The following CFPs for a panel I'm organising at The Social Life of
Methods conference (31 August - 3 September 2010) might be of interest:
The act of seeing: visuality and the social life of methods
Recent years have witnessed an expansion in the use of 'visual
methodologies' in the social sciences and related disciplines. These
methodologies have highlighted the significance of visual media to
the research process. However, relatively little attention has been
accorded to the way in which a more fundamental dimension of
visuality figures as part of the research process: the act of
seeing, and the individual's experience of seeing from a first
person perspective
This panel will address the ways in which seeing figures as integral
to the research process, and how seeing has and has not been
addressed as an element of this process.
Themes to be addressed might include:
The researcher as a figure who sees
Conceptions of the individual as a subject who sees
The relationship between visual media and the act of seeing
The denigration of vision in research methodologies
The relationship between seeing and the other senses
The limits of seeing and the unseen
Seeing and knowledge
The history of vision
Scopic desire
The ethics of seeing
Abstracts of 200-300 words for individual papers should be sent to
Andrew Hill (<mailto:(a.hill /at/ open.ac.uk)>(a.hill /at/ open.ac.uk)). Enquiries
about possible papers are also welcome. The deadline for abstracts
is the end of February 2010.
Further details of the conference can be found here:
<http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/conference2010/callforpapers.html>http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/conference2010/callforpapers.html