Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Visual and Media Anthropology

description11 papers
group14 followers
lightbulbAbout this topic
Visual and Media Anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that studies the cultural significance and social implications of visual media, including film, photography, and digital media. It examines how these forms of representation shape human experiences, identities, and social relations, emphasizing the role of visual culture in understanding diverse societies.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Visual and Media Anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that studies the cultural significance and social implications of visual media, including film, photography, and digital media. It examines how these forms of representation shape human experiences, identities, and social relations, emphasizing the role of visual culture in understanding diverse societies.

Key research themes

1. How is the ethnographic gaze conceptualized and operationalized in visual anthropology, particularly regarding its theoretical underpinnings and relationship with photography?

This research theme investigates the nature and theoretical framing of the ethnographic gaze within visual anthropology. It explores how anthropologists understand and critique the visual practices involved in fieldwork, including the relationship between the observer and the observed. The focus is on deepening conceptual clarity around visual epistemologies, the body-gaze nexus, and the role of photography as a critical tool in ethnographic knowledge production. This matters because the gaze shapes not only the production but also the interpretation of anthropological knowledge, impacting how cultures and subjects are represented and understood.

Key finding: The paper articulates a need to define the ethnographic gaze in theoretical terms, arguing the predominance of a 'Cartesian' visualist gaze that neglects embodied and cultural sensory modalities. It advances the idea that the... Read more
Key finding: This paper historicizes the long and complex relationship between anthropology and photography, emphasizing that photographic practices have been an intrinsic part of anthropological knowledge production since the late 19th... Read more
Key finding: The work provides a systematic and analytical overview of visual research in social sciences, critiquing the fragmented appropriation of visual methods and the neglect of ethical reflexivity in visual research. It offers... Read more

2. What are the methodological and ethical challenges encountered when integrating artistic practices and digital media technologies into anthropological film-making and ethnography?

This theme addresses how anthropologists navigate and synthesize their scientific and artistic identities in ethnographic film-making and digital media. It interrogates the conflicts, compromises, and reflexivities involved in producing anthropological knowledge through interactive and multimedia formats. Ethical considerations such as consent, representation, and the power dynamics of the ethnographic encounter in digital contexts are central. This matters because the evolving media landscape transforms both the practice and dissemination of anthropology, demanding critical methodological innovation and ethical vigilance.

Key finding: Through autoethnographic reflection on two documentary films, this paper reveals how anthropologist-filmmakers must constantly negotiate tensions between their scientific and artistic roles. It finds that anthropology neither... Read more
Key finding: The article introduces a multi-sited design ethnographic methodology that combines participant observation across multiple field sites with participatory design practices, tailored for new media ethnographies involving... Read more
Key finding: This paper provides an ethnographic account of interactive documentaries, emphasizing how digital imaging challenges traditional notions of visuality and documentary truth. It stresses the participatory, multimodal, and... Read more
Key finding: Beyond its theoretical critique, the book highlights the insufficient attention paid to ethical reflexivity during visual data production and research dissemination phases, especially in digital and interactive contexts. It... Read more

3. How do visual anthropology and media anthropology engage with the sociopolitical dimensions of mediated cultural expression, including the circulation of art, social media practices, and media's role in shaping identity and political subjectivities?

This theme explores visual and media anthropology’s focus on the circulation, reception, and political economy of visual art, social media, and mediated publics. It examines how anthropologists analyze the mediated production of cultural and political meaning in contexts such as art worlds, broadcast media, Islamic televisual programming, and social media platforms. Central concerns include the mediation of identity, power relations, and collective affect, as well as anthropology’s role in deciphering the interplay between symbolic forms and social structures.

