te third subject- perspectives on visual antropology

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The Third Subject: Perspectives on Visual AnthropologyAuthor(s): Chris WrightReviewed work(s):Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Aug., 1998), pp. 16-22Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2783352 .Accessed: 15/05/2012 22:14

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It is also not surprising hat demand for genetic testingis on the increase. However, reading the omens andtransmitting this complex, inconclusive knowledge,wild-cards and all, so that people do not panic, is an artthat it is likely very few have mastered.

We have at least five issues to sort out post-hastewhich have relevance to all multifactorial diseases inwhich genetics are sometimes implicated, includingprostate cancer and heart disease, among others. First,how to put in place enforceable regulatory measures inconnection with facilities that provide genetic testing

and screening. Second, how to prevent discriminationagainst individuals both in the work place and by insur-ance companies on the basis of genetics. Third, weshould reconsider our current devotion to the ideas ofindividual choice, and to self-responsibility for main-taining health as being more important han other fac-tors. Fourth, we (the media, the public and many healthcare professionals) must become better acquainted withprobability mathematics f we are to interpret risk ana-lyses. And fifth, it is urgent that we disabuse ourselvesof genetic determinism. O-

Examining he SocialConstruction f Medicine.Edinburgh: U. of EdinburghP.

Yoxen, Edward. 1982.Constructing GeneticDiseases. In P. Wright andA. Treacher eds) TheProblem of MedicalKnowledge: Examining heSocial Construction fMedicine. Edinburgh: U. ofEdinburgh P., pp. 144-161.

h e t h i r su jectPerspectives on visual anthropology

CHRISWRIGHT

The author is the RAI'sPhotographic Librarian.He is currentlyundertaking researchprogramme on somecollections in the RAIphoto archive, fundedby the Leverhulme Trust.

'Visual Anthropology' is having something of a re-naissance within certain sections of the contemporaryanthropological community.1 Increasing numbers ofUK undergraduate nd MA anthropology courses havetitles like 'Anthropology and Representation', and fre-quently combine an interest in the visual products ofanthropologists with media studies and the anthropo-logy of art. The recent workshop 'Mediating Modem-ities' hosted by the Department of Anthropology atUniversity College London2 saw anthropologists debat-ing what strategies the discipline should adopt to copewith an increasingly mediated world. But, although theterm is used regularly, what is currently meant by com-bining the two words 'visual' and 'anthropology' re-mains far from clear. Anthropology and the visual canbe articulated in a variety of ways, and through adiverse range of processes, and what follows is a con-sideration of some of these articulations inspired, and

provoked, by recent attempts to redefine visual anthro-pology as a sub-discipline.

PolaritiesThe recently published book Rethinking Visual Anthro-pology, edited by Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy,sets out to rewrite the role of the visual within contem-porary anthropology. In their introduction o the book,Banks and Morphy make a number of initial distinc-tions that outline how they see visual anthropology as asub-discipline. First, they distinguish between the studyof visual systems and visual culture, and the use of vis-ual material n research practice; and second, they alsoseparate the role of visual material in the presentationand consumption of anthropological knowledge, fromits role in the production of such knowledge. Althoughthe terms of this model are not necessarily directly op-posed to each other, it is the study of visual culture thatthey want to emphasize for current ocus, and as a fu-ture direction for the sub-discipline.

One of the stated aims of the book is to '...reintegratea sub-discipline within a wider whole', though Banksand Morphy also argue, somewhat contradictorily, hat'...anthropology should free itself from rigid discipli-nary boundaries'. The question that arises from their in-troduction s, why is there a need for such a reintegra-tion? Possibly because visual anthropology s currentlyon a threatening rajectory of escape from the orbit ofmainstream anthropology. If this is the case, then the

move to consolidate is possibly either symptomatic ofsome underlying structural weakness within anthropo-

logy, or maybe the result of increasing encroachmentfrom other disciplines. In a positive light, the move to-wards reintegration ould be seen as an attempt to usevisual anthropology as a theoretical tool to alter someof anthropology's assumptions about its object of studyand its strategies of working. Yet the visual, in severaldifferent modes, has been central to anthropology romits inception, although often unacknowledged as such:which would make recognition a better term. In a nega-tive light, the move to reintegrate can be seen as a po-licing of the boundaries between disciplines. If this isthe case, then I would argue that such a move is poten-tially detrimental to the development of new knowl-edges, and new forms of representation.

Although Banks and Morphy set out to re-think boththe place of visual anthropology within anthropology asa whole, as well as the structure of the sub-discipline,they claim that the book '...includes precisely the range

of topics that were covered in the issues of LarryGross's and Jay Ruby's pioneering journal Studies inVisual Communication originally founded in 1974 bySol Worth) which set the framework or the sub-disci-pline.' Despite this claim, the book as a whole does notrepresent a return to some founding framework oragenda, and contributions by Elizabeth Edwards, Ni-cholas Thomas and Anna Grimshaw amongst others,suggest new and challenging directions for visual an-thropology.

