The Social Life of Methods theme for 2011-12 is The Visual. 

In taking the visual as our focus we aim to draw together work across CRESC to ask what role the visual plays in the history of methods, how methods work, and the impact methods have upon the world.

What can the visual reveal about what methods seek to do? What’s distinctive about the role the visual plays in how research is carried out and disseminated? And what do we mean when we talk about ‘the visual’?   

Underpinning our approach to these questions is a desire not to simply rehearse pre-existing debates about ‘visual methods’, but to examine how the visual figures as an aspect of method in ways that have often been overlooked or marginalised.

In pursuing this aim we’re interested in addressing the full spectrum of forms visual media can take, from diagrams and graphs, to photography and film, to models and digital visualisation. But we also want to put forward a conception of the visual that extends beyond the almost exclusive focus on the use of visual media in discussions of ‘visual methods’.

In particular we want to draw attention to the centrality of the act of seeing to any discussion of the visual, and to acknowledge the fact that the researcher and the researched are - with notable exceptions - subjects who see. Such an approach to the visual asks us to think about how the visual weaves its way through ‘the research process’ in complex and ambiguous ways that demand further attention. Reading and writing, are, for example, at one level visual processes. Indeed, we might ask, are there really any ‘non-visual methods’?

In taking up these themes we’re seeking to address a series of questions that include - but aren’t restricted to - the following:

• What is the visual? What are the boundaries or limits of the visual? What effect does an attention to the visual have on our appreciation of other ontological domains and epistemological categories.
• What type of knowledge does the visual generate? How does this compare to other forms of knowledge, including language and the numerical? What is the status of ‘visual knowledge’ in different contexts and settings, including inside/outside the academy?
• What is the relationship between the visual and aesthetics? In what ways does the visual foreground aesthetic concerns? Has aesthetics become neglected in discussions of method, and with what effects? What is the relationship between aesthetics and the dissemination and impact of knowledge?  
• How is seeing implicated in method? In what ways are the researcher and the researched subjects who see? In what respect does seeing involve desire and affect? What is the relationship between visual media and the act of seeing?
• What are the implications of the development of visual technologies for social science methods? How have developments in technology shifted the relationship between the visual and methods and in what ways do they raise new questions about this relationship? What histories can be told about the relationship between visual technologies and methods? What can these histories tell us about contemporary preoccupations regarding the promises and possibilities of digital technologies?  
• How is the visual implicated in researching socio-cultural change? How is change seeable?   Through what techniques do we try and visualise change? How do these visualisations feed our understanding of what change is and what it means? 
• The visual and the politics of method. What does the visual reveals about how methods are selected and deployed and how they’re governed and regulated? What role does the visual play in the dissemination and impact of knowledge? What is the politics of the unseen?  

Plans for 2011-12 include a study group, gallery and exhibition visits and a workshop. For further details see the CRESC blog, the events page and check back for regular updates on this page.