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Inspired by the immensely influential 1937 sociological study Middletown: A Case Study in Cultural Conflicts by Rovert and Helen Lynd, Peter Davis's six documentary films about Muncie, Indiana, set out to examine the lives of Munsonians in the early 1980s. The disputes and conflicts accompanying the filming revealed more about AMerican values and customs than the films themselves. While attempting to transform the data from the Middletown studies into a meaningful and interesting visual form, the filmmakers were constantly distracted by the pressures, decisions and perils of government- and corporate-funded documentary filmmaking. Dwight W. Hoover, a Muncie historian and collaborator in the iddletown film project, describes why the folms were make and how they changed the lives of everyone involved. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

poor scholarship
A very poor book on a fascinating documentary series.

The Middletown Film Project represented a significant crossroads for American documentary, and the ethical and censorship controversies raised (particularly by one film in the series, "Seventeen") presaged many of the issues American documentary makers were to face in the decades that followed.

Unfortunately, Hoover's understanding of documentary is woefully simplistic.He fails to grasp key issues around documentary and broadcast practice, and the text is riddled with factual errors.

Frankly, I'm surprised that this book is in print.

Dull
A waste of time.The author doesn't know anything about documentary filmmaking or visual anthropology, and it clearly shows.

The February 2, 1997 reviewer didn't read the book.
Please take the FEb 2, 1997 review off the web. It doesn't make any sense ("inclusion"?) and it assumes things about the author that are not in the book itself ("failed academic" and"paranoid"). The review borders on being actionable....

A badly written vendetta, by a failed academic.
Hoover felt slighted by his total inclusion from the production of these films, and wrote this hard-to-follow book as payback. Unlike most paranoid vendettas, this one isn't even interesting... a waste of money. ... Read more

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The Cinema of John Marshall explores the life and art of the pioneering ethnographic filmmaker. Its centerpiece is an autobiographical essay in which Marshall assesses his forty-year involvement with the San peoples (Bushmen) of South Africa and his films, from the 1957 award winning ''The Hunters'' to his current work in progress, ''Death by Myth.'' The book weaves together the political economy of San dispossession, history and ethnography, personal narratives of historical importance, and expositions of film techniques and film language. The first English language study of the man and his work, The Cinema of John Marshall conveys the complex unity of Marshall's life: the filmic, the intellectual, the political, and the human. ... Read more

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El Guindi provides a comprehensive guide to visual anthropology and the use of film in ethnographic research. She shows how visual media is now an accepted part of anthropological methodology, a vital tool that produces knowledge about the range of cultures and about culture itself. It is an excellent guide for ethnographic research, and for film and other media instruction concerned with cross-cultural representation. ... Read more

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Early in its history, anthropology was a visual as well as verbal discipline. But as time passed, visually oriented professionals became a minority among their colleagues, and most anthropologists used written words rather than audiovisual modes as their professional means of communication. Today, however, contemporary electronic and interactive media once more place visual anthropologists and anthropologically oriented artists within the mainstream. Digital media, small-sized and easy-to-use equipment, and the Internet, with its interactive and public forum websites, democratize roles once relegated to highly trained professionals alone. However, having access to a good set of tools does not guarantee accurate and reliable work. Visual anthropology involves much more than media alone.

This book presents visual anthropology as a work-in-progress, open to the myriad innovations that the new audiovisual communications technologies bring to the field. It is intended to aid in contextualizing, explaining, and humanizing the storehouse of visual knowledge that university students and general readers now encounter, and to help inform them about how these new media tools can be used for intellectually and socially beneficial purposes.

Concentrating on documentary photography and ethnographic film, as well as lesser-known areas of study and presentation including dance, painting, architecture, archaeology, and primate research, the book's fifteen contributors feature populations living on all of the world's continents as well as within the United States. The final chapter gives readers practical advice about how to use the most current digital and interactive technologies to present research findings.

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Media Anthropology represents a convergence of issues and interests on anthropological approaches to the study of media. The purpose of this reader is to promote the identity of the field of study; identify its major concepts, methods, and bibliography; comment on the state of the art; and provide examples of current research. Based on original articles by leading scholars from several countries and academic disciplines, Media Anthropology provides essays introducing the issues, reviewing the field, forging new conceptual syntheses.

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The Handbook of Visual Analysis is a rich methodological resource for students, academics, researchers and professionals interested in investigating the visual representation of socially significant issues.

The Handbook:

The Handbook of Visual Analysis, which demonstrates the importance of visual data within the social sciences offers an essential guide to those working in a range of disciplines including: media and communication studies, sociology, anthropology, education, psychoanalysis, and health studies.

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Visual studies is a rapidly expanding intellectual field, growing throughout colleges and universities around the world. But is it asking the most interesting questions? And is it just too easy to do?

In his latest book, James Elkins offers a road map through the field of visual studies, describing its major concerns and its principal theoretical sources. Then, with the skill and insight that have marked his successful books on art and visuality, Elkins takes the reader down a side road where visual studies can become a more interesting place. Why look only at the same handful of theorists? Why exclude from one's field of vision non-Western art or the wealth of scientific images?

