Is this what depression looks like? Visual narratives of depression on social media

Humans are inherent storytellers that in turn shapes our identity. The tendency to talk about health and illness is called ‘illness narratives.’ Most research on illness narratives is generated from diaries, interviews, and surveys. However, text is not the only means of expression. An alternative is to produce images of illness, known as ‘visual illness narratives.’ Depression is a common and serious illness, which can lead to serious health hazards. Despite the increased use of images on social media, little research has been done on visual narratives of depression. The current study examines such illness narratives elicited through images on Tumblr. Fourteen patients with moderately severe depression (Mean age = 27), mostly female (N = 12) were recruited from a counselling centre. Participants were presented with 72 depression-related images from Tumblr in a semi-structured interview. Participants sorted the images into three piles, based on personal relevance, and then talked in detail about each image. Inductive thematic analysis identified six themes providing rich insights into participants’ depressive states, dysfunctional thoughts, suicidal ideation, lifestyle changes, help-seeking, and social struggles. The study offers insights to improve care for depressed individuals using visuals of depression on social media.     

Issues of collaboration,representation, meaning and emotions: utilising participant-led visual diaries to capture the everyday lives of people in mid to later life

In recent years there has been an increasing use of visual methods in ageing research. There are, however, limited reflections and critical explorations of the implications of using visual methods in research with people in mid to later life. This paper examines key methodological complexities when researching the daily lives of people as they grow older and the possibilities and limitations of using participant-generated visual diaries. The paper will draw on our experiences of an empirical study, which included a sample of 62 women and men aged 50 years and over with different daily routines. Participant-led photography was drawn upon as a means to create visual diaries, followed by in-depth, photo-elicitation interviews. The paper will critically reflect on the use of visual methods for researching the daily lives of people in mid to later life, as well as suggesting some wider tensions within visual methods that warrant attention. First, we explore the extent to which photography facilitates a ‘collaborative’ research process; second, complexities around capturing the ‘everydayness’ of daily routines are explored; third, the representation and presentation of ‘self’ by participants within their images and interview narratives is examined; and, finally, we highlight particular emotional considerations in visualising daily life.     

Global System Theory and ‘Market-friendly’ Religion

This article explores some implications of the interplay of neoliberal economic policy and religion for Leslie Sklair's global system theory (GST), and some implications of Sklair's theory for the study of contemporary religion. We first suggest that Sklair needlessly restricted his theory's scope by analyzing culture in terms of consumerist ideologies without systematic consideration of religious doctrines and practices. Second, based on studies of ‘market Islam’ and our own research on neo-Pentecostal Christianity in Guatemala, we argue that Sklair's notion of a transnational capitalist class is needed for an adequate understanding of the rapid growth of these religious movements. We conclude that GST can benefit from consideration of contemporary religious change, while the study of contemporary religion has perhaps even more to gain from theorizing the influence of transnational elites.     

Theology of liberation and some problems of religious change in Brazil

It has been said that in Brazil the Catholic Church, by the adoption of the Theology of Liberation, chose the poor, but the poor chose the ever growing churches and sects of Pentecostal derivation. This paradox haunts the sociology of religion, in Brazil and elsewhere. This paper suggests to its solution a hypothesis inspired by Weber's ‘Religious Directions of the World and their Directions’ (the ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’).The social, political and economic efficacy of a given religious movement is essentially linked to its theodicy. In other words, the passage of religion to politics, if understood as the exit from religion as allegedly motivated by religion itself, involves a contradiction as it implies the elimination of its basic religious motivation. The inner-worldly success of a religious tendency depends, therefore, on the persistence of a properly religious ‘rejection of the world’. In fact the whole of the Theology of Liberation movement falls under a certain cognitive penumbra, a kind of theological and philosophical syncretism, which constitutes both its main strength and its main weakness.     

Communicating mixed messages about religion through internet memes

This article investigates the dominant messages Internet memes communicate about religion. Internet memes about religion are defined as, ‘memes circulated on the Internet whose images and texts focus on a variety of religious themes and/or religious traditions’ (Bellar et al., 2013). By drawing on meme genres identified by Shifman (2012) and analyzing techniques used to frame ideas concerning religion in memes, this study identifies common genres found amongst religious Internet meme and core frames used to present messages and assumptions about religion online. This article further draws attention to the importance of studying religion in digital contexts, as it highlights trends, recognized by scholars toward ‘Lived Religion’ within digital culture (Campbell, 2012). Lived Religion argues that contemporary media and digital culture provide important resources for presenting popular beliefs about religion. This study also suggests that studying Internet memes about religion provides a useful lens for understanding popular conceptions about religion within mainstream culture.     