Key finding: This special issue reviews the enduring impact of The Traffic in Culture on understanding art’s circulation and value production within anthropological inquiry, emphasizing art as deeply embedded in political, social, and... Read more
Key finding: This course-based exploration identifies social media platforms as culturally embedded and highly variable phenomena that intersect with issues of identity, power, ideology, and social institutions worldwide. It emphasizes... Read more
Key finding: This introduction outlines emergent scholarship on Indigenous media that foregrounds futurity and temporal sovereignty through diverse media forms, including television, film, virtual reality, and digital art. It... Read more
Key finding: The collection expands the scope of Indigenous media scholarship by linking media production with Indigenous articulations of futures and temporal sovereignty. It stresses that Indigenous media are not only reflective but... Read more
Key finding: By integrating media modalities—such as the immersive VR film 'Collisions'—with ethnographic and affect theory perspectives, the work demonstrates the embodied, somatic ways media can communicate Indigenous experiences of... Read more
Key finding: Highlighting the dialogic relationship between artist-mediated narratives and anthropological inquiry, this study frames Indigenous media projects as sites of contestation and creative sovereignty that reshape understandings... Read more
Key finding: The article analyzes mediated public performances of resistance in Italy during COVID-19 lockdown, developing an analytical framework of social intimacy across spatial, biographical, and mediational layers. It shows how... Read more
Key finding: This editorial draws on interdisciplinary perspectives to theorize consciousness, art, and media’s convergences as both political and aesthetic sites. It critiques Enlightenment assumptions and contemporary surveillance... Read more
Key finding: By engaging with Indigenous video projects that articulate postapocalyptic hope, this work explores how media can provide generative political imaginaries to counter narratives of collapse or cultural demise. This approach... Read more
Key finding: The work illustrates how Indigenous science fiction and media-IP projects provide political critique and cultural survival strategies, framing Indigenous futures as sites of imaginative sovereignty. By highlighting Native... Read more
Key finding: Examining the confluence of media, affect, toxicity, and mediation, this work underscores how Indigenous VR and immersive media disrupt normative storytelling, creating embodied audience experiences that challenge... Read more
Key finding: This work highlights Indigenous media’s function as 'temporal sovereignty', actively reinterpreting colonial histories and asserting Indigenous presence beyond past-imposed anachronisms. It foregrounds ethnographic approaches... Read more
Key finding: Addressing the broadening media forms of Indigenous representation, including comics, video games, and installations at venues like Indigenous Comic Con, this work situates visual anthropology at the intersection of emergent... Read more
Key finding: The scholarship underscores the critical potential of digital-native Indigenous media to puncture colonial temporalities, support collective memory, and challenge hegemonic historical narratives, thereby expanding the... Read more
Key finding: Through detailed ethnographic engagement, this study reveals Indigenous media's role as both a medium and message for political struggle, creative authority, and cultural restoration. This dual function informs a renewed... Read more
Key finding: By situating Indigenous-led media and media arts projects within global dialogues over cultural sovereignty and mediated aesthetics, this contribution provides a critical interdisciplinary framework that enriches debates... Read more
Key finding: This collection's interrogation of Indigenous digital media projects highlights visual anthropology's shifting boundaries with media and performance studies, underscoring the discipline's evolving role in decoding mediated... Read more
Key finding: The work stresses the necessity of ethnographic sensitivity to Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies as they are performed and reinterpreted through contemporary media, offering visual anthropology an expanded... Read more
Key finding: By analyzing diverse Indigenous media forms, including performance and virtual installations, this study elucidates how mediated cultural expressions are actively shaping Indigenous political futures, serving as sites of both... Read more
Key finding: By documenting the intersections between shifting Indigenous identities and mediated artistic expressions, this work offers visual anthropology a critical vantage point for understanding and challenging dominant ideological... Read more
Key finding: Through a synthesis of media ethnography and Indigenous studies, this work advances visual anthropology's engagement with media as both cultural artifact and political intervention, emphasizing media production processes and... Read more
Key finding: This work's rich ethnographic data on Indigenous media emphasize the productions as emergent spaces for reimagining sovereignty, resistance, and communal selfhood, thus expanding the theoretical and practical scope of visual... Read more
Key finding: By situating Indigenous media within contemporary geopolitical struggles over cultural representation and resource control, this scholarly effort significantly enriches visual anthropology’s interrogation of the relationships... Read more
Key finding: This comprehensive exploration highlights how Indigenous media not only reflect but also model alternative temporalities and cosmologies, thus expanding visual anthropology's capacity to engage with diverse ontologies and... Read more
Key finding: The work foregrounds modes of Indigenous self-representation that resist colonial erasure by deploying multimodal media strategies that redefine narrative authority, thereby contributing critical perspectives to visual... Read more
Key finding: Through ethnographic analysis of Indigenous media projects, this study illustrates the productive tensions between technological innovation and cultural continuity, offering visual anthropology nuanced analytical tools for... Read more
Key finding: By highlighting Indigenous media producers’ roles as cultural agents and knowledge brokers, this work reinforces visual anthropology’s commitment to collaborative and decolonizing methodologies in ethnographic media production.
Key finding: This study advances visual anthropology’s understanding of media aesthetics as politically charged sites where indigeneity is continuously negotiated, challenged, and reimagined amid global and local pressures.
Key finding: Through interdisciplinary collaboration and ethnographic rigor, this collection elucidates the complex ways in which media function as vehicles for Indigenous futurity, identity articulation, and political agency, enriching... Read more

