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Henry Moncrieff Zabaleta
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2020
Venezuela is internationally known as a “Factory of Queens” for the Miss Universe, the most important female beauty contest in the world. This beauty pageant represents a hegemonic, transversal, and gendered construction of the female body in the socialist country… (read more)

Camilo Leon-Quijano
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2018
Koumba, 16, is one of the best players of Chantereine High School. She lives in a social housing tower in Sarcelles. This city has the biggest social housing density of the country. Her father is retired and he suffers from a chronic illness… (read more)

Aubrey Graham
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2014
At first glance, this image may look similar to those that appear beside ‘donate here’ instructions in magazine ads and non-governmental organization (NGO) websites… (read more)

Kristin Miller
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2014
Three men stand on a sidewalk in San Francisco. They stand equidistant from each other, not even their shadows touching. In any event, they are more engrossed in the smartphones they hold than in anything going on around them… (read more)

Eryn Snyder
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2012
Four to six times a day, Bedik women haul water from a nearby well back to their community. Their feet have cut trails into the red earth and worn smooth the rocks along the paths up to their mountain villages… (read more)

Emilie Dubois
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2010
I swung off the curb and onto the M4 bus relieved to finally step out of the thick, simmering street air of a New York City late summer afternoon… (read more)

Haruna Miyagawa Fukui
1st Prize Rachel Tanur Contest 2010
This photograph was taken on a sunny spring weekend at the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego, California. The photographer is a graduate student from Japan… (read more)

esearch ethics are often particularly nuanced and situated for visual sociological research and its dissemination. RC57 adheres to the ISA’s Code of Ethics and is committed to the ongoing development of high ethical standards concerning visual research and the dissemination of visual research results.

RC57 engages in ongoing discussions on various ethical dilemmas concerning visual research (including presentations and publications) across different cultural settings and social contexts. For examples of these discussions see the abstracts from relevant RC57 sessions at XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology.

In addition to the ISA’s Code of Ethics the following publication is a useful starting point when research topics, methods, data, analysis and dissemination etc., involve visual materials/processes:

Paperdemas D. and the International Visual Sociology Association (2009), “IVSA Code of Research Ethics and Guidelines,” Visual Studies, 24(3), pp. 250-57.

Advice for Presenting Visual Research

When preparing to present visual research at conferences, lectures, seminars and/or other forms of public engagement, consider the following:

Is each image essential?
Do I have permission (verbal or written as appropriate) to use each of the images?
Have I attributed each image appropriately?
To what extent might each image be considered sensitive?
Is a ‘trigger warning’ appropriate?

Useful Resources

The broad field of visual research offers a wealth of ethics resources. The following items are simply starting points and will not suit every ethical question/dilemma/context. Let us know of other resources to include.

American Sociological Association, Code of Ethics and Policies and Procedures of the ASA Committee on Professional Ethics (2009)
http://www.asanet.org/about/ethics.cfm
International Sociological Association Code of Ethics
https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/code-of-ethics
See for example abstracts from relevant RC57 sessions at XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology
https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogram/Session10657.html

isual Sociology is a diverse field of study which gathers sociologists involved in visual studies and studies of the visual. As a relatively new discipline and methodology within the Sociology, Visual Sociology attracts growing numbers of scholars and students who are using visual methods, and/or interested in the production, use and dissemination of visual knowledge.

The overall goal of the research committee is to bridge discussions on theoretical and practical aspects of the analysis of visual data. The research committee provides the opportunity to share, exchange and develop ideas which are relevant to Visual Sociology in the global arena. The focus of the research committee is on applying visual methods in sociology at large, and developing theoretical perspectives as well as specific sociological methods, such as web-site analysis, photo-elicitation interviews, sociological video and photo production and analysis.

With this in mind, the Committee and its membership has 3 objectives:

To generate further discussions concerning the collection of visual data in the field (in archives, photo albums, media, websites etc.) as well as the production of visual materials by the researcher (photography and documentaries) with an emphasis on
methods of analysis of these data.
To work is the contemporary and historical analysis of the socio-cultural locus of the visual. The key concern here is how the visual is produced, used and disseminated, and how it intersects with the verbal and other means of communication and
sensual experiences.
Lastly, it is our goal to put to debate broader theoretical issues of the Sociology of the visual sphere and discuss the applicability of various sociological theories in the analysis of the visual data.

What we are and who we are...
The RC57 History

What we are and who we are...

isual Sociology RC57 is an international, inter/trans disciplinary community of academics, practitioners and professionals with a shared interested in the visual as a way to unpack and frame our experience of the world. We live in a visual age and so it is right that we work with images and think about visual artefacts, building global partnerships and scholarly links to collaboratively see the world, sociologically. We have an elected board which is revised every four years, with one member not being able to serve for more than two-terms.

With members from the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas, specialising in a range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) Sociology, Anthropology, Ethnography, Visual Culture, Photography, Media and Communication, Criminology, Geography, Pedagogy, Politics and more, we are well represented, academically and globally.

Through our workshops, conferences and publications, we encourage debate, analysis and application of Visual Sociology, both in the interest of scholarly and methodological advancement as well as for practical application that contribute to a better world. In particular, we host free, pre-Forum and pre Congress workshops wherever the ISA participates globally. The workshops are an important facet of what we do, and we are one of only a handful of groups (TG/WG or RC) who offer free, pre-forum activities. In an effort to democratise knowledge and make it accessible to all, the Pre-forum/Congress workshops reflect the ethos and values of our group to share ideas, spaces and understanding with local partners, academics and communities, to better acquaint ourselves with the spaces outside our immediate locality and to collaboratively co-create knowledge and build
relationships.

Additionally, we also pride ourselves on our very own, standalone event, the Visual Workshop. A biannual event that moves between a Board member’s host institution, the Visual Workshop is our own international, PGR/ECR focused forum. These workshops offer a space to build collegiate relationships, learn and exchange ideas, whilst emphasising PGR/ECR development, supported by key thinkers and established academics and
practitioners in the field.

The RC57 History

he Visual Sociology Research Committee (RC57) is the 57 th Research Committee within the International Sociological Association (ISA), having achieved RC status in 2018, 10 years after its initial inception. Originating as an ad-hoc group of graduate students who first met at an International Visual
Sociological Association (IVSA) summer school in 2006, the Visual Sociology Thematic Group (TG05) was formally established one year later in 2007 by Dennis Zuev and Regev Nathansohn, holding its first sessions at the ISA forum, Barcelona in 2007 and was officially approved by the ISA in 2009. The group was upgraded to a working group (WG03) in 2013 and again, finally to a full Research Committee (RC57) in 2017, having exceeded the 100 members threshold. At present, the RC 57 is only one of two official bodies engaging with and foregrounding Visual Sociology as a disciplinary field.

In addition to our collegiate and scholarly work, we also offer a photography prize, the Rachel Tanur Prize in Visual Sociology (in collaboration with the SSRC, USA and the Mark Family Trust). The prize recognizes students in the social sciences who incorporate visual analysis in their work. It is named for Rachel Dorothy Tanur (1958–2002), an urban planner and lawyer who cared deeply about people and their lives and was an acute observer of living conditions and human relationships.

The award is also biannual and is administered by SSRC in collaboration with ISA RC57 who provide jury members for the prize. The award is given at the ISA Forum/Congress and in addition to a financial award and publication, the winner is given honorary membership of the RC57 board and mentoring for two years by members of RC57, which we are delighted to participate in and consider it an honor to co-host.

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Guidance on Ethics in Visual Research

Advice for Presenting Visual Research

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RC57 Mission Statement

What we are and who we are...

The RC57 History