Visual Methodologies : Theorizing Disasters and International Relations

There is an increase in extreme weather conditions due to human-induced climate change. Their impacts are most severely felt by the marginalized and the poor in the Global South. Increasingly, study of international relations focuses on the varied forms of disasters and the global politics that emerge around them. Disaster studies scholarship actively challenges the myth of existence of “natural disasters.” Instead of defining them as being “natural,” disasters are conceived as serious disruptions to the functioning of a community or a society with human, material, economic, or environmental losses. The disaster concept is thus separated, first, from hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, and floods, and “disaters” are not limited to events resulting from natural hazards. Disasters emerge also as a result of major economic and political instabilities due to the nature of the contemporary global political economy and global financial crises. Disasters also include those that often go unnoticed such as violent conflicts or famines, and also include global pandemics such as Ebola and COVID-19. Disasters understood in this way also include aftermaths of resource extractivism and settler coloniality. The intersection of disasters and visual methodologies offers insights into theorizing International Relations nature, the everyday, and the politics of disasters. This article focuses on such visual and audiovisual scholarship that has predominantly emerged from, and actively engages with, collaborative visual methodologies and a rethinking of research processes. Such works offer insights into critical exploration of academic knowledge production processes and praxis, suggesting that visual is not a method, but a methodological and ethical choice. Research processes adopting photo-elicitation, graphic novels and comics, and films in specific disaster contexts challenge text-dominated scholarship and offer reflection on the roles between the researcher and researched, and on the question of authorship. Turning to visuals also brings to the fore questions of representations and the strategic use of the visual in the overall scholarly storytelling practice. Further, scholars have suggested that instead of focusing on the visual devices, or the visual products, visual methodologies as a process orientation allow questions related to democratizing and accessibility to the research process to be addressed, weighing up whose priorities matter, that is, making research useful for (Indigenous) communities and resisting legacies of the imperial shutter.Peer reviewe

Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of Visual Methodologies, a new on-line visual studies journal which will critically engage with the development, utilisation and influence of visual experience in the production and consumption of knowledge of contemporary social and material conditions. Visual Methodologies provides a forum for debating emerging visual research methods across a constellation of visual domains and fields of enquiry, embracing perspectives beyond the bounded parameters of disciplinary tradition and towards hybridity, mobility and postdisciplinarity

Audio-visual instruments and multi-dimensional architecture in Visual Research Methods in Architecture.

This book offers a distinctive approach to the use of visual methodologies for qualitative architectural research

A delegate’s perspective: review of the Second International Visual Research Methods Conference 13-15 September 2011

The Second International Visual Research Methods Conference was interdisciplinary, innovative, questioning and poignant; therefore when approached by Visual Methodologies to provide a review, I was pleased to accept the invitation. Firstly, it provided an opportunity to revisit the experience of the conference; and its ideas, techniques and concepts. Secondly, being part of the inaugural publication of this post-disciplinary visual journal resonated well with the collaborative ethos of the conference; and I expect to see many conference papers as forthcoming contributions to Visual Methodologies. Unfortunately, I could not report on all of the sessions, exhibitions and films; at best the review is selective and subjective. However, my review should offer an insight into the valuable methodological, ethical and theoretical contributions generated by the event

Archiving and imagination in an intertidal zone.

The authors explore, in a conversation informed by experimental visual methodologies, the concurrence of two historically disjointed, yet adjacent, sites: the shipwreck of Danish cargo steamer G. Koch and the expansion of Aberdeen Harbour in Scotland

‘It’s Coming from the Heart’: Exploring a Student’s Experiences of ‘Home’ Using Participatory Visual Methodologies

This introductory study explores the meanings and images of ‘home’ for a student living in student accommodation within the United Kingdom. It makes a case for the use of visual methodologies, as well as outlining their contribution to theorising the geographies of space, gender, and the home. In addition to furthering debates about the meanings of ‘home’, it establishes the visual as a valid form of sociological knowledge, ethnography, and representation, and adds to critiques of visual methodologies more broadly. Employing a combination of auto-photography and photo-elicitation methods, this study forms a collaborative effort between research participant and researcher, to create and interpret the visual images of 'home'. The setting of the ‘home’ – regarded as one of the most familiar places for its occupants – is defamiliarised and made strange and interesting again through the medium of photography. This study positions itself within this research gap and dilemma by building on existing work which has sought to 'make the familiar strange' through creative methodologies

“When words become unclear” : unmasking ICT through visual methodologies in participatory ICT4D

Across the globe, our work and social lives are increasingly integrated with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), yet massive disparities in the values, uses and benefits of ICT exist. New methods are needed to shed light on unique and integrative concepts of ICT across cultures. This paper explores the use of visual methods to facilitate critical engagement with ICT—defined as situational awareness, reflexive ICT practice and power and control over ICT. This definition of critical ICT engagement is informed by a cultural identity lens, and intends to improve participatory methods in ICT for Development (ICT4D) and community technology design and application. Our notion of critical ICT engagement is developed through an analysis of three case studies, each employing visual methods to shed light on concepts and practices of ICT cross-culturally. This paper makes three contributions to the ICT4D literature. First, it establishes a cultural identity lens to chart out cultural differences between researchers and participants, and to develop situational awareness of ICT in context. Second, it defines the conceptual domain of reflexive ICT practice and establishes the key role of researchers in facilitating it. Third, it argues for the need to support participants to develop capacity to engage critically with ICT as a means to influence social and organizational structures. This paper offers a way for researchers and practitioners to engage with cultural issues in community-based research and design using visual methodologies

When Words Become Unclear : Unmasking ICT Through Visual Methodologies in Participatory ICT4D

Across the globe, our work and social lives are increasingly integrated with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), yet massive disparities in the values, uses and benefits of ICT exist. New methods are needed to shed light on unique and integrative concepts of ICT across cultures. This paper explores the use of visual methods to facilitate critical engagement with ICT—defined as situational awareness, reflexive ICT practice and power and control over ICT. This definition of critical ICT engagement is informed by a cultural identity lens, and intends to improve participatory methods in ICT for Development (ICT4D) and community technology design and application. Our notion of critical ICT engagement is developed through an analysis of three case studies, each employing visual methods to shed light on concepts and practices of ICT cross-culturally. This paper makes three contributions to the ICT4D literature. First, it establishes a cultural identity lens to chart out cultural differences between researchers and participants, and to develop situational awareness of ICT in context. Second, it defines the conceptual domain of reflexive ICT practice and establishes the key role of researchers in facilitating it. Third, it argues for the need to support participants to develop capacity to engage critically with ICT as a means to influence social and organizational structures. This paper offers a way for researchers and practitioners to engage with cultural issues in community-based research and design using visual methodologies

Advances in Visual Methodology

In recent years we have witnessed a ‘visual turn’ in the social sciences, as an increasing number of scholars are engaging with visual methodologies for the collection, analysis, and display of both qualitative and quantitative data. To mention an example, video ethnography is gaining momentum across a range of disciplines, at a time when social scientists are increasingly concerned with capturing the minutiae and details of social practices. What is more, recent developments in information technology are extending the range of techniques for the capture and analysis of visual data, therefore opening up new possibilities for research and practice. It is no coincidence that several books on visual methodologies were published in the last ten years (Margolis & Pauwels, 2011; Rose, 2007; Van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001) and an entire volume on visual data analysis was included in the SAGE collection on qualitative research methods (Banks & Flick, 2007). But what is distinctive about Sarah Pink’s Advances in Visual Methodology is the attempt to establish visual methodology as an interdisciplinary field of practice, while recognizing the interconnectedness of theory, technology and methods