ABSTRACT
Classical social theory is of course full of attempts to define social change: in one sense Marxism is nothing else but a systematic model for doing so. But in most of these models two problems always seem to remain: the first being that the actual mechanisms of change are obscure, a problem that sociologists share with historians. Mainstream historians, or sociologists for that matter, rarely consider the possible power of images as vehicles of change. Art historians do so of course, but almost always within the limited discourse of their professional discipline. While intellectual historians and historians of ideas consider the relationship between ideas and how they influence other ideas, and while art historians consider the communication and patterns of influence flowing between images over time and over spatial boundaries. Sociology has been long mired in over-abstract, non-sensuous and over-socialized concepts of society.
