Paper No.

: 02 Social-Cultural Anthropology
Module : 31 Visual Anthropology

Development Team
Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor
Principal Investigator Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi, Delhi

Prof. Sabita Acharya

Paper Coordinator
Department of Anthropology, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar

Content Writer Ms. Naila Ansari and Prof. A.K.Kapoor

Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi, Delhi

Prof. A.K.Sinha
Content Reviewer
Department of Anthropology, Panjab University, Chandigarh
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Prof. Sabita Acharya

Utkal University, Bhubaneswar
Social-Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology
Visual Anthropology
 Description of Module

Subject Name Anthropology

Paper Name 02 Social-Cultural Anthropology

Module Name/Title Visual Anthropology

Module Id 31

Social-Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology
Visual Anthropology
 Contents of this unit

Introduction

Definition of Visual Anthropology

Emergence of Visual Anthropology

Holistic Cultural context of Visual Anthropology

Aims and Scope of Visual Anthropology

Classification of Visual Anthropology

§ Documentary
§ Ethnographic Film
§ Videotape
§ Feature Films

Studying Visual Data produced by Cultures

Applied context of Visual Anthropology

Summary

Learning Objectives
After reading this module the learner will be able:
§ To define Visual anthropology and classification of Visual Anthropology.
§ To know about Emergence of Visual Anthropology.
§ To describe Aims and Scope of Visual Anthropology.
§ To derive Holistic Cultural context of Visual Anthropology.
§ To improve descriptive studying of Visual data produced by Cultures.

Social-Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology
Visual Anthropology
 Introduction

The explosion of visual media in recent years has generated a wide range of visual and digital
technologies which have transformed visual research and analysis. The result is an exciting new
interdisciplinary approach of great potential influence in and out of academia. Visual Anthropology is
a newly developed sub-branch of cultural anthropology. It deals with the study of human behaviour
through visual means incorporating the theories and technologies as developed in the anthropological
traditions. Visual anthropology wide by considers various arguments about this sub-field, but also
looks beyond immediate disciplinary concerns to enlarge the possibilities for a visual anthropology
that's not only connected with the professional concerns of anthropologists, but also adequately
presents anthropologically. It analyses the behaviour of the people, natives and their different modes of
communication.

Scientific research needs unbiased and reliable data. Film, sound videotapes records are today an
indispensable scientific resources since they can provide reliable data on human behaviour that may
later be analysed by independent investigators in the light of new theories. Expert may also be able to
find data that may then give rise to new theories, or may be used to corroborate already established
theories. The advantage that of film and videotape records over other tools of data collection is that
they are independent of language, i.e. their communitycability is independent of language and any one
can understand them, at least to some extent. Films also help us in preserving the changing ways of life
in action.

Definition of Visual Anthropology

Visual anthropology can play a very important role in developing awareness of those aspects of culture
that condition the formation of the value judgements. The development of such awareness is possible
because visual communication can engrave itself directly upon the emotional elements of one’s
psychic structure. Visual anthropology can also affect the rational level by virtue of its specific
language – the language of images.

An International Journal of Visual Anthropology defines the field of visual anthropology as the “the
analysis of the structuring of reality as evidenced by visual productions and artefacts; the cross cultural
study of art and artifacts from a social, cultural, historical and aesthetics points of view; the
relationship of cultural and visual perceptions and the study of the forms of social organisation
surrounding the planning, production and use of visual symbolic forms” (Visual Anthropology:
Harwood Academic Publishers, New York, 1989). In addition, Visual Anthropology has the functions

Social-Cultural Anthropology
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Visual Anthropology
 of ‘preservation’ and ‘communication’, which it fulfils through the use of films, videotapes and
televisions.

It is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the
mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science and visual culture.
Although sometimes wrongly conflated with ethnographic film, Visual Anthropology encompasses
much more, including the anthropological study of all visual representations such as:

§ Dance and other kinds of performance,

§ Museums and archiving,
§ All visual arts, and
§ The production and reception of mass media.

Histories and analyses of representations from many cultures are part of Visual Anthropology: the
research topics include:

§ Sand paintings,
§ Tattoos,
§ Sculptures and relies,
§ Cave paintings,
§ Scrimshaw,
§ Jewellery,
§ Hieroglyphics,
§ Paintings and
§ Photographs.

