains, to a certain extent, a model for photographic analysis. Balinese
Character, in brief, is comprised of a lengthy introduction followed by 100 ‘plates’ which are individual pages
containing from five to twelve photographs each. On pages facing the photographs are ethnographic analysis of the
photographs. The subject matter ranges from an overview of a typical village, to subjects such as the ‘integration and
disintegration of the body’, the social definitions of bodily orifices and their products, and relations between siblings,
parents, and children, and childhood development. With somewhere between 800 and 1000 photographs organized
around specific ethnographic themes and developed in accompanying statements, their book became a monument to
photographic analysis. However, it has also been noted that they failed to achieve the move from visual anthropology
as a mode of representation by the anthropologist to visual anthropology as a study of people’s own visual worlds,
including the role of representations within cultural process. Their insight was that the latter would be better achieved
by using a full range of representational systems – sound, film, objects themselves, as well as writing – but they failed
to carry the project through. A fact that is often omitted by those who reference their work. See also F. Hughes-
Freeland, in Rethinking Visual Anthropology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 120-39.
41
The European tradition of visual inquiry is, in contrast to its American counterpart, strictly logo-centric and heavily
influenced by semiotics, philosophy, Freud, Marxist theory, and the analysis of cinema, architecture and visual art.

20
support journals and special interest groups within esteemed research associations. In
addition to ‘cushioning’ the influence of limited status, this provides for a comparably
rich intellectual climate relative to other image-based researchers around the world.”42
In
support of this view, we find that the principal journals for the publication of visual-based
research – Visual Sociology Review, Visual Anthropology, Visual Communication, Visual
Sociology and the International Journal of Visual Sociology – all originated in the US.
Therefore, and as a result of this geographical centering, it can be argued that the self-
image of visual sociology was forged to accommodate the intellectual heritage of its
parent discipline as it evolved in the US. In very general terms this heritage has been
prone to define itself in terms of its methods and has paid little consideration to
theoretical conceptions of vision and visuality. Or as Emmison and Smith point out it is
no coincidence that photographs, and visual data, have largely been debated as an issue
of methodological adequacy in the US whereas in the predominantly logo-centric
European tradition of visual inquiry these are seen to belong to the realm of interpretation
and decoding.43
Framing the Common Ground of Dissent
The theme of methodological adequacy runs like an undercurrent throughout Becker’s
(1974) article. And although he does make suggestions, he wisely refrains from providing
any finite guidelines on how to proceed as a hands-on practitioner. Instead he engages in
commentary about the occupational ideologies of photography and sociology and what
the two groups might learn from each other. To begin he notes that photography and
sociology have approximately the same birthdate, the former with Daguerres (1839)
announcement of his method for fixing an image on a metal plate and the latter with
Comte’s (1838) publication which gave the field of sociology its proper name. This said,
Becker expressedly makes clear his intent is not to make photographers of social
scientists. Nor is he bent on imposing social science imperialism on photographers.
Instead, and much more importantly, what he has to say is “directly addressed to those
social scientists and photographers who are sufficiently dissatisfied with what they are
doing to want to try something new, who find difficulties in their present procedures and
42
Prosser, "The Status of Image-Based Research," 99.
43
Inquiry, 24.

21
are interested in seeing whether people in other fields know something that might help.”44
While this initially leaves open the combination of fields that can be explored and cross
fertilized, Becker's choice is narrowly limited to documentary photography and the ways
in which its practitioners share common ground with sociology. Not only is this pre-
occupation with documentary photography a re-occurring theme in Becker (1974; 1981;
1986; 1998) it is part and parcel of mainstream visual sociology.45
Canceling Vice with Virtue: A Balancing of Vocations?
Becker's limited field of vision is motivated by his belief that the vices and virtues of the
two vocations are mutually redeemable for the better. Thus, the sociologist who has
extensive knowledge of the social is able to compensate for the lacking role of theory in
documentary photography while the technical and visual competence of the photographer
offsets the absence of photographic evidence of the social in sociology. This merging of
‘vocations’ can either take the form of a collaboration (e.g. Euan Duff and Dennis
Marsden (1975)) or find expression in an individual. Most notably it is the role of the
latter that occupies Becker and hand-on practitioners. For Becker, then, the merging of
vocations is a matter of sociologists being prepared to apply visual materials of their own
making in their research. This entails, among other things, that visual sociologists must
set out to become more sophisticated in the appropriation of their photographic evidence
so as to improve on the theoretically underdeveloped work of documentary
photographers. Or as Becker writes: “Close study of the work of social documentary
photography provokes a double reaction. At first, you find that they call attention to a
wealth of detail from which an interested sociologist could develop useful ideas about
whose meaning he could spin interesting speculations…. Greater familiarity leads to a
scaling down of admiration. While photographers do have these virtues, they also tend to
restrict themselves to a few reiterated simple statements. Rhetorically important as a
strategy of proof, the repetition leads to work that is intellectually and analytically
thin.”46
Similarly, Becker is not shy to point out that when documentary photographers do
produce work with “a satisfyingly complex understanding of a subject, it is because they
44
Becker, "Seminal Article for Visual Sociology," 6.
45
See also Howard S. Becker, "Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography, and Photojournalism: It’s (Almost) All a
Matter of Context’," Visual Sociology 10, no. 1-2 (1995).
46

