Contenu du sommaire : Sociologies visuelles

isual Sociologies. History and Directions of Research
The use of the expression “visual sociology” is well recognized and stabilized in the Anglo-Saxon world, but its francophone translation under the phrase “sociologie visuelle” remains precarious and open to question. The label “sociologies visuelles” is explicitly presented in plural form in order to portray the francophone space, which is weakly institutionalized. From visual studies to the “sociologie visuelle”, a “visual turn” has characterized the social sciences since the end of the 1970's, but it has taken different forms in the English-speaking and the francophone worlds. In the former space, visual sociology is often associated with an ethnographic approach, using photography rather than film, following such figures as Howard Becker or Douglas Harper. Meanwhile, the francophone space characterizes itself by a more filmic than photographic sociology, especially about the theme of work, and by a more pedagogic than scientific activity. Beyond the diversity of visual sociologies, we identify three stimulating research directions offered by visual approaches : the articulation between cases and types, the construction of images sequences, and the exploitation of the communication potentialities offered by images, in particular in the form of participative research.

Researchers Dealing with Documentaries in France: Wich Communities of Action?
This paper tackles, from a pragmatist sociology standpoint, the different forms of community of action developed in the field of researches using photography or films. It accounts for the ways by which researches “with” images in anthropology and sociology build up a “community of action”. This can be a scientific and disciplinary one and in that case it is most of the time ill-structured and is situated in the depression's line of the social. In that respect, researchers “with images” mostly validate their disciplinary skills through written accounts rather than by their films. This reflexive work on their practices introduces them to a deepening of the existing scientific knowledge. These practices come form the peculiarities of the film device which lead the researchers to struggle along with the publics and reveal new articulations between theory and practice.

The Filmic Sociology: Using Cinema to Write Sociology?
Writing about sociology through or else with cinema is a challenge that seems easier to overcome given today's lower cost of filming and editing videos. Above and beyond this apparent improvement, however, there are a number of old questions that the filmic sociology cannot avoid answering. A film's images and sound, or else the way that it has been written, can both be used to apprehend the tensions that it creates between social realities – with the filmic sociology consi­dering both to be complementary, hence a combination worthy of organising. To achieve this, sociologists-filmmakers must learn to think with the film, an ability that is very different from using video to express a sociological outcome that already exists. This is particularly true due to the fact that cameras/microphones also constitute tools of investigation. Creating a sociological documentary means learning a cinematographic language, which can be a very difficult task for sociologists, in part because of the way that sociological or ethnographic images/sounds resist the process of narration. At the same time, new tools (Multimedia, Internet) are creating new possibilities for combining filmed and written sociology.

Is Interview Movie a Film ? Or How a Specific Filmic Object Questions Cinema's Boundaries, Sociology's Boundaries“Interview movie” is a particular kind of film which, since the 1960s, develops by using only conversations, or almost. Yet, this kind of film raises problems to the French sociologists of three successive waves of visual and cinematic sociology, for that it offers a rare cinematic object, at first sight little visual. This article studies at first the development of the genre in parallel with sociologists' analysis on its stakes in the 1960 decade. Then it analyzes the interview movie in the 80' and the 90'. At last, it shows the particular link between sociology and image exposed by the interview movie. How to ally scientific rigor with the film's aesthetic emotion?

The Taste of Others: Sociology of Intentions and Sociological Intentions
The French film The Taste of Others was a huge commercial and critical success when it was released in 2000. At the very same time Pierre Bourdieu gained an audience, which was to go far beyond the academic sphere of sociology. The film has often been presented as a unique creative illustration of Bourdieu's theory about ‘symbolic violence', social building of aesthetical tastes and cultural illegitimacy, presenting the Taste of Others as a break through ‘sociological movie'. Nevertheless, this affinity between the film and Bourdieu's theory has always been taken for granted and has never been analysed sociologically. This paper intends to do so by understanding the dynamics in between fiction and sociology by i) presenting a sociological inquiry about how sociology could have influenced the production process of the film, based on a personal interview with the movie maker; ii) reflecting upon how the narrative ‘rule' of the film can challenge sociology. The first concern shows how sociological knowledge can be integrated throughout the specificities of a biographical trajectory, marked by the experience of social misfits, the later shows how fiction can render particular sociological phenomenon in an efficient way: the experience of social vacillating, the reciprocal game of mutual distanciation in between groups and signs of improbable possibilities occurring in social life.

Just Cultural Clichés ? A Sociological Analysis of the Works of theHelsinki School of Photography
Although the sociology of art has developed considerably in the last twenty years, visual sociology – intended here as the analysis of art images – remains underdeveloped.  This dearth of visual studies in the sociology of art does not, however, imply that it is not possible to apply a sociological analysis to artistic works in the visual domain. In order to illustrate this point, this article presents a sociological study of the works of the Helsinki School of Photography. The context of this research is presented first, followed by a description of some of the salient characteristics of those artists who belong to the Helsinki School of Photography. Then, sociological objectivizing is mobilized through the process of analyzing the themes and other characteristics of the works. This case study demonstrates that certain themes and stylistic characteristics of works of art, in this case photography, can be identified in terms of artists' relationship to a specific country or even more precisely here to a city. Thus, common cultural traits shared by artists are expressed through their work.

The aim of this article is twofold: to propose a more systematic definition of a number of terms used in the context of interviews with photographs, and to present an interview technique which is still little known, the bipolar photo elicitation. The use of this latter technique will be illustrated through the only two research studies known to the author.

Images to Raise Words: On the Sociological Power of Photography
Designed to favour a better access to a specific population, the technique of interview discussed here is based on photographs. Roughly speaking, it may be characterized as a move from a free interview to a centered one, via a step where standard words are used to qualify the pictures. It appears that we need to connect explicitly the usual techniques of coding the way people take a hold on pictures and a strong body of hypothesis (belonging here to pragmatic sociology). This allows us to identify two main ways to be anchored in the photographied reality, supported (or not) by narratives. The research also shows that the high ability to set themes and to give them the weight of values may be related to an expertise of lay persons. And, finally, when interviewed persons agree and take pleasure in sharing pictures with an anonymous other they are supposed to inform, it asks questions to the ordinary accepted dissymetry between the scholars and their public.

he Multiplication of Centralities in a Context of Urban Sprawl
This article intends to analyze current processes of peri-urbanization and urban sprawl by questioning the emergence of new centralities. Based on two important studies conducted within the urban area of Nancy – city located in the east of France –, this article aims to understand, through the residential choices and the daily practices of the inhabitants of the outer-ring suburbs, the pattern of their relationship to multiple centralities, whether these centralities are historical or emerging.