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.

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