In this paper, I argue that monuments to mestizaje (miscegenation) in Puerto Rico reaffirm the myth of a harmonious mixture between the White Spaniard, Black African, and Indigenous Taíno. This ...racial triad, originally conceived in the nineteenth century, was institutionalized in 1956 by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture to legitimize the reformulation of Puerto Rico's colonial status. It was meant to foster a consensus‐driven nation‐building project through a depoliticized harmonious mixture of races. I analyze ten monuments to mestizaje that privilege the white European root of Puerto Rican identity and demonstrate how their visual discourse sustains the narratives of racial democracy in Puerto Rico.
In seeking to strengthen pedagogical and research outcomes in tourism students' fieldtrips to assess community sustainability and resilience in Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong, and maximize ...experiential learning opportunities, the relatively neglected methodologies in tourism research of visual anthropology and Rapid Appraisal and the rarely reported concept of Habermas' communicative action to promote teamwork through consensus-based decision-making in tourism studies, were combined with more commonly utilized ethnographic participant observation. While taking photographs is fundamental for millions of tourists and has been researched from many perspectives, the use of visual anthropology and participatory photo elicitation not only to record but to generate new knowledge as a major component of research-oriented data collection, is comparatively novel in tourism studies. In isolation, all four methodologies are not new and are common in a range of social studies: but their fusion especially for tourism research, is atypical and assumes an additional element of innovation.
•Improved cognitive/affective outcomes of student-centred fieldtrips are generated by a novel mix of methodologies.•This mix includes visual anthropology, photo elicitation, rapid appraisal and ethnographic participant observation.•Habermas' 1989 concept of communicative action provides an instrument for building teamwork through consensus.•Photographs as visual literacy are polysemic (open to multiple interpretations) as with the written word in any language.•Iterative post-trip longitudinal collation/analysis of multi methods data contribute enriched depth to research outcomes.
Abstract
This article is aimed at transdisciplinary (critical International Relations, visual anthropology, and existential philosophy) analysis of Russian gendered nationalism and masculine ...ontological insecurities. It explores and re-imagines how visual representations of “Mother Russia” became signifiers of the phallocentric voice of the Russian gendered state. What can return the voice back to the “invisible women”? I claim that the political activism of the singer Madonna in the spheres of resistance to warfare and protection of gender minorities may shed new light on hidden manipulations with masculine anxieties in modern Russia. Besides original empirics, the article proposes theoretical avenues to integrate into gendered nationalism studies research on what I call masculine “politics of loneliness.” I also look at the role such politics plays in constituting Russia's domestic narcissistic master narratives of the collective self and its frontiers with transnational celebrity activism. Based on feminism and narrative IR, this article investigates the “sociological dimension” of Russian loneliness. It examines the alienation of femininity as reflected on Russian street posters photographed during 2021–2023 and represented in the form of five “dialectical collages.”
This article explores the works of the late anthropologist Frank Cancian, specifically considering Another Place (1974), Orange County Housecleaners (2006), and Lacedonia - An Italian Town, 1957 ...(2016). Re-reading his works together reveals Another Place as a point of departure that concretised Cancian's vision of documentary photography as a vocation. In particular, the article explores the implications of an exchange with none other than John Collier Jr. that followed the publication of Another Place. This moment reveals Cancian's orientation towards visual ethnography as toolkit to mobilise a version of cultural relativism and demonstrates Cancian's resistance to any rigid notions of scientific visual anthropology. The article therefore argues that, in essentially separating the products of his photographic practice (e.g., photobooks) from his 'professional' anthropology, Cancian sought new modes of expression through photography. In so doing, he thus confronted an enduring problem for visual scholars - how to engage the world analytically vs. aesthetically. Especially for this reason, bringing Cancian out of contemporary obscurity is useful for visually oriented scholars today.
This Dialogues contribution reviews the work Hshouma: Corps et Sexualité au Maroc (Hshouma: Body and Sexuality in Morocco) by Zainab Fasiki and includes an interview of the author. Hshouma is a ...graphic novel comic book that has received great acclaim for its direct confrontation of shame and taboos in Morocco. However, the book and the author have also received a lot of criticism for Fasiki's use of nudity and her secular approach. What follows is background of the author and discussion of the word hshouma, a review of the work, and a transcription of the May 2022 interview.
Anthropology of the Artificial Salter, Chris; Saunier, Alexandre
Visual anthropology review,
09/2023, Volume:
39, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Abstract
“Anthropology of the Artificial” is a special section of articles by a collective of anthropologists, sociologists, digital media artists, and computer scientists that address the ever ...increasing encounters between humans and new kinds of machine systems. The contributions draw on a series of artistic and scientific research programs which call for new ways of thinking about the relations between human and artificial systems, focusing on anthropological encounters with artworks, software/hardware, and the public encounters with such systems in settings ranging from research labs to museums.
Visual sociology Harper, Douglas A
2012., 2012, 20121212, 2010-11-15, 2012-12-12, 20120101
eBook
Visual sociology has been part of the sociological vocabulary since the 1970s, but until now there has not been a comprehensive text that introduces this area. Written by one of the founding fathers ...in the field, Visual Sociology explores how the world that is seen, photographed, drawn, or otherwise represented visually is different from the world that is represented through words and numbers.
Doug Harper's exceptional photography and engaging, lively writing style will introduce:
visual sociology as embodied observation
visual sociology as semiotics
visual sociology as an approach to data: empirical, narrative, phenomenological and reflexive
visual sociology as an aspect of photo documentary
visual sociology and multimedia.
This definitive textbook is made up of eleven chapters on the key topics in visual sociology. With teaching and learning guidance, as well as clear, accessible explanations of current thinking in the field, this book will be an invaluable resource to all those with an interest in visual sociology, research methods, cultural geography, cultural theory or visual anthropology.
The four verbs in this title bear witness to different theoretical frameworks -that some may find irreconciliable- that guided my ethnographic research with a camera. Starting from a cinematographic ...conception that links documentation and creation, I was brought to take interest in the singular knowledge produced by the encounter between cameraman and those whom s/he films, in the heuristic « lie » that it provokes -to put it in Jean Rouch’s terms- and in the specificity of the filmic act in ethnography. As the somatic engagement during the use of the camera has gradually come to be the main indicator of my practice, I suggest that the work of the ethnographer-cineast, like that of the people filmed, should be mainly guided by the constraints and potentialities of his/her raw material with whom s/he necessarily engages.
Individuals residing in the rainforest belt of Nigeria were shown photographs of five biomes: rain forest, deciduous forest, coniferous forest, savanna, and desert. Subjects overwhelmingly selected ...savanna scenes as representing the most desirable place to live. These results, coupled with extensive American data, support the hypothesis that humans possess an innate preference for savanna-like settings, which then is modified through experience and enculturation. Findings are discussed in relation to anthropological, biological, and psychological research.
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