Iconic Power Materiality and Meaning in Social Life

A collection of original articles that explore social aspects of the phenomenon of icon. Having experienced the benefits and realized the limitations of so called 'linguistic turn', sociology has recently acknowledged a need to further expand its horizons.

Materiality and Meaning in Social Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology; D.Bartmanski  & J.Alexander   PART I  Representation, Presentation, Presence: Tracing the Homo Pictor; G.Boehm  Iconic Power and Performance: the Role of the Critic; J.Alexander   PART II  Inconspicuous Revolutions of 1989. Culture and Contingency in The Making of Political Icons; D.Bartmanski   The Making of Humanitarian Visual Icons. On the 1921-1923 Russian Famine as Foundational Event; F.Kurasawa   Seeing Tragedy in the News Images of September 11; W.Bowler  The Emergence of Iconic Depth. Secular Icons in a Comparative Perspective; W.Binder   PART III  Shifting Extremism: On the Political Iconology in Post-socialist Serbia; D.Šuber  & S.Karamanic   The Visualization of Uncertainty: HIV Statistics in Public Media; V.Rauer  How To Make an Iconic Commodity: The Case of Penfolds' Grange Wine; I.Woodward  & D.Ellison   Becoming Iconic. The Cases of Woodstock and Bayreuth; P.Smith   PART IV  Body and Image; H.Belting Iconic Difference and Seduction; B.Giesen   Iconic Rituals. Towards a Social Theory of Encountering Images; J.Sonnevend   Visible Meanings; P.Sztompka   Afterword; B.Giesen

Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University, USA Dominik Bartma?ski, Yale University, USA Gottfried Boehm, Basel University, Switzerland Hans Belting, Northwestern University, USA Fuyuki Kurasawa, York University, Canada Wendy Bowler, LaTrobe University, Australia Werner Binder, Masaryk University, Czech Republic Philip Smith, Yale University, USA Ian Woodward, Griffith University, Australia David Ellison, Griffith University, Australia Daniel uber, University of Lucerne, Switzerland Slobodan Karamani?, Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities, Slovenia Valentin Rauer, Goethe University Frankfurt Main, Germany Bernhard Giesen, Universität Konstanz, Germany Julia Sonnevend, Columbia University, USA Piotr Sztompka, Jagiellonian University, Poland