Researching family practices in everyday life: methodological reflections from two studies

The study of the everyday is recognised as central to the understanding of identities, agency and social life. Yet, attempts to research everyday life often fail to capture the complexity of the mundane. This paper draws on findings from two studies: fatherhood across three generations and adult narratives of childhood language brokering to illuminate that complexity. The purpose of bringing these studies together is methodological; in particular, it is to examine how the storied material generated by narrative approaches can contribute to understanding of the everyday practices of family life, practices that are often unacknowledged, hidden or assumed. One study adopted a narrative form of interviewing while the second combined narrative photo-elicitation techniques with narrative accounts. Methodologically, the two studies illustrate that no one method produces ‘objective’, comprehensive knowledge of family practices. Together, however, they produce new insights into family practices around fatherhood, migration and language brokering and how participants ‘do’, ‘display’ and commemorate family. The paper argues that narrative approaches, sometimes alongside visual methods, can assist holistic analyses of family practices from sociocultural, intergenerational and life course perspectives.     

Portrayal of Religion in Reality TV Programming: Hegemony and the Contemporary American Wedding

We examined the treatment of religion in reality TV programming, namely The Learning Channel's A Wedding Story, by conducting a content analysis of 85 recently aired episodes. Results support a hegemonic portrayal regarding religion: most weddings were somewhat religious, Christian, held in a church, involved traditionally worded vows and few religious rituals, and included mention of the word God. We discuss the program's potential to provide viewers with more diverse religious portrayals.     

Religion and New Media: A Uses and Gratifications Approach

This research examines specific relationships between new media and religion. While prior research has focused on the question of whether a relationship exists, we explore technology usage as a predictor of specific religious behavior. Using a sample (N = 423) comprising a cross-section of religious and cultural backgrounds, results indicate that attitudes toward technology and use of social media contribute to how people view religion as a mechanism for meeting needs. Applying uses and gratifications theory in a unique way, three needs related to religion emerged: religion as a means of passing time, religion as a mode of meeting self needs, and religion as a catalyst for learning. We discuss implications of our findings.     

The Varieties of Religious Significance: An Idiographic Approach to Study Religion's Role in Adolescent Development

We present a rationale and method for taking an idiographic approach to study the role religion plays in adolescent development. We theorize that adolescents harness qualitatively different aspects of religion to address idiosyncratic developmental needs. Therefore, analyzing religion's role in adolescent development necessitates a case‐by‐case holistic analysis. We introduce a systematic method using narratives to identify the personal ways that individuals attribute meaning in general and regarding religion in particular. We present three detailed case studies from a sample of 20 religious Israeli Jewish Orthodox emerging‐adult women who provided retrospective narrative accounts of their general and religious development through adolescence. Systematic analysis reveals that religion was significant to these women in diverse and personal ways, addressing markedly different adolescent developmental needs.     

Participants’ productive disruption of a community photo-elicitation project: improvised methodologies in practice

Abstract

This article reports on an attempt to use photo-elicitation to explore contested intergenerational perceptions and experiences of ‘place’ in one English village. Participants actively disrupted the photo-elicitation project and ended up co-creating an enriched research design that allowed them to represent how they experienced ‘place’. The spontaneous, mixed media-elicitation that resulted overturns some of the more straightforward notions that are aligned with photo-elicitation techniques. This article builds on a growing body of critical literature on photo-elicitation and shows how participants’ disruption of a project’s research methods can be both challenging and fruitful in practice. The researcher’s flexibility and willingness to work with participants’ alternative approaches proved extremely effective in allowing participants to communicate their ‘imagined geographies’ and to identify experiences of social inequality. This article explores how the initially problematic in participant involvement can be turned into the productive through the use of ‘improvised methodologies’.     

Religion in the Television-mediated Public Sphere Transformations and paradoxes

This study suggests to look at the audiences of religious television programmes as a possible common field of interest for both the sociology of religion and communication research. The current visibility of religion on Italian television, amplified by the Jubilee 2000 and confirmed by the repeated successes of fictions dedicated to religious characters, put unusual questions to sociological theory. We argue here that such visibility must be interpreted within the ‘process of de-secularization’, i.e. one of the many processes which are currently de-constructing modernity and confusing the distinction between the public and the private sphere. The ‘mediated’ religion is the result of the ambiguous rediscovery of religion in the post-modern society. From this point of view, the Jubilee 2000 appears as a media event typical of the global media society, in that religion is spread throughout the world but within the limits of media (and especially television) formats.     

