Abstract

MARTINS, Humberto. About the significance and the uses of images in anthropology: critical notes in times of the audio-visualization of the world. Etnográfica [online]. 2013, vol.17, n.2, pp.395-419. ISSN 0873-6561.

In this text I discuss the significance and the uses of images in social anthropology. By identifying insufficiencies in the dialogues between visual and non-visual anthropologists, I claim for an intensification of the use of images (audio-visual) in anthropology, both as a research (methodology) and as an analysis tool (theory). This claiming acknowledges not only the fact that anthropology’s subjects are today more visible and visualisable in the way they can, must and want to be studied (connecting to emergent theoretical, epistemological, political and ideological frameworks in the discipline) but also a more reflexive attitude of the anthropologists in their research processes; accordingly, images may serve to reveal encounters between observed and observers as well as ongoing, negotiated and circumstantial construction processes of knowledge and representations both in the field and post-field moments. The overall argument considers not only the increasing accessibility and diffusion of audio-visual products and means but also its greater recognition regarding the anthropologists’ academic and scientific curricula.

Keywords : visual anthropology; images; ethnography; reflexivity.

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