This paper discusses the implications of various current uses of the term “sociology” in collocation with the term “visual”. The paper departs from an annotated catalogue of current definitions of visual sociology, as outlined in the materials of professional organizations or course descriptions. The authors of this paper consider such approaches to be lacking in what they feel should distinguish a sociologically-inspired analysis from other forms of analysis in a broader field of visual studies. To delineate what they think should be a fruitful grounding of analysis in the field of visual sociology, they discuss aspects of sociological approaches such as symbolic interactionism and sociological phenomenology, followed by a discussion of some more recent tenets of constructivism. Far from being a nominalistic exercise, the discussion aims at increasing the scope and efficiency of visual analysis by means of addition of a specific perspective and reliance on the strengths of a disciplinary tradition. Current developments in “visual grounded theory” are also invoked, to illustrate the fruitfulness of such a general position.

Sociologija