Visually exploring social perceptions of environmental harm in global urban contexts

Abstract

Building on the visual criminological endeavour, the article describes an ongoing pilot study exploring the potential usefulness of a visual and sensory methodology for investigating the social perception of environmental crime and harm. Given the scarcity of tools with which to approach these dynamic and elusive phenomena, I focus first on the methodological and theoretical positioning that sees the encounter between green, cultural, visual and narrative criminologies. I will do this by considering in detail two techniques to collect qualitative data: interviews-with-visual-materials (also known as photo elicitation) and itinerant soliloquies – a peculiar sociological form of mobile methodology. In doing so, I invite sociologists who work in visual criminology to reconsider the constitutive relationship between our ways of seeing and our ways of sensing and perceiving the environment we live in. Finally, the article reflects on the importance for criminologists and sociologists of deepening and strengthening an organic solidarity among the visual, sensorial and narrative dimensions of environmental crime and harm, as well as looking at the social, cultural and political relevance of human–environment relationships.