Applied Anthropology Research Paper Topics

Visual anthropology, whether photographed, taped, filmed, or written, is a method of observation, but more important, it is a means for developing questions and analyzing data. Visual anthropologists provide their observations for other anthropologists and social scientists to consider in their own work, presenting an alternative way of seeing culture through the lens, which instigates only further inquiry, not certainty. By embracing collaboration between observer and observed and recognizing the relationship between the visual and textual, visual anthropologists have created theoretical objectives that redefine the boundaries of the subdiscipline, exploring new ways to study and understand culture, society, identity, and history. These are the characteristics that separate visual anthropology from documentary film, photography, and journalism; and these are the issues that will promote the use of visual methods in the anthropology of the future.

Visual Methods

In the late 19th century, anthropologists employed photography and filmmaking as tools to augment their research, as a means for illustration, description, and preservation of people they observed. Although rudimentary, bulky, clumsy, and sometime dangerous, photographic equipment found its way to the field with the express purpose of quickly gathering accurate information about the local population. Baldwin Spencer, Alfred Cort Haddon, Félix-Louis Regnault, and the Lumière brothers were among the first ethnographers to employ photographic cameras in their research. From 1922 through 1939, government anthropologist Francis E. Williams made thousands of glass plates and negatives of the people in 18 different cultural groups in the Australian colony of Papua (New Guinea). Although Franz Boas had used a still camera since the 1890s, it was not until late in his career, 1930, that he employed filmmaking to capture various activities of the Kwakiutl for documenting body movements (dance, work, games) for his cross-cultural analysis of rhythm. Similarly, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson relied on photographs and film as visual tools in their research, because they felt that their images could explain behavior more clearly than they could describe it. Bateson shot hundreds of photographs and hours of film, which they analyzed and published, arguing that their anthropological understanding of the cultural context in which the images were made recognized the linkages between the action and the deep cultural meaning of the images.

Ethnographic film, video, and photography remain the primary methods of visual anthropology as a means to record visual phenomena and obtain visual data. Using qualitative methods, one may seek data to investigate a particular question or seek a question from a set of data. In visual anthropology, one may film a topic of interest or make images and discern patterns and questions from them. Today, visual anthropology spans the spectrum of inquiry and analysis, from materialistic perspectives and positivist analysis to symbolic interpretations and informant participation. The former is represented in ethnographic works capturing culture in situ. Like synchronic slices of life preserved on celluloid, the footage is later used for teaching, documentary, and scientific research. From this point of view, the lens is objective, capturing behavior for preservation, description, and accuracy. At the other end, the most humanistic level, visual anthropology questions the material, the subjects, and the investigators themselves, as an experiential nexus of culture and reflexivity. Moving away from a literal or textual description of visual expression requires a shift to thinking about culture through images themselves. In this case, the visual becomes a medium through which to enhance knowledge and develop questions that are not possible otherwise. To accomplish this task, the methodology extends beyond the researcher herself and invites the informants to participate in the work itself. Visual anthropology explores visual phenomena and visual systems in the process of cultural and social reproduction. With that in mind, the anthropologist must be open to all visual material, behaviors, and interactions and recognize that by capturing them on film, they inherently modify the content and context of the message and must question their own role in the process in which they are a part.

Within anthropology, ethnographic films are the most popular form of cultural description. Usually shown in classes as teaching aids, anthropologists have relied upon visual material to bring indigenous cultures and behaviors to the classroom so that students can glimpse “the other.” In the 1950s and 1960s, the Peabody Museum at Harvard funded film projects to collect material on cultures from around the world, with the intent of having researchers view these films in lieu of traveling to the field. In this case, as well as others, the use of film to depict culture is laden with the biases emphasizing their interests rather than focusing on the subjects’ priorities. For this and similar reasons, ethnographic film has been criticized for its colonial heritage, citing how filmmakers maintain power over what and who they represent. For example, governments with colonies in Africa and Asia sponsored filmmakers to depict the lives of natives in their colonies. These films were shown to their citizens in support of government programs to civilize the “savages” and bring them Western values and beliefs.

