Iconic Power Materiality and Meaning in Social Life

by Alexander, Jeffrey C.; Bartmanski, Dominik; Giesen, Bernhard

• ISBN13: 9780230340053
• ISBN10: 0230340059
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Iconic Poweris a collection of original articles that explores social aspects of the phenomenon of icon. Having experienced the benefits and realized the limitations of so called "linguistic turn," sociology has recently acknowledged a need to further expand its horizons. "Visual sociology" is emerging as a separate field and prominent scholars announce the coming of "the pictorial turn." The methods and themes taken up in these studies respond to this shift in social scientific interest. Each contribution to this book carefully tests the analytic purchase and empirical implications of iconicity. If we can succeed in understanding the iconic, we should be able to know our culture much better.

Author Biography

Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University. With Ron Eyerman, he is the Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS). Dominik Maksymilian Bartmanski is a doctoral student at Yale University in the Sociology Department's Center for Cultural Sociology. Bernhard Giesen is a professor of Sociology and the Chair of the Department of Macrosociology at theUniversität Konstanz in Germany.

Table of Contents

Materiality and Meaning in Social Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology--Dominik Bartmanski and Jeffrey Alexander * PART I * Representation, Presentation, Presence: Tracing the Homo Pictor--Gottfried Boehm * Iconic Power and Performance: the Role of the Critic--Jeffrey Alexander * PART II * Inconspicuous Revolutions of 1989. Culture and Contingency in The Making of Political Icons--Dominik Bartmanski * The Making of Humanitarian Visual Icons. On the 1921–1923 Russian Famine as Foundational Event--Fuyuki Kurasawa * Seeing Tragedy in the News Images of September 11--Wendy Bowler * The Emergence of Iconic Depth. Secular Icons in a Comparative Perspective--Werner Binder * PART III * Shifting Extremism: On the Political Iconology in Post-socialist Serbia--Daniel Šuber and Slobodan Karamanic * The Visualization of Uncertainty: HIV Statistics in Public Media--Valentin Rauer * How To Make an Iconic Commodity: The Case of Penfolds‘ Grange Wine--Ian Woodward and David Ellison * Becoming Iconic. The Cases of Woodstock and Bayreuth--Philip Smith * PART IV * Body and Image--Hans Belting * Iconic Difference and Seduction--Bernhard Giesen * Iconic Rituals. Towards a Social Theory of Encountering Images--Julia Sonnevend * Visible Meanings--Piotr Sztompka * Afterword--Bernhard Giesen