Douglas Harper
Biographic Data
| ID | 3685344 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Douglas Harper |
| GIVEN NAMES | Douglas |
| FAMILY NAME | Harper |
| SIGNATURE | HARPER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duquesne University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4682-8044 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 201 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Visual Sociology
Everett Hughes: A moment on film
"Everett Hughes: a moment on film." Visual Studies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2 DISCLOSURE STATEMENTNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsDouglas HarperDouglas Harper is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Duquesne University. He is one of the founders of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), the founding editor of the journal Visual Studies, and the …
Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge
Good Company: A Tramp Life
This sociological classic shows how the railroad tramp’s status as a deviant changed from frontier itinerant to post settlement vagrant; from class conscious proletariat in the Depression to the damaged post WWII vet. The third edition (with new photos) discusses how today the freights have become the milieu of violent gangs who transport drugs, human traffickers, and serial killers. Beating the odds against increased post 9/11 surveillance are y…
We Live in the Shadow: Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs
Visual Methods in the Social Sciences
Memou, Antigoni, Photography and Social Movements: From the Globalisation of the Movement (1968) to the Movement Against Globalisation (2001)
Beside One's Self: Homelessness Felt and Lived
Visual Sociology
Visual sociology has been part of the sociological vocabulary since the 1970s, but until now there has not been a comprehensive text that introduces this area. Written by one of the founding fathers in the field, Visual Sociology explores how the world that is seen, photographed, drawn, or otherwise represented visually is different from the world that is represented through words and numbers. Doug Harper’s exceptional photography and engaging, l…
Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials
I begin with the suggestion that Rose's book addresses slightly differ- ent topics than it claims to.Rather than an overview of visual methods per se, the book consists primarily of eight essays that analyze how some topics have been studied visually, and in some instances, how visual methods have been constructed to do so.Discussion of topic and method are generally paired.For example "compositional interpretation" is applied to fine arts painti…
An ethnographic gaze
Fixing Work and the Work of Repair
admits to being a speed fetishist, and he understands all too well that his customers, driven by similar irrational desires, pay him vast sums to realize their motorcycle dreams. Now, I am the last person to begrudge them their consumer pleasures. But to be fair to the rest of us who might fetishize different commodities, it behooves him to clarify why some pleasures are more soulful than others. He tries to do this by drawing a distinction betwe…
Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes, and Journeys
The Italian Way: Food and Social Life
Cinema and fascism: Italian film and society, 1922-1943
Finding Simmel on the Hong Kong Subway
Visually narrating post‐colonial lives: Ghosts of war and empire
This paper is about two journeys: the first through the memories of an old soldier captured by the Japanese in the Second World War; the second through the present life to which this past gave rise, in which the old soldier tends the graves of his fellow soldiers as part of his current navigation by bus and taxi of the post‐colonial landscape of Hong Kong
The Cultural Study of Work
This is an edited volume of readings with commentary by the authors. It applies the concept of culture to the study of work tracing the development of the culture of work through a series of readings. Its approach is based on the definitions of culture given by James Spradley, anthropologist, and Howard Becker, sociologist and follows a line of thinking initiated by Everett Hughes and the Chicago School. This anthology brings more than fifty year…
Framing Photographic Ethnography: A Case Study
This article retraces the emergence of visual ethnography before deconstructing the uses of photographic evidence gathered for my book Changing Works: a visual ethnography of industrializing agriculture in 20th-century America. It discusses techniques of visual documentation and argumentation, including the formal properties of pictures, the influence of framing and captioning, and the use of existing photographic archives and how to control thei…
Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation
This paper is a definition of photo elicitation and a history of its development in anthropology and sociology. The view of photo elicitation in these disciplines, where the greatest number of photo elicitation studies have taken place, organizes photo elicitation studies by topic and by form. The paper also presents practical considerations from a frequent photo elicitation researcher and concludes that photo elicitation enlarges the possibiliti…
Changing Works: Visions of a Lost Agriculture
The work of Douglas Harper has for two decades documented worlds in eclipse. A glimpse into the life of dairy farmers in upstate New York on the cusp of technological change, Changing Works is no exception. With photographs and interviews with farmers, Harper brings into view a social world attended by machines and stuns us with gorgeous visions of rural times past. As a member of this community, Harper relates compelling stories about families a…
Borderland: A Midwest Journal
Books in review
Interpreting Visual Culture: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual
The image in sociology: Histories and issues
While photography had established a minor presence in early American sociology, it was not until the 1970s that a practice of « visual sociology » became recognized as a subfield of the parent discipline. In anthropology, photography was used to gather data to support theories of social evolution popular in the early 20th century, but photography as a data gathering device fell into disuse as the theoretical focus of anthropology changed. In the …
Visual sociology: Expanding sociological vision
The visual ethnographic narrative1
This paper is a brief overview of narrative, reflexive, phenomenological and scientific approaches to visual ethnography, and an examination, in more depth, of the visual ethnographic narrative. To illustrate the visual narrative I draw on photographs made as part of an ethnography of tramp life in America. The narrative in this paper is incomplete and suggests the basic form for a comprehensive visual ethnography or film
Framing Photographic Ethnography: A Case Study
This article retraces the emergence of visual ethnography before deconstructing the uses of photographic evidence gathered for my book Changing Works: a visual ethnography of industrializing agriculture in 20th-century America. It discusses techniques of visual documentation and argumentation, including the formal properties of pictures, the influence of framing and captioning, and the use of existing photographic archives and how to control thei…
Meaning and Work: A Study in Photo Elicitation
Visualizing Structure: Reading Surfaces of Social Life
On 'Methodological Monism' in Rural Sociology1
