Indiginous Ethnography

The ethnographic eye of the insider greatly varies from that of the traditional role of the ethnographer as outsider. We witnessed this first hand with the film Itam Hakim Hopi by filmmaker Victor Masayesva, an insider, or indigenous cosmology of the history of their people as told by a sagely elderly man. Ross Macaya (pictured) regals children with their rich oral history which Masayesva augments with rich natural imagery and dramatic reenactments of historical events. He is indirectly continuing the traditions of oral history though this modern video medium by granting the old man the privilege of talking in his own voice and sharing the rich history of his people.

Themes we saw in this film were addressed in Faye Ginsburg's Parallax Effect. Here she writes about the changing roles of ethnographers and the many hats they can wear in their creation of the process. Parallax itself means: "The apparent displacement of difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points." (64) Her article is an exercise in the politics of representation, especially of groups that have, for so long, been - pardon the pun - at the bottom of the totem pole. She wants to put the camera in the hands of the people who have been, for so long, on the other side of it. This stance is a progressive step in a more well rounded form of ethnography/social science.

Sands & Lewis also address this issue in their article Seeing With a Native Eye. The first version of Itam Hakim Hopi we saw was unsubtitled and undubbed. They address this here: "The language of the film is Hopi; the language of the images are Hopi. This is a Hopi film, made for a Hopi audience- No subtitles, no explanation, no interpretation. The audience of the film is expected to make the connections, interpret the images, understand the structure, much as the audience for a Hopi story is expected to provide context for the narrative. The audience, thus, actively participates." (388)

The origin myth of the Hopi still came through to me even watching the first version without any English in it. It was very engaging, surprisingly, to be on the outside trying to put all the pieces together in a coherent fashion. This was a great final film to see how far ethnography has come as a genre of film and understanding of culture. It had humble colonialist beginnings, but the doors have now been opened for self representation and active participation in understanding humanity as a whole.

The Role of the Gift Shop

Basics: My photo essay on the American Museum of Natural History is an ethnography dealing with spaces and the relationships people have within those spaces. The two spheres I am choosing to explore more deeply are the little enclaves of consumerism lurking about in the museum - the gift shop(s).

Gift shops have a much different function than the educational parts of the museum. They are a place where the reverence and quiet of the museum dissolve away into a much more chaotic, hands-on atmosphere. To get a real sense of how the various gift shops in the museum (there is at least one a floor) are similar and different, I went to everyone on the floor plan.

The main gift store is massive: it is 2 and a half floors on the


Main general changes in interaction:

-Bright florescent light Vs. low light of museum
-Expensive/price gouging (2 batteries= $4.32) Vs. Donation entry
-Toys Vs. Learning
-Collectibles commodified Vs. Rarities preserved in the museum
-No picture taking (other than myself) Vs. Strobe like effect of flashes in the museum
-Gift Shops individualized according to their placement in the museum.



Methodology: This is the floor plan of the museum. I went through and circled all the gift shops on each floor - planning out my journey.



































Here are some detailed pictures of the layout with some field notes written on them:











































































































































The main Museum Shop acted as a hub for all the other satilite shops. Here there was the most selection of merchandise over 2 and half floors of shopping space. Here is a break down of the space:

This is on the main floor of the museum and the upper floor of the shop. Here there were mainly goods for a person looking to spend more money. Top shelf items would be a good term used to describe them. There were lots of glass encased jewelry/rocks. Very clean and bustling with all types of people.









This is the staircase connecting the store's floors. The there were fossil decorations hanging and wall art.
























This is detail shot of the dinosaur spine railing on the staircase. No space is wasted in reminding you that you are in the American Museum of Natural History.



















This is on the bottom floor where it was mostly targeted on children. Down here it was a mess and the air was thick with screaming children cries. Lots of stuffed animals, kids books, and toys.





















This is the Water H20 special exhibit gift shop. It was the hardest to get to because unless you bought tickets to the special exhibit, you have to to walk around the long way through permanent collection. It should be noted however, that all the gift shops are open to all visitors. You can buy a t-shirt even if you didn't get a ticket.

