Book | Chapter
Visibility and social theory
pp. 37-70
Abstract
In the previous chapter we observed the curious zone of convergence according to which, on the one hand, neurophysiological cognitive research is discovering and increasingly recognising the relevance of the social (traditionally conceived) and emotional aspects of seeing, while on the other fashionable social theories like ANT tell us that we should displace the centrality of humans in the ensemble of the social world as exclusive agents and the only entities entitled to perceive. My suggestion here is that the only possible advantageous zone of convergence between these apparently dissonant claims is a relational social theory in which the percipiens and the perceptum are analysed as flexions of the same perceptive phenomenon, event or act, which constitutes a territory within a social environment. I call this perspective an ecological phenomenology, and I will try to explain why.
Publication details
Published in:
(2010) Visibility in social theory and social research. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Pages: 37-70
Full citation:
(2010) Visibility and social theory, In: Visibility in social theory and social research, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 37–70.