Seen and unseen : visual culture, sociology, and theology / Kieran Flanagan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Flanagan, Kieran, 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christian sociology--Catholic Church.

Christian sociology.

Visual sociology.

Physical Description:

xii, 251 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Summary:

This original study argues that visual culture has re-cast the sociological imagination and its reflexive basis. Sociology and sociologists are more often deciphering spectacle, images and icons, where the disciplinary eye cannot be neutral over what it elects to see. Moreover, recognition of the importance of the visual is occuring in an increasingly confessional culture, deeply worried by matters of trust and distrust. The Internet, in particular, has placed the virtual at the heart of visual culture, providing unexpected and surprising links to the analysis of theological endeavours to deal with the contradictions of the seen and the unseen. Visual culture presents sociological theory with a choice between the hidden god behind Foucault's gaze, and the distrust so sown, and the hope of trust the eye of God presents. In re-adjusting its theological spectacles, sociology needs to realise that Simmel's notion of religiosity opens out a fullness of visual culture denied in Weber's theological choice that can only lead the discipline into the country of the blind.

Contents:

1 Sociology and Virtual Religion: Issues of Memory and Identity 14

2 Who Sees There? Tales of Character, Virtue and Trust 42

3 Visual Culture and the Virtual: The Internet and Religious Displays 73

4 To See or Not to See: The Plight of the Voyeur 102

5 Piety and Visual Culture: Seeking to See the Unseen 130

6 Dark into Light: A Sociological Navigation 158.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 194-239) and index.

ISBN:

0333998545

OCLC:

54692958