This was a very small gift shop.





This is the planetarium gift shop. It was small but dense. There was a lot of high end stuff here, mostly centered around space and telescopes.











This is the Mythic Creatures gift shop. By far the least educationally oriented.














Case in point: DVD selection. All mermaid, dragon, and cartoon oriented. Little substance here. Everything costs almost twice what it should.

















Case in Point #2: This is a sugary, artificially flavored/colored candy at the shop.





















This is the Dinostore on the 4th floor. Here it was clear they were understaffed with little attention paid to the back room.














Stereotypical museum goods:
-Pencils
-Pens
-Bouncy Balls













Register encouraging membership/Little doo-dads.















Another gift shop staple (available in the Dinosaur area) is Freeze Dried astronaut ice cream.
























Polished rocks for sale.





















In case you get thirsty from all that learning and walking about you can purchase an over priced beverage.























Display case presenting the film Night at the Museum, and acknowledging the museum's role in the larger pop culture.





















Large dinosaur advertising the film.
























The gift shops are finished to the finest detail, here we see dino foot prints leading the way to more goodies.





















Conclusions: The gift shop appears to be the museum's financial bread and butter. It provides some necessary functions such as providing a snack or a drink throughout the cavernous museum. It also is a place that allows the children to be loud, touchy, and obnoxious after subduing themselves for the hallowed grounds of the museum. It was not uncommon to see parents utilitzing the time tested form of bribery to pacify their screaming child. It was interesting to make it a point to see every gift shop and by the end they had certainly lost all appeal to me personally- Unfortunately at the museum my batteries died and I was forced to purchase new ones for my camera at an extremely inflated price. The museum has thought of everything to emblazon with their logo/name - coffee mugs, pencils, frisbees, sweatshirts, t-shirts, ties, etc, etc.

The role of the gift shop appears to be on completely working in the museums terms and playing on the tourist or young child. It is certainly not the place to go looking for bargains. It it exsits on a different plane than the rest of the museum; one where everything is for sale. Perhaps though it is a necessary evil in keeping the museum donation funded and more readily available to the public.

Museum Culture

The American Museum of Natural History is one of those places that has come to define a moment in history as much it has the objects inside of it. There has been much examination and criticism of this space dedicated to the exploration of the realm of human culture, zoology, botany, astronomy, and history. It is a place that holds a special place in many New Yorkers hearts as an escape from the hustle bustle of the outside world (and the lobby) into a place of quiet wonderment - where visitors are able to get a closer view at the world around them and in many cases themselves.

In her essay, Teddy Bear Patriachy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City 1908-1936 Donna Haraway has presented the reader with an interesting view into the times and methods that this massive museum was created under. The museum is a veritable labyrinth of dioramas, display cases, little informational plaques, and mopey security guards. Haraway addresses this specific construct when she writes "A diorama is eminently a story, a part of natural history... The animals in the habitat groups are captured in a photographer's vision and a sculptor's vision. They are actors in a morality play on the stage of nature, and the eye is the critical organ." (Haraway 53) This generous acknowledgment of what the dioramas are acting out and the role they play in depicting the reality they are merely representational of quite commendable.

The Museum has also played such a large role in the contemporary image pool in the collective consciousness of NYC and the country. The name itself conjures up images of large marble pillars (pictured above), dinosaurs, exotic peoples, and even sensory details such as the smell of knowledge. The museum has taken on a muse like role inspiring people and taking on an almost mythical status as magical (Night at the Museum for example).

One other scholar who has put some time and words into trying to further understand the importance and power of this place is James Clifford, who in his book The Predicament of Culture, wrote an essay On Collecting Art and Culture further dissects what it means to organized, collect, and display objects. He writes in regards to collecting versus fetishizing, "Accumulation unfolds in a pedagogical, edifying manner. The collection itself - its taxonomic, aesthetic structure - is valued, and any priavte fixation on single objects is negatively marked as fetishism." (Clifford 219) The Museum of Natural History transcends this category of collecting because it is part of the museum's charm that it is readily available for the public to sift through, explore, and learn from for a bare minimum of cost.