22
have acquired a sufficiently elaborate theory to alert them to the visual manifestations of
that complexity.”47
From this he concludes that “the way to change and improve images
lies less in technical considerations than in improving your comprehension of what you
are photographing, your theory.”48
Notwithstanding that technical and aesthetic
competence provide an enormous control over the image making process, Becker insists,
insofar one’s aim is to produce intellectually dense work, that a premium be put on
conceptual complexity rather than mastery of formal aesthetic conventions. Oppositely,
the acquisition of social science theory does not necessarily guarantee that the social
science content of ones photographs will improve. Or put otherwise, “knowledge does
not automatically shape what you do, but works only when it is deliberately put to work,
when it is consciously brought into play.”49
This correlates with Ruby’s (1972) &
Edwards (1997) observation, that most hands-on practitioners tend to take pictures that
are equivalent to vacation pictures.50
Meaning that their pictures are no different than the
pictures they take on vacation or that ordinary vacationers take, hence, their focus tends
to be directed at the spectacle of the immediately exotic and wry i.e., the eye-popping
‘authentic’ and ‘traditional’ rather than the ‘mundane’ and ‘subtle’ practices of everyday
life. In this sense sociological thinking does nothing to improve the semantic transfer of
concepts and information through images while photographic sophistication does.
Contextual Difference: Arguing the Case of Visual Fieldwork
To counter this naïve use of imagery Becker suggests an “important way in which the
photographic exploration of social life can be made more sophisticated (sociologically) is
for the researcher to avoid the accumulation of isolated images and seek instead to
photograph ’sequences of action’ which try to capture something of the dynamic aspects
of social organization or the patterns of cause and effect.”51
While this may lead to all
sorts of formats and conceptual approaches, the one Becker has in mind is practical and
points to a procedure in which the visual sociologist must learn to record images in a
47
Ibid. 11
48
Ibid. 12
49
Ibid. 16
50
Elizabeth Edwards, "Beyond the Boundary: A Consideration of the Expressive in Photography and Anthropology,"
in Rethinking Visual Anthropology, ed. M. Banks and H. Morphy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 53-80,
Jay Ruby, "Up the Zambesi with Notebook and Camera or Being an Anthropologist without Doing Anthropology . . .
With Pictures," in Paper presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Toronto:
1972).
51

23
manner that is analogous to the process of data collection in fieldwork. Citing Lofland
(1971), Schatzman and Strauss (1973) Becker reminds us that the essential procedure of
fieldwork is to make use of what one has learnt one day in ones data-gathering the next
day. In this sense fieldwork for Becker, as Emmison and Smith point out, “involves a
continual ‘grounded-theory’ style of testing tentative hypotheses in the context of a series
of repeated observations.”52
Hence, the analysis of data is conceived as “continuous and
contemporaneous with the data-gathering” process.53
In practical terms this means that
the analysis of one’s photographs in the field is simultaneously a way of directing one’s
theory-building so that one’s pictures and ideas, practice and theory, gradually become
approximations of one another.54
From this vantage point a central theme in visual sociology emerges, namely, that
the comprehensive context of fieldwork proposed by Becker is poised to counter the
assumption that images in social science research lack the validity associated with other
social scientific data. Addressing this assumption, Becker starts with the assertion that all
images are social and technical constructs that reflect the views, biases, and knowledge,
or lack of knowledge of the photographer, researcher, or artist. In this sense images
merely “make obvious the difficulties we have with every variety of data.”55
To say that
images are unacceptable as social scientific data is thus to ignore that “every scientific
method has easily observed technical flaws and is based on not very well hidden
philosophical fallacies.”56
Regardless of the applied methodology, what counts in the
final analysis, is that “the results they produce are good enough for the community of
scientific peers that use them.”57
Like other social scientific data, images are subject to
the partiality of the research community. Whether this means looking through a
viewfinder, crunching numbers, concocting questionnaires or being on a hermeneutic
hunt for theoretical answers, is beside the point, as long as there exists a scientific
community strong enough to agree that the virtues of the mode of inquiry outweigh its
vices. From this Becker concludes, “not only is inconsistency unavoidable, it is the basis
of everyday scientific practice.”58
52
Inquiry, 25-6.
53
54
Ibid.
55
Howard S. Becker, "Preface," in Images of Information: Still Photography in the Social Sciences, ed. Jon Wagner
(Beverly Hills/London: Sage Publications, 1979), 7.
56
———, "Theory: The Necessary Evil " in Theory and Concepts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives from the
Field, ed. David J. Flinders and Geoffrey E. Mills (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993), 226.
57
Ibid. p.223
58
Ibid. p.219

