Imag(in)ing the University: Visual Sociology and Higher Education

This study examines the potential of visual sociology to expand our knowledge of higher education through the use of visual data sources and methods of analysis. Photographs and archival material form the basis of the study. The images were analyzed as being part of the initiation and fulfillment stages of the social construction of collective discourse known as an “organizational saga” (Clark, 1972). These stages were coupled with theories and methods from visual sociology to examine the production and reproduction of iconic images central to the organizational saga of the case study university.