Religion and progressive politics in the United States

In recent decades, scholars interested in the role of religion in American public life have largely focused on the Christian Right or the role of religion in civic life. Compared to these extensive literatures, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of religion in liberal/progressive politics. Progressive religious voices are more widespread and more racially, socioeconomically, and religiously diverse than is typically recognized. Moreover, while these actors seek influence within the most visible political realms of elections and policymaking, they also focus on shaping the cultural identities, narratives, and discourses that undergird democratic life. This article offers a framework through which to conceptualize the progressive religious field of action and reviews the growing body of research on the individuals and organizations that comprise this field. It begins by examining the prevalence of progressive religious views and activities among the general public; reviews research on three different types of progressive religious political organizations (social movements, national advocacy organizations, and faith‐based community organizations) as well as religious congregations' efforts to spur members to progressive political consciousness and mobilization; and evaluates the place of progressive religion in American political culture. Finally, it points to fruitful areas for future research.     

Typen religiöser Sozialformen und ihre Bedeutung für die Analyse religiösen Wandels in Deutschland

The article examines different forms of institutionalization of religion in Germany since the 1950s. Going beyond the classical church-sect dichotomy, we discuss in a theoretical part communities, organizations, market relations, movements and events as possible candidates for the structuring of religious communication. In an empirical part, we outline recent changes of social forms in Germany. By addressing divergent trajectories in the major German churches, smaller Christian denominations, immigrant religions and the evolving spectrum of new religiosity, we show that a general trend is not observable. The developments do not prove the often claimed ‘end of religious communities’. It rather seems that modernity produces a variety of religious social forms that seem to balance the tension between communalization (Vergemeinschaftung) and socialization (Vergesellschaftung).     

Cultural Schemas of Religion,Science, and Law in Talk About Social Controversies

We analyze cultural schemas of religion, science, and law reflected in the way ordinary citizens discuss contemporary social controversies and assess whether these schemas accord with a modernization narrative or whether people's experiences with each of these institutional arenas lead them to adopt realistic or critical schemas not predicted by modernization accounts. Focus group participants in three metropolitan areas were asked to talk about one of three vignettes on faith‐based prison ministries, parents’ refusal of medical treatment for a child on religious grounds, or preimplantation genetic diagnosis of human embryos. We find that people's everyday experiences, grounded in specific institutional contexts, produce perceptions of the domains of religion, science, and law that are not fully captured by the modernization account. Further, our findings illustrate that schemas of law, science, and religion are varied and evoked by social context and the specific issues under consideration. Schemas that do not fit the modernization framework provide a way for people to address concerns about power and effectively level the playing field between more and less rationalized social domains. Future research on a broader range of issues is needed to develop a theory of when different schemas of law, science, and religion are activated.     

Navigating religious diversity: exploring young people’s lived religious citizenship in Indonesia

Against the backdrop of several concerning reports which have noted growing socio-religious conservatism and intolerance amongst Indonesia youth, this study examined how school-aged Indonesian young people navigate encounters with religious difference in their everyday lives. Recognising the significance of religious and citizenship education curricula, the research included classroom observations and interviews with 20 religiously-diverse Indonesian young people in three purposively selected high schools in Jakarta. The paper reveals that participants in all three schools agreed that religious studies and their personal religious frameworks were central to their approaches toward religious tolerance. However, their lived everyday experiences of rubbing shoulders with religious ‘others’, expanded upon and critiqued the narrowness and rigidity of these frameworks and showed greater religious inclusivity. Through this analysis the paper integrates prior work on ‘lived religion’ and ‘lived citizenship’ to fuse a ‘lived religious citizenship’ concept, arguing that this adds depth to both fields by recognising that religion cannot be separated from the experience of being a citizen. A focus on lived religious citizenship provides a deeper account of individual identity and highlights the importance of qualitative studies focused on the living out of religion and citizenship.     

Young people looking forward: Imagined future and normative tensions in urban Norway

We explore the meaning-making practices of ‘little personal stories’ and ‘big societal stories’ in the imagined futures of 12- and 13-year-olds within Norway, known for its egalitarian ideals and welfare society. Using the concept ‘prospective narratives’, we explore these practices through the students' narrative world-making. The narratives connect the imagined future with gender and class variations related to larger social norms in the arenas of work and family. They demonstrate embodied and positioned cultural knowledge of the present, reflecting tensions between dominant social norms—‘big stories’—in terms of child-centred parenting, active work-life and egalitarian ideals across gender and class.     

