Beyond authenticity: The discourse of tourism in ethnographic and experimental film

This paper explores the relationship between postmodern ethnographic and experimental filmmaking. Recent shifts in both modes of film praxis away from modernist paradigms of anthropology and aesthetics have disclosed a rich field of nonscientific, non‐visionary common ground. Theoretical issues that help to define this inter‐penetration of film modes include allegory, tourism and intertextuality. Films by Jonas Mekas, Trinh Minh‐ha, David Byrne and Paula Gaitan are discussed with the aim of indicating the scope, the potential and the problems of postmodern ethnography.     

“Two kinds of bioscope”: Practical community concerns and ethnographic film in Namibia

A quote from a Namibian Ju/'hoan political leader introduces the topic of community concerns about the practical implications of various styles of ethnographic filmmaking. The main issues addressed include communication, leadership, and decision‐making processes internal to the community being filmed; development planning and self‐presentation in state and international contexts; community participation in design of, and remuneration from, film projects; images produced and their relevance to governmental and international funding; and dialogue within both the local and the anthropological communities on the consequences of filmic decisions. Examples from six film projects in Nyae Nyae, Namibia, over the last decade are used to illustrate how complex land rights, natural resource rights, development planning, and external political issues may be more (or less) effectively dealt with depending on community involvement, presentational choices and activist goals.     

Pikisi kwaiyai! (pictures tonight!): The screening and reception of ethnographic film in the Trobriand Islands,Papua New Guinea

Ethnographic films hold great historical value for the communities in which they were filmed, yet people in source communities often lack access to them. Visitors engaging in ‘visual repatriation’ of ethnographic film can enrich both sides of the ethnographic exchange. I review my experiences screening ethnographic films with Trobriand Islanders, their reactions, and the various ways in which local communities regain ownership of these films, including re‐narration and renaming. My findings reiterate how source communities' reception of, and uses for, ethnographic film can sharply differ from the filmmakers' original agenda.     

Clinical writing and the documentary construction of schizophrenia

Psychiatric practice involves writing as much as it involves talking. This study examines the interpretive processes of reading, writing and interviewing which are central to the clinical interaction. It is part of a broader ethnographic study of an Australian psychiatric hospital (which specializes in the treatment of patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia). The paper examines two major types of written assessment of patients — the admission assessment and the complete work-up. Writing is analyzed as performance, thereby focusing on the transformations that are effected in patients, their perceptions of their schizophrenia, and their total identity. One crucial transformation is from person suffering from schizophrenia to schizophrenic. The paper aims to show that as much as psychiatry is a talking cure it is also a writing cure.     

The anthropologist as photographer: The visual construction of ethnographic authority

“The Anthropologist as Author"—Clifford Geertz's formulation is emblematic of a theme of anthropology in the 1980s, ethnographic writing. Ethnographic photography, however, was barely a subject of consideration. Reviewing Evans‐Pritchard's The Nuer, a book widely re‐read in the writing culture debate, this article investigates not only the author's visual construction of ethnographic authority. It also reveals ethnographic photography as a medium, which can undermine this authority in a subtle yet compelling manner. Thus concentrating on the medium itself this paper investigates the uneasy relationship between photography and anthropology, and proposes an approach to ethnographic photography that goes beyond the questions of representation.¹     

The turbulence of images: On imagery,media and ethnographic discourse

As the anthropological theory of politeness has put it, people have universally two kinds of social want. They wish to be close to others, liked and accepted, but they also want some distance, freedom from imposition and respect of mutual difference. These wants, which one may also call basic human rights, are however often violated, and images play an important role in this.

Images are ultimately generated in the human mind and may find verbal as well as written and pictorial representation. Tyler [1978] has proposed a typology of mental images based on criteria of conscious control, completeness, abstraction, media and autonomy. These criteria also prove useful when probing into prototypical usages of intrusive imagery such as cursing, blessing, magic, witchcraft and the evil eye. Also the criteria help one understand the subtle process by which imagery can lead to the articulation and even discovery of peoples’ selves.

Ethnographic discourse has always been to a large extent about images, but until recently the ethnographer stood between his or her audience and the people of whom he or she was speaking or writing. Now, as sound recordings, film and video have arrived, this allows for richer varieties of cooperation where the non‐literate counterparts of the ethnographer can make more expressive and coherent contributions than before.

Also it seems that in the face of suppression people welcome the new media as a support in their ongoing battle for a recognition of their cultural and social worthiness.     

The science behind pre-Columbian evidence of syphilis in Europe: research by documentary

This article discusses the presentation of scientific findings by documentary, without the process of peer review. We use, as an example, PBS's "The Syphilis Enigma," in which researchers presented novel evidence concerning the origin of syphilis that had never been reviewed by other scientists. These "findings" then entered the world of peer-reviewed literature through citations of the documentary itself or material associated with it. Here, we demonstrate that the case for pre-Columbian syphilis in Europe that was made in the documentary does not withstand scientific scrutiny. We also situate this example from paleopathology within a larger trend of "science by documentary" or "science by press conference," in which researchers seek to bypass the peer review process by presenting unvetted findings directly to the public.     

Analogies and resonances in the process of ethnographic understanding

In this paper I explore the way in which anthropological understanding is engendered through analogies with an ethnographers experiential knowledge. This theme is addressed via an account of the development of my friendship with my ‘key informant,’ employing what Riesman (1977) calls a ‘disciplined introspection’ of what I as an ethnographer brought to the ethnographic encounter.     

