2011 Good-bye to all that

For the past 40 plus years I have been an advocate of an anthropology of visual communication approach to visual anthropology. The position I advocated was that visual anthropology should be the anthropological study of all visual and pictorial forms of culture and that the production of visual media(films, videos and stills) by anthropologists should be approached as a theoretical problem. Most importantly, visual anthropology should not be a fancy word for so-called ethnographic films that are often made by people with no anthropological training and who do not do ethnographic field work in preparation for producing their films. Finally, ethnographic film should be regarded as more than simply an audiovisual aid to teaching but as an avenue for the communication of anthropological knowledge. It is a concept first developed by Sol Worth(astro.temple.edu) and expanded upon by the two of us. We first formulated it at a National Science Foundation sponsored 1972 Summer Institute in Visual Anthropology. One result of this institute was the creation of the first professional organization in the field (Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication) and the first visual anthropology journal.

Try as I may to convince others of the value of this concept, it was mostly ignored. As Bob Aibel, one of Worth's former students, said recently, "we were preaching to a very small choir - ourselves, our students and a few friends. Everyone else didn't want to hear about it." In time, I found myself becoming the "Don Quixote of visual anthropology." While I wrote a number of articles espousing my ideas about film, it was with Picturing Culture(University of Chicago Press, 2000) that I developed my argument in its fullest. More recently, Marcus Banks and I have co-edited a history of the field, Made To Be Seen: Historical Perspectives in Visual Anthropology(University of Chicago Press, 2001) in which film is one chapter out of 11.

Apparently I am a slow learner but finally at VisCult in Finland and at this years' American Anthropological Association meetings(2010), I realized I was not Don Quixote, I had become the anthropological equivalent of "Rodney Dangerfield." It was time to quit wasting my time. So in late November, 2010, I resigned from both the American Anthropological Association and Society for Visual Anthropology. It is my intention to turn my attention of the production of multi-media ethnographies of American society like "Oak Park Stories"(DER). To that end, I am in the beginning stages of a long term ethnographic study of two Bohemian institutions in Malibu, California (astro.temple.edu). I will no longer critique manuscripts, write reviews or articles, give lectures about ethnographic film or attend those incredible boring "ethnographic film festivals" - the gold arches of visual anthropology.

As I found myself listening to the same tired ideas again this year and looking at the same kind of films over and over. Those interested in the anthropological study of visual media, by and large, ignore the Society for Visual Anthropology as it is considered by many to be nothing more than a place where films are promoted. I recalled something Sol Worth once said people do not re-invent the wheel, they invent the flat tire. In my case I been reading about and watching hundreds if not thousands of flat tires. Enough already!

-- ********************************************************************************************* Jay Ruby 8 Fourth Street Mifflintown, PA 17059 717-436-9502 Web - astro.temple.edu ********************************************************************************************

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