Visual Methods in Social Research. Marcus Banks
can be gathered which is then written up as ‘research data’. We note that such statements should satisfy both the most quantitative and the most qualitative research projects. Thus we could see the exercise of, for example, doing photo-elicitation or even making a documentary film to be ways of structuring interactions which will enable the researcher to learn things she is interested in. This is very much the tone in which Carlo Cubero (2008) describes his doctoral research project which included the making of a film on the Caribbean island of Culebra. In this case planning and setting up the film taught him more about how things happen on Culebra than is contained in the formal content of the film itself. In other words, through the process of making the film he acquired a lot of ethnographic knowledge, some of which was ‘data’ that he actively sought out but much of which was acquired implicitly or indirectly in the course of discussing with participants just what the film would be ‘about’ (see also Chapter 5, Section 5.5, where we discuss other examples of project discussion with participants, leading to further sociological insight).
Cubero’s experience notwithstanding, with the majority of social research projects the research questions should come first and the choice of methods follows. The various social science disciplines understand the concept of a ‘research question’ in different ways, but all agree that the question asked should be meaningful to other researchers in the discipline and beyond, and that whatever the answer is, it should be recognizable as an answer. Some research methods may be used as a probe, to discover both known and unknown unknowns (to paraphrase the former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld), and visual methods are very often used in this way, but only within the context of a broader question-focused enquiry.
Once the question has been established, and framed within the relevant literature, the next step in planning a research project is to identify the human population or sample data set that best suits investigation in the light of the research question asked. (In practice, we acknowledge that many social researchers are drawn to a particular empirical issue first, and then subsequently devise a sociological question that justifies the enquiry). With research question and field of research established, the question of which methods to employ can finally be meaningfully addressed. Although a ‘mixed methods’ approach has recently become popular and acquired a particular meaning (see, for example, Tashakkori and Teddlie 2010), in practice field-based research with human participants generally employs a mixture of methods: observation, participation, interviews, formal or informal focus groups, surveys, and so on. Adding visual methods to the mix generally complements such approaches, no matter what the subject of enquiry, but visual methods are especially suited to investigations involving particularly visual or embodied practice, such as dance, or sport, or craft activity (see Section 4.4). Methods such as photo-elicitation (Section 4.4.1) are relevant in forms of action research and participatory research, especially when the co-participants may not have the same familiarity or confidence with the written word as the researcher. Finally, visual methods are obviously indicated when the subject of research is image-based or otherwise inherently visual (e.g. the acquisition and deployment of what has come to be known as ‘skilled vision’ amongst health care professionals such as radiographers and others; see Grasseni 2007 for example, and Lammer 2012 for an investigation into skilled vision among surgeons in a Viennese hospital that broadens out into ‘sensory anthropology’ and art practice).
Planning a research enquiry that employs visual methods is much the same as planning any research project, but there are some extra practicalities to bear in mind.9 First, there are time implications, especially if the researcher plans to create visual materials. Photography and especially video both place additional time demands on the research process in multiple ways. As well as the time it takes to produce and process the material shot (which is considerable in the case of video editing and transcription – see Zeitlyn 2011) more time will probably be needed to negotiate access and gain the permission and, more importantly the trust, of the research participants. In our experience, participants who are happy to talk to a researcher, even with a sound recorder running, are much more circumspect when it comes to being video recorded. Secondly, there are cost implications, and again these are various. As well as the obvious and upfront costs associated with image production or reproduction (for example, creating copy prints from an archive to use in photo-elicitation), there may be further costs down the line such as fees for copyright clearance and reproduction rights (see Section 5.6.2).
Finally, there is the matter of ethics. We discuss this extensively in Section 5.6, but briefly we should mention here that there are numerous dimensions to this that need to be considered at the early planning stages. The first is the hurdle that almost all researchers today face when subject to ethical review by their home institution. Research ethics boards (IRBs in the USA) tend to baulk when faced with projects employing visual methods, for two reasons: the problems surrounding the anonymity of research subjects, and the problem of ‘third parties’ – the showing of images of one person to another, as is often the case in photo-elicitation. While there are solutions and workarounds to both issues, it makes sense to think them through in the very early stages of the planning process, so that the research is not held up by ethics board queries. More serious, however, is planning for actual ethical practice in the conduct of the research (as opposed to jumping the ethics board hurdle). Again, we address this in Chapter 5, but if a researcher is planning to conduct research with people from a different social or cultural group to herself, it makes a great deal of sense to identify a senior member of that group or someone who is very familiar with the group, early on. This person can be consulted in the early planning stages, and give advice and feedback on any issues that may prove to be ethically problematic for the research subjects, especially around the production and circulation of images. Asking someone to mentor a project in this way is an increasingly commonplace requirement of IRBs in the United States for projects that take place outside of the country.
Notes
1 On the history of the visual in anthropology, see MacDougall 1998b; Morphy and Banks 1997; Pinney 1992a; for sociology, see Harper 1998; Stasz 1979.
2 Several methods guides have appeared in recent years such as Reavey 2011; Pink 2012; and Rose 2012.
3 As Pels (1996) points out in his review of Jay’s expansion of Fabian’s argument (1993).
4 While the affective power of an image is often strongly related to formal properties of composition and so forth, this is an aspect we only touch on in passing. One reason for this is that formalist analytical approaches, which tend to stress the skill or even genius of individual producers, have dominated approaches to the history of art and of photography and have obscured the more sociological approaches we are concerned with here.
5 An earlier version of this section first appeared in Banks 2007: Chapter 3.
6 Iedema does not, in fact, refer to his approach as an example of content analysis. MB has argued elsewhere, however, that his ‘social semiotic’ approach to the latent meaning of the film rests upon an approximated quantitative approach to the content of the film’s scenes (Banks 2007: 47–48).
7 The term is Garfinkel’s (cited in Heath et al. 2010: 88), although in our opinion this is an instance of what we consider to be an unexamined assumption in ethnomethodological analysis.
8 It is another premise of ethnomethodology that while human subjects are understood to be – normally – competent social actors, they are also understood to be unconscious of their competence; social life would be unbearable and unsustainable if we had to consciously plan all the micro-detail of social interaction.
9 Popular basic guides to research project planning include Bell 2010 and Walliman 2011.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен