Film As Ethnography

Download or read book Film As Ethnography written by Peter Ian Crawford and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1992-11-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels; that they are hierarchically related; that whereas writings may encompass the images produced by film, the inverse of this cannot be true. The author argues for this position further by suggesting that the visual is to the written mode as "thin description" (giving a record of the form of behaviour) is to "thick description" (giving an account of meaning).