The centerpiece of Visual Studies is Elkins's proposal for ten ways in which visual studies could be made more difficult -- theoretically, practically, and in terms of its interpretative and historical range. As Stories of Art offered an antidote to the authorized version of art history, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction proposes a refreshingly open-minded introduction to a growing field.

This handsome volume is illustrated throughout. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

several points
I was initially interested in the newly emerging field of visual studies, however after reading several of elkins' other books as well as taking a course taught by the author, I have lost what interest I had.This book follows similar themes as his others and while it does a fantastic job of presenting problems within the field, it does not present any feasible alternatives.
Concerning the images included, it is problematic that elkins does not then interpret at least some of the images.However, I do not believe that elkins is leaving this task for the reader to do.Having listened to his lectures I believe that elkins includes the images simply because they strike him in some way or another, not because they have any relevance to the field in question.This lack of relevance seems to pervade the majority of his literature and indeed the field as a whole.

If you have the time...
Not by any means an introduction to the field of visual studies, however it is true to its title in that it indeed is skeptical. If you do not have a previous knowledge of visual studies, this book will not provide much clarification. The text comes across as a curriculum guide for educators. Elkins is proficient at pointing out the flaws of the discipline, and I'd agree that it is "too easy." Elkins provides many great examples of images from science to dogtags that could be de-coded under the rubric of visual studies. However, after providing these examples, he does not actually go through any interpretative process. Perhaps he is leaving this task for the reader to do..? Knowing how intelligent Elkins is, I would have loved to read his interpretations of the examples he provides. Elkins also provides a good precis of the canonical literature.
This is not a ground-breaking book, but if you are involved in any way with this field of knowledge, I'd definately suggest it. Otherwise, seek elsewhere for a more thorough introduction. ... Read more

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Chapters: Margaret Mead. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 122. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was both a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and Western culture, and also a respected, if controversial, academic anthropologist. Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life. An Anglican Christian, she played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Mead was the first of five children, born into a Quaker family, and raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily Fogg Mead, was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants. Her sister Katharine (1906-1907) died at the age of nine months. This was a traumatic event for Mead, who had named this baby, and thoughts of her lost sister permeated her daydreams for many years. Her family moved frequently, so her early education alternated between home-schooling and traditional schools. Margaret studied one year, 1919, at DePauw University, then transferred to Barnard College where she earned her Bachelor's degree in 1923. She studied with Professor Franz Boas and Dr. Ruth Benedict at Columbia University before earning her Master's in 1924. Mead set out in 1925 to do fieldwork in Polynesia. In 1926, she joined the American Museum of Natural History, Ne...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=19617 ... Read more

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Researching the Visual provides a comprehensive introduction to the entire field of visual research, exploring a range of approaches to visual enquiry which have previously been considered in isolation.It reviews the contributions of traditions as diverse as semiotics, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism and material culture studies and demonstrates their potential application for the visual researcher.

The first part of the book deals with the more traditional themes in visual research.These center on the use of photographic images in ethnographic enquiry and the cultural interpretation of texts such as advertisements.It then goes on to argue that visual research should also embrace the analysis of everyday objects, places and forms of social interactions. Accessibly presented yet methodologically rigorous and theoretically grounded, the relevance of leading theorists such as Foucault, Bourdieu, Goffman and Hall, for example are discussed.

The book includes numerous student exercises and projects (over 60 in all) which demonstrate that `low-tech, low-budget' visual research can provide methodologically sophisticated ways of testing and developing cultural theory.The book is generously illustrated with images, and diagrams that serve to bring the various theoretical points into focus.

Researching the Visual demonstrates the potential of the visual domain to form a crucial common ground for the diverse research agendas and theoretical perspectives of contemporary culture and cultural enquiry.

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Visual media offer powerful communication opportunities. Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People explores the methodological, ethical, representational and theoretical issues surrounding image-based research with children and young people. It provides well-argued and illustrated resources to guide novice and experienced researchers through the challenges and benefits of visual research.

Because new digital technologies have made it easier and cheaper to work with visual media, Pat Thomson brings together an international body of leading researchers who use a range of media to produce research data and communicate findings. Situating their discussions of visual research approaches within the context of actual research projects in communities and schools, and discussing a range of media from drawings, painting, collage and montages to film, video, photographs and new media, the book offers practical pointers for conducting research. These include

•  why visual research is used
• how to involve children and young people as co–researchers
• complexities in analysis of images and the ethics of working visually
• institutional difficulties that can arise when working with a ‘visual voice’
• how to manage resources in research projects

Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People will be an ideal guide for researchers both at undergraduate and postgraduate level across disciplines, including education, youth and social work, health and nursing, criminology and community studies. It will also act as an up-to-date resource on this rapidly changing approach for practitioners working in the field.

Pat Thomson is Professor of Education and Director of Research in the School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK. She is a former school principal of disadvantaged schools in Australia.