Departmental Papers (ASC)
Title
An Ethnographic Filmflam: Giving Gifts, Doing Research, and Videotaping the Native Subject/Object
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
3-2004
Publication Source
American Anthropologist
Volume
106
Issue
1
Start Page
32
Last Page
42
DOI
10.1525/aa.2004.106.1.32
Abstract
Using the discussion of self-reflexivity as an organizing principle, this article examines how mobilizing digital video technology during fieldwork opens up empirical and theoretical space for reconceptualizing the relationship between anthropologists and informants. Placing the field of visual anthropology into critical conversation with long-standing theoretical arguments about the objectivist limitations of native anthropologists, I argue that the slipperiness of nativity as an anthropological designation helps to provide analytical tools for examining filmmaking as a kind of gift-giving process between native ethnographic filmmakers and the subjects of their films. This article highlights some of the ways in which my own filmic and videographic exploits in Harlem, New York, mark integral connections between seeing and being the proverbial other, probing social exchanges predicated on the usefulness of low-budget digital technology as a means of fostering politically and epistemologically valuable ethnographic collaborations.
Copyright/Permission Statement
This is the accepted version of the article which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.2004.106.1.32
Keywords
Black America, native anthropology, visual anthropology, reflexivity, gifts
Recommended Citation
Jackson, J. L. (2004). An Ethnographic Filmflam: Giving Gifts, Doing Research, and Videotaping the Native Subject/Object. American Anthropologist, 106 (1), 32-42. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2004.106.1.32
Date Posted: 13 December 2011
This document has been peer reviewed.