A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: Visual Anthropology and Activism

Faye Miller UMass Senior Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies Major Commonwealth Honors College

Faye Miller
UMass Senior
Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies Major
Commonwealth Honors College

By Faye Miller

UMass Public Anthropology Course | Anthro 397D

Spring 2014

It shames me a bit to mention this but I usually prefer a documentary about an issue than actually reading about it. Blame it on my generation or a short-attention span, but the fact remains that I get way more invested in stories when a face is presented to me in color. Photographs and documentaries capture something for me that just doesn’t always happen with words, especially if the alternative to a picture is a lengthy, wordy, and complicated article. Call me a sucker for press hype, but the truth is I watched the documentary Blackfish twice in the past three months and probably wouldn’t have been motivated to read a collection of books or articles to learn about SeaWorld’s problems and abuses (http://blackfishmovie.com/).

I don’t think I’m alone in my enjoyment of photographs and other digital accounts of lives and issues. I also don’t think that this is in anyway a problem for activists or public anthropologists. How many people are really going to read an academic book you wrote about a community and its problems? If the amount of books I checked out this semester for my thesis that haven’t been read since the 90’s are any indication, it seems that very few people actually are reading thick academic tomes. Of those readers, I doubt many are the intended audience that most anthropologists would really hope to reach. Moving away from articles and books toward something more attention grabbing, like photographs or documentaries, might be effective pathways for social change.

When we can capture on film people speaking about their lives, communities, and the desires they have for change we can bring a whole new perspective to public discussions and social justice movements. Imagine trying to explain issues of corporate pollution or systemic racism in a local community through a documentary. The community’s emotions, desires, and fears would be presented in full-living color. Theoretical issues, like structural violence, can be transformed into actual people, with lives, hopes, and dreams. Structural violence is affecting your neighbor down the street, your teacher, or your own family. UMass Amherst Public Health professor Aline Gubrium (2009) asks students and research participants to produce moving digital stories to encourage and promote change. She recently collaborated with UMass Anthropologist Krista Harper to write a book, Participatory Digital and Visual Methodologies (Gubrium and Harper 2013), exploring a range of digital and visual approaches to collaborative research. Kansans State University visual anthropologist Michael Wesch explains on his website ‘Mediated Cultures’ that visual anthropology “seek[s] to inspire empathy and a sense of connection between the audience and the subject, and all of our productions strive to achieve what we call “profound authenticity” – giving the viewer and the subject a sense of wonder about those things that otherwise seem mundane and trivial” (2013). Boom. That kind of message, of connection and compassion, goes far and pulls on heart-strings far more than a book that’ll sit on a library shelf until some poor student has to write a thesis about it.

Great. Fantastic. Documentaries, photography, and digital storytelling are wonderful ways to make us feel impassioned about an issue. But how do we move to the next step? As in, how do we get our emotionally moved audience to actually enact change and to work with communities? This is what I call the double-edged sword of visual anthropology: “slacktivism”. Humor site Urban Dictionary described “slacktivism” as “The act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem”. In other words, I’m going to like this page on Facebook and now I can feel good about myself. I’ll re-tweet this story and now I’ve helped improve the lives of Syrian refugees. “Slacktivism” is the negative side of visual ethnography and anthropology. Communities and academics can work together to produce a beautifully moving film about their lives or issues. Then, nothing. There could be outrage but no action. Or, if there’s action, maybe it’s the “little white girl” (or boy) voluntourist as savior riding in to save that poor community described by Biddle 2014. Once we release a video into the wild we are at the mercy of the public’s perception and that may or may not lead to lasting change.

But sometimes we can see beautiful action born out of digital media. Writer Sarah Kendzior wrote on Al-Jazeera English that “In the case of Trayvon Martin, the cause prompted the conversation – because it is not only a cause but a symptom; a symptom of systematic injustice that Americans are confronting through, and in part because of, social media”. Social media allowed Trayvon Martin’s family and their supporters to bring to light the horrific lack of justice and love for young black men in America. Today, months after the trial of George Zimmerman, this conversation continues, even as change moves slowly (if at all). Maybe, slacktivism is not the worst thing that has come with the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Maybe, slacktivism is the first step in achieving lasting change and social justice. We have to open minds and change perception before we can implement lasting and large change. Digital storytelling and the creation of a connection and empathy, in Michael Wesch’s words, is the first step toward change.

As anthropologists, as advocates, as activists, as fighters for social justice, as humans, we have to stand in solidarity with our partners. Public anthropology faces a huge hurdle in connecting with the greater public just because anthropology is located in academic institutions. Universities change slowly, like all behemoth institutions. However, if we want to encourage social change and social justice, if we want to stand in solidarity with community members, we have to be willing to go against the grain. Digital media and ethnography does, right now, challenge traditional academic knowledge production, which is change itself. So, let’s make a movie.

References Cited:

Blackfish”. http://blackfishmovie.com/

Bidddle, Pippa. “The Problem With Little White Girls (and Boys): Why I stopped Being a Voluntourist”. 2014 http://pippabiddle.com/2014/02/18/the-problem-with-little-white-girls-and-boys/

Gubrium, Aline. “Digital Storytelling as a Method for Engaging Scholarship in Anthropology”.   Practicing Anthropology. 31 (2009). 5-9.

Harper, Krista and Aline Gubrium. “Participatory Visual and Digital Methods”. Left Coast Press. Walnut Creek, California. 2013.

Kendzior, Sarah. “The Subjectivity of Slactivism”. Al Jazeera English. April 5th, 2012.            http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/201244114223946160.html

Wesch, Michael. “Smile Because it Happened”. June 14, 2013.http://mediatedcultures.net/our-videos/smile-because-it-happened/

Urban Dictionary. “Slactivism”. 2003. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slacktivism.