This paper is a brief outline of the history of methods in rural sociology which suggests that the dominant methodological practice results from institutional arrangements and the traditions of the academic culture, as well as commitment to a scientific sociology. I note oft-stated critiques of the positivist model relevant to rural sociology's 'methodological monism,' including imprecise measurement, low levels of predictability, and a social ps…
Small, silly insults,” mutual seduction and misogyny the interpretation of Italian advertising signs
This study examines how audiences in two cultures interpret advertising messages. Using photographs of public display ads in Bologna, Italy, the authors interviewed women in the United States and Italy to elicit their interpretations of advertising signs. The study draws upon semiotics and employs photo elicitation as its principle research method
Seeing sociology
At home on the rails: Ethics in a photographic research project
Borderland: A Midwest Journal
Give and Take Among the Rural Poor
In the past, social exchange based on reciprocity has been important to the ways in which people in rural areas have made their living. Our study shows that contemporary reciprocal labor exchanges continue to be integral to the ways in which households sustain themselves economically and socially. However, unlike the relations of reciprocity of the past, which were based upon accomplishing harvest work among neighboring dairy farms, the current p…
Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People
David Snow and Leon Anderson show us the wretched face of homelessness in late twentieth-century America in countless cities across the nation. Through hundreds of hours of interviews, participant observation, and random tracking of homeless people through social service agencies in Austin, Texas, Snow and Anderson reveal who the homeless are, how they live, and why they have ended up on the streets. Debunking current stereotypes of the homeless,…
Howard S. Becker: A Portrait of an Intellectual's Sociological Imagination
Memou, Antigoni, Photography and Social Movements: From the Globalisation of the Movement (1968) to the Movement Against Globalisation (2001)
Cinema and fascism: Italian film and society, 1922-1943
The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America
This volume tells the story of what the 1988 closing of the Chrysler assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, meant to the people who lived in that company town. Since the early days of the 20th century, Kenosha had forged its identity and politics around the interests of the auto industry. When nearly 6000 workers lost their jobs in the shutdown, the community faced not only a serious economic crisis but also a profound moral one. In this study, Du…
Visual sociology at the university of Amsterdam: Personal notes and reflections
Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop
At home on the rails: Ethics in a photographic research project
Images of good company
Meaning and Work: A Study in Photo Elicitation
The visual ethnographic narrative1
This paper is a brief overview of narrative, reflexive, phenomenological and scientific approaches to visual ethnography, and an examination, in more depth, of the visual ethnographic narrative. To illustrate the visual narrative I draw on photographs made as part of an ethnography of tramp life in America. The narrative in this paper is incomplete and suggests the basic form for a comprehensive visual ethnography or film
Adaptation and Survival in the North Country
Visual sociology: Expanding sociological vision
Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Anselm L. Strauss
Who is this man: Studying the work of a rural mechanic
Interpretive ethnography: From ‘authentic voice’ to ‘interpretive eye’
(1989). Interpretive ethnography: From ‘authentic voice’ to ‘interpretive eye’. Visual Sociology: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 33-42
Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop
Howard S. Becker: A Portrait of an Intellectual's Sociological Imagination
Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop
In this ethnography Douglas Harper examines the working of a machinist with a small shop in upstate New York. Harper gives us this man's philosophy of work and shows how his work fits into the web of life in his community. In addition to fairly conventional auto and farm equipment repair, he rebuilds and creates new machines out of salvaged materials, drawing on his deep knowledge of these materials and how machines work. Harper's study addresses…
Visual sociology at the university of Amsterdam: Personal notes and reflections
Images of History: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Latin American Photographs as Documents
On 'Methodological Monism' in Rural Sociology1
This paper is a brief outline of the history of methods in rural sociology which suggests that the dominant methodological practice results from institutional arrangements and the traditions of the academic culture, as well as commitment to a scientific sociology. I note oft-stated critiques of the positivist model relevant to rural sociology's 'methodological monism,' including imprecise measurement, low levels of predictability, and a social ps…
Photography: A Middle-Brow Art.Pierre Bourdieu
Analyzing Visual Data
Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People
David Snow and Leon Anderson show us the wretched face of homelessness in late twentieth-century America in countless cities across the nation. Through hundreds of hours of interviews, participant observation, and random tracking of homeless people through social service agencies in Austin, Texas, Snow and Anderson reveal who the homeless are, how they live, and why they have ended up on the streets. Debunking current stereotypes of the homeless,…
The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America
This volume tells the story of what the 1988 closing of the Chrysler assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, meant to the people who lived in that company town. Since the early days of the 20th century, Kenosha had forged its identity and politics around the interests of the auto industry. When nearly 6000 workers lost their jobs in the shutdown, the community faced not only a serious economic crisis but also a profound moral one. In this study, Du…
Sociology and Visual Representation
Seeing sociology
Milton Rogovin: Portraits of social change
Give and Take Among the Rural Poor
In the past, social exchange based on reciprocity has been important to the ways in which people in rural areas have made their living. Our study shows that contemporary reciprocal labor exchanges continue to be integral to the ways in which households sustain themselves economically and socially. However, unlike the relations of reciprocity of the past, which were based upon accomplishing harvest work among neighboring dairy farms, the current p…
Eldoret: An African Poetics of Technology by Richard M. Swiderski
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 505 can enhance and clarify this solid foundation of research. As Hosier indicates but cannot explore due to lack of data, understanding the social organization involved in acquiring metal, manufacturing it lo cally, and controlling its access and distribution in West Mexico is critical to this study. Who became metalworkers? Who controlled metal production over time, the consumers or producers? How were the m…
Eldoret: An African Poetics of Technology
Sociology (37 works) · Art (17 works) · Participatory Visual Research Methods (15 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Social science (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works)