Universität Wien

240091 SE Inside and outside, emic and etic in visual representation (P4) (2015S)

theoretical background and practical examples

Continuous assessment of course work

Participation at first session is obligatory!

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 40 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

Friday 06.03. 09:45 - 13:00 Seminarraum D, NIG 4. Stock
Friday 13.03. 09:45 - 13:00 Seminarraum D, NIG 4. Stock
Friday 20.03. 09:45 - 13:00 Seminarraum D, NIG 4. Stock
Friday 17.04. 09:45 - 13:00 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock
Friday 08.05. 09:45 - 13:00 Seminarraum D, NIG 4. Stock
Friday 12.06. 09:45 - 13:00 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Representation is a core issue in visual anthropology and concerns both photography and film. Supposedly neutral, objective presentations of reality are often prevalent in historic, natural scientific or ethnographic films, some travel photography or ethnographic photo documentations. These positivistic approaches suggest that photo or film document reality 1:1 and the subjectivity of the photographer/filmmaker has no influence on the final product.
In ethnographic or anthropological visual documents a specific topic comes to the forefront: the presentation of cultural "others" from an outsider perspective. We would like to study both from theoretical and practical perspectives the different processes of filtering, selecting, structuring and interpretation going on among insiders and outsiders (e.g. tourists, anthropologists, different participants) and leading to different emic and etic perspectives. We will focus not only on products such as photos and film but especially on the social processes leading to their production.

Assessment and permitted materials

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Insight that photos and films are never objective but are always produced from special vantage points which are either implicit or explicit.
Try out different forms of representation by making photos from insider and outsider perspectives on one topic
reflecting on the influence of personal vantage points regarding the representation of specific topics
becoming sensitive to anthropological problems of representation, especially of cultural "others".

Examination topics

In this course we will work in bigger and smaller groups on theoretical and practical issues. You are asked to actively participate and the seminar group will have some leeway in choosing subtopics and tasks.
At the beginning you will have to do some reading of basic texts. In small groups you will then work together on one topic, making images from an outside perspective and getting others to make pictures from an inside perspective (e.g. market vendors, guerrilla gardeners, workers on a construction site...). In the seminar we are going to explore the differences between emic and etic perspectives and their implications for anthropological representation.
You are asked to participate actively during the seminar and write up your empirical research project in small groups.

Reading list

Banks Marcus und Howard Morphy, 1999, Rethinking visual anthropology, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Devereaux Leslie, Roger Hillman (eds.), 1995, Fields of Vision. Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Petermann Werner, 1991, 'Fotografie- und Filmanalyse' in Flick Uwe, Handbuch qualitative Sozialforschung, München, Psychologie Verlags Union, 228-232.
Pink Sarah, 2009 (2nd edition), Doing visual ethnography: images, media and representation in research, London, Thousand Oaks, Sage.
Ruby Jay, 2000, Picturing Culture. Explorations of Film & Anthropology, Chicago & London, Chicago University Press.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:39