Image and politics
Image and politics
Today, the Visual Studies approach and techniques are established and recognised within the social sciences, thanks in particular to the democratisation of audiovisual tools (Giglio-Jacquemot, Gehin, 2012). In fact, more and more sociological investigations are being carried out using photography (Cuny et al., 2020), drawing (Nocerino, 2016), film (Durand and Sebag, 2020) or the re-use of audiovisual archives (Fournier, Cesaro, 2020), or even images produced by social actors (Galibert-Laîné, 2021). Nevertheless, the subjects of political sociology have received very little attention (Mattioli, 2007), unlike the fields of work, the family or the urban environment. Because it engages a reflexive gaze on social experience, because it possesses an intrinsic dramatic tension, the relationship with politics and political competition are subjects that are conducive to visual writing. And not just for fiction, reportage or documentary. There is a very strong analogy between situated analysis, as practised in some areas of the social sciences (in the wake of French ethnography or the microsociology initiated by the Chicago School), and the proponents of cinéma-vérité (particularly documentary films, films or series that seek to create a sense of reality). Basically, in each case, the aim is to capture a compartment of the social world, a world of relationships, positions and little routines whose principles of order, the logic of action and the representations that organise them are precisely what filmed observation aims to restore.
Putting these situations into images, i.e. literally showing the conditions of existence, gives a double dimension to the expression "field politics" (Olivier de Sardan). Since Jacob Riis, recording reality through images has meant entering into politics in a different way, defined here as all forms of interaction in society that involve relationships (of force, submission, contestation, resignation) with the established order and the law. This broad definition of politics also covers all the forms taken in the ordinary social world by opposing ideas or interests, and competition between individuals or groups for resources. From this perspective, the visual writing of sociologists of politics must imagine photographic or filmic ways of showing the tensions and conflicts that affect society. Photodocumenting or videodocumenting a field project also means storing data (individual or group interviews, scenes from 'ordinary life', actions involving mobilisation, confrontation, negotiation, etc.) that will enable a deferred analysis of the social world based on the visual traces of the survey, which are often empirically very dense. This is particularly useful for understanding political subjectivation or politicisation in the making.
Le inter-laboratory seminar (Mesopolhis, Iremam, Prism) supported by the MMSH under the title " Images of politics and the politics of images in the Mediterranean (IPPI Med)" is coordinated by Philippe Aldrin, Pascal Cesaro, Pierre Fournier and Vincent Geisser.
Le seminar IPPI-Med aims to discuss experiences of research and artistic creation with a view to preparing research projects on images and with images based on a reflection on ordinary relationships to citizenship in a world where social affiliations are multiplied and where the 'top-down' definition of citizenship, that of the State, the law and administrations, seems to compete with and sometimes be challenged by 'bottom-up' definitions through a plurality of practices. The visual representations of this alternative citizenship, whether individual (personal accounts on socio-numerical networks) or collective (associative, artistic or militant groups), occupy a central place in these practices, which we need to document.
Reflection on the potential of the image to enrich research when it comes to thinking about politics is inseparable from reflection on the image policyThe project focuses on the ways in which images are produced and circulate in the social world, subject to various forms of control or attempted control.
At a time when researchers are working on the images of politics and the politics of images associated with them, the seminar aims to bring together different disciplines (sociology, political science, anthropology, history, film studies) to explore these two dimensions. On the one hand, it will look at the work of image professionals on the political subject (film-makers, artists, activists) and, on the other, at the 'work' of social actors who film themselves and use this material in various symbolic productions, as much as they evaluate their reception of the productions of image professionals by the yardstick of this practice? Research collaborations with these 2 types of actors are conceivable. Both the dialogue with the artistic point of view and the forms of participatory science they represent deserve to be examined on their own merits. To explore this, the seminar will take its first Mediterranean fieldwork at the local level of the city of Marseille and in monographic works, with the aim of understanding what frames the relationship to citizenship when the relationship to the State changes.
Through discussion sessions based around the viewing of films chosen from among fiction, author-driven documentaries and films by researchers, the seminar proposes to reflect on the possibilities of using images to investigate political issues involving a relationship to citizenship in Mediterranean areas. The seminar will take note of the growing familiarity of social actors with images and with the display of a public image of themselves through social networks. The effects of self-censorship and the profiling of respondents in relation to the researcher are no less important to consider when engaging in such research practices to document the relationship to citizenship.
Archive of IPPI-Med 2021-2022 seminars
The first series of seminars focused on taking stock of research fields, debates and agendas. Images of politics, politics of the image (IPPI), which took place throughout theyear 2021-2022.
As well as compiling an inventory of the researchers involved in such research practices and listing the associated bibliographic and film references, one of the first concrete results of the seminar's work was the organisation of a meeting at the Congress 2022 of the AFSP in Lille, in the format of a Methodological conversation.
Images of politics, politics of the image at the AFSP (IPPI-AFSP)
THE AFSP (French Political Science Association) set up a research group entitled "Images of Politics, Policies of the Image (IPPI)" in 2023 to study the place of images in political processes and support the development of filmed investigative approaches "in the political arena".