BODIES KEYING POLITICS:
VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS, GENDER AND
POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY
Methods Festival, Aug 20, 2015
University of Tampere
Eeva Luhtakallio, University of Tampere
eeva.luhtakallio@uta.fi
Political sociology, gender, and the visual
sphere
• Political sociology’s new coming, with what we’ve learned
from the linguistic turn
• E.g. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology
• Jeffrey Alexander’s, Nina Eliasoph’s, Paul Lichterman’s… etc.
current work
• Pragmatist, micro-oriented, culturally sensitive approach
 demands gender analysis beyond “factor
treatment“
 brings visual culture closer to the core of
examination of political phenomena
 challenges methodological work to find new
solutions
One methodological suggestion, two
illustrations
• Goffman’s frame analysis adapted to visual
representations
• Case1: activist website images from Finland and France –
context comparison of gender in political imagery
• Case2: magazine covers from Finland – comparison in
time of changes in gender representations
Dominant frames and keying
• A dominant frame is the primary analysis of a situation.
• Keying is interpretation that directs and focuses – and
sometimes transfers or even switches – the meaning of
an image in a given situation.
• How gender keys the dominant frames of demonstration,
violence, and performance in Helsinki and Lyon – features
of mass gatherings, struggle, protest policing, and
performativity that were repeatedly visualized in activist
publicity?
• How the frames and keyings of gender change in time
(1950s-2010s) in Finnish periodicals?
1. Dynamics of gender in visual
representations of everyday contention
• Puzzle: how to tackle embodiment and gender dynamics
in social movements
• Visual representations: images collected from the
websites of local social movement activists in Lyon
(N=230) and Helsinki (N=275), collected as part of an
ethnographic fieldwork
Dimensions of the material
• I analyzed the activist sites as cultural representations
that a viewer needs to frame in order to understand what
is going on, and to key in order to understand how this
going-on is happening
• The frames of demonstration, violence, and performance
cover 47% of the material in Lyon, and 48% in Helsinki,
and the gender keying is one of the most crucial elements
throughout the material, while being the most articulate
within these three frames.
Why the comparison?
• France
1. Popular uprisings as building blocks of the Republic
2. Gender culture emphasizing sexual difference and radical
feminism
• Finland
1. Civil society historically a partner to the state, not a protest force
2. Gender culture emphasizing equal treatment and neutrality
• Yet, isomorphism in today’s (European) activism
Dominant frame of demonstrating in Lyon (left) and
Helsinki (right).
Feminine keying of demonstrating in Helsinki
Gender keying the frame of violence in Helsinki
Masculinities keying the frame of violence in the
Lyonnais (left) and the Helsinki material (right)
The frame of performance keyed with gender
ambiguity in Helsinki (left), and in Lyon (right)
What do we learn from the gender
keyings?
• The representations of local activism portray gender
through keyings that both reproduce and fracture the
gendered division of labor of activism, the prevailing
power structures, and the entire social order
• Masculine leadership, confrontations between the
activists and the police – yet, keying dynamics of nonuniform masculinity
• Similarly, childlike, ‘sweet’ femininity – yet,
representations of visible feminine aggressiveness
• Coincidence of gender ambiguity and performative
dimensions of contention
How to understand “cultural differences” in
gender representations?
• Activist isomorphism + French polarizations + Finnish
•
•
•
•
gender neutrality?
Features of “Frenchness” and “Finnishness” + locally
embedded + situational features?
The importance of looking at cultural isomorphism and
differences simultaneously, and with a localized, sensitive
eye
“General trends”, such as blurred gender representations
as markers of performative activism, gain in local
resonance, and “local features” gain in isomorphic
connections
Understanding gendered and embodied contention in the
intersections of the global and local features of activism
2. Gender representations in mainstream
publicity
• What kind of gender representations are the most
culturally predominant, and how do they change in time?
The gender system visualized?
• Covers of periodicals – Kotiliesi, Me Naiset, Seura and
Suomen Kuvalehti – with depictions of human beings from
1955 (n=118), 1975 (n=165), 1995 (n=147), and 2010
(n=136).
• Dominant frames of
• Desire and gaze
• Relationship and reproduction
• ‘Culture’ and art
• Politics and power
Trends of mainstream gender
representations: femininity
• Partially “circular” development: from traditionalistic
representations of desirability and motherhood (1950s) to
problematized visualizations of women’s status (1970s) to
increasing multiplicity and extremes – pin-up type pictures
vs portraits of powerful female ministers – (1990s) and
finally to a relative return of traditionalistic themes (2010s)
• Partially “linear” development: the complexity and
multiplicity, as well as the “reflexive” dimension in
women’s representations increase
Trends of mainstream gender
representations: masculinity
• The most general trend is the fading of masculinity:
images of men disappear little by little
• The powerful, middle aged white man dominates the
framing of masculinity
• The playful, feminine male is rarely represented
• In order to portray reflexivity or emotions, men “need”
mediators, usually women, rarely children
1955
1975
1995
2010
What political sociology should learn from
visual studies (and the other way round)
• The importance of visual material in everyday life and
therefore also in political life keeps increasing
• Visual culture is (also) a vehicle in emphasizing the need
to include gender as an inherent dimension to political
analysis
• In a world touched by so many dimensions of
performative power, the combination of visual and political
analysis is crucial in understanding power relations, the
conditions for democratic governance, and means of
participation
Further readings
• Eeva Luhtakallio: “Bodies Keying Politics. Visual Frame
Analysis of Gendered Local Activism in France and
Finland.” Social Movements, Conflict and Change vol. 35,
April 2013, Guest-edited by Doerr, N., A. Mattoni & S.
Teune
• Eeva Luhtakallio: Practicing Democracy. Local Activism
and Politics in France and Finland. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012.
• Eeva Luhtakallio: “Visuaalinen julkisuus ja sukupuolten
representaatio”. Chapter accepted for publication in
Heiskala & Husso eds. Sukupuolikysymys, Gaudeamus
forthcoming.