The museum holds a very special place to me personally, because my parents used to take me there all the time as a child and I think it played a large role in me wanting to understand better those different from me. Despite the fact the museum may still house some antiquated notions of Western Culture's dominance over the world, it still holds many precious gems of information and deeper understanding of our world and the human condition.

BRIDGE & TUNNEL (2007)

Ethnographic Film Project






Credits:

Sebastiano
Christine
Harlan

Mararet Mead Film Fest 2007

This previous weekend - Nov. 9-11th, the 31st annual Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival took place at the Museum of Natural History and was a great venue for these contemporary visual ethnographies. The Museum itself was a buzz with its usual sunny Sunday crowds thirsting for knowledge, and it was great to work our way towards the screenings by weaving in and out of various wings, rooms, and people to finally get to the rather small festival.

The first film I attended was Judith MacDougall's The Art of Regret. This was a very intimate film directed, produced, and shot by MacDougall and her translator in China. The focus of the ethnography was on how the Chinese use, view, and bring meaning to photographs in their culture. It brought up many points about how China is very much at a cross roads in their understanding of the past and the future. In China it is very hard to get a hold of older photos as many were destroyed during their Cultural Revolution and this has taken a toll on many individual families who have lost their pasts. Also the film explores the new steps in technology and how these images can be manipulated or restored by the same digital means. The film leaves the audience wondering if photography is still an art of regret or if it has reached a new place/definition in its history.

The second film we sat in on (literally on the floor) was The Birthday by Daisy Mohr and Negin Kianfar. This film chronicled the lives of trans gendered people in Iran, a conservative Islamic government. I went into the film with much different expectations of what I would see, and enjoyed being surprised. While being very anti-homosexual, the Iranian government is actually quite supportive of their transgender folk who wish to change their sex, due to a strange Islamic loophole in the Koran. The stories of the people the filmmakers followed around were quite emotionally effective and poignant. Despite thinking that the Iranian government was very tolerant at first, I realized later that the only reason they favor this is because it reinforces their belief system and doesn't challenge the preestablished binaries that their culture lives in.

All in all I really enjoyed the Festival and liked seeing these fresh works as opposed to the classics we've been viewing in class. The stories of human struggle, history, and joy are always interesting and it was nice to see it all in such a setting of learning and knowledge.

Two References from Class:

This is the first 15 mins of the Gods Must Be Crazy (1980):




and

Joseph Campbell & the Power of Myth, below is the introduction to the show that ran on PBS.

Jean Rouch and Ethno-Fiction - Jaguar

Jean Rouch's film Jaguar (1967) almost seamlessly blends the realms of ethnographic realism with a fictitious parable of boys leaving and returning home men. The film follows it three protagonists from their homes in a small village in Niger, across Africa and to the Gold Coast of Ghana. Courtesy of Rouch the audience is also along for the ride.

A key part in understanding Rouch's interest in the region in the first place reveals itself in an interview conducted by fellow filmmaker and anthropologist Lucien Taylor. In the interview Rouch is unexpectedly candid about his work and autobiography. The filming of this movie was certainly not the first time he had ever been to Africa or Niger. During the Second World War Rouch was studying there to avoid the chaos in Europe and had this to say about the country he so delicately depicts in Jaguar: "Niger was an awful country - the climate was dreadful, the quinine tablets had ran out, and the mosquito bites could be very dangerous... there was absolutely nothing there - no gas, no cars, no clothe..." (Rouch 133)

Quite a surprising response from the way the film is handled - with its rhythm of walking, and emphasis on the simple grandeur of this odyssey - There is also a strong emphasis on a collaborative effort with those he was shooting. This is evident in the commentary of the film being lively and allowing his informants/subjects voice their opinions on what has happened to them.

