Application deadline

Type of course

Admission requirements

May be taken as a single course. Application code 9371.

Reccommended previous knowledge:

For students of the Master's Programme in Visual Cultural Studies:

SVF-3101 Approaching social realities: Understanding other people's life-worlds

SVF-3102 Conveying social realities: Exploring audio-visual narrative strategies

For other students: A Bachelor's degree in a subject within the Social Sciences or Humanities.

Course content

Visual anthropology concerns both the use of (audio) visual material in research and the study of visual systems. The course will present and discuss various approaches to camera-based research, the use of visual material in processes of elicitation of knowledge and the study of already existing visible culture.  These are approaches which imply both challenges and possibilities for the praxis of ethnographic research and dissemination.

A focus on the non verbal fields of knowledge can contribute to a broadening of the field of communication between informant, researcher and audience, and accordingly also to an enlargement of the scope of the social sciences. It also invites for reflections on:

• How artifacts constitute aspects of social systems;
• How the relationships between visual perception and cultural organization unfold through time;
• How cultural representations are embedded in/generate power relations; and
• The potential new ways of doing so called applied research and research dissemination.

Recommended prerequisites

Objectives of the course

Students who successfully complete this course should have achieved the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

•  have knowledge on how the visual can be studied (semiology)
• have knowledge on how visual systems can be used in the discovery of social processes.
• have knowledge of the state of the art within visual ethnography/visual anthropology
• have solid knowledge of how photographic and filmic representations are used in social scientific traditions

Skills

• be able to identify the culturally specific signs which are expressed in smells, tastes, sounds, objects, gestures.
• be able to reflect critically on the role of sensorial expressions in cultural and social analysis
• be conscious of conventions in photo and film
• be able to reflect critically on the role visual representations play in concrete research projects

General competence

• be able to demonstrate how knowledge of systems of sensorial signs favours successful dialogues in the process of research  and dissemination
• be able to reflect critically of how visual representations articulate with text in social science representations.

Language of instruction and examination

Teaching methods

Assessment

Course attendance is compulsory, i.e. only valid absences will be approved. A minimum participation of 80 % is required.

The home examination is to be based on a given topic. Students have two weeks to complete the examination and submit a paper of ca. 3500 words (10 pages). Marking is made according to a grading scale from A to F, where F is fail. A re-sit exam will be arranged for this course

Recommended reading/syllabus

SVF-3107 Visual Ethnography - Reading List - Spring 2016

Calfen, R. and Rich, M. (2007) Combining the Applied, the Visual and the Medical: Patients Teaching Physicians with Visual Narratives. In Pink, S.(ed). Visual Interventions. Applied Visual Anthropology. Oxford. Berghahn books. (53-70)

Fuenta, E. and Walsh, M. (2013) Framing Through the Senses: Sight and Sound in the Shaping of Everyday Life. In (eds.) Michelsen, T. Kristensen, A. and Wiegand, F Transvisuality - The Cultural Dimension of Visuality.Vol.1 Boundaries and Creative openings. Liverpool University press, Liverpool. (207-222)

Ginsburg, F. (1995) Mediating Culture. Indigenous Media, Ethnographic Film and the Production of Identity. In Devereaux, L. and Hillman, R. (eds.)Fields of Vision. Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology and Photography. University of California Press, Berkeley. (256-291)

Grasseni, C. (2007) Good Looking: Learning to be a Cattle Breeder. In Grasseni (ed.) Skilled Visions. Between Apprenticeship and Standards. Berghahn Books, Oxford. (47-66)

Gullestad, M. (2007) "Propaganda for Christ". In Picturing Pity. Pitfalls and Pleasures in Cross-Cultural Communication. Image and word in North Cameroon Mission. Berghahn Books. (1- 34)

Hall, S. (1997) Representation. Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. SAGE Publications Ltd, London. (15-74)

Harper, D. (2012) Visual Ethnography. In Harper, D. Visual Sociology. Routledge, London. (8-18)

Harper, D. (2012) Photo elicitation. In Harper, D. Visual Sociology. Routledge. London. (155-188)

Holtedahl, L. (2010) "Up as a Rabbit-Down as a Lion." Socio-Economic Determinants of New Idioms of Legitimacy and Power in the Public/Private Space. Visual Case Stories from Urban Adamaoua, Cameroon. In Governing the African Public Sphere. CODESRIA, Dakar. (117-175)

MacDougall, D. (2006) Social Aesthetics and the Doon School. In The Corporeal Image. Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. Princeton University Press, Princeton. (94-119)

MacDougall, D (2006) New Principles of Visual Anthropology. In The Corporeal Image. Film, Ethnography and the Senses. Princeton, Princeton University Press. (264-274)

MacDougall, D. (1998) Visual Anthropology and Ways of Knowing. In Transcultural Cinema. Princeton University Press, Princeton. (61-92)

Mead, M. (1974 (1994)) Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words. In Hockings, P. (ed.) Principles of Visual Anthropology. Mouton de Gruyter, New York. (3-10)

Mitchell, W.J.T. (1996) What does Pictures Really Want? October 77 (Summer 1996): (71-82)

Postma, M. and Crawford, P. (2006) Introduction. Visual Ethnography and Anthropology. In (eds.) Postma, M. and Crawford, P. (eds.) Reflecting Visual Ethnography - using the camera in anthropological research. Intervention Press. Denmark. (1-5)

Pink, S. (2011) Digital Visual Anthropology: Potentials and Challenges. In Banks, M. and Ruby, R.(eds.) Made to Be Seen. Perspectives on the History of Visual Anthropology. (209-233)

Pink, S. (2006) A visual anthropology for the twenty-first century. In The Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging the Senses. Routledge, New York.

Prins, H. (2002) Visual Media and the Primitivist Perplex. Colonial Fantasies, Indigenous Imagination, and the Advocacy in North America. In Ginsburg,F., Abu-Lughod, L., and Larkin, B. (eds.) Media Worlds. Anthropology on New Terrain. University of California Press, Los Angeles. (58-74)

Schirato,T. and Webb, J. (2004) Understanding the Visual. Sage publications, London, (1-33)

Taylor, L. (1996) Introduction. In MacDougall, D. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton University Press, Princeton. (3-21)

Waage, T. (2013) Seeing Together. Towards a Shared Anthropology with Visual Tools. In Michelsen, T. Kristensen, A. and Wiegand, F. (eds.) Transvisuality - The Cultural Dimension of Visuality.Vol.1 Boundaries and Creative openings . Liverpool University press, Liverpool. (157-173)

@ Whitehead, H. (2010) The agency of yearning on the Northwest coast of Canada: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Salvage of Autochthonous Culture. Memory Studies 3(3): 215-223

Willerslev, R. (2007) "To have the world at distance": Reconsidering the Significance of Vision for Social Anthropology. In Grasseni, C. (ed.) Skilled Visions. Between Apprenticeship and Standards. Berghahn Books. Oxford. (23-46)