Search results

Globalization, the ever-increasing worldwide flow of ideas, practices, and material objects resulting in increasing interdependency between people and nations across the globe, has numerous interrelated economic, political, cultural, ideological, environmental, and technological facets.

In an effort to make the elusive and multifaceted concept of globalization more tangible and measurable, different instruments have been developed, usually in the form of “indexes” based on quantitative data. These indexes mainly result in rankings of individual cities as well as whole countries with respect to their supposed level of globalization. Some items of the existing indexes to measure the level of globalization of nation states or cities refer to phenomena that are to some extent visually observable, but many aspects and manifestations of globalization escape these rather crude operationalizations.

Visual approaches to globalization help to enrich and complement the more abstract and mainly quantitatively supported discourses around this multifaceted phenomenon. They may provide valid and unobtrusive ways to assess and understand the impact of culture and cultural exchange in the daily lives of inhabitants of cities around the world and add a unique “localized,” cross-cultural empirical perspective to the many divergent views and discussions about the presumed beneficial or detrimental nature of these processes. An ‘in situ’ visual approach to globalization may help to uncover the “real life” impact and the specific contexts of these processes at different locations. This chapter discusses different options for researching globalization and cultural change in cities.

This introductory chapter starts off by discussing the differences and interconnections of visual sociology and urban sociology in their quest to understand human settlements. It then moves to argue for expanding the focus to other disciplines that are equally geared toward researching aspects of the city in visual and multimodal ways, since the urban context cannot be studied comprehensively without engaging a multitude of disciplines and trying to make productive connections between them. The chapter continues with a concise overview and discussion of each of the contributions in this first of two volumes of “Visual and Multimodal Urban Sociology” in the “Research in Urban Sociology” series. These twin volumes explore multiple ways in which the city and city life may be approached, studied, and expressed through visual and multimodal means and methods, thereby as much as possible including sensory experiences other than those related to seeing and hearing. It concludes with drawing some contours and challenges of visual and multimodal urban studies and the critical role of technology in advancing this cross-disciplinary field of inquiry.

The present chapter explores the topic of death in the context of contemporary New Delhi, India. Building upon what I chose to call an ‘expanded ethnography’, it explores the multiple ways in which sensory, visual and digital mediations and tools can help researchers address such an existentially delicate topic. Building on a mix of online visual ethnography (of computer screens and smartphones), of bodily/sensory practices, of sound recording and image-making, my research focussed on retirement homes and shelters amidst a bulging Indian metropolis. I engaged with subjects who, because of personal choices or family difficulties, have ended up finishing their lives in solitude amidst a city forced to co-live with the presence of death. Alternating between photographic portraits, filmic observations and moments of playful exchanges in front of a camera (with me as one of the objects portrayed) my method capitalizes upon the integration (and problematisation) of bodily (sensory and affective) as well as digital techniques. All together these different mediations have granted me access to different layers of connection to the topic of death in Delhi and also to my ageing guides/interlocutors.

The purpose of this chapter is twofold: in the first part, we will provide comprehensive, state-of-the-art urban and visual studies across the domains of visibility, urban aesthetics and the legitimate use of the urban. We will show that what we see is foremost what is accessible and legitimate as a vision, while the urban provides multiple realms of invisibility that are often neglected or rendered invisible. Art, architecture, urbanism and place-making will be used as examples of these dynamics.

In the second part of the chapter, we will present a research study on the decolonial practices of re-signification of colonial urban traces. Despite the dominant representation of Italians as ‘good people’ (a local version of ‘white innocence’), in recent years, Italy has witnessed a new interest stemming from bottom-up local movements dealing with colonial legacy in the urban space. We will show a research example (‘Decolonising the City. Visual Dialogues in Padova’) based on participatory video, arts-based methods and walking methods.

Using visual materials to understand a social object requires the researcher to know that object's purpose, and this is true whether the object is an artifact, a restricted event, a small social world, or something as massive as the modern city. I argue that the purpose of the city as a settlement is driven by the need to safely sleep in peace at night while satisfying other basic biophysical needs during the day as conveniently as possible. An examination of these needs identifies 10 functional prerequisites for human settlement, entangling its inhabitants in involuntary community with entities and events other than themselves, whether they like it or not. In addition, the rise of the modern city exacerbates the challenge of living in a reluctant community and pressures its inhabitants to come to terms with the consequences for how these relationships affect daily life. I highlight nine challenges posed as questions that have been particularly salient in American urban history since the mid-nineteenth century. How these challenges have been addressed indicates not only what it takes to make a modern city a settlement suitable for satisfying human needs, but also just how deeply invested its residents are in making the city work. Finally, the 10 functional prerequisites and nine moral challenges not only provide a framework for researching the city, but also suggest a coherent outline for imagining a “shooting script” or guide for conducting visual research.

This chapter introduces “Isolated Building Studies,” a photographic series that interrogates Chicago's landscape of racial and economic segregation. In order to facilitate comparison, the series features uniform compositions of buildings that do not have neighboring structures. Through the repetition of these buildings and their uncanny settings, viewers are pushed to investigate relationships between these scenes and the social, political, and economic forces that created them.