Yet it seems that visual anthropology is to be re-thought mostly on, and within, its own terms. Some ofthe pieces in the book put forward arguments that re-main largely internal to anthropology as a discipline,and the overall feel of the book is that it is both by, andfor, anthropologists - making its general 'movementperhaps more centripetal han centrifugal. This tends toreinforce the notion that visual anthropology s some-thing done solely by established professional anthropo-logists, rather than being a broader field which mightencompass a much wider range of disciplines andpotential practices.

This centripetal movement is perhaps some kind ofinstitutional regrouping', and Banks and Morphy arguethat the task of visual anthropology hould now be '...totranscend the political nature of representation and torethink its strategies for engaging with the world.'(p.3 1). I would certainly agree that strategies of engage-ment need to be rethought, but visual anthropology s

not some transcendent realm of theory that has theworld as its object of study, a realm outside the in-

This article owes much toconversations with the artistsCraigie Horsfield and LotharBaumgarten, and I amgrateful o them for theirtime and generosity. I amalso indebted o ChrisPinney, Michael Richardson,Roslyn Poignant, ArndSchneider and Laurent vanLancker or their discussionof some of the issuescovered above, and toJonathan Benthall and SeanKingston for their adviceand patience.

I would like to thankLothar Baumgarten or hispermission o let mereproduce his work here. Ihope to give his work fullerconsideration at a later date.

I am also very grateful toPatsy Asch for permission toreproduce he late Tim

Asch's photo in this article.

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fluence of a myriad of other contexts. It is as firmlyembedded within the specificities of historical and cul-tural contexts and relations, as anthropology tself is.

A caption from the introduction sheds some light onhow the relation between 'visual' and 'anthropology' scurrently igured within some areas of visual practice nanthropology. A relation that is often still perceived interms of some vague disjunction between science andinformation on the one hand, and art or aesthetics onthe other. The caption (p.12) accompanies three stillsfrom Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon's seminalfilm The Ax Fight (1975):

Tim Asch always tressed he importance f the anthropo-logical relevance f a still or moving mage over other as-pects, such as image quality or aesthetic composition.While he atter re desirable hey should not be overridingfactors n determining he selection f an mage.

Here then, is an originating separation, a founding divi-sion on which a whole edifice is constructed. On theone hand anthropological relevance, on the other aes-thetic composition. The terms are figured here as separ-able, separate and antagonistic; as though they are com-peting polarities. Visual anthropology nvolves a deci-sion making process, one in which the 'anthropologi-cal' must necessarily be privileged over the 'aesthetic',or over the visual in general. For many anthropologists

this is perhaps he primary anthropological echnique ofthe observer4. I would argue the case for a productivecomplementarity between the two terms, rather thanany necessary privileging of one term over the other.

Whether this anthropological relevance is somethingwhich is actually visible, and if so, in what ways, is notfully addressed by Banks and Morphy. If it is theability of the visual to illustrate an already formulatedanthropological heory, then the visual becomes of in-terest only in its ability to correspond with previouslyexisting models. The questions of how, for whom, andthrough what relations this anthropological relevance isconstructed are the important ones here. I would arguethat decisions about anthropological relevance involveaesthetic choices, and an insistence on the differencebetween this relevance and aesthetic composition hasled to the latter's becoming to some extent taboo.5

In terms of this anthropological relevance, Banksand Morphy seem to retain a particular belief in data, ininformation which can be recorded hrough visual tech-niques and analysed later. Here the integrity of the pro-filmic event is maintained - as if the camera simplyrecords what happens in front of its omniscient lens,events which would have taken place whether the ca-mera was there or not - and the neutrality of the ob-server is effectively preserved. Banks and Morphy are,of course, arguing that this is only one possible use ofvisual material, albeit currently the major one. But ifthis is the case, then 'illustrated anthropology' might be

a better term to describe such practices.In this light it is the paradoxical, often contradictory

nature of the relationship between anthropology and thevisual that is perhaps the subject of The Ax Fight, and itis only secondarily a film about Yanomami kinship.The film shows the process of visual anthropology naction, how filmmaking can be part of a process of in-terpretation, and this is why it is such an exemplaryteaching film, and such a well-used, even over-used.example. An initial event, the fight, is first shown inseveral long unedited shots, with the confused voices ofthe filmmakers as they try to work out what is goingon. This is followed by a series of clips and stills ac-companied by kinship charts, maps, and a voice-overcommentary, before a final edited version of the event.In showing the unedited 'raw' footage as largely in-

comprehensible the film reveals that what was of an-thropological relevance was not known, and maybe insome sense was not even present, when the filmingtook place. This relevance comes later, and the kinship,the anthropology, appears as an overlay, a kind of sup-plement that comes from a dissection and rearrange-ment of the visual. The alchemical production of kin-ship from chaos. The film separates seeing and know-ing; the visual is a potential source of knowledge, butnever on its own terms.6

The status of the visual in much contemporary isualanthropological practice is often achieved largelythrough a denial of any aesthetics, constructed hrougha distancing from any potentially polluting 'artistic'concerns. Of course, the aesthetic is of some interest,there is some recognition that it can make a film moreexciting, more watchable, more emotional, more avail-able to a TV audience (all terms which tend to arousesome suspicion within anthropology) but only, if at all,as a secondary concern.

