Beyond Narratives: “Free Drawings” as Visual Data in Addiction Research

ABSTRACT

The study presented here explores the usefulness of visual data when assessing addiction careers from various methodological perspectives. The database consists of 14 “free life-course drawings” produced by seven Swiss and seven Polish male alcohol ex-users, and their life history narratives collected in the context of earlier studies on self-change. The analysis follows the principles of the Barthian visual semiotics approach including the author and the viewer perspective. This is followed by the investigation of the interplay between drawings and narratives in Polish and German.

Compared to the detailed narratives following few sub-storylines at the same time, the drawings provide a more coherent and differentiated overall picture especially of the emotional state over the life course: the relative subjective importance of highs and lows; and clearer visualisation of mixed positive and negative feelings; as well as identity concepts, such as the interplay between Mead's I & me.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual sociology
• self-change
• cross-cultural
• life-course drawings
• qualitative

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Justyna Klingemann

Justyna Klingemann, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Department of Studies on Alcohol & Drug Dependence, Institute of Psychiatry & Neurology in Warsaw, Poland. Her areas of interest are situated within the sociology of health and medicine with a focus on social and individual change processes. She has several years of experience in participating in cross-cultural comparative research in this area. She works with both quantitative and qualitative methods, with special expertise in qualitative methodology (PCI, grounded theory, mixed methods design, visual analysis).

Harald Klingemann

Harald Klingemann, Dr.rer.pol. Dr.h.c., is currently a Professor at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB)/communication design. His main research interests include the sociology of time, the cross cultural analysis of addiction treatment systems and the natural history of substance use for which he received the honorary doctor of the University of Stockholm in 2003. Currently, he is involved in projects focusing on artistic interventions in public space.