24
While the North American tradition of visual sociology by-and-large has been
guided by an instrumental and pragmatic relationship to imagery, the European tradition
of visual inquiry in sociology has consistently been logo-centric, theory driven and dealt
with the semantics of images, their ideological and institutional basis, and the power they
yield in everyday life.59
Being a representative of the former Becker pursues a pragmatic
relationship to imagery when he explores the context of how sociologists and
photographers differ in their reading of images and how visual sociologists might use and
learn something from photographers who, as he states, have an innate understanding of
the visual grammar that goes into composing images as opposed to the simple and purely
descriptive laymen readings that most sociologists apply to visual representations.
However, this line of inquiry tends to limit itself to a set of quasi-mystical qualities
Becker identifies on the basis of grand generalizations. Or as he writes:
“Sociologists tend to deal in large, abstract ideas and move from them (if they do)
to specific phenomena that can be seen as embodiments, indicators, or indices of
those ideas. Photographers, conversely, work with specific images and move from
them (if they do) to somewhat larger ideas. Both movements involve the same
operation of connecting an idea with something observable, but where you start
makes a difference. Granting, and even insisting as I already have, on the
conceptual element in photographs, it is still quite different to start with something
immediately observed and try to bend ideas to fit it than to start with an idea and
try to find or create something observable that embodies it. Sociologists have
something to learn from photographers’ inextricable connection with specific
imagery.”60
Becker thus argues that visual sociologists need to accept and spend more time
acquainting themselves with the semantics of imagery if the quality of their visual work
is to be on par with what is expected of their writing. Or put more simply, visual
sociologists, according to Becker, need to understand (and experiment with) what it
means to work in both directions.
There is something intuitively correct about Becker’s observation, but it is only in
his later writings that he provides a more in-depth commentary on the unruly quality of
59
I.e., George Simmel, Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Giséle Freund, Herbert Marcuse,
Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour, to name a few.
60

25
images and their reception.61
In Aesthetics and Truth (1986), for example, Becker brings
a polysemic understanding of the image to the table when he writes “every question we
ask a photograph can be put, and therefore answered in more than one way.”62
The
‘truthfulness’ of a photograph is thus measured by the credibility of the answer(s) we
receive. For Becker this means, “that there is no general answer to the question of
whether a photograph is true.”63
Instead we must recognize that aesthetic and stylistic
choices pitch not only certain moods, but also certain answers. It is therefore all the more
necessary that visual sociologists become acquainted with how these formal elements of
a visual vocabulary are put together. For without this knowledge, as Becker so rightly
remarks, even those who want to make photographs scientifically or objectively will do it
in an unintentional and uncontrolled manner and therefore fail, except by accident, to
articulate visually the questions they want to pose or answer. The same of course applies
equally to logo-centric visual sociologists who use the images of others, for they are, by
default, no less implicated in making aesthetic and stylistic choices. In contrast, artists are
trained, through their education, to bring intentionality and control to their visual
expression. Artists, however, as Becker remarks “ought to devote more time and attention
than is customary to learning about the social phenomenon” they use to legitimize their
work as more than aesthetic objects.64
Meaning visual sociologists and artists also have a
great deal to learn from one another.
Under any circumstance we can assert that it is the genealogy of documentary
photography and North American sociology that informs Becker’s take on imagery, and
consequently also his audience. Among other things, it is this take that is mirrored
throughout in the writing of those (meaning the bulk of visual sociologists) who have
later found inspiration in Becker’s lead article (Stasz, Wagner, Fyfe & Law, Harper, etc).
Whatever the case, it is also a due reminder that photographic images have always been
susceptible to the idiosyncrasies of their creators, or as in this instance the North
American paradigm of visual sociology. However, what we must not forget is that
photographic images also are ambiguous constructs. They lend an uneasy quality to the
perception of reality by being at once real and imaginary. Compounding this uneasy
quality even further are the idiosyncrasies that audiences (critics, curators, researchers
61
Howard S. Becker, "Aesthetics and Truth," in Doing Things Together: Selected Papers ed. Howard S. Becker
(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1981), 293-301.
62
Ibid. 294
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid. 301

26
and the public) bring to the reading of images. Becker captures this tension, between
polysemic and essentialists readings of imagery, when he notes that the validity of a
photograph lies in “distinguishing between the statement that X is true about something
and the statement that X is all that is true about something.”65
The tension between
polysemic and essentialist readings also captures the struggle for legitimacy in visual
sociology. As we have seen it is here that the remedy for gaining acceptance from an
orthodox mainstream research community is commonly promoted as a collective effort
for finding an organized, systemic and coherent approach to working with images. Stasz’
essay, while making important observations on the disappearance and reappearance of
images in sociology, inscribes itself firmly into the foundation of such essentialist efforts.
And while these can be said to mimic a realist, objectivist fantasy, they are, as we will
now see, only part of the problem.
II: Purification and Disorder – Conflicting Loyalties
Institutional Illegitimacy and the Enculturation of a Field
Though it might be plausible, it strikes me as somewhat construed to read, time and
again, how mainstream social scientists supposedly denigrate the use of images when in
fact the use of images has never even amounted to be of the slightest concern to
mainstream social science. Perhaps the most vivid evidence that this discussion is a
pseudo-discussion can be found in the fact that there is no record or reference of those
who supposedly keep pointing a disapproving finger at visual sociologists. Instead it
would be more correct to perceive these discussions as exclusively belonging to the field
of visual sociology. Or put more precisely: discussions that denigrate the use of imagery
in the name of mainstream social science are discussions that are internal to the field.
Although an admittedly simplified divide, two things characterize the discourse
surrounding these discussions: a tangible objective, and a collective reasoning that
underlies and motivates the pursuit of this objective. The tangible objective is directed at
securing the legitimacy of the field by pre-empting a mainstream social science critique.
On the surface, this objective is overt and clearly defined while the motives that lead to
the pursuit of this objective remain illusive, covert and tacit. If we take for granted that
the latter lacks expression because the practitioners of visual sociology fit the bill of
65
Becker, Doing Things Together : Selected Papers, 252.