This disenfranchisement of vision is perhaps the re-sult of the vestiges of a certain Cartesianism within an-thropology. Knowledge, information, understanding resomehow divorced from the body and its senses.7 Thegeneral distrust of the embodied observer has led to a

focus on the technology employed to gather data. 'Thusone major advantage of visual recording methods is thatthey enable the ethnographer o scan and record forlater inspection and re-analysis. Visual recordingmethods have properties such that they are able to rec-ord more information han memory alone, or notebookand pencil, and that certain of them are indexically re-lated to the reality they encode.' (Banks and Morphyp.14)

TechnologiesOne of the accepted models for the origins and rise ofvisual anthropology as a recognised sub-discipline con-cerns precisely the development of new technologies. Itis a history that has been reiterated so often as to takeon the status of doctrine. In fact it glosses over manycomplexities, as Grimshaw's account (in Marcus andBanks) of early uses of film in anthropology so clearlyshows, and elides many concurrent aesthetic develop-ments. The advent of lightweight portable 16mm filmequipment and new low-light film stocks in the 60's isfrequently identified as signalling the advent of visualanthropology, or at least of heralding a 'golden era' ofanthropological filmmaking, one which has nowpassed. This new technology was seen as less intru-sive , and allowed an 'intimacy' with the subjects thatwas previously not thought possible. A large-scale tech-nological presence, large cameras, tripods, lights sig-nalled an excessive intervention, an overt sense of con-

struction.8 The new technology also allowed,the anthro-pologist to work on her or his own, or with a minimalnumber of others. The period has become modelled asone of individual 'pioneers' of filmmaking within an-thropology, visual anthropology's equivalent of an ar-tistic avant-garde.

It has never been seriously suggested that a hand-held camera or lack of lights can guarantee ntimacywith those being filmed. However, there is a hint oftechnological determinism n these kinds of arguments.If we concede that the development of 16mm equip-ment and other technologies did contribute o the birthof visual anthropology in its current ncarnation, thenwe might speculate on what changes technology likethe new Sony PC7 digital video camera might engen-der. The size of a small paperback book, this device

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initiates a short-circuiting of some of the processes ofrepresentation. Rather than a viewing screen encasedwithin an eyepiece, as with the majority of videocameras, the PC7 has its own fold-out mini-TV screen.Vision is no longer as directly connected to the eye ofthe camera-operator, who becomes instead a kind ofrelay, one point in a circuit. The previous model thatconnected the scene of action, the camera, and the eyeof the camera-operator n a single line, is disrupted anda feedback loop is established between two positions.The camera and what it is pointed at, and the operatorand the camera's screen. Previously denied the choice- the camera-operator aw what the camera saw - sheor he is now torn between looking at the screen, andlooking at the scene; a constant play between the two.The camera no longer needs to come directly betweenyou and what you are filming.

This can be visualized as a technique of the body;one of the ways in which the development of camerasand video camcorders have forced the body into aseries of different postures. Most involve a physicalconnection between the camera, the eyepiece and theeye, but with the PC7 there is no longer any necessarycorrelation or coordination between eye movement andcamera movement. It makes apparent what was already

established once the physical optics of mirrors was re-placed by the digital delay of video; you no longer lookat what you are filming through he camera, you look atthe screen. You look with the camera, not through it.Everything is already displayed as a spectacle on thescreen, signalling a partial collapse of the difference be-tween filming and viewing.

What this example of the effective distancing of thecamera-operator llustrates, is that visual anthropolog-ists should be concerned with what is anthropologicalabout film, TV, the Internet and a whole range of othermedia as media. A focus on the relations they mediateand engender is an important and necessary componentof any use of them as techniques.9 What is importantare the relations of communication.

In terms of visual anthropology, a fieldworker pos-sessing the right portable computer, with a largeenough memory and appropriate oftware, could nowpotentially conduct some editing of digital video on thespot, and sections of the finished film could even besent back on-line. But this could be seen as anothershort-circuiting process, a disappearance of differencesbetween there and here, and an example of the geo-graphy of space being replaced by that of time. Cer-tainly, most contemporary anthropologists doing field-work take photographs, and an ever increasing numberalso use video cameras, and in this sense new technol-ogy like digital video does offer the potential for a hugegrowth in the numbers of practising visual anthropolog-

ists, although the use of a camera does not necessarilymake a visual anthropologist. However, whether ornot this will have any corresponding effect on what ac-tually constitutes visual anthropological practice is cur-rently unclear. Although the camera is often used as away of relating to other people, as well as a way ofrecording data, much of the visual material which iscurrently generated simply does not find the light ofday within anthropology. To acknowledge this largelyunseen archive of images raises questions about thecontinued centrality of text within contemporary nthro-pology.

To some extent anthropology grew out of, and along-side, a whole range of visual practices,l and Grim-shaw's article in Rethinking Visual Anthropology ar-gues convincingly for a reintegration of contemporary

anthropology with some of the aims of early filmmak-ing and the work of the early British anthropologist andpsychologist W.H.R.Rivers, who sought to relate inte-rior states to external observations. Along with talking,listening and a range of other senses and relations,sight, techniques of observing, and ways of looking, areall central to the practice of ethnography and 'partici-pant observation'. In a different way, they are also im-plicit in anthropology's project as a whole; looking atother, and our own, cultures. Visual metaphors andtropes for anthropology are everywhere you look.

