Roger Sandalls Films And Contemporary Anthropology

Download or read book Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology written by Lorraine Mortimer and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology, Lorraine Mortimer argues that while social anthropology and documentary film share historic roots and goals, particularly on the continent of Australia, their trajectories have tended to remain separate. This book reunites film and anthropology through the works of Roger Sandall, a New Zealand–born filmmaker and Columbia University graduate, who was part of the vibrant avant-garde and social documentary film culture in New York in the 1960s. Mentored by Margaret Mead in anthropology and Cecile Starr in fine arts, Sandall was eventually hired as the one-man film unit at the newly formed Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in 1965. In the 1970s, he became a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sydney. Sandall won First Prize for Documentary at the Venice Film Festival in 1968, yet his films are scarcely known, even in Australia now. Mortimer demonstrates how Sandall's films continue to be relevant to contemporary discussions in the fields of anthropology and documentary studies. She ties exploration of the making and restriction of Sandall's aboriginal films and his nonrestricted films made in Mexico, Australia, and India to the radical history of anthropology and the resurgence today of an expanded, existential-phenomenological anthropology that encompasses the vital connections between humans, animals, things, and our environment.

Download or read book Beyond observation written by Paul Henley and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Beyond Observation is structured by the argument that the ‘ethnographicness’ of a film should not be determined by the fact that it is about an exotic culture – the popular view – nor because it has apparently not been authored – a long-standing academic view – but rather because it adheres to the norms of ethnographic practice more generally. On these grounds, the book covers a large number of films made in a broad range of styles across a 120-year period, from the Arctic to Africa, from the cities of China to rural Vermont. Paul Henley discusses films made within reportage, exotic melodrama and travelogue genres in the period before the Second World War, as well as more conventionally ethnographic films made for academic or state-funded educational purposes. The book explores the work of film-makers such as John Marshall, Asen Balikci, Ian Dunlop and Timothy Asch in the post-war period, considering ideas about authorship developed by Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner and Colin Young. It also discusses films authored by indigenous subjects themselves using the new video technology of the 1970s and the ethnographic films that flourished on British television until the 1990s. In the final part of the book, Henley examines the recent work of David and Judith MacDougall and the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, before concluding with an assessmentof a range of films authored in a participatory manner as possible future models.

Download or read book Chicanery written by Geoffrey Gray and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2023-05-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors’ reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of influential anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.

Download or read book Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs written by Georgia Curran and published by Sydney University Press. This book was released on 2024-03 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warlpiri songs hold together the ceremonies that structure and bind social relationships, and encode detailed information about Warlpiri country, cosmology and kinship. Today, only a small group of the oldest generations has full knowledge of ceremonial songs and their associated meanings, and there is widespread concern about the transmission of these songs to future generations. While musical and cultural change is normal, threats to attrition driven by large-scale external forces including sedentarisation and modernisation put strain on the systems of social relationships that have sustained Warlpiri cultures for millennia. Despite these concerns, songs remain key to Warlpiri identity and cultural heritage. Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs draws together insights from senior Warlpiri singers and custodians of these song traditions, profiling a number of senior singers and their views of the changes that they have witnessed over their lifetimes. The chapters in this book are written by Warlpiri custodians in collaboration with researchers who have worked in Warlpiri communities over the last five decades. Spanning interdisciplinary perspectives including musicology, linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnography and gender studies, chapters range from documentation of well-known and large-scale Warlpiri ceremonies, to detailed analysis of smaller-scale public rituals and the motivations behind newer innovative forms of ceremonial expression. Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs ultimately uncovers the complexity entailed in maintaining the vital components of classical Warlpiri singing practices and the deep desires that Warlpiri people have to maintain this important element of their cultural identity into the future.

Download or read book The Culture Cult written by Roger Sandall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Culture Cultis an acerbic critique of that longing widespread in society today to ?retreat from civilization.? From Rousseau and the Noble Savage to modern defenders of ethnicity such as Isaiah Berlin and Karl Polanyi, a prominent intellectual tradition has over-romanticized the virtues of tribal life. In contrast, another tradition, represented by Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Ernest Gellner, defends modern values and civil society. The Culture Cult discusses both sides of this divide between "culture" and "civilization," and between "closed" and "open" societies. The romantic insistence on the superiority of the primitive is increasingly grounded in a fictionalized picture of the past-a picture often created with the aid of well-meaning but misguided anthropologists. Such idealizations work to the detriment of the very people they are meant to help, for they isolate minorities from such undeniable benefits of modern society as literacy and health care, and discourage them from participating in modern life. Few will find comfort in The Culture Cult, but many will recognize a valuable criticism of currently popular social politics.

Download or read book Selected Readings in the Anthropology of Religion written by Stephen D. Glazier and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-12-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together in one volume a number of key theoretical and methodological advances in the anthropological study of religion. Chapters cover important topics not ordinarily included in books dealing with the anthropology of religion (e.g., bipedalism, the study of alcohol, film and video images, notions of religious agency). In addition, this collection is intended to build bridges between anthropologists of religion and religious studies scholars. Over the last four decades, anthropologists have grappled with the dialectical relationship between the examination of cultures from the emic, or insider, perspective, and the etic, or outsider, perspective. Nowhere is this creative tension more evident than in the anthropological study of religion. In this volume, anthropologists and religious studies scholars come to terms not only with a landscape that has shifted fundamentally, but a landscape that is still shifting. Essays in this collection raise new and important issues for the anthropological study of religion in new and important ways. In intensely personal essays, a number of contributors address two fundamental concerns in the study of religion: (1) how should anthropologists deal with the beliefs and practices of others?, and (2) how should anthropologists deal with their own religious backgrounds and beliefs as these may affect their understanding of the beliefs and practices of others? A partial resolution to both questions is necessary before the anthropological study of religion can advance to a higher level.

Download or read book Anthropological Filmmaking written by Jack R. Rollwagen and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.