New AN CFP: Ethnography across Media

Proposal submission deadline: December 1, 2008.

Anthropology News seeks contributions for two series that explore how ethnographic work is produced through diverse media. The below prompts are meant to inspire and we welcome additional topics related to these general themes.

Multisensory Anthropology across Media
More than just ways of thinking and being, cultures are also fields of sensation, experience and sentiment. Indeed fieldwork remains the sine qua non of ethnographic understanding precisely in so far as both cultural transmission and cultural understanding depend on experiential engagement. Recognizing this, many contemporary anthropologists seek to explore the variety of media—including video, music, photography, digital ethnography and creative writing—through which such multisensory experiences and knowledges can be communicated. Drawing from diverse modes of creative expression, from traditional forms of ethnographic writing to work that makes use of performance or new technologies, submissions should focus on how media can be harnessed to ethnographically convey different kinds of information.

Visual Ethics
As access to digital media increases, discussions of “visual ethics”—ethical considerations regarding the collection and dissemination of visual data—become ever-more incumbent on anthropologists using this data. This conversation is framed by the varying, sometimes conflicting needs and interests of those who produce and consume visual data, including research communities and anthropologists across all subfields. This series seeks to explore the following issue: (1) negotiating representational authority; (2) control in the circulation of images; (3) displaying images in different contexts, including textbooks, conferences and film festivals; (4) relations with and responsibilities toward research subjects and communities; (5) balancing rights to privacy and knowledge circulation; and (6) the collection and dissemination of visual materials within the context of globally expanding use of and access to digital media.

For guidelines see our website.