Image from Coce

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

By:

Flanagan, Kieran, 1944-

Publication details: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan 2004.Description: xii, 251 p. : ill. ; 23 cmISBN:

0333998545

Subject(s):

Online resources:

Review: "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 occurring 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 endeavors 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."--BOOK JACKET.

Holdings ( 1 )
Title notes ( 2 )

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Main Collection	John Kinder Theological Library	BX1753 FLA (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		J00808033

Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-239) and index.

"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 occurring 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 endeavors 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."--BOOK JACKET.