Also within the province of the subfield are studies of human vision, properties of media, the
relationship of visual form and function, and applied, collaborative uses of visual representations.
Since anthropology is a holistic endeavour, the ways in which visual representation are connected to
the rest of culture and society are central topics.

Emergence of Visual Anthropology

Even before the emergence of anthropology as an academic discipline in the 1880s, ethnologists used
photography as a tool of research. Anthropologists and non-anthropologists conducted much of this
work in the spirit to salvage ethnography or attempts to record for posterity the ways-of-life of
societies assumed to be doomed for extinct.

The 9th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, held at Chicago in 1973,
passed a resolution on Visual Anthropology. The minutes of this resolution as reported by Hockings
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 (1975: 483) are, “Film, sound and videotape records are today an indispensable scientific resource.
They provide reliable data on human behaviour that independent investigators may analyse in the light
of new theories. They may contain information for which neither theory nor analytical schemes yet
exist. They convey information independently of language, and they preserve unique features of our
changing ways of life for posterity. Today is a time not merely of change but of spreading uniformity
and wholesale cultural loss. To help arrest this process and to correct the myopic view of human
potential to which it leads, it is essential that the heritage of mankind be recorded in all its remaining
diversity and richness”.

In an edited volume on Visual Anthropology, Margaret Mead, says in her introductory notes,
“anthropology as a conglomerate of disciplines has both implicitly and explicitly accepted the
responsibility of making and preserving records of the vanishing customs and human beings of this
earth”.

Holistic Cultural context of Visual Anthropology

While art historians are clearly interested in some of the same objects and processes, visual
anthropology places these artifacts within a holistic cultural context. Archaeologists, in particular, use
phases of visual development to try to understand the spread of humans and their cultures across
contiguous landscapes as well as over larger areas. By 10,000 BP, a system of well-developed
pictographs was in use by boating people and was likely instrumental in the development of navigation
and writing, as well as a medium of story telling and artistic representation. Early visual
representations often show the female form, with clothing appearing on the female body around 28,000
BP, which archaeologists know now, corresponds with the invention of weaving in Olden Europe.

This is an example of the holistic nature of visual anthropology:

ü A figurine depicting a woman wearing diaphanous clothing is not merely an object of art, but a
window into the customs of dress at the time,
ü Household organization (where they are found),
ü Transfer of materials (where the clay came from) and processes (when did firing clay become
common),
ü When did weaving begin?
ü What kind of weaving is depicted and what other evidence is there for weaving, and
ü What kinds of cultural changes were occurring in other parts of human life at the time?
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 Aims and Scope of Visual Anthropology

Visual anthropology, by focusing on its own efforts to make and understand film, is able to establish
many principles and build theories about human visual representation in general.

The aims of visual anthropology can be briefly enumerated as follows:

(i) To record data for future analysis,

(ii) To improve our descriptive ethnography increasing the equality of basic observation,
(iii) To provide information for related cultural studies and to verify theories,
(iv) To provide an account for the Ethnographer,
(v) And to put together a film that will convey to the audience a ‘feel’ of the people.

The promise of visual anthropology is that it can provide an alternative way of perceiving culture-
perception constructed through distinct ways:

(i) Definition, scope and uses of visual anthropology, views of prominent anthropologists
regarding the discipline.
(ii) History and development of visual anthropology. The different approaches to anthropological
films. History and development of Visual anthropology. The different approaches to
anthropological films. Types of film, movie films, feature films, ethnographic films,
documentary. Visual Anthropology and analysis of cultural style.
(iii) Visual Anthropology as one of the documentation methods in anthropology. Visual
communication and its advantages; limitations of visual communication over other systems.
Photography as medium of communication. Still and movie photography.
(iv) Television and Visual Anthropology. New techniques of observation and analysis in
anthropology. The videotape – advantages and limitations over other systems.