There are obviously many inherent and frequentlydiscussed contradictions n the ambivalent erm 'partici-pant observation'. Observation, at least as conceptuallyloaded in scientific discourse, implies some kind ofnecessary distance, a sense of detachment, and withthem a false notion of neutrality. Timothy Asch is oftenquoted as having compared the use of the movie ca-mera in anthropology, o the use of the microscope inbiology, and the telescope in astronomy. This scientificaura of a detached and neutral vision still continues toguarantee much of the veracity and indexical quality ofcontemporary visual anthropology. But I would arguethat it is actually the relations that are involved in an-thropological practice that can support some sense of

veracity, rather than adherence to documentary or rea-list models of representation. Of course, the other sideof the term - 'participant' implies a very definite kindof relation between people, an involvement that isbackgrounded n the term observation. The relationshipbetween these two terms, like that between 'anthropo-logical relevance' and 'aesthetic composition', remainsone of constant tension.

Banks and Morphy recognize anthropology as essen-tially a representational ractice: 'An understanding ofthe nature of representational rocesses across culturesis [...] integral to the overall objectives of anthropo-logy.'(p.2) Yet in its representing, anthropology usuallyprivileges one convention or genre, one way of visuallyapprehending thers - documentary ealism - and thereis a sense in which the documentary mode is part of ourown aesthetic. Of course, much of this argument de-pends on the intended audiences for any visual anthro-pology product. Granada Television's now sadly de-funct anthropology series, Disappearing World, con-sciously targeted a popular viewing audience. But it isprecisely these notions of audience that anthropologicalapproaches o media have now begun to question. The'creative' nature of documentary ilmmaking has beenacknowledged for some time, and other ways of trans-lating experience cross-culturally, other ways of com-municating and representing, need to be considered.One reason other modes of representation re often re-garded as illegitimate forms for representing ncounters

with difference within anthropology, is that they arethought not to contain information, or perhaps not theright kind of information.

But the aim of anthropology s, of course, not just toprovide information or data, at least not in the sense ofsome direct, unmediated, or value-free way, and whatpasses as information n anthropology s itself subjectto continual mutation and revision. Anthropology isalso about communication n the broad sense of an ex-change, and representation hould not be seen solely interms of the information t can provide. Yet the visualis often still treated within anthropology solely as atechnique, an indexical technology for providing re-liable data, rather than as presenting a whole range ofpotential relations, methods and theories.

Photographs

Top: 'Yanomamo amily,Venezuela', Tim Asch1968 or 1971 rom frontcover of VisualAnthropology Review11.1, 1995, 'Out ofsynch: the cinema of TimAsch'

Notes: The detachedposition of the observer,we seem not to intrude?The construction fspace, a certain distanceis createdinformation? n intimatemoment s revealed('kinship'?) trust - ourintimacy with Asch.What re the differencesin intended audience andresponse compared oBaumgarten?

Below: 'Ya onibrarema- I decorate myselfNatoma romKashoraweU-t ri paintsher body and face withNana red. If they donot paint themselvesregularly, then they agequickly. Yanomami,Alto Orinoco, Venezuela1978.' LotharBaumgarten rominstallation atDocumenta X, Kassel,Germany, 1997.

Notes: How are weinvolved as obververshere? Natoma'sself-awareness and herrelationship withobserver(s). Display?The exhibition as aphysical demonstrationof coevalness. Differencein the assumed agency ofthe practitionercompared o Asch?Differing rames ofreference. Reverse thecontexts of exhibition?The mirror as ametaphor of change?'the imbrication of the

primitive and themodern, not theiropposition' (Hal Foster).

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Anthropology has traditionally ended to t ranslate hevisual into words. This is arguably why what visual an-thropologists do appears to a large extent - at least inthe UK - to be currently synonymous with film, andnow video. Practical visual anthropology coursesmainly teach students to make mostly documentaryfilms. Seemingly more so than other visual forms, filmscan be treated by anthropologists as texts and nar-ratives, and film form frequently mirrors hat of the eth-nographic monograph, belying an overwhelming needfor a certain kind of narrative. Typical anthropologicaluses of narrative are as genre-bound in their way asthose of classical Hollywood cinema. Films can betreated as texts, but this is surely only one, often nar-row, way of treating and making them? Like the ma-terial culture of others, visual objects produced by an-thropologists often only seem to take on meaning wheninscribed within written histories and embedded intexts. It is as if objects, performances, and other formsonly accumulate cultural value by being writtenabout. Textual 'labels' can also work in a way whichnegates our awareness of objects as sensual entities, orfreeze that awareness within an instrumental and pre-dictable frame of response.

Despite the production of significant numbers of

films, videos and other visual forms, visual anthropo-logy, like anthropology itself, currently remains to alarge extent a discipline weighted towards words andtexts. It is possible to see the relation between wordsand images within visual anthropology n terms of thepolarity between anthropological relevance and aes-thetic composition. An example of this can be seen inanother of Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon'sfilms Magical Death. What we see in one section ofthis film is a Yanomami shaman taking hallucinogenicsnuff and going into trance, a series of visceral and dis-turbing images of possession. Yet what we hear, overand above the moaning and shouting of the shaman, isthe anthropological ommentary explaining calmly howthe event is linked to kinship and inter-communitypolitics. As a spectator you are confronted with a dis-junction between vision and text (as commentary) interms of the information each is providing: the two ap-pear unrelated.

The heavier emphasis placed on one value of thispolar system in preference to the other, is also revealedin the relative lack of images in recent publications onvisual anthropology.13 Although there are in fact somesixty small black and white photographs nserted withinthe text of Rethinking Visual Anthropology, none arefull page, and none stand on their own without disci-plining words. They remain mostly illustrations of thetext, and, inset within it, they are restricted to backingup the words. Although there are obviously constraints

within the current publishing climate, with authorsoften having to pay for illustrations themselves, morevisual works do not necessarily need to be hugely ex-pensive ventures. The relations between image and textin such works could also be approached more crea-tively.14 The tendency to adopt an oppositional modelbetween anthropological relevance and aesthetic com-position, between word and image, perhaps belies, oractually works to perpetuate, ome perceived threat hatthe visual poses to anthropology.

BoundariesPerhaps there is a need for boundaries between anthro-pology and disciplines like art precisely because thereis actually such an affinity between them, a large areaof overlap as similar strategies for representing culture.

In the introduction to another recent visual anthropo-logy publication, The Traffic in Culture, GeorgeMarcus and Fred Myers argue that art and anthropologyare rooted in a common tradition, both situated in acritical stance towards the 'modernity' of which bothare a part. The primitive other (and its represented re-ality) as evidence of the existence of forms of humanitywhich are integral, cohesive, ... permits the charac-terization of the modern as fragmented. It also enablescontemporary mass culture to be experienced asspurious and somehow inauthentic.15

They go on to suggest even more shared concernsbetween the two disciplines. In their view, anthropolog-ists have been influenced by the critiques of modernismformulated in art to consider various current proble-matics. How we feel about or judge 'change' or assimi-lation to Western patterns has been determined byterms established within modernist discourses about art.For them, it is within the space of art that difference,identity and cultural value are being produced and con-tested. Art, they argue, has taken on the challenge ofconfronting the issue of modernity itself, by means ofboth moral comment and alternative perspectives.

The art community has for the most part now cometo the conclusion that it is not some separate ideal

realm of aesthetics, but is firmly embedded within theworld and cultural specifics. In reconnecting tself withculture, this realization has led to certain strands of con-temporary art becoming increasingly fascinated withanthropology as the study of culture. Replacing earlierprimitivist tropes, art is now envious of anthropology'sperceived position as the arbiter of cultural difference.Perhaps he products of visual anthropology hare someanalogies with the status of the 'readymade' n art, theperceived movement of an object from a familiar con-text, to one where its definable qualities are less certain,but where it can clearly be seen as art. In anthropo-logy's case however there is a focus on content, ratherthan form.

In an important short article in Marcus and Myers,the critic Hal Foster discusses how anthropology s alsoenvious of art:

In this envy the artist becomes paragon f formal eflex-ivity, sensitive o difference nd open to chance, a self-aware eader f culture nderstood s text. But s the artistthe exemplar ere, or is this figure not a projection f aparticular deal ego - of the anthropologist s collagist,semiologist, vant-gardist? n other words might his artist-envy be a self-idealization? p.304).

As Foster points out, there is a great deal of mis-recog-nition on both sides of the boundary between the twodisciplines.

Although some contemporary European and NorthAmerican art has appropriated he aura, and even onoccasions the methodologies of anthropology, thereverse has not occurred with any

frequency.,Howevermuch anthropology has admitted he role of tropes, therole of the anthropologist as a writer, the fictionalqualities of anthropological writing and so forth, therestill remains a residue of science, an often unvoicedclaim, or assumption of a certain privileged position.The main differences between anthropology and artmay be those of contexts of exhibition, strategies of le-gitimation, and discursive spaces, rather han somethingmore fundamental. These are what are at stake in anydestabilization of the boundaries between the two disci-plines. Admitting alternative visual methods maythreaten he way much work within visual anthropologyis legitimated.

However, Banks and Morphy argue that the future of

visual anthropology, involves an anthropology of the

1. See also Paul HenleySeeing is Understanding,review of Banks andMorphy 1997 in TimesLiterary Supplement 692,May 1998.

2. 'Mediating Modernities'was a workshop held on 17March 1998 to coincide withFaye Ginsburg'spresentation f the DaryllForde ecture for theAnthropology Department fUniversity College London.

3. Rethinking VisualAnthropology d. MarcusBanks and Howard Morphypublished by Yale U.P. 1997(?27.50).

4. See Jonathan CraryTechniques of the Observer,MIT Press 1993.

5. See for example thedebates around RobertGardner's ilm Forests ofBliss, and Elliot WeinbergerThe Camera People inVisualizing Theory: electedessays from V.A.R. d. byLucien Taylor, published byRoutledge 1994.

