Sociological Images is designed to encourage all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination by presenting brief sociological discussions of compelling and timely imagery that spans the breadth of sociological inquiry. Please friend us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter or Pinterest.
About the Site
Sociological Images encourages all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination by presenting brief discussions of compelling and timely imagery that span the breadth of sociological inquiry.
Consisting of an archive of almost 5,000 posts, the website receives about 500,000 visits per month and is followed, additionally, by almost 25,000 via Facebook, over 10,000 on Twitter, and more than 5,000 on our 25+ Pinterest boards.
SocImages is frequently featured on high-profile news and opinion sites and re-posted on BlogHer, The Huffington Post, Jezebel, Ms., Pacific Standard, PolicyMic, Racialicious, and elsewhere.
Founders and Main Authors
Lisa Wade, PhD, holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and an M.A. in Human Sexuality from New York University. She is an Associate Professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles. You can follow her on Twitter, on Facebook, or visit her personal website.
Gwen Sharp, PhD, has an M.S. in Rural Sociology and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She is an Associate Professor at Nevada State College in Henderson. Follow her on Twitter or visit her personal website.
Accolades
Sociological Images has been reviewed at Visual Studies and Teaching Sociology, its authors have been interviewed about the site by Bitch (transcript) and Contexts (listen), and it has received awards from the Pacific Sociological Association (2009), the American Sociological Association Section on Communication and Information Technologies (2012), and the University of Minnesota Sociology Department (2012).
Contributors
- Philip Cohen, PhD
- Martin Hart-Landsberg, PhD
- Caroline Heldman, PhD
- Michael Kimmel, PhD
- Jay Livingston, PhD
ABOUT THE WEBSITE
WHY: The sociological imagination is a woefully under-utilized tool. We hope this blog encourages all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination and that, between all of us, public discourse will increasingly include a sociological lens with which we can all learn about social processes and mechanisms, critique social inadequacies, and design functional and equitable alternatives.
Also, if you are an instructor, we hope that the material will be useful for your classes. A good image is often more effective for getting a point across than all the citations, repetition, or jumping up and down and saying “really I swear” will be. Also, check out our essays for classroom use and our collection of Sociological Images assignments.
OUR AUDIENCE: We assume that you, our audience, are sociologically-inclined folks. So we do not typically include a lengthy beginner-level sociological interpretation of the images.
DIALOGUE: Images are polysemic and people will view and use them in many different ways, so our commentary, when offered, is never meant to control how people use the images (as if we could anyway). We welcome comments that offer additional or alternative interpretations of images.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: We do our best to place potentially upsetting images and text after a jump. If we’ve failed to notice that something needs a trigger warning, or have forgotten to do this, please feel free to send us a note letting us know. We’ll fix it ASAP.
COMMENTS MODERATION: Comments that are hateful or threatening toward other commenters, mean-spirited toward particular social groups, or otherwise useless, will be deleted.
STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE: The point of this blog is not to prove that sociological insights actually describe the social world (i.e., “prove” that they are “true”), but to illustrate those sociological insights that are shown or posited to be true elsewhere in academia. This is by design.
CONTRIBUTIONS: If you see an image you’d like to see posted, we’d be happy to oblige. Email the image to socimages@thesocietypages.org. If you add commentary, we may even quote you! And, if you send a website or blog of your own, we’ll link to you.
LEGALITY: While all law is a matter of interpretation, we believe Sociological Images to be legal under the Fair Use doctrine. That is, we use the images for a non-commercial educational purpose and that makes it all good.
