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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 chapter introduces a methodological approach to analyzing visual material based on Erving Goffman's frame analysis. Building on the definition of dominant frames in a set of visual material, and the analysis of keying within these frames, the approach provides a tangible tool to analyze contextualized visual material sociologically. To illustrate the approach, the chapter analyzes visual representations of social movement contention in two local contexts, the cities of Lyon, France, and Helsinki, Finland. The material was collected during ethnographic fieldwork and consists of 505 images from local activist websites. The analysis asks how femininity, masculinity, and gender/sex ambiguity key visual representations of different aspects of contentious action, such as mass gatherings, violence, protest policing, and performativity. Strong converging features are found in the contents of the frames in the two contexts, yet differences also abound, in particular in the ways femininity keys different frames of contention in visual representations. The results show, first, that the visual frame analysis approach is a functioning tool for analyzing large sets of visual material with a qualitative emphasis, and second, that a comparison of local activism through visual representations calls into question many general assumptions of political cultures, repertoires of contention, and cultural gender systems, and highlights the importance for sociologists of looking closely enough for both differences and similarities.

This essay employs a visual approach to explore some of the ways that spatial practices become markers of a globalising and glocalizing world. Images are offered that reflect some of the symbolic competition created by more and less recent migrants as they lay claim to ‘contested terrains’ by changing what they look like. Although often dismissed as mere “marking” of territory, such ordinary practices by migrants of symbolic home or community building are crucial to understanding global cities. One indicator of their importance is the, often hostile reactions by the dominant society to them. A brief review of some of the most important theoretical perspectives on these interrelated phenomena, such as those of Saskia Sassen, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells, isolates common expectations about the visibility of resulting competing spatial practices in shared multiethnic residential and commercial environments. It is argued that many of the contradictions created by the concentration of global capital can be seen in the neighborhood streetscapes of global cities. From Georg Simmel, through Henri Lefebvre, and Lyn H. Lofland, the visible, and the symbolic, have been central to urban analysis. Therefore, the ubiquitous aspects of what Jackson called ‘vernacular landscapes,’ such as commercial signs and graffiti in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, London, New York, and Rome are addressed.

This study explores the meaning of Cinderella archetype through the use of visual narrative art (VNA) created from the chosen motion film. First, the present study describes basic concepts of several qualitative research methodologies including visual sociology, cognitive sculpting (CS), storytelling, and VNA. Mapping contexts that the movie describes deepens the understanding of the stories and enactments. Second, the paper briefly examines the Cinderella archetype in storytelling. Finally, the paper illustrates VNA via CS of a subject movie for improving interpretations and sense-making of the story.

Ever since Robert Ezra Park and Ernest Burgess published their classic research on Chicago which described “how” residential neighborhoods follow a distinct ecological pattern, generations of urban practitioners and theoreticians have been arguing about “why” they are spatially distributed. This essay is designed to demonstrate the utility of Visual Sociology and the study of Vernacular Landscapes to document and analyze how the built environment reflects the changing cultural identities of neighborhood residents. It is strongly suggested that a visual approach can also help build a bridge between various theoretical and applied disciplines that focus on the form and function of the metropolis. While discussing some of these often-competing models, the text is illustrated by a selection of photographs taken in Brooklyn, New York whose neighborhoods over the past century have been a virtual Roman fountain of ethnic transitions. Although many of the oldest and newest residents of Brooklyn such as Chinese, Italians, Jews, and Poles would be familiar to Park and Burgess, others such as Bangladeshis, Egyptians, and Koreans would not. Ideas about Old and New cities from the “classical” to the “post-modern”; from Park and Burgess to Harvey and Lefebvre are also synthesized via the insights of J. B. Jackson.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the methodological dimensions and potential of photo‐elicitation, particularly as a historical research tool for archival, oral and critical accounting, and management historians.

The analysis draws upon the methodological, theoretical and empirical literatures of visual anthropology, visual sociology, visual ethnography, oral history, and visual research methods and develops a methodological agenda for photo‐elicitation research in accounting and management history.

It reveals the potential for contextualised, interpretive and critical discovery in accounting and management history. The prospect of peeling back of hidden layers and voices is significantly enhanced by the introduction of photo‐elicitation, which offers empowerment not only through the visual triggering of memory but through the negotiation and construction of images themselves.

The prospect of more direct access to organisational and personal experience and context is accompanied by new understandings of multiple voices and fresh narratives. Together, these promise potential insights from the particular to the societal.

In assembling a collection of papers which address issues relating to the visual image as the medium through which we might come to know the social world, we are in a sense, merely drawing on something that most of us do and take for granted during all of our waking hours. For most of us, the world in which we live is experienced through our capacity to see and to make sense of what we see. At its most fundamental, visual research draws on our basic capacity to interpret the world through our sense of sight. In this respect, for those of us who are not in anyway visually impaired visual research might be seen to be little more than something that we do all the time in order to go about our everyday lives. We might also argue that all or at least the great majority of social research relies on our capacity to interpret and to make sense of visual images. This is true not only in cases where methods of observation and participant observation are used, but also in respect of the need to read written data of various kinds, to interpret statistics and merely to orient ourselves within any given research location. Whilst there is no intention here to deny or overlook the contribution that blind or partially sighted researchers may make to our understanding of social life through their work with the written medium or through their capacity to give accounts of their personal experiences of research sites and locations via other, perhaps more developed, senses such as hearing, touch and smell, it remains a fact that most social research relies on the capacity of the researcher to see and to interpret on the basis of what is seen.