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Frontiers of Visual Anthropology: Theme As we enter the twenty first century visual anthropology has increasingly expanded from the emphasis on ethnographic filmmaking that dominated in the latter part of the twentieth century to take on a more diverse identity encompassing uses of documentation and elicitation and other visual research methods. Photographic and filmic research methods as well as the analysis of visual texts have all been part of visual anthropological practice throughout the twentieth century (e.g. in the work of Mead and Bateson and Collier) and were emphasised in statements by Worth, Ruby and Chalfen (e.g. Ruby and Chalfen 1973) and later by Morphy and Banks (1997). However until the end of the twentieth century visual methods of research and analysis were largely been salient in a subdiscipline dominated by and identified with ethnographic film production (at levels of both university training and practice). Currently visual anthropology is still engaged in a series of transformations, which to a large degree involve making links with other disciplines, testing how it might be more closely integrated with mainstream anthropology, and examining its applied potential outside academia. The aim of this seminar is to draw together anthropologists working across these areas to define the contemporary shape of visual anthropology, the questions and issues that it faces in the twenty first century, the wider contribution it can make to the building of theory, empirical evidence and methodological development in the academic social sciences and arts practice and its uses in applied work supporting the development of policy, collaborations with industry and the wider potential for visual anthropologically informed social intervention. As such the seminars will address a series of themes: 1. Challenges from within: the challenge of developments in anthropological theory and practice to the existing principles of visual anthropology: This might include critical discussions of examples of how visual anthropology might be both challenged or enriched by recent developments in areas of theory and practice including medical anthropology, anthropology of the senses, the work of indigenous anthropological filmmakers, and collaborative methods in research and representation. 2. Challenges and innovations at the edge: to examine projects that connect visual anthropology and other disciplines to develop new methodologies, and approaches. This might include 1) critical comment on interdisciplinary borrowings and appropriations of visual anthropology that challenge its position 2) discussions of what makes visual anthropology distinctive in ac context where it shares interests with other disciplines such as media and cultural studies, and 3) discussions of collaborative work that involves visual anthropologists and others (such as artists, performers) working together at the boundaries of both their disciplines. 3. External Engagements: an exploration of how visual anthropological work has informed and been informed by questions from 'beyond' academia - for instance in applied projects or in critical engagements with broader social and political issues: This might include applied visual anthropological projects in a range of areas that include public sector, NGO, or business as well as social interventions initiated by local communities in connection with anthropological work (such as health research, design anthropology and consumer ethnography, development communications, post-conflict work, migration studies), and work that discusses activist films that render visible exploitation. 4. The role of visual
anthropology in a public anthropology in the twenty first century: papers
that respond to this theme should consider how visual anthropology can
contribute to public anthropology. For example this might mean addressing
questions like: To what extent does ethnographic documentary film still
play a role?; What effects will the increasing use of mixed genres in
filmmaking have on documentary and anthropology?; Is there a role for
visual anthropologists in analysing and responding to public media texts?;
What is the role of anthropology in producing public art. |