27
persons that are sufficiently dissatisfied with how things are executed in mainstream
social science, then we can also be sure that dissatisfaction is what endorses their motives
and the pursuit of their objective to legitimate the field, and hence also themselves. The
reasons for dissatisfaction are as many and varied as there are practitioners, but in the
final analysis these painful experiences find united expression in a defense against the
doxa of a scientific institution to which they want to belong, but do not feel accepted.
Yet, the pre-empting of a mainstream social science critique is not only a measure for the
level and type of dissatisfaction that many practitioners have had with mainstream
practices, it may also be perceived as a collection of utterances that, broadly speaking,
have been conceived in a spirit of revenge for the cursory attention paid to visual
sociology by mainstream sociology. Whatever motive lay behind, it is by no means
commensurate with the notion that visual inquiry is an illegitimate means of inquiry, but
rather an indication that the collective pursuit of legitimacy is a collective sublimation
and venting of unpleasant experiences and frustrations that have been gathered
elsewhere.
Becker is sufficiently foresighted to provide an outlet from which these
frustrations can be given new purpose and direction. At the cornerstone of this foresight,
is Becker’s use of the Kuhninan66
notion of “science” as a construct of scientific
communities to address the frustrations of those who have internalized dissatisfaction
with mainstream social science practices. Or as Becker writes: “Sociologists’ choice of
theories, methods, and topics of research usually reflect the interests and constraints of
the intellectual and occupational communities to which they are allied and attached. They
often choose research methods, for instance, that appear to have paid off for the natural
sciences. They frequently choose research topics which are public concerns of the
moment, especially as those are reflected in the allocation of research funds: poverty,
drugs, immigration, campus or ghetto disorder, and so on. These faddish tendencies are
balanced by a continuing attention to, and respect for, traditional topics and styles of
work.”67
Rather than being a radical call for total disengagement with mainstream social
science the above should be viewed as a discursive means of enticing the disgruntled
back into the fold of legitimate scientific practice. Hence, the arguments put forth by
Becker, i.e., the rigorous and time consuming process of conducting fieldwork as a means
66
To this we should probably also add Bruno Latour’s concept of science, which it can be argued is a derivative of
Kuhn’s – Latour is a good friend of Beckers.
67

28
to better approximate the truthfulness of what can be said with images are, thereby, not
only an attempt to both appease and break with the business as usual attitude of orthodox
social science they are, by the same account, also, an attempt to weave into its fabric an
image of the visual as a viable and legitimate means of scientific inquiry.
Thus it is fairly easy to see why the dual promise of legitimacy and rebellion
appeals to an audience that is at once inherently traditionalist, yet rebellious enough to
attempt to create a position of their own making within mainstream sociology.
The Intellectual Heritage of Howard S. Becker
The legitimacy of scientific inquiry that Becker, so to speak, guides his disgruntled reader
towards, and which he is acknowledged as being a lead representative of, is the Chicago
School tradition of symbolic interactionism. First coined in an article written by Herbert
Blumer in 1937, symbolic interactionism is built on Mead and Cooley, as well as on W.I.
Thomas, John Dewey and others.68
According to Collins, symbolic interactionism turned
into a full-fledged dynamic sociology, as well as it being a militant intellectual movement
critical of the opposing (and then dominant) approaches in North American sociology
(i.e. functionalism, behaviorism, and ethnology). More particularly, the utilitarian model
of the rational actor came under fire from Dewey, who was quick to point out that means
and ends are not really separated in the real world. For in ordinary situations, one merely
acts habitually, finding ends as one moves along at the same time as one finds means to
reach them. Hence, in symbolic interactionism, the actions and interactions of individuals
are seen as a fluid process characterized by an ongoing negotiation of the outcome of the
meanings that individuals attach to things and to social action, including themselves.
From this, symbolic interactionists infer that the meaning of a subject matter for a person
grows out of the ways in which other persons act toward the person with regard to the
subject matter. In other words, it is the interaction and actions of the other(s) that operate
to define the subject matter for the person. Hence, it is no surprise that the preferred
methods of symbolic interactionists include participant observation and intensive
interviews, as opposed to conventional social surveys that use fixed choice questionnaires
and standardized variables.
68
Randall Collins and Randall Collins, Four Sociological Traditions : Selected Readings (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994), 304.