Classification of Visual Anthropology

Brigrad (1975) notes, the specialised uses of film in research where conclusions are expressed verbally,
and unlike the use of film in education where effectiveness is dependent upon context, the use of
ethnographic film as public information depends upon the presence, in self-contained form, of visual
attractiveness and intellectual substance”.
Visual Anthropology classifies films into:

§ Documentary
§ Ethnographic
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 § Educational

Documentary

Marcel Griaule is one of the opinions that documentaries are intended for a relatively large and
uninformed public, and ethnographic films are intended for educational use particularly in cultural
anthropology. The latter must present cultural phenomenon and human behaviour as accurately as
possible and is less conditioned by aesthetic formal concerns.

Film has played only a minor part in anthropological research. This is, in part, is due to the fact that
film is harder to harness as data than still pictures. But, it is also due to temptation, or even the
pressure, to make films in the field of anthropology for reasons other than research. Great
‘documentary’ films have been made in the field of anthropology by art filmmakers, and by expert
anthropologists. These films have generally been produced for an audience, for aesthetic experience
and for education. Anthropological films are used as an illustration of culture in teaching anthropology.

Ethnographic Film

The close association of visual anthropology with ethnographic film that characterised its position for
much of the latter part of the twentieth century is diminishing. One of the major thrust areas of Visual
Anthropology is Ethnographic film, which may be defined as ‘a film that reveals cultural patterning’.
Walter Goldschmidt defines an ethnographic film as “a film that endeavours to interpret the behaviour
of the people of one culture to the persons of another culture by using shots of people doing precisely
what they have been doing if the camera were not there”.

The history of anthropological filmmaking is intertwined with that of non-fiction and documentary
filmmaking, although ethno fiction may be considered as a genuine subgenre of ethnographic film.
The literature about ethnographic film has been hampered by a lack of a conceptual structure sufficient
to the task of allowing anthropologists to theorize about how film can be used to communicate
knowledge. It is a failure that burdens all discourse about non fiction film. As a result, authors have
concentrated on making proscriptions and programmatic admonitions, and telling war stories about
how a film was made. Other topics of discussion have been the assumed dilemmas between science
and art; questions of accuracy, fairness, and objectivity; the appropriateness of the conventions of
documentary realism; the value of film in the teaching of anthropology; the relationship between a
written and visual anthropology; and collaborations between filmmakers and anthropologists and the
native production of visual texts. Theoretical explorations are consequently limited to arguing about
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 whether or not a particular film is objective, accurate, complete, or even ethnographic. With the
erosion of the positivist underpinnings of anthropology and documentary film comes the possibility of
a new examination of the politics and ideology of filmed ethnography. Like the documentary, the
ethnographic film seems on the verge of some serious theoretical debates. Perhaps as a result of the
criticisms from film theorists such as Bill Nichols and the challenge of indigenously produced media,
visual anthropologists have become increasingly aware of the need for a more secure conceptual basis.

ü Anthropologists always emphasis on the fieldwork through the use of ‘participant observation’
while studying other cultures; this participation between the researcher and the subjects being
studied should be reciprocal. According to Rouch, the way to achieve this reciprocity is through
the use of ethnographic film, since it represents the easiest route to establish a dialogue between
the anthropologists and his subjects. The dialogue’s most decisive moment comes with the
presentation of the complete film to the subjects filmed that is with what Rouch defines as an
audiovisual counter gift.

ü With the entry of Mead and Bateson in 1963-1938, the field of Visual Anthropology,
ethnographic film underwent a profound change. There was a shift towards conceptual
originality. Anthropological teaching has started taking greater support from films. The
museums and universities are now supporting it. With the introduction of culture and
personality studied in socio-cultural anthropology, Mead and Bateson made the most effective
use of films for analysis of cultural behaviour. Collier is of the opinion that the works of Mead
and Bateson depended not only on the viewing of the film footage, but also on detailed
examination and comparison of enlarged prints of single frames.

Visual Anthropology makes an explicit distinction between the difference in approach reading the
presentation of ethnographic film and a documentary film. How ethnographic films can contribute in
understanding a culture or cultures of a region can best be understood by distinguishing between the
various uses to which films can be put in the field of social research, education and visual
anthropology.

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Visual Anthropology
 Videotape

The videotape permits coverage of the stream of activity in the natural setting in much of its
complexity over relatively extended time periods. Videotapes records provide necessary detail on the
activity of individuals in specific contexts. Videotape coverage can be adventitious to visual
anthropology in many different ways. It supplements the ethnographic accounts of the records of any
particular culture. It permits review by scientists and informant-participant in the field to stimulate
response and increase the scope of interrelation of both general specific socio-cultural phenomenon.
Lastly, videotape records are employed to establish connections between abstraction and inferences
and the observed phenomenon upon which they are based.

