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.

The methods and themes taken up in these studies respond to this shift in social scientific interest. Each contribution carefully tests the analytic purchase and empirical implications of iconicity

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