29
Although symbolic interactionists reject nomothetic approaches that seek
deterministic universal laws or the discovery of overarching structural-functional
regularities, they do allow for generalizations to be made.69
This move from the particular
to the general, rather than from the general to the particular is given by the premium that
symbolic interactionists place on analytical induction and grounded theory as guiding
principles of social research. Symbolic interactionists therefore have more in common
with the creative workflow of ethnographers, documentary photographers and the
romantic/expressive strains of visual artists than they do with those who are committed to
survey designs and grand theory. As Coser writes: “Since the social world is constructed
from interpretative processes arising from transactions between individuals, it is only
amenable to careful description aided by sensitizing, as opposed to theoretically
grounded, concepts. Only by taking the role of others and inserting oneself imaginatively
in the flux of social interexchanges between actors can the sociological researcher make
sense out of data.”70
Hence the micro-sociological tradition of symbolic interactionism is
characterized by an idiographic approach that, rather than pledge allegiance to the fallacy
of constructing enduring, objective, theoretical structures, calls for social science to be
“attentive to the subjective interpretations, the definitions of the situations, and emergent
meanings that arise in human interaction, and be content with that.”71
As such it does not
take much to follow the fine line of reason that leads Becker to take up photographic
fieldwork as a viable approach to conducting image based research.
Labeling revisited, Theory or Praxis?
While Becker can be rightly characterized as belonging to the Chicago tradition of Mead,
Thomas, and Blumer he also developed and coined what has later come to be know as
labeling theory.72
Although applicable in many settings labeling theory is concerned only
with the study of deviance. Coser neatly sums up the concepts underlying labeling theory
when he writes:
69
Note: conceptual abstractions and generalizations are allowed only if they have a sensitizing function. See also Lewis
A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought; Ideas in Historical and Social Context (New York,: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1971), 575.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.
72
Labeling theory was coined by Becker in Howard S. Becker, Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New
York: Free Press, 1973).

30
“While most theories of deviance prior to the emergence of labeling theory were
mainly concerned with the study of the causes and consequences of various forms
of deviance, labeling theory attempted to shift the major focus of attention from
those engaging in deviant behavior to those who make the rules that design certain
men and women as deviants in the first place. Labeling theory, very much in line
with the Chicago tradition, stressed that one cannot understand deviant acts in
terms of the behavior of deviants alone but that such acts lend themselves to full
sociological analysis only if and when it is realized that, just like all other social
acts, they involve interactive relationships.”73
Coser goes on to note that critics such as Gibbs (1966) have pointed out that labeling
theorists often focus exclusively on the moral entrepreneurs who label and stigmatize
deviant behavior and therefore bypass the objective circumstances that foster these acts.74
Which leads to the absurd conclusion that “behavior contrary to a norm is not deviant
unless it is discovered.”75
Under any circumstance it is somewhat ironic to think that
Becker’s intellectual roots, and particularly his call for those who are sufficiently
dissatisfied with what they do to try a visual approach, has given impetus to the labeling
of visual sociology as an illegitimate and deviant sub-disciple. While I do not believe this
stigmatization to be premeditated by Becker in any which way or form, it is arguably
important to acknowledge that his (1974) article was instrumental in mobilizing persons
who were ready and willing to facilitate their collective vocational interest as illegitimate
and stigmatized interest.
Deviance and Dissent, a Community in the Making
Because the peculiar self-stigmatization exhibited by visual sociologists have worked to
form a set of common interests, indeed a paradigm, it is imperative that its psychological
makeup be further explored if an understanding of where the field is headed is to emerge.
This will be done by reading the field into Richard Sennett’s analysis of urban life - The
Uses of Disorder.
73
Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought; Ideas in Historical and Social Context, 575.
74
See also Coser p.578
75
Ibid.

31
Drawing on Tocqueville, Weber, Parsons, and Znaniecki, Richard Sennett remarks that
communities based on dissent grow out of a desire to define a common bulwark against
disorder.76
To be drawn into a sub-field like visual sociology thus equals an active
attempt to restore the disorder that one experiences when one no longer identifies with
the doxa of ones mother discipline. In its most banal form the restitution of identity
signals a process whereby individual growth is measured by the ability to weed out and
displace disorder with a purified and meaningful identity. Because identity and meaning
are assigned and projected by the relationships and interactions that we, as individuals,
have with others, we can say that attempts to displace disorder are, by and large,
collective attempts. When we enter into a process of purification we therefore engage in a
collective evading of experiences that are perceived as being either threatening,
dislocating or painful. Hence, if sameness is the condition of a threatened dignity, then
the struggle to attain dignity is a collective struggle against oneself. Because the lure of
sameness is seen as an effective means to sublimate men’s fears of the power within
themselves they are typically represented as self-destructive acts used to repress human
strengths, such as curiosity and the desire to explore new territory. While not universally
applicable as a means of describing the underlying dynamics of paradigm formation it
does bring a certain clarity to the case of visual sociology and the way Becker’s article
was received.
Purification in Visual Sociology
It is only a literal reading of Becker that leads to a myopic concept of the visual (and
theoretical) in visual sociology. Interpreted through Sennett it signals a struggle in which
the fear of ones own otherness is funneled into efforts to produce a homogenous
collective.77
If we take for granted that Becker represents that otherness and that
reception of this otherness is misrepresented by the community who canonize him then
this community exhibits the same purifying traits as counterfeit communities (see also
Stein, Riesman, Vidich and Znaniecki in Sennett p.39). The sense of counterfeit
community and the struggle for a purified identity is manifest in two ways. First through
the mounting of a pervasive defense against what is collectively agreed to be the origin of
the trauma (the collective projection of individualized and concealed traumas that have
76
Richard Sennett, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life (Knopf, 1970), 34.
77
Ibid., 39.