The trouble with 'inclusion': a case study of the faith zone at the Millennium Dome

Some sociologists of religion would argue that there has been a move away from ‘religion’, in terms of institutionalised dogmas and established corporate ways of believing, towards ‘spiritualities of life’ where the emphasis lies on the personal, the individual and the experiential ( Heelas, 2002 ; Wuthnow, 2001 ). Given the evidence for the apparent popularity of spirituality in contemporary Western society, it is surprising that between 1996 and 2000, the Zone concerned with religion at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich was re‐named from‘The Spirit Zone’to‘The Faith Zone’. A range of political, economic and religious interests lay behind the Zone’s re‐naming, and both the name (and the content) changed to reflect ‘religion’ rather than ‘spirituality’. The process of constructing the Zone thus moved in a diametrically opposite direction to some of the trends associated with religious belief in modern Britain. An investigation of the dynamics behind the construction of the Faith Zone at the Dome provides an opportunity to evaluate what ‘counted’ as religion ( Beckford, 2003 ) at a specific time and context in British society. The paper also shows that behind the Labour Government rhetoric of ‘inclusion’, various dimensions of spiritual belief and activity in Britain are excluded from the public sphere. When it comes to religion, taken‐for‐granted criteria operate – resulting in the prioritisation of the official, the ‘representative’, the ‘respectable’, and ‘the unified’ over the unofficial, the deviant, the private, and the contested. This paper looks at the struggles and the conditions associated with the idea and the policy of inclusion in relation to religion in modern Britain, using the Faith Zone at the Dome as a case study.     

Recalling the ‘Islam of the parents’ liberal and secular Muslims redefining the contours of religious authenticity

Scholarship on Islam in Europe has largely invested in examining the generational dynamics in the lived religious experiences of Muslims. Within this perspective, the idea of a generation gap, which revolves around a distinction between ‘tradition’ and ‘religion’, has figured as an important account in assessing some of these religious transformations. Drawing on fieldwork with Belgian Muslims of Moroccan origin, this paper seeks to nuance this perspective by exploring accounts wherein this ‘traditional’ Islam of the parents is actively reclaimed. This was especially the case for respondents who were quite critical of Islamic revivalist trends. In many of these stories, the parents’ Islam was understood as tolerant and open, in a way that was consonant with ‘tradition’. By focusing on these narratives, a first aim of the paper is to understand how genealogy and ancestry figure as distinct criteria in determining the ‘real Islam’. A second aim is to complicate the understanding of the liberal and modern self, and its relationship to the past.     

Historical Sociology and Secularisation: The Political Use of ‘Culturalised Religion’ by the Radical Right in Spain

The critique of the theory of secularisation has favoured the emergence of a series of concepts for the analysis of contemporary socio-religious transformations, such as ‘culturalised religion’. These categories constitute, in turn, an opportunity to rethink the process of secularisation from the perspective of historical sociology. Against this background, this article carries out a theoretical analysis of the ambiguities of secularisation in Spain from which a cultural approach to religion (‘culturalised religion’) emerges and its potential connection to the expansion of the radical right-wing party Vox, which became the third-largest party in Spain's parliament in the 2019 national election. After analyzing this interrelation between ‘culturalised religion’ and the radical right on the basis of statistical sources, discourse analysis and bibliographical sources, the article concludes by stressing the importance of historical sociology for understanding phenomena like ‘culturalised religion’, which take us out of the binomial logic that has marked part of the interpretation of secularisation (revival of religions vs decline of the religious) and introduce us into the multiple interactions between the historical past and sociological reality.     

Using Visual Art Workshops with Female Survivors of Domestic Violence in Portugal and England: A Comparative Reflection

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a reflection on the use of visual art workshops in an interdisciplinary feminist project with female survivors of domestic violence living in refuges in England and Portugal. The paper discusses the fieldwork in each location with attention to the interaction between participants, between participants and the researcher/s, and the cultural and institutional structures influencing the research and the images produced. Despite some key differences in the context, the analysis highlights key resonances and commonalities amongst the objects that survivors of domestic abuse depicted in each location. We use the feminist notion of ‘giving voice’ as an analytical tool throughout the paper. The paper argues that ‘giving voice’ was not unproblematically accomplished by using visual methods and suggests that our understanding remained partial and often reliant on verbal narratives accompanying the visual images produced. We also highlight issues of power emerging when exhibiting art generated through the study.