6. There s of course aparallel history of sound.See also Wilton Martinez,

'The Challenges of aPioneer: Tim Asch,Otherness and FilmReception', in VisualAnthropology Review, 11: 1,1995 for a discussion ofaudience responses to TheAx Fight.

7. See Martin JayDowncast Eyes: theDenigration of Vision in20th Century FrenchThought, U. of California P.1993, and Barbara MariaStafford, Good Looking:essays on the virtues ofimages, MIT Press 1997 fordiscussions of the relativemerits of vision.

8. Phil Agland's film TheBaka: People of theRainforest used relatively



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visual, the study of 'visual culture', or 'art', or somecorresponding ealm of 'aesthetics' or representation, smuch as an anthropology conducted visually. The studyof visual culture has also now been expanded to includethe anthropology of contemporary art practices fromNorth America to Australia, and Nicholas Thomas's ar-ticle in Rethinking Visual Anthropology suggests somecreative new directions for such work. Although anthro-pologists have only recently begun to pay much atten-tion to the contemporary art of their own cultures, thereverse has a longer history.

Since the 1970s, a variety of artists have taken acritical look at anthropology and its methodologies.16Practitioners such as Lothar Baumgarten have workedin ways which resemble fieldwork, spending extendedperiods of time living with communities, in Baum-garten's case the Yanomami, as well as producing di-rect commentaries on anthropological practices. Hiswork, including that for the 1997 Documenta X art ex-hibition in Kassel, Germany which accompanies his ar-ticle, raises many questions for visual anthropology.18Baumgarten's nstallation at Documenta X, in which hearranged photographs of the Yanomami as a personal'archive' on the walls of the exhibition space, revealssome of the relations involved in a 'fieldwork' situ-

ation, and questions the role of the observer. No, it doesnot provide a 'context' for the images in the form of anaccompanying explanatory ext, but it does situate themwithin a visual relationship between the Yanomami andEuropean audiences, and seeks to understand and ques-tion the terms of this relationship. Baumgarten oftenseeks to 'de-centre' European and North Americanspaces and institutions. At the Venice Biennale interna-tional art exhibition in 1994, he inscribed in marble aset of animal pictographs and the names of Amazonand Orinoco river systems on the floor of the WestGerman pavilion. In superimposing New World overOld, he de-centres the latter, and questions their separ-ation and opposition wiel also casting dobut on prac-tices of renaming such as 'Venezuela' (little Venice). Inan expanded sense, visual anthropological practicecould be, for example, a way of looking at how infor-mation or understanding s embedded in experience. Itcould be used to conduct an ethnography of vision, notjust as a technique for providing data, or a means ofdocumenting other cultures.

Carrying out anthropological analyses of institutionsand movements in contemporary art, although certainlyvery worthwhile, does not necessarily encourage thekind of creative practice that I want to argue for here.Perhaps studying contemporary art practices is a wayfor anthropology to maintain them at a safe distance,figured more as new objects of study, rather han poten-tially alternative methodologies. We are happy to study

- the term itself implies a certain distance - the con-temporary art of others, and now that of ourselves, butnot necessarily to admit any of its strategies as part ofour own practice. An anthropology of art, but not thereverse. To echo Foster's discussion of current attitudestowards 'Third World art', a politics of periphery pro-hibits one of immanence. Vision and the visual are cen-tral to anthropology, not just part of a recognizablesub-discipline, and to position them as such is to par-tially deny them any potential they have for changingcontemporary nthropology.

The study of visual culture, whether ours or theirs, isthen perhaps a combination of the two terms 'visual'and 'anthropology' hat causes less immediate threat ofdestabilizing boundaries. It signals a change in subjectmatter, and although this is in some cases accompanied

by a corresponding shift in method, it does not alwaysimpinge upon practice. There remains some institu-tional reluctance or inertia in allowing certain boun-daries between anthropology and other disciplines tobecome more porous.

PotentialsActively exploring and re-negotiating some of theboundaries between anthropology and other disciplinessuch as media studies and art, are increasing numbersof current UK undergraduate nd MA students, who seemore connections between disciplines than are currentlyavailable for them to pursue formally. Institutions are,however, beginning to respond to this demand. TheSlade School of Art and the anthropology department tUniversity College London now have a PhD pro-gramme which can involve work in both departments.The anthropology department at the School of Orientaland African Studies is going to start running an MA inthe Anthropology of Media this year, and GoldsmithsCollege will be initiating an MA in Visual Anthropo-logy this coming autumn, which, like the MA offeredby the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology atManchester University, will include a significant practi-cal component. The forthcoming ethnographic ilm fes-

tival organized by the RAI and Goldsmiths College,London, (17-19 September) akes the connections be-tween anthropology and other visual practices, such asart, as one of the themes for the Vision, Witness, Pro-fession conference which accompanies t. All this activ-ity may signal the start of closer interdisciplinary olla-borations n the future.