32
amassed from unsuccessful engagement with mainstream sociology) e.g. the many
references that are made to the illegitimacy of the field are apparitions that conceal the
real problems of its practitioners as there are no records that indicate mainstream
sociologists have denigrated the field. The second indication of a purified identity lies
with the discursive and practical establishment of a common reference point, e.g. in this
case the reference point is given by the unproportionate methodological dominance that
documentary photography holds in visual sociology. In other words, both indicate
purification is an integral part of what it means to be a visual sociologist.
The question, as Sennett writes, is whether “the elect must give up complex or
conflicting loyalties, and that they want to do this, want to become slaves to each other,
in order to avoid the strengths in themselves that would make them explorers beyond
comfortable limits.”78
The myth of community purity therefore signals “a collapsing of
the experiential frame, a condensing of all the messy experiences in social life, in order to
create a vision of a unified community.”79
This said, I believe a more contemporary
reading of Becker would find that he also frames this struggle in a much more potent and
humane form by coupling it to a liberation of these repressed strengths. And he does this
not by addressing an audience that is exclusively dissatisfied but by addressing an
audience that first and foremost is adventurous and willing to engage in experimentation.
In my opinion this makes for an altogether better pitch because it empowers and permits
a freedom of deviation, which, in the final analysis, translates into a caring about the
unknown and the other in social contracts. This of course is an ideal reading of Becker
with little consequence on the way his article came to be received. So much, indeed, is
the discrepancy, that it would not be wrong to infer that the immediate outcome of his
article was that it spawned a community of self-proclaimed academic ‘misfits,’ who
although highly uncomfortable about not belonging to mainstream discourse found
consolation in collectively labeling themselves as such.
This said, it should be noted, that, the increasing popularity of visually oriented
research has prompted contemporary (mostly European) commentators such as Marcus
Banks (2001) to proclaim this self-serving deviant role as incommensurable with current
realities.80
The fact that ‘misfits’ have become mainstream (as if they ever aspired toward
anything else) surely indicates that a turn of priorities is taking place within the
78
Ibid., 44.
79
Ibid., 36.
80
See Marcus Banks, Visual Methods in Social Research (London: SAGE, 2001).

33
contemporary visual research community.81
Today we bear witness to the emergence of
an academic community that on all fronts has become much more diverse and skilled in
its analysis of visual culture. With this development, we find that hands-on practitioners
more often than not are being given free reign to adopt a more reflexive and playful
approach to using visual imagery. This is not to say that documentary photography is no
longer dominant or that other means of visualization have become common. What it does
mean, is that the field of visual sociology is undergoing a transformation as calls for the
emergence of an expanded field of inquiry become more numerous. Under any
circumstance, and before I risk getting ahead of myself, I want to return to the discussion
of Becker’s influence on the discursive formation of visual sociology and how the field
came to be framed as an illegitimate scientific endeavor by its practitioners.
Q & A
Visual sociologists have often voiced complaints about their illegitimate status. Typically
these insinuate a denigration by the mainstream orthodox research community. Again,
what is truly baffling is that visual sociologists provide no examples that elaborate or
confirm this belittlement, just as criticism is nowhere to be found in mainstream orthodox
literature. Naturally one of the reasons for this could be that giving testimony to academic
deprecation is not exactly conductive to advancing ones career opportunities, particularly
if this is something that happens in faculty meetings and in everyday academic life, rather
than in publications. The question therefore is how do we find out if this is really the
case? Certainly not by asking visual sociologists who are at the beginning of their career
or without tenure. In fact if any disclosure of this sensitive subject is to be made at all,
our questions must be directed at the very top of the academic food chain. Following the
logic that the latter are more experienced and not as susceptible or vulnerable to
retribution and ridicule as the former I wrote a letter, explaining my predicament, to the
four most prolific and important contributors of visual sociology; Howard S. Becker,
Douglas Harper, John Grady and Jon Wagner.82
With slight variation and depending to
81
Mainstream aspirations are, as Prosser reminds us, given by the fact that “the one unifying theme of Image-based
Research is the belief that research should be more visual.”
82
Howard S. Becker the founding father of visual sociology, is often associated with the sociology of art and with
labeling theory and the sociology of deviance in particular; Douglas Harper, a major voice in the field, has been
instrumental in facillitating a transformation of the IVSA newsletter to peer-reviewed journal; John Grady is
documentary film maker and longtime contributor to visual sociology; Jon Wagner is the editor of the influencial book
‘Images of Information’ (1979) and a pioneer of image based research in educational studies.