The Value of Visual Anthropology

Although they share similar interests in people, visual anthropologists are neither journalists nor documentarians. The ethnographer is someone who establishes and maintains a unique relationship with informants and develops an understanding of the culture within which they live. Furthermore, while the resulting images may document and describe the people and cultures where they live, the anthropologist sees patterns and asks questions of the images themselves—not simply asking informants for commentaries, but seeking deeper meaning within the body of work to develop a theoretical understanding of human behavior. In this case, photos are data, and they are a record of life and people that can be reviewed and analyzed by the researcher, who under-stands the context in which they were taken and recognizes the content they illustrate. Moreover, they can be interpreted by many different people, to solicit various reactions. Perhaps the slippery nature of interpretation alienates visual anthropology from the more popular written discipline. While photojournalists may spend time with their subjects and broach meaningful and deliberate themes, telling a story and developing behavior theory are ultimately not the same endeavors.

Visual anthropology brings to the discipline a unique, sometimes difficult way of understanding culture. While written and filmic data are edited before distribution, only the researcher understands the context and content in which the notes and images were made. Unlike field notes, which few anthropologists publish, placing images in the public record invites others to criticize the analysis and conclusions, interpretations that the researcher may not necessarily agree with or desire. Because images are interpreted in multiple ways, anthropologists hesitate to make analysis of their meanings and instead prefer to use photos or film exclusively for description. At this point, visual anthropology must redefine itself by transcending the political nature of what it represents and establish new strategies for engaging with the world.

The value of the visual exercise lies in its ability to document and preserve, but most important, in its inherent character of combining knowledge with experience to ask questions of the information conveyed to reach a more profound understanding of the people involved with the research. As a scientific endeavor, visual anthropology continues to probe and explore the relationships between people, illustrating their behaviors and objects, which convey a sense of who they are and their worldviews, but such practice must also acknowledge its position in the process.

New Directions in Visual Anthropology

With the advent of new technologies and innovations that make the world “smaller,” visual anthropology will lead the discipline to an image-based discourse. As more machines (for example, digital cameras, video and audio recorders, handheld computers and satellite phones) become available to capture movement, behaviors, environments, and objects, researchers will employ these technologies to facilitate their work. The World Wide Web, e-mail, instant messaging, Power Point presentations, and other interactive media will transform the one-way street of researcher to colleague/student/classroom—to a discussion between them as the research unfolds and analysis ensues. Internet technology will bring about classroom participation in research and teaching, making the “other” tangible by enabling subjects to be “online” and accessible even when anthropologists are not in the field. However, such a perspective unfortunately applies only to the most developed countries and ignores the people in the world who have never even used a phone, much less a computer. As more powerful, lighter, and inexpensive hardware becomes available, researchers will experiment with its offerings and produce work that expands the boundaries of what we consider visual anthropology.

As technology evolves, the use of the image will also change, not only in format but also in meaning. Images and content will become more arbitrary, blurring the lines between “truth” and observation, vision and experience. Knowledge gleaned from images will therefore be less reliable, but more available, and the potential for learning and experiencing culture increases, while its validity decreases. Visual anthropology will either become more of the language of anthropology or continue being the subdiscipline that only other visual researchers take seriously. To overcome the inherent bias toward text-based anthropology, visual researchers must change the language of knowledge to one which emphasizes nonverbal levels of understanding and develop alternative objectives and methodologies that will benefit anthropology as a whole. In other words, visual anthropology must provide more than accompanying illustrations and sequence-style films, and develop theories not only obtainable through visual media, but applicable across the discipline. Technology accounts only for the tools to define visual anthropology’s future; students and researchers alike must recognize that anthropological communication is founded in observation and that visual methods allow them to describe and discuss culture in ways that complement and expand our understanding of the human condition.