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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Anna Grimshaw
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Summary

Visual anthropology

There is a tribe, known as the ethnographic film-makers, who believe they are invisible. They enter a room where a feast is being celebrated, or the sick cured, or the dead mourned, and, though weighted down with odd machines, entangled with wires, imagine they are unnoticed – or, at most, merely glanced at, quickly ignored, later forgotten.

Outsiders know little of them, for their homes are hidden in the partially uncharted rainforests of the Documentary. Like other Documentarians, they survive by hunting and gathering information. Unlike others of their filmic group, most prefer to consume it raw.

Their culture is unique in that wisdom among them is not passed down from generation to generation; they must discover for themselves what their ancestors knew. They have little communication with the rest of the forest, and are slow to adapt to technical innovations. Their handicrafts are rarely traded, and are used almost exclusively among themselves. Produced in great quantities, the excess must be stored in large archives.

Eliot Weinberger's humorous stereotype gives expression to an image which I suspect is widespread in academic anthropology – that ethnographic film-makers are weighed down by technical encumbrances; that they produce large quantities of boring footage which show strange people doing strange things, usually at a distance; that they are theoretically and methodologically naive.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Ethnographer's Eye
Ways of Seeing in Anthropology
, pp. 1 - 12
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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  • Introduction
  • Anna Grimshaw, University of Manchester
  • Book: The Ethnographer's Eye
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511817670.002
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  • Introduction
  • Anna Grimshaw, University of Manchester
  • Book: The Ethnographer's Eye
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511817670.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Anna Grimshaw, University of Manchester
  • Book: The Ethnographer's Eye
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511817670.002
Available formats
×