The Pictorial Body and Interaction in Protest: Theoretical Approaches and Methodological Challenges

• In Event: 277 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Culture and Movements 1

Abstract

There is broad agreement among social movement scholars about the importance of studying visual aspects of protest action. Nevertheless, very little is known about the role of the visual in the micro-dynamics of protest events. This gap is largely due to a lack of systematic procedures to investigate the visual dimension of such phenomena. This article addresses the gap by presenting the concept of the “pictorial body” as an elaborated way to study the physical body as a key element of social interaction. We take three steps in the development of the concept. First, the visual body is defined as a social phenomenon and as a unit of analysis using approaches from cultural theory. Second, existing methodologies for visual analysis are discussed for their potential to capture the pictorial body empirically. Last, a methodological procedure is introduced, which systematizes the visual appearance of the body by combining elements of physical appearance and body movement. It further takes the pictorial characteristics of the body and the iconographic quality of the body into account, which speaks to the symbolic communication occurring in protest action. As visual cues of the body provide key reference points to the unfolding of social events for both participants and observers, methods for capturing such cues are critically important.

Authors

• Michael Neuber, Humboldt University-Berlin

• Beth Gharrity Gardner, University of California-Irvine