Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography

Abstract

Since the development of mechanical visual technologies—such as still and moving photography—some producers and scholars have seen the potential of using these technologies as tools for social improvement and change. Photographers and journalists were the first to wed social justice to visual imagery, as well as early film pioneers like theorist and documentary innovator Dziga Vertov. Anthropologists and ethnographers also saw the benefit adopting visual technology for research early on, but many of the products of this early era were exploitative, stereotypical, and theoretically simplistic. Notable exceptions to this trend included Margaret Mead’s photographic and film work in Bali and beyond and Jean Rouch’s reflexive experimental films which both resulted in sensitive and influential work. The general tide began to change as the technology became more democratic and as wider theoretical discourse began to consider the various impacts of creation, representation, and dissemination. During the 1980s and into the 1990s there was a serious crisis within ethnographic film and the social sciences more widely concerning representations of the Other in Western media. This coincided with video cameras and videotape becoming more widely available commercially, leading to an explosion of visual projects including many that were Collaborative, Participatory, or otherwise aimed at improving the lives of the community or group being studied. The emphasis on collaboration and equal participation of those being studied continues today, and this article describes key threads of current research that continue to explore the intersections of activism and visual ethnography. Almost all regions of the globe have begun to see the establishment of video projects and other visual research with indigenous and other marginalized communities, including a general movement to decolonize museums and visual representations of indigeneity. There has been a growing awareness during this time that the products of indigenous filmmaking could not be thought of solely as products of academic research, but rather as resulting from indigenous perspectives within the context of academic research. This has given rise to major discourses questioning not only the received traditions of production and presentation of indigenous media, but the place of indigenous media within academia and within the international film world more broadly. More recent projects—including work in and with photography, video, multimedia, and museums—have continued to develop collaborative and participatory methods linking the evocative potential of visual ethnography to activist sensibilities including resistance movements, undermining traditional narratives, and community improvement.