34
whom it was addressed the letter read as follows:
Dear, Howard
I've been researching the origin and discursive formation of visual sociology in
North America and have some questions that I thought you might be able to help
clarify.
My current predicament is that I've already plowed through most of the available
literature, but have yet to figure out why visual sociologists portray their
mainstream colleagues as 'those who label' and stigmatize the visual as an
illegitimate and unsubstantiated means of scientific inquiry. To claim that ones
mainstream colleagues are at the root of this stigmatization strikes me as a
somewhat peculiar approach since there is no evidence to suggest this is actually
the case! As far as I recall the closest attempt to actually provide such evidence
has been made by Stasz who attributes the dissolution of visual in early 20th
century North American sociology to behaviorist and then editor of the AJS,
Albion Small. However, Stasz study is not entirely unproblematic, in that she
makes use of the old trick of backward causation to legitimate a very limited
canon of the visual in visual sociology, i.e. the canon of documentary
photography. Somewhere along the line I believe this limited visual canon along
with the collective self-stigmatization (i.e. the unsubstantiated accusations used
by visual sociologists to label themselves illegitimate) are instances, that have
been used to mobilize a pervasive and collective defense against the disorder that
visual sociologists have experienced prior to entering the field.
Of course one could forcefully argue that collective self-stigmatization, because
it anchors and brings identity to an otherwise disordered conception of the self, is
a common and reoccurring theme in the paradigm formation process described
by Kuhn. Albeit in a somewhat different context, I believe Sennett makes a
similar point when he argues that 'communities based on dissent grow out of a
desire to define a common bulwark against disorder.' Still, this leaves us with the
problem that there is no evidence to suggest that visual sociology has been
deemed illegitimate by anybody else than visual sociologists themselves. Granted
this experience of disorder is collectively manifest as an internalized

35
dissatisfaction with mainstream social scientific practices, and granted that some
no doubt seek consolation in the visual as means of purifying this unpleasant
state of affairs, I wonder whether your original call for 'those who are sufficiently
dissatisfied to try something new' has left you with the feeling that diversity and
experimentation (which I admirably believe is what you advocate in your
writings) have yielded to a conservative and very limited conception of the visual
in visual sociology?
In other words (and please do correct me if I’m wrong) I have this innate feeling
that the potential of what you were trying to say in Photography and Sociology,
was superseded by an influx of persons who were more interested in trying to
make sense of themselves, rather than pursue a creative vision of what they as
individuals believed the visual could bring to sociology. If this is the case it
surely would establish a motive for the discursive and practical establishment of
documentary photography as the common and un-proportionately dominating
reference point of the field. In this context I can't help but think that many visual
artists and curators have worked (now more than ever) on problems that are
directly related to sociology (e.g. Hans Haake (liked your piece on him), Allan
Sekula, Trin Minh-Ha, Superflex, Charles Esche, Mary Kelly, etc.), and that
many European sociologists have studied or used concepts from visual art in
their own work (e.g. Walter Benjamin, Gisele Freund, Elizabeth Chaplin, and
Latours recent exhibit at ZKM Karlsruhe). I guess what I'm trying to ask is
whether you're just as baffled as I that so few have ventured beyond documentary
photography and whether this limited field of vision could have been effected by
a misreading of your 1974 article?
Curiously yours,
André

36
In the following I present and analyze the highlights of this correspondence and note in
passing that it can be found in its entirety in the appendix.83
In response to my findings, that there is no evidence pointing to a mainstream
stigmatization of visual sociology, Becker notes “there’s no doubt that people who use
visual materials in the US feel oppressed by their more conventional colleagues. But I
don’t think that it’s all imagined and they in fact are really not treated as though what
they are doing is legitimate. It may be that relying on published materials has led you to
this conclusion.” In his response to the same predicament Harper strikes a fresh and
provocative point when he writes “perhaps we are ‘pre-stigmatization,’ that is, not taken
seriously enough to stigmatize,” i.e., in mainstream publications. Grady suggests a
solution to the lack of material documenting the oppression of visual sociologists when
he writes, “You could do the field a real service, … by interviewing the “founders” of
visual sociology and writing about this phase of its history. You’ve got some of them
with Howie and Doug. … I would also really do open ended interviews and make it as
experiential as possible. If your hypothesis has any merit, it will need biographical,
anecdotal data, to confirm it.” This lack of experiential data confirms not only my
bafflement but also Wagner’s when he writes, “I share your views, at least in part, about
the peculiar “anti-mainstream” ethos that has characterized some discussions among
visual sociologists and visual anthropologists. I found this peculiar myself when in
contrast to the way these issues are approached in the field of education – where visual
studies have been “mainstreamed” in several different ways.”
Becker, Harper and Grady all provided experiential data. The following is a
summary account of their experiences. Becker writes: “I have heard the question of
whether a work of “visual sociology” is really sociology at all – in faculty meetings, in
discussion of who to hire, in discussions of what students may be allowed to do and use
as evidence in a dissertation, etc. Negative academic judgments of visual materials are
very common and are made unashamedly. I have often heard people say that photographs
should only be used to ‘sweeten’ textbooks for undergraduates. None of this gets into the
printed record that is available to you but you can believe me that it is real.” Harper
confirms Becker’s observations: ”For example, I have applied to two positions in the past
83
Having sent the above letter, I began to worry whether what I had written was too provocative, totally off the court
and without merit. I mean really had I not just put my head on the block? Under any circumstance I reasoned that
whatever the outcome it was better to have asked. So when replies began popping up in my inbox I was truly amazed to
find my inquiry had received a warm and comprehensive response from all four.

