The Ethnographer's Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology

by Anna Grimshaw

Grimshaw sets a new agenda for visual anthropology, attempting to transcend the old division between image and text-based ethnography. She argues for the use of vision as a critical tool with which anthropologists can address issues of knowledge and technique. The first part of the book critically examines anthropology's history, focusing on the work of key individuals--Rivers, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown--in the context of early modern art and cinema. In the book's second part, Grimshaw considers the anthropological films of Jean Rouch, David and Judith MacDougall and Melissa Llewelyn-Davies.

Genres: Anthropology

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 25, 1997

About the author

Anna Grimshaw was trained as an anthropologist at the University of Cambridge. She carried out her doctoral research with communities of Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas. For almost a decade, she worked as a public scholar outside the academy.

Reviews

[Matej]

Delno

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grimshaw is a master at weaving together the parallels in art movements and ethnographic film.