Writing with the Camera

This Palgrave Pivot book examines documentary filmmaking as a sociological method and methodology. Working across public sociology, visual sociology, film studies and arts-based research, it argues that documentaries do not simply record social life but help organise how social realities are seen, researched, taught and remembered. The book develops the concept of sociological film through the relationship between sociological imagination and filmic imagination, showing how framing, montage, voice, sound and duration can become forms of sociological reasoning.

Chapters consider documentary as public media, research methodology, representational practice, teaching tool and archival form. Through discussions of observational, interview-based, reflexive, participatory and performative approaches, the book analyses how documentary practice shapes knowledge, public engagement, ethical accountability and the representation of everyday life. Case studies include films concerned with migration, labour, neighbourhood, disability, institutional life, environmental sustainability and historical memory.

Writing with the Camera will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, visual sociology, public sociology, documentary studies, visual anthropology, media studies and qualitative, creative and participatory research methods.