Yet despite this increasing demand, one issue that alltoo readily reveals the currently ambiguous nature ofthe visual within anthropology as a discipline, is howstudents and practising visual anthropologists arethought to acquire or develop their own visual sense.This is not always directly addressed, and is generallytreated as something which is either somehow innate,just down to luck, or largely irrelevant because it is theanthropological content that is of overriding concern.Students often end up being simply steered towardsadopting certain existing styles and models, rather handirectly encouraged to develop their own visual sensi-bility and working strategies. Limits, often unvoiced,but perhaps all the more persuasive because of this, areset as to what is permissible visual practice. Mimicrycan, of course, be an extremely productive and a valu-able learning tool, but I would argue that the range ofavailable and legitimate models for visual anthropologystudents needs to be expanded. 9

The relation between visual anthropology and anthro-pology in a broader sense does need to be rethought asBanks and Morphy suggest, and the links between an-

thropology and art equally need to be refigured asMarcus and Myers argue, but visual anthropology alsoneeds to be remade. It is a matter of changes in profes-sional and institutional practices, as much as re-theoriz-ing. Theoretical destabilization, or blurring of boun-daries, is not an end in itself, and visual anthropologyneeds to be remade as a zone of practical potentials, ofnew methodologies, artefacts and knowledges. A prac-tice that develops other ways of interacting with, andrelating to people, as well as other ways of repre-senting, and works towards the development of newcross-cultural ways of seeing. My aim is not to denyanthropological relevance, or to turn anthropologistsinto artists or vice versa, but to help to broaden anthro-pology's use of the visual both practically and theoreti-cally. Experimentation and creativity in these terms

large amounts of equipmentand high production aluessuch as 24-track oundmixing, to give an 'intimateportrait' of Baka ife.However, his involvedsome 'creative' uses ofdocumentary. As withRobert Flaherty's ilmNanook of the North, thisincluded he fabrication f ahalf-finished hut to permitthe unhindered ilming of itsoccupants as they pretendedto sleep.

9. Grimshaw uccessfullyargues against any simplisticuse of visual media as'techniques', withoutattention o their heoreticalimplications oranthropology s a whole(Banks and Morphy,pp.36-52).

10. Marcus Banks 'VisualAnthropology: mage,Object and Interpretation' nImage-based Research: ASourcebook or QualitativeResearchers, d. JonProsser, Falmer P. 1998 p.11.

11. See for example ChrisPinney The ParallelHistories of Anthropologyand Photography' nAnthropology ndPhotography 1860-1920edited by ElizabethEdwards, published by YaleU.P. Anthropology also hasroots in 17th and 18thcentury llustrations andengravings, he oral andwritten tories of travellersand sailors, stage plays, anda whole range of othertechnologies and discourses.

12. There s acorresponding endency ncontemporary rt to focus onreviews and catalogueessays, rather han discussany direct responses to theobjects themselves.

13. The original edition ofthe agenda-setting Principlesof Visual Anthropologyedited by Hockings, had noillustrations at all.

14. Inventory, noccasional ournal publishedin London, s a goodexample combining magesand texts in a variety ofways. See Inventory Archiveathttp://www.backspace.org/inventory

15. George Marcus andFred Myers The Traffic nCulture: Refiguring Art andAnthropology, U. ofCalifornia P. 1995, p.15.

16. Arnd Schneider 'The

Art Diviners', A.T. 9:2,April 1993, and 'UneasyRelationships: ContemporaryArtists and Anthropology' nJournal of Material Culture1:2, 1996.

17. See LotharBaumgarten AMERICAInvention published bySolomon GuggenheimMuseum, New York 1993(contains bibliography andfurther eferences).

18. See Documenta XShort Guide andPolitics-Poetics: Documentax - the Book, published.byCantz Verlag 1997.

19. See for exampleMichael Taussig Mimesisand Alterity: a ParticularHistory of the Senses,

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No 4. August 1998 21


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should be a key part of both visual anthropology prac-tice and training. The focus should be on the potentialsof representational ractice, rather han on strict defini-tions of either anthropology or art. In his contributionto the Banks and Morphy volume, David MacDougallargues that rather han strive for some overarching he-oretical unity, visual anthropology should allow prin-ciples to emerge from practice (pp.276-295).

One of the more pertinent points Rethinking VisualAnthropology raises for me is relegated to a small foot-note: 'Sadly few anthropologists have yet tried to ef-fect other-cultural epresentations primarily hrough ar-tistic representation.' (p.32, n.6) Although I disagreewith the radical separation, opposition and reification of'art' and 'anthropology', I hope that anthropologists donow begin to explore some of the potentials that this'third subject' holds. D

published by Routledge1993, and Fumio Nanjo TheSituation n Japan, in ThirdText No.6, 1989.

20. David MacDougallThe Visual in Anthropologyin Banks and Morphy 1997pp 276-295.

21. Banks and Morphy1997, Note 6 p. 32.

'A PRODUCT FOR EVERYBODY IS A PRODUCT FOR NOBODY': NICHE MARKETING ANDPOLITICAL INDIVIDUALISM IN POLISH CIVIL SOCIETYIn Poland, where I do fieldwork, the idea ofcivil society is both popular and powerful.Once used as the 'thin end of the wedge'that toppled socialism, the ideal of apluralistic, democratic polity that itembodies s endlessly discussed by

academics, picked up by politicians andinstitutionalized n the hundreds oforganizations which subsist on the largesseof Western unders.

