Seeing equality and diversity: A Visual Analysis essay

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VISUAL ANALYSIS & INTERSECTIONALITY

MANAGING EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY AT WORK WEEK 5

SAMANTHA WARREN 2018

AIMS OF TODAY

• Equip you with more sophisticated ideas for the module, particularly your assignments but also future careers

• Intersectionality

• An introduction to visual analysis

• Answer your questions about the assignment using Menti. • Go to www.menti.com on your phone/ device now, further instructions to

follow

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AN INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL ANALYSIS

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ORGANIZATIONS ARE PROLIFIC PRODUCERS OF IMAGES IN SOCIETY

Strategic images:

images that ‘do work’ for the organization - can analyse these for intentions/ effects

Documentary images:

eg: historical records, company films

Images of organizations

eg: representations in popular culture (film/ TV/ magazines) – what do these say about cultural understandings of work and organization?

1. Picturing discourses Reading images for how realities are produced

2. Discursive pictures How do images perform certain discourses?

3. Images in action Circulation, subversion, pollution

adapted from Preston et al. (1998)

Picturing discourses Analysing representational features

Benschop & Meizunen (2002)

• Men more likely to be pictured than women in annual reports (during the 1990s)

• Content analysis as a method. Counting features of the image and making inferences in a quantitative manner

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Discursive pictures How do images perform/ construct reality

Pritchard and Whiting (2015) • Stock photos = ‘visual shorthand’, staged, but to

reflect an ‘essence’ that we rarely question (link to implicit bias)

• Semiotics as method: • Sign-signifier-signifier (linguistics/ media studies)

Ethics and ideology: Calling the viewer into an ethical/ ‘ideal type’ relationship with the subject

Campbell et al. (2009) • Gaze and faces in annual reports

• Positions the ‘Other’ in relation to us…

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Images in action

Circulation and subversion

“…individuals articulate their identity as

social beings not only by taking and

storing photographs to document their

lives, but by participating in communal

photographic exchanges that mark their

identity as interactive producers and

consumers of culture.”

(van Dijck 2008: 62)

• #looklikeasurgeon

Adbusters

HIGHER MARKS WILL GO TO STUDENTS WITH MORE SOPHISTICATED THEORY UNDER- PINNING THEIR IDEAS

• Intersectionality – recognition that multiple systems of disadvantage often occur together (they intersect)

• Visual analysis (not just observation) • Semiotic meaning • Compositional ideology • Image & text/ juxtaposition

• Fewer points, better made (use your 500 words wisely)

• Reference list for lecture on Moodle,