Abstract
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology which aims at getting insights into people’s lives through interaction and collaboration between the researcher and the researched mediated by a camera. This study which is based on document analysis and a two-week fieldwork in a high school, tries to retrace the evolution of shared anthropology from the fore fathers to its current developments and implementations. First of all, the founding principles of anthropology contributed to the underestimation of the camera in scientific research. Then, in the 1950s, contrary to the reifying perspectives of the first anthropologists influenced by positivism and structuralism, Jean Rouch orients anthropology towards a new approach by introducing the concept of shared anthropology.
Highlights
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology which aims at getting insights into people’s lives through interaction and collaboration between the researcher and the researched mediated by a camera
In the 1950s, contrary to the reifying perspectives of the first anthropologists influenced by positivism and structuralism, Jean Rouch orients anthropology towards a new approach by introducing the concept of shared anthropology
This paper aims at relating the different processes we followed in order to gain an anthropological knowledge from our fieldwork thanks to the contributions of our informants, the camera and our involvement as researchers and researched
Summary
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology which aims at getting insights into people’s lives through interaction and collaboration between the researcher and the researched mediated by a camera. At the image of his settlers’ colleagues, the ethnologist was considered as a superhuman, an enlightened who is observing the poor and powerless—exotic other, from a distance This is why Jean Rouch considered the anthropological approach of that time as—the elder daughter of colonialism, a discipline reserved to those with power interrogating people without it” (cited by Ruby, 2000). The camera is considered as a third actor who intervenes in the interaction between the anthropologist and his informants This innovative approach is defined by Rouch (2003) as an anthropological dialogue between people belonging to different cultures. This paper aims at relating the different processes we followed in order to gain an anthropological knowledge from our fieldwork thanks to the contributions of our informants, the camera and our involvement as researchers and researched. After a brief presentation of the fieldwork and, I will highlight progressively how I approached my informants, the interactions between me, my informants and the camera during the film period; and the transformation of the data in editing room thanks to the contribution of the audience
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