Rouch's explanation of the inherent condition of ethnographic film is also quite important, "The situation is clearly this: the anthropologist has at his disposal the only tool (the partisipating camera) that offers him the extraordinary possibility of direct communication of the group he studies - the film he has made about them." (Rouch 8) This symbiotic relationship is present in Jaguar where the subjects and their journey is documented and the represented to the public at large. Rouch is saying that he and them are bonded through this film and their mutual hope that it comes out as good as possible.

I enjoyed the film and its over-all understanding of the rite of passage it was filming. Rouch's "jump-cutting" technique is a great stamp of authenticty on the project and adds a feeling of other-worldly-ness to landscape, while the men's story is all too familiar. Universality really shines through his camera lens.

OH AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! BWAHAHAHHA!!!

Ethnographic Surrealism

"An ethnographic surrealist practice... attacks the familiar, provoking the irruption of otherness - the unexpected." (Clifford 145)

At first glance the spheres of social science and surrealism don't seem to share any overlap. However, after closer inspection these two trains of thought have much to offer one an other, especially according to noted anthropologist James Clifford. He views "Surrealism [as an] aesthetic that values fragments, curious connections, unexpected juxtapositions - that works to provoke the manifestation of extraordinary realities drawn from the domains of the erotic, the exotic and the unconscious." (Clifford 118) This draws clear parallels to the realm of ethnography and its attempt to deconstruct the participant observer's surroundings.



"From this [surrealist] disenchanted viewpoint stable orders of collective meaning appear to be constructed, artificial, and indeed often ideological or repressive. The sort of normality or common sense that can amass empires in fits of absent-mindedness or wander routinely into world wars is seen as contested reality to be subverted, parodied, and transgressed." (Clifford 117)


He further places the reciprocal relationship next to one another when
Clifford refers to "a more general cultural predisposition that cuts through modern anthropology and that this science shares with twentieth-century art and writing. The ethnographic label suggests a characteristic attitude of participant observation among the artifacts of a defamiliarized cultural reality. The surrealists were intensely interested in exotic worlds... Their attitude comparable to that of the fieldworker who strives to render the unfamiliar comprehensible, tended to work in the reverse sense, making the familar strange." (Clifford 121)


Things in between the two world wars got complicated due to the surrealist because "Reality, after the surrealist twenties, could never again be seen as simple or continuous, describable empirically or through induction." (Clifford 134) He also elaborates further, "Reality is no longer a given, a natural, familiar environment... To see culture and its norms- beauty, truth, reality- as artificial arrangements susceptible to detached analysis and comparison with other possible dispositions is crucial to an ethnographic attitude." (Clifford 119)



"Ethnography, which shares with surrealism an abandonment and distinction between high and low culture... two key elements of ethnographic surrealism are noticeable: first, the corrosive analysis of a reality no identified as local and artificial; and second, the supplying of exotic alternative." (Clifford 130) This makes itself evident in the surrealist work of Buneul whose faux-documentary Land Without Bread, shows through a parody of style and authority how reality is mailable.



After reading this essay and seeing some early surrealist work, it really is no surprise that these two practices draw from each other so much. Put bluntly: "Changing definitions of art or science must provoke new retrospective unities, new ideal types for historical description. In this sense ethnographic surrealism is a utopian construct, a statement about the past and future possibilities for cultural analysis." (Clifford 118)

Visual Sociology Film Presentations @ New School

November 15 (mark your calendars...) Terry Williams Visual Sociology class from last semester (of which I was a part) is presenting some finished works. This would be a good chance to see projects that are happening now in the field, done by fellow New School students.

I did a project on robots with a grad student--- he may be presenting his work on the roles of robots in both the public and private sphere.

More details to come....

"The Difference Between a Photo and an X-Ray"

David MacDougall's self assessment of his work in the burgeoning field of visual anthropology is a great self reflexive tool of evaluating what he has "broadly defined 'anthropology of consciousness." (Macdougall 272) He really managed to think about his own style and write it very well.