The ethics and obligations of long-term ethnographic relationships: revelatory moments and the concept of solidarity

This article reflects on an ethical and revelatory moment in the development of my long-term fieldwork relationships with people of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Ethnographic research globally is now shaped through formal processes of ethical review, with the requirements for informed consent, privacy, and consideration of harm and beneficence. Researchers then have to put these procedures into practice, often encountering the need to weigh competing ethical principles, particularly when unforeseen events occur. Reflexivity has been argued to be crucial on these occasions. Yet both ethical codes and reflexivity fall short of managing ethical and relational implications of long-term field relationships. This article suggests that the concept of solidarity as theorized recently in bioethics may be helpful, particularly the discernment of three layers of relationship. What responsibilities might we as anthropologists have to the people we work with that go beyond procedural ethics? And how do moments such as the one described in this article shape ongoing field research?     

Neurofibromatosis type 1 and the "elephant man's" disease: the confusion persists: an ethnographic study

Background: In 1986, two Canadian geneticists had demonstrated that Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man, suffered from the Proteus syndrome and not from neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), as was alleged by dermatologist Parkes in 1909. Despite this and although the two diseases differ at several levels: prevalence, diagnostic criteria, clinical manifestations and transmission, the confusion between NF1 and the "elephant man's" disease continues in medical and social representations by current linguistic usage, and in some media reports. With this article, we want to 1) document the persistence and extent of this fallacy, 2) identify certain critical factors that contribute to its persistence, and 3) evaluate its impact on the health and well being of patients with NF1 and their family members.Methodology: Participant observation in the course of an ethnographic study on intergenerational dialogue between individuals with neurofibromatosis and their parents - Analysis of the scientific literature and of pinpoint articles in the print and online news media.Findings: Our findings show that because physicians have little knowledge about NF1, several print and online news media and a lot of physicians continue to make the confusion between NF1 and the disease the "elephant man". This misconception contributes to misinformation about the disease, feeding prejudices against affected patients, exacerbating the negative impacts of the disease on their quality of life, their cognitive development, their reproductive choices, as well as depriving them of proper care and appropriate genetic counseling.Conclusion: If family physicians and pediatricians were properly informed about the disease, they could refer their patients with NF1 to NF clinics and to specialists. Thus, patients and their family members would benefit from better-tailored clinical management of their cases, perhaps even optimal management. [corrected]     

The historical unreality of the proletariat as an ethnographic subject in Mexican anthropology

Dialectical Anthropology - At the beginning of the twentieth century, the anthropological field became one of the main means of integrating indigenous populations utilized by the Mexican State in...     

Discourse and power: On the limits of ethnographic texts

Dialectical Anthropology -     

Emergent publics,critical ethnographic scholarship and race and ethnic relations

This article asks what might be the possibilities and the limits of what academic research might strive for when we engage with the politics of race. It argues for a reflexive engagement with the historically sensitive production of critical ethnographic knowledge. Ethnography and the anthropological tradition, challenged in much politically progressive literature on race and ethnicity as a form of exoticism, a medium of orientialism and a field of misrepresentation, need to be considered in interdisciplinary traditions of knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences that examine efficacy and causality as central concepts of analysis.     

The interplay of ethnographic and archaeological knowledge in the study of past human subsistence in the tropics

Much of what is currently known or believed about how humans procured and produced food in the past stems from ethnographic and historical evidence of the subsistence practices of foragers and farmers. It is often difficult or impossible to relate archaeological evidence directly to the ethnohistorical record, although these two very different sources of data potentially complement each other. The potential of such complementarity is now being enhanced by the use of novel techniques, such as parenchyma, phytolith, and starch-grain analysis, for identifying fragmentary and amorphous organic remains retrieved from archaeological deposits, and by the use of the AMS (accelerator mass spectrometric) radiocarbon method to date very small samples, such as single seeds. More conventional ethnoarchaeological methods, by which field evidence of subsistence-related structures is compared with information derived from ethnographic and historical accounts, also continue to yield valuable insights into past food procurement and production. In this essay, the reciprocal relationship between archaeobotanical and ethnohistorical data is exemplified by examining (a) recent applications of novel analytical techniques in investigations of the antiquity of root and tuber cultivation in the American, African, and Southeast Asian tropics, and (b) the use of more conventional methods in the study of past forager subsistence in tropical northeastern Australia.     

Good anthropology in dark times: Critical appraisal and ethnographic application

‘Dark Anthropology’ and its complementary ‘Anthropology of the Good’ have become influential and debated notions in anthropology in recent years. I here parse distinctive features of these emphases, address their relation to theory and to ethnography, and consider the stakes involved in concretely applying their conceptual designations. I discuss the general shift in anthropology from grand theory to key concept, and the topical delimitation of theory that results. In larger purview, Dark Anthropology and the Anthropology of the Good both have long theoretical genealogies as well as practical contexts of political and social understanding, including vis‐à‐vis recent events in the U.S. and elsewhere. I suggest that considering the relationship between politico‐economically structured inequality and attempts to assert positive meaning and purpose is the most productive way to ethnographically apply their alternative conceptualisations. This brings to greater focus the thorny question of whose understanding of inequality or suffering, or of moral value and positive wellbeing, is being articulated—the sentiments of the people studied, or the concepts of the analyst? It seems vital to examine both analytic and indigenous views of dark times, and of the good, to refine our understanding of both, that is, in order to consider our complementary conceptualisations in relation to both sides of the emic/etic coin. This refines our understanding of local sensibilities and also of the appropriate limit points of our own conceptual associations.