37
5 years at Ph.D. departments and not gotten to the interview stage (at least according to
what I was told) because visual sociology was simply too marginal. I made ‘long short
lists,’ but that is where it ended. The people who eventually did get these jobs (I checked)
had fewer publications than I did, and in lesser venues but they were in traditional areas
with traditional methods. Ok, I’ve had a good career and a lot of fun precisely because
I’ve followed my interest, but I’ve also been treated with joking distain because of my
interests. Christ, a month ago in a conflictual meeting, a colleague from another
department said, “Oh yes, and YOU take photographs …” such an insult! One would
never say: “Oh, and YOU do variable analysis!” Grady recalls a similar demeaning
attitude towards image based research: “I found colleagues at Wheaton thought that what
I did was cool – and very useful for making rhetorically compelling arguments about
poverty and inequality – but it wasn’t, strictly speaking, sociology; ‘Boutique’ courses
was one term that was used. Years later, some of these same sociologists tore down a
poster from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies that I had on my door because
their feminist sensibilities were offended by the photograph of a portly Elvis
impersonator. Another of my colleagues told me that the Salt photographs weren’t
genuine because real people don’t look like that.” In this regard Harper brings an
interesting angle to this discussion: “the simple fact is that it is easy to dismiss visual
sociology even by people who end up using it. I have had that experience over and over.
My grad assistant reports to me that her previous supervisor in the department actively
mocked visual sociology (and my research) yet ironically he just finished telling me how
he has constructed his new course on the sociology of sport around visual themes and
methods! And, he would likely not see a contradiction here.” Speaking from personal
experience and from an European context, the most concrete barrier for those who work
visually is the fact that one does not receive credit for visual work, a point Becker also
makes in his response: “It is very evident in the life of academic sociology in the US that
one does not ‘get credit’ (which is the usual expression) in the ordinary way for visual
work.” One can only begin to wonder what would be left of sociology if variable
analysis, fixed questionnaires and qualitative fieldwork were given similar treatment?
Does the Orthodox Mainstream Opinion Really Matter?
Although these answers and anecdotes are a testimony to the fact that the work of visual
sociologists are denigrated by their mainstream colleagues it is by no means

38
commensurate with discarding our analysis of how the practitioners of the field have
subsumed a collective identity of being marginalized. Meaning that the experiential
affirmation of mainstream denigration does not annul the fact that visual sociology
remains a marginal sub-discipline and that this marginal position brings with it a certain
‘deviant’ occupational identity. As Wagner writes “In terms of ahistorical analysis, I tend
to see the visual sociology and visual anthropology, communities as having many of the
characteristics of ‘deviant’ subcultures. I don’t think its difficult to understand how the
deviant status can be created – around issues of methods or substance – as that happens
with lots of other sub-specialties as well. But … that’s only part of the picture.” What
significantly alters the picture then, and to return to a Sennett inspired analysis, is that the
response of Becker, Grady, Harper and Wagner suggests that whatever interpersonal pain
and disorder they have experienced as a result of following their interests, they accept
these as an inevitable part of working in an emerging field. Clearly as this is the first time
that testimony of these painful experiences have been documented it points to the
possibility that the field is outgrowing its purified identity, i.e., that visual sociologists are
coming into character by way of sifting through experience, rather than through willful
assimilation of what they are not.84
This coming into character is exemplified by Harper, the most outspoken of the
four, when he takes care to reminisce that he has “… had a good career and lots of fun
precisely because I’ve followed my interests, … ” just as he asserts his position when he
writes “I speak as a person who is mostly a visual ethnographer with unabashed ties to
documentary practice.” Nonetheless, we are still left with what Wagner in a paper he
gave at the IVSA (International Visual Sociology Association) conference in 2001 calls –
the ‘mainstreaming dilemma.’ Quoting an earlier observation by Becker that “mainstream
respect for visual sociology will depend on demonstrating that image-based research can
make substantive contributions to mainstream areas of inquiry” Wagner summons the
paradox that “the legitimacy of this kind of ‘mainstreaming’ challenges the notion that
image based research is a province in its own right.” In concrete terms this leaves visual
sociologists with a difficult choice, as Wagner writes: “Achieve mainstream legitimacy
through pragmatic, unromantic and systematic use of visual imagery to examine
substantive issues of mainstream domains of social research – OR – explore personal, at
times romantic, and less systematic uses of visual imagery, or the aesthetic and structure
84
See also Sennett, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life. 125.

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