Saturday, September 15, 2007

Chinese Visual Anthropology


A common introduction to anthropology is through ethnographic film. Readers may well be familiar with television series such as Disappearing World and Under the Sun. These films are made by anthropologists or professional filmmakers and show life in non-European societies. They are valuable in revealing a more rounded representation of the issues that anthropologists normally investigate particularly with respect to ritual, music, dance and other areas where a purely written description cannot convey the richness of the experience. Teachers of anthropology have also found film to be valuable for conveying a sense of the work that anthropologists actually do in the field.
However, visual anthropology is much more than ethnographic film. It encompasses a much wider study of visual systems. Most anthropologists produce visual representations in the course of their work (often photographs, but also videos, maps, drawings and diagrams) and all societies make visible aspects of their social life and their cultural understandings. Visual anthropology is concerned with understanding the production and consumption of all these forms. Visual anthropology clearly overlaps with the anthropology.
Marcus Banks (University of Oxford)

Yunnan ethnic group visual anthropology images/photo gallery
Focs on ethnic groups in Yunnan of China. Provide traditional cultural images, local arts photos and rural landscape gallery.www.anthrop.net/ - 19k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

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