He displays many of the points he writes about in Transcultural Cinema, his book about the methods he used in visual anthropology, in his film Lorang's Way. This movie chronicled the life of one African animal trader through interviews with Lorang, those who knew him, and candid tracking shots of what seems like banal conversation. However, as Macdougall shows, these small seeming conversations blossom into very telling aspects of a foreign culture. It is through these very exotic exchanges that we can see the parallels to our lives and relationships.

MacDougall writes on page 261, "Visual representation, it is worth noting, has intercultural as well as transcultrual implications. Images, by standing outside the system of 'cultures' and nation-states, create new links based on points of recognition among otherwise separated social groups." This is writing about the universality of the visual image and how it can convey many ideas just through its visage and help in a more thorough way.

One more point on the act of seeing vs. "seeing" in the film, Lorang's Way: "At a more basic level, visual media produce intercultural documents simply in their co-inscription of filmmakers and their subjects in the same work (assuming they do not come from identical backgrounds). The filmmaker's acts of looking are encoded in the film in much the same way as the subjects physical presence." (MacDougall 261) Here he is referencing the importance of the relationship between the camera, the subject, and the filmmaker. The mingling of these three factors completely shapes a piece of ethnographic film. He is asserting that the filmmaker needs to be aware of his/her presence in the field, and that he should acknowledge the subject's role in the project. We see this in Lorang's Way when they ask Lorang what the most important or basic component of the film should be, to which he responds, "Life..."

Personally I liked the slow, temporally conscious nature of the film. It was nice to have a seeming picture of a small slice of village life blossom into a larger understanding. The visual composition of the film was also very pleasing to the eye.

Ethnography's Challenging Muse: The Yanomami

As the world has gotten progressively smaller and culture more globalized, so to have the sociologists and anthropologists grown more obsessed with finding the last remaining "unadulterated" cultures. This obsession has driven many of these social scientists to the far reaching corners of the globe with discovering and documenting a pure, "privative" culture. One such group that has caught the eye of the discipline and generated much controversy in its wake is the Yanomami of the Amazon.

Reading of the lasting effects of Chagnon's, Lizot's, and other's studies and perspectives on the Yanomami is decidedly more interesting than the people themselves. The reflexive quality they've given the field speaks to the subtle power of those who are studied. The differeing opinions on the depiction of a remote people deep in the rain forest has spurred a discipline wide debate over sensationalism, native rights, and neocolonialism representation.

Chagnon's scholarly ego is clearly one of the main characters of his ethnography and we see the Yanomami through his eyes. This white academic adventurer and his brush with the savage side of culture. He was also a researcher who learned that he had to fight dirty and not always play by the AAA's standard rules. There is a charm to this ethnography as well as its visual companion - however, the darker side of Chagnon's one sided portrayal of the Yanomami as warriors is quite evident.


Lizot's counter ethnography tries to show another side to these people but also gets bogged down by some of his own personal demons. His ethnography was free from a narrator's inflection but took on voyeuristic tendencies to compensate. Lizot also was in breach of ethical codes when he would trade goods in exchange for private time with the little Yanimamo boys. He also didn't distance himself far enough from Chagnon's fierce interpretation, and therefore played into the preexisting interpretations of the Yanomami.

Visual work done in South America on the Yanomami has also yielded similar results. The work of projects like NOVA on PBS has brought a new journalistic publicity to the region. To me this kind of special illustrates the ways in which the Yanomami have already been acculturated into the larger global scheme of things. Below that I place the work of "video artist" Juan Downey and his piece The Laughing Alligator. Personally I was surprised by amateur nature of such a piece and the lack of compelling (distinguishable) footage for having stayed with the Yanimami for eight months. But at this point it's just personal opinion.

No other group has fascinated so many in the field and led to such a reassessment about what we as social scientists are doing in the field and the ramifications it can have on all those outside.

A fantasitc movie on PBS - Yes, really.

49 up is a film that is 42 years in the making and is a fascinating look on how we age, view aging, and the life arc in general. This movie brings up the issues we've been discussing in class between the blurring line between documentary and ethnographic film making. I am posting a snippit and the director Michael Apted speaking on his work.