All papers in Visual and Media Anthropology

O dossiê que temos o prazer de apresentar articula textos que fazem uma interlocução com os temas de pesquisa debatidos pelo Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas em Antropologia Contemporânea -GEPAC 3 . As discussões levadas a cabo giram em torno... more
Resumen Desde las instituciones estatales, las mesas de participación ciudadana son presentadas como mecanismos democráticos que permiten la toma de decisiones responsables y que traerán beneficios para la sociedad civil. En este trabajo,... more
Este texto discute la importancia de la memoria como mecanismo de defensa, para un pueblo originario en el entorno urbano. A través de un recorrido por la historia oral, se plantea la problemática situación del pueblo de San Sebastián de... more
This practice-led thesis constitutes a timely response to the absence of audio and visual representation of labour practices and post-industrial space in the context of Ireland’s accelerated economic development during the past decade,... more
In the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic situation, physical interaction and public performances became difficult, while use of digital media for public and private purposes was extended and intensified. This affected citizens’ right of assembly and... more
Este artigo avalia criticamente a contribuição de Pierre Clastres para o entendimento do poder, enfatizando sua noção de "sociedade contra o Estado". Mostra que a crítica de Clastres a Lévi-Strauss não exclui uma proposta... more
O seguinte artigo tem como objetivo contribuir, ainda que de modo preliminar, para a ampliação das discussões acerca de Religião, Gênero e Espaço Público de modo geral e, especialmente, as formas de configuração da religião islâmica na... more
Centrally informed through the application of photography, my multi-media practice has evolved to one conversant in ethnography and the principles of a critically reflexive practice. Ethnography can be viewed as an epistemological... more
Este Relato de Experiência se baseia em uma atividade realizada através do Estágio Interdisciplinar de Vivência e Intervenção na Bahia (EIVI). Utilizando a Educação Popular como base metodológica, foram realizadas intervenções em um... more
O presente artigo apresenta algumas reflexões sobre a noção de poder e como esta se configura como uma categoria analítica no campo da globalização. Partimos da perspectiva histórica a fim de provocar reflexões sobre os "velhos insights"... more
O presente artigo compila algumas reflexões sobre a noção de poder e como esta se configura como uma categoria analítica na área da Antropologia Política. Dessa forma, partimos da perspectiva histórica a fim de provocar reflexões sobre os... more
Resumo: Este artigo analisa o interacionismo simbólico sob uma perspectiva de longo prazo, partindo de suas origens pragmáticas, passando pelas críticas que recebeu até a revitalização da tradição. O fio que costura a análise vem do... more
Este artigo propõe uma reflexão metodológica. Apresenta-se um diálogo entre teorias sociológicas do século passado e a pesquisa com mídia digital que o autor vem desenvolvendo. O objetivo é discutir como uma etnografia virtual... more
O artigo apresenta uma discussão teórica sobre antropologia urbana e o interacionismo simbólico na cidade. Discuto sobre o conceito de sociedades complexas e a questão do patrimônio cultural e simbólico no contexto do urbanismo... more
Este trabalho busca realizar uma discussão que aproxima a perspectiva praxiológica da comunicação com formulações centrais sobre os processos identitários, especialmente os coletivos. Em razão desse exercício, em que também utilizamos as... more
Resumo: Este artigo reflete sobre complexidades e caixas-pretas como Bruno Latour elaborou, aqui para as políticas de saúde mental no Brasil. Caixas pretas são 'máquinas' que não se consegue destrinchar, panaceia de complexidades. O que... more
Este artigo pretende discutir o emprego de uma abordagem de natureza socioantropológica do processo saúde-doença como forma de se produzir o enfrentamento de iniquidades em saúde. Considerando-se que os elementos culturais têm sido pouco... more
O PAPEL DA(O) ANTROPÓLOGA(O) RELATIVAMENTE AOS CONTEXTOS ATUAIS DA HUMANIDADE E AOS ATIVISMOS CONTEMPORÂNEOS RESUMO: a Antropologia, enquanto Ciência Social, tem nas sociedades-com suas características, especificidades, conexões,... more
em jornalismo, doutor em Ciências Sociais pela PUC/SP, docente na Cásper Líbero, faz uma viagem pelos caminhos tortuosos e labirínticos da identidade em profícua relação com a comunicação. Ele constrói sua obra fruto de um trabalho como... more
Consideramos que este livro pode preencher uma lacuna na divulgacao de trabalhos na area da Antropologia da Doenca e da Antropologia Medica, desejamos que contribua para melhorar a comunicacao entre representantes de diferentes áreas do... more
RESUMO Os " Estudos Subalternos " devem ser entendidos como uma corrente historiográfica que nasce na Índia, tentando traçar uma história daquele país enfatizando os conceitos produzidos naquele país e não aqueles definidos, sobretudo, no... more
El presente artículo tiene por objetivo comprender los usos económicos del Internet y el celular en la agricultura y el turismo de la comunidad de Yanque (Caylloma, Arequipa). En primer lugar, se propone reconstruir los principales... more
