ABSTRACT
The relationships between social analysis and visual representation are many and complex, to the extent that there is no consensus on how images should be used or to what ends they might be put. This chapter begins with an account of the diverse ways the social sciences have used images, especially in anthropology. It revisits some sociological classics to see how the visual has figured in the discipline. The chapter concentrates on cultural studies and the legacy of semiotics. It provides a glimpse of the diverse range of visual research methods social scientists have used, and this diversity characterizes both the kinds of visual materials they work with, and the analytical procedures to which that material is subjected. A key distinction can be made between a detailed interpretation of an aspect of visual culture and the use of visual methods in social research (such as photo-elicitation, virtual ethnography, spatial mapping, video diaries and other kinds of explicitly collaborative documentary making).