Yet, while civil society is a potentnormative concept - a seductive vision ofthe way things ought to be - it is not a verygood analytic concept. In fact, most attemptsto gauge 'civil society' can only show howfar a given socio-political situation deviatesfrom this ideal-type. As an analytic term,'civil society' actually doesn't tell us verymuch about real modes of non-stateorganization, how they come to be and their

effects on the polity. This is due to theconcept's roots in liberal ndividualism andthe limits that philosophy faces not only indescribing he societies it came from butalso in describing non-Western ones.

My reflections on this problem were mostrecently spurred by an organization beganto run across more and more frequentlywhen I was in Poland: the Business CentreClub, or BCC. The BCC is an independentorganization of high-powered entrepreneursand business people in Warsaw, founded inthe early 1990s. Part prestigious social club,part Chamber of Commerce and part policy

think-tank, he BCC actively lobbiesmembers of parliament, while also shapingpublic opinion by being vociferous in themedia. In almost any article on economicchange or legal reforms affecting the newclass of Polish business people, you'll find aquote by the BCC. For example,commenting on the role of workers'associations in the privatization ofstate-owned enterprises, BCC presidentHenryka Bohniarz said 'trade unions shouldact like trade unions and not like bankers,owners or political parties' (Rzeszpospolita,7 October 1992). I find this commentextremely ironic given the BCC's ownquasi-party tatus.

What made me do a double take were twoadvertisements saw later in anothermagazine. One ad was for Business CentreClub shirts - blue or white, naturally, withbutton-down collars. Perfect for theup-and-coming businessman. A few pageslater, there was an ad for Business CentreClub beer. Precisely what the linkage isbetween business, beer, haberdashery nd anindependent NGO remains unclear to me.But the juxtaposition of the terms led me towonder about the connection between thelarger ssues of 'civil society' represented bythis NGO and the new practices ofmarketing and consumption. In particular,wondered f there weren't commonassumptions about persons and theircapacities for social actions contained nboth concepts of 'civil society' and 'nichemarketing'.

Classical liberalism defines civil society

as a domain between the domestic sphereand the state where people can associate topursue common interests. This, of course,assumes that there are different sorts ofpeople that exist prior to their association,and that they are autonomous ndividualswho can freely choose to associate withothers. These individuals must feel that theirdifferences from others give them particularinterests, and that they can join others with asimilar difference in order o advance theircollective interest.

In Poland, however, it is clear thatdifferences and interests do not necessarily

antedate he development of theorganizations which purport o representthem. This is ironic, given that Poland'sSolidarity movement refined andre-energized he idea of civil society. ButSolidarity's vision of 'civil society' was of adifferent sort, one which united manydifferent groups and persons into a hugemonolith called 'society' and placed it inopposition to 'the state'. In post-1989Poland, then, the problem of 'civil societybuilding' is less one of uniting anomicindividuals than of breaking apart he giantpolitical blocs created when society waspolarized nto 'us' and 'them', socialism andits opposition. This has been a surprisinglyslow process. Merely lifting the lid of state

repression and creating the right of freeassociation was not enough to constitutespecial interest groups. For the most part,political power in Poland still comes fromclaiming to represent society' as a wholerather han particular nterests within it. Thisis the strategy pursued by most politicalparties, but it is slowly changing. In the lasteight years, the giant political blocs of 'we'and 'they' have been slowly crumbling assmaller social subdivisions come to sensetheir particularity hence the developmentof organizations uch as the BCC.

But how is it that people come to feel thatthey are particular r that they are somehowessentially different han others? Creatingthis sense of difference is no mean feat in asociety which consciously emphasizedhomogeneity for forty-five years. Inpost-socialist Poland, this reconstruction fthe person is strongly bound up with the

new discipline of advertising, which notonly reflects differences among persons butconstructs hem. In particular, he idea ofniche marketing, according o which specialproducts are made to meet the ostensible'demands' or 'needs' of a narrowly definedsocial group, continually segments andresegments the consumer population. Theobvious goal of niche marketing s toincrease consumption, but the way in whichit constitutes person has important politicaland social consequences.

I first saw this during my fieldwork at theAlima-Gerber baby food factory in

Rzeszow, where I attended he productlaunch for Frugo, a new juice drink forteenagers. The marketing trategy behindFrugo was clearly aimed at increasing uiceconsumption by segmenting the market.Alima-Gerber basically owned the marketfor children's uices, but could not competeagainst the giants like Coca-Cola who hadentered he adults' uice market. Teenagers,however, had the lowest per-capitaconsumption rate of fruit uice drinks, andso this new market niche had a dramaticpotential for increased consumption f aproduct was aimed at them. There had neverbeen a juice particularlyfor eens before. Infact, the entire social group 'teens' was justcoming into being as a market n Poland.


te third subject- perspectives on visual antropology

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