Visual Methods in Social Research

There has been an explosion of interest in visual culture - coming largely from work in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies and while there are a number of practical and technical manuals available for film, photographic and other visual media, there is a dearth of writing that combines both the practical and the technical. This book redresses this with a balanced approach that is written primarily for students in the social sciences who wish to use visual materials in the course of empirical, qualitative field research. It should also be of interest to experienced researchers who wish to expand their methodological approaches.

Visual anthropology and ethnographic film, Indian urban society and Jainism; ethnicity; research methods and computing.

Following earlier research in India and the UK on the social organization of the Jain community, and later on anthropological theories of ethnicity, Marcus Banks has spent the last few years conducting research in the area of visual anthropology. Recent research interests include the history of a small city in western India, cinematographic practice in Colonial India, the history of ethnographic film, and the development of robust visual research methodologies. His current research is on the interpretation of forensic imagery. With Andre Gingrich (Vienna) he recently co-edited a book on neo-nationalism in Europe, and he is co-editing a book on the current ‘state of play’ in visual anthropology with Jay Ruby (Temple). Sage published his second book on visual research methods in 2007, and the next two years will see a series of books on visual and material anthropology published by Berg under his editorship.