O Conceito de Identidade O conceito de identidade, assim como o de pertencimento, só tem sentido se relacionado à alteridade, pois a propriedade de alguém ser idêntico a si mesmo só ocorre se for em relação à diferenciação do outro. A... more
A análise procura aproximações e distanciamentos entre alguns dos principais conceitos abordados por Michel de Certeau e Michel Foucault, construindo uma proposta que os aproxime no estudo da constituição dos sujeitos. Foi considerada a... more
Social media platforms have quickly transformed communication, relationships, identities, education and power relations. These platforms have also become a popular topic for discussion and research, yet most claims made about social media... more
This article explores the ethics of the current "War on Terrorism", asking whether anthropology, the discipline devoted to understanding and dealing with cultural difference, can provide us with critical purchase on the justifications... more
Indigenous futures are not only vital for Aboriginal people; they also provide valuable insight into global challenges. Building on Indigenous futurisms scholarship on Native science-fiction films, I engage recent Indigenous Australian... more
This collection of essays engages the ways in which anthropological understandings of Indigenous media can be expanded and reimagined through a focus on futurity. Throughout, the contributors pose two distinct yet interconnected... more
O presente ensaio procura refletir, utilizando de exemplos pontuais, sobre alguns caminhos percorridos pela prática etnográfica contemporânea e como antropólogos da atualidade tem procurado reinventar seus procedimentos investigativos a... more
This study it´s a reflection about “practices of popular cure” present in Amazon context and it takes some theory-methodological studies like references, which this studies talk about subject-in-screen, in the region. This apprehension... more
Link to a 23-minute documentary film entitled The War of the Princes of Rain ("La guerra de los príncipes de la lluvia", in Spanish) researched, directed and co-produced by Bernardo Pérez-Soler: https://vimeo.com/119632830 (Please... more
Turkey has witnessed a proliferation of Islamic television channels since the liberalization of broadcasting in the 1990s. The programming of these TV channels was initially distinctly theological in character, with shows focusing on the... more
Promoção à saúde e empoderamento: uma reflexão a partir das perspectivas crítico-social pós-estruturalista Health promotion and empowerment: a reflection based on critical-social and post-structuralist perspectives Resumo Neste trabalho,... more
Michel de Certeau aborda no capítulo VII, " Caminhadas pela Cidade " uma problematização acerca do embora já conhecido espaço urbanizado de uma cidade, onde ele pode nos apresentar um manancial de possibilidades de se pensar esse meio. As... more
Diante das discussões acerca das temáticas indígenas no âmbito da Educação Física, o artigo procura abordar o papel da memória na ordenação e nas transferências de expressões corporais. Tem o objetivo de analisar e descrever as tradições,... more
O intercultural visa apreender a diversidade mediante dois componentes: a complexidade e a multirreferencialidade. Nesta abordagem crítica ambos são contemplados a partir do conceito de dialética cultural, formulado ao longo do texto. A... more
Este é um artigo publicado em acesso aberto (Open Access) sob a licença Creative Commons Attribution, que permite uso, distribuição e reprodução em qualquer meio, sem restrições desde que o trabalho original seja corretamente citado.... more
Capítulo 4 do livro de Basil Bernstein, "Pedagogia, Controle Simbólico e Identidade." A tradução destes capítulos foi feita com apoio do programa CAPES-PIBID e destina-se apenas a usos não-comerciais, em grupos de estudo e aulas. (Ronai... more
Resumo: Existe uma relação conceitual entre o Interacionismo Simbólico e os contem-porâneos estudos sobre cultura e poder, o pós-estruturalismo e a denominada crítica pós-moderna. O interesse é evidenciar em que medida assistimos a um... more
E ste estudo objetiva analisar os diferentes modos pelos quais os membros organizacionais percebem e experimentam a valoração do conhecimento no contexto do trabalho. Realizou-se uma pesquisa fenomenográfica com profissionais de RH, que,... more
Download a free pdf at the link above Based on 15 months of ethnographic research in the city of Alto Hospicio in northern Chile, this book describes how the residents use social media, and the consequences of this use in their daily... more
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? é a questão que dá nome à reflexão de Lila Abu-Lughod, antropóloga com um extenso trabalho etnográfico em comunidades no Egito, e que estabelece o mote para a extensa e fundamentada resposta da autora,... more
Pensar o sujeito moderno enquanto indivíduo centrado – dotado apenas de uma identidade única - é uma fantasia (HALL, 2006). Mais adequado seria, segundo Hall, perceber e compreender o sujeito moderno enquanto um ser que vive uma história... more
O presente artigo teve como objetivo principal apreender os mecanismos sociais encontrados no candomblé – uma das várias formas de expressões religiosas de matriz africana no Brasil. Ao adentrar neste sistema religioso terapêutico, os... more
This paper aimed to seize the uses of therapeutic resources from customers, believers or not, who attend the Candomblé, understood as a African roots religion in Brazil. By entering this religious system therapeutic, the subjects will try... more
Download research papers for free!