Is it an ethnographic look at modern life or a documentary on specific people?

It is amazing to hear people reflecting on where they thought they were going and where they ended up. Watch and decide for yourself. The film is on Channel 13 - Check local listings. It's worth sitting down for.

Grandma Ethnography : Matzo Balls & Culture

The suburbs of New Jersey are not the ideal place to conduct your average fieldwork. Its surroundings are painfully familiar and banal. The minutia of culture here reveal themselves only after a careful examination of routine, values, and aesthetics. One does not have the luxury of exoticism in a setting like this. On highly ritualized days, not unlike the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kipper, things do become a little bit clearer through those three pieces of the pie- routine, values, and aesthetics.

The routine of the ritual of Yom Kipper has not changed for my grandma for many years (with the exception that my grandfather is no longer here to share it with her.). She always spends the holiday with the family, her son, my father, and her daughter, my aunt. She can always be counted on to prepare the staple dishes for the breaking of the fast, which almost always include the following: matzo ball soup, brisket, egg salad, tuna salad and green beans. She makes the soup even though it is not the proper holiday to enjoy it (which is Passover). These foods hold special significance to my family because of their status as a staple on the table. She also completes the lighting of the candles ritual with such routinized precision that she doesn't even know what each component means anymore.

Grandmas are the bedrock of the family unit. They represent where the family has been and act as the cement of the younger members. Her values and understandings of the holiday are what is transmitted most strongly through her tales of the past and interpretation of the religious literature. Grandma represents integrity and positionally which is to be celebrated and respected. She also passes these along through her kin by rewarding good behavior with treats and the like.

Her view of aesthetics and what looks right for the occasion also speak volumes. Her use of her finer clothes indicate the serious nature of what is going on and that it is different from other days of the year. The way her food is presented on the table and then attacked buffet style creates a familial mood that is nearly impossible to recreate. The good china is used, a table cloth is spread, and thin wine glasses are filled. This is no ordinary night.

....

Epistemology & Me.

Epistemology as way of knowing rings true to my natural thought processes especially in a sociological gaze. To see and observe in the action of what is going on is to truly grasp, from the fine sensory details, upward. The film Man With A Movie Camera really hammers home this point through its thorough representation of then modern Eastern European life. The film also manages to convey its messages in the universal language of music which makes the whole experience that much more powerful. The film toys with technological feats of the day and creates a very convincing montage of everyday life from sunup to sundown.

We can apply this for our uses of understanding ethno-media through the idea of self reflection and broad understandings of our effect on the subject matter. Our ways of seeing the world must include ourselves in it, our actions spawn their own reactions that may not have occurred if we weren't there. Looking backwards on the things we've studied up until this point, each has had a camera, subject, and a director - it is important to not forget to turn the camera around once in a while and reverse the roles in order to understand the effect of each player in the game. I feel as though I will revisit this theme when we begin working on our group film projects.

The loose narrative stirred up an eerie connection to the hustle and bustle of our daily lives today and to, perhaps, the triteness of it all - in a technological sense - seeing how far we've come in such a short time. I was also reminded of a contemporary experiment in film done in a very similar way- Koyaanisqatsi- Godfrey Reggio's epic cinescape.

This is an 8 minute segment called "Vessels," in it one can clearly see the critique of modern life but through the the lens of the camera. The music is composed by famed minimalist Philip Glass and is quite enchanting.
Enjoy and I'm sure the parallels of theme and style will leap out to you.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: Estelle the Jewish Grandma.

1) The grandma is always cooking for her friends and family for the sustenance of her kinship is of the utmost importance to her.









2) Sitting before the meal discussing the importance of the day of atonement for Judaism, Yom Kipper.












3) The spread of food that she made for the pre-fast meal. Presentation is a big concern for her and how the food looks is just as important as taste.













4) She reads from the prayer book.













5) This is her praying before the yartzeit candles which symbolize dead family members including her husband.
















6) This is how she passes the time in between cooking meals, a daily ritual of crossword puzzles.