Feature Films

It also involves an appreciation of the value of permanent records, and the careful, systematic and
objective study of their visual and sound (verbal, musical and other) content. But there is an equally
important difference, related to the basic nature of the material. Feature films are fictional, and they are
frankly viewed as such in anthropological analysis. That is, although fictional films may at times
portray aspects of behaviour accurately in a factual or documentary sense, this is not the main focus of
their study. Rather, these films are taken as projecting images of human social behaviour, and these
images are the first object of study. Such images, of course, may also be “real” in important sense
(Boulding 1956), though differing from the reality of detailed records of actual behaviour. They may
reflect cultural premises and patterns of thought and feeling.

Studying Visual Data produced by Cultures

Art, photographs, film, video, fonts, advertisements, computericons, landscape, architecture, machines,
fashion, makeup, hairstyle, facial expressions, tattoos, and so on are part of the complex visual
communication system produced by members of societies. The use and understanding of visual images
is governed by socially established symbolic codes. Visual images are constructed and may be
deconstructed. They may be read as texts in a variety of ways. They can be analyzed with techniques
developed in diverse fields of literary criticism, art theory and criticism, content
analysis, semiotics, deconstructionism, or the more mundane tools of ethnography. Visual sociologists
can categorize and count them; ask people about them; or study their use and the social settings in
which they are produced and consumed. So the second meaning of visual sociology is a discipline to
study the visual products of society—their production, consumption and meaning.

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 Applied context of Visual Anthropology

Applied uses of anthropology outside the academy are becoming increasingly popular in the public
sector, industry and non-governmental organizations. In these contexts, combined with the increasing
availability and accessibility of visual media and technologies, visual methodologies and
representations are already in use. In some cases innovations in methodologies of research and
representation have developed when visual anthropology that has not been tried in academic visual
anthropology practice is used in applied work. This might be due to a range of factors, such as different
funding opportunities, freedom to innovate without the restrictions of existing anthropological
conventions, and different audience expectations. There is a long history of visual anthropology’s
involvement with non-academic projects in the creative media as well as social intervention and policy
domains for example:
ü Ethnographic television documentary making,
ü Indigenous media projects broaching issues of local community development,
ü Identity and self-representation, and
ü Photographic inventories as part of wider social research projects.

With the recent increase in use of digital technologies (video, still photography and hypermedia) there
is much wider access to the use of visual imagery and audio-visual media by anthropologists working
both in and outside the academy. Simultaneously the use of visual anthropological methods of research
and representation is now more prevalent: in consumer ethnography and design anthropology trained
visual anthropologists are working with businesses using visual ethnography and anthropologically
informed ideas to provide insights that offer commercial advantage; anthropologists working in social
development overseas use visual research methods, and video production as part of their working
practices; and ‘at home’ anthropologists use visual ethnographic methods in applied work in the public
sector and policy research.

Summary

Anthropology is a word-driven discipline. It has tended to ignore the visual-pictorial world perhaps
because of distrust of the ability of images to convey abstract ideas. When engaged in ethnography, the
researcher must convert the complex experience of fieldwork to words in a notebook and then
transform those words into other words shifted through analytic methods and theories. This logo
centric approach to understanding denies much of the multisensory experience of trying to know
another culture. Visual anthropologists sometimes find themselves involved with the research and
thinking of professional image makers and scholars from other disciplines-visual anthropology,
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 cultural studies, film theory, photo history, dance and performance studies, and architectural theory-
rather than with the work of other cultural anthropologists.

ü The increasing use of visual research methods across the social sciences and humanities ·
ü The growth in popularity of the visual as methodology and object of analysis within
mainstream anthropology and applied anthropology ·
ü The growing interest in ‘anthropology of the senses’ and media anthropology ·
ü The development of new visual technologies that allow anthropologists to work in new ways.

The Visual Anthropology offers a ground breaking examination of developments within the field to
define how it might advance empirically, methodologically and theoretically, and cement a central
place in academic study both within anthropology and across disciplines.

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