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Visual Anthropology Review, Volume 20, Issue 1, pages 3-16, ISSN 1053-7147, online ISSN 1548-7458. ©2004 by the American Anthropological Association, all rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press; Journals Division; 2000 Center Street, Suite 303; Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

SARAH PINK

Applied visual anthropology implies the creation of new methodologies and practices specific to proj-ects that entail some form of social intervention and that are guided by the needs of clients. This ar-ticle introduces the historical and contemporary development of this subdiscipline and argues that it can make substantive contributions to academic visual anthropology method and theory. [Key-words: applied anthropology, visual methodology, ethnography, social intervention, interdisciplinarity]

INTRODUCTION

John and Malcolm Collier’s 1986 Visual Anthropol-ogy: Photography as a Research Method has played an important role in the development of the subdiscipline.

It has inspired many students to use visual methods and, since it was rooted in the scientific approaches of its time, has simultaneously been criticized from new theoretical perspectives (Edwards 1997; Pink 2001). As such, it has provided a fundamental point of departure for thousands of students and for the de-velopment of visual methodologies. Yet, one strand of Collier and Collier’s work has remained dormant and not represented in subsequent written debates in visual anthropology. This is applied visual anthropology.1 Collier and Collier note that in the early 20th century the sociologist Lewis Hine’s photographs of children “were influential in passing the first child labour laws’ (1986:9; see also Chaplin 1994:198). They propose that “the essence of applied anthropology [is such] observation, synthesis, and action” (9) and they pur-sued this conviction in their own practice. In the 1950s John Collier Jr. participated as a visual anthropologist in a number of Cornell University’s applied projects,

including the Vicos Project in the Peruvian Andes and Venezuela where his photography tracked “human development in agricultural technology in support of community development’ (Collier 1997-8:56; see also Collier, Malcolm 2003). The Vicos project, a well-cited example in applied anthropology texts that do not men-tion its visual component (van Willigen 2000:33), was carried out by Cornell University and the University of San Marcos, Lima. Its goal “was to prepare the Indian peons of Vicos to take over their colonially established hacienda and live as free citizens of Peru” (Collier and Collier 1986:51). In a random sample of families, Col-lier “measured systematically some of the influences of the project on Indian families by...photographing every wall, in every room, of every home” (51). This produced two thousand negatives, used to create qualitative and statistical information (54). Some of the photographs from these projects can be viewed on-line (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/VAR/collier/collier.htm, accessed July 6, 2004.) and in Collier, 1997-8). This case study contributed to the literature produced during a period when visual anthropology was being established as a sub-discipline of anthropology. It was discussed in John Collier’s first edition of Visual Anthropology

APPLIED VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

SOCIAL INTERVENTION, VISUAL

METHODOLOGIES AND

ANTHROPOLOGY THEORY

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along with a series of other applied projects that Collier had participated in as a visual anthropologist (Collier 1967). Another early project in applied visual anthro-pology was Collier’s observational film study, Alaskan Eskimo Education (1973). Collier’s work continued to be influential. His text (1986) was for many years the only introduction to visual research methods. The idea of visual anthropology as a research method was also advocated by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (1942, 1976; Mead 1995), but it was soon overtaken by the more “glamorous” practice of anthropological filmmaking (Banks and Morphy 1997:5).

Visual anthropology began growing internationally as a subdiscipline of anthropology in the mid – 20th century, when it had an applied strand.2 Like Collier’s work, much of this went unreported, or if documented at the time, it was neglected in later versions of the history of visual anthropology (Banks and Morphy 1997; Grimshaw 2001). For example, Richard Chalfen and Michael Rich’s article in this volume discusses Chalfen’s 1960s collaboration with the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic to develop “socio-documentary filmmaking”. This project allowed clinic staff to know their clients in new ways. Elsewhere, applied elements of visual anthropology practice have not been stressed. In Britain, for example, from the 1970s to 1990s ap-plied visual anthropological practices included the production of Granada TV’s Disappearing World and BBC TV’s Under the Sun (Henley in press; Grimshaw 2001). Target audiences of these projects included the general television-viewing public as well as academ-ics. Such projects involved anthropologists working in television as consultants and initiated a lasting but changing route for trained visual anthropologists to work with television in various capacities (Henley in press). If these films have a social intervention slant, it lies in their role as educational documentary with the potential to evoke empathetic understandings of ways other people experience their worlds.

Sometimes, work involving applied visual anthro-pology is reported under other subdisciplinary labels, for

example, the anthropology of indigenous media.3 This literature often reports on social interventions involving indigenous activists’ use of video. Here, I am interested in the strand of this work in which the anthropologist becomes an activist and media producer (Ginsburg et al. 2002b:8). This may occur when anthropologists,

feel a responsibility to support projects by non-western or postcolonial groups who are resisting the impositions of Western or global capitalist media; and to support media use by subaltern groups…or minorities within nation states. [Ginsburg et al. 2002b:22; see also Ginsburg 1997]

Examples include Eric Michaels’ work in Austra-lia in the 1980s. He trained aboriginal informants in video production and facilitated setting up a low-power transmission facility. This allowed them to respond to state programming with their own broadcasts (Ruby 2000:227; Ginsburg 2002a:42-47). In the United States, Harald Prins, an anthropologist trained in filmmaking, became involved with Native rights work on behalf of a Mi’kmaq community, resulting in a land claim settle-ment and federal recognition of their tribal status. “Their success was due in part to a film about them, which I co-produced and they sponsored” (Prins 2002: 59).

This issue of Visual Anthropology Review intends to bring applied visual anthropology out of obscurity and into a public arena. By providing case studies and templates, it aims to provoke debate on the role of ap-plied visual anthropology in today’s world. An initial literature and on-line review reveals the timeliness of this exercise. Contemporary demand for applied visual anthropology stems from three key interests: the users of applied anthropology – public, private and non-gov-ernmental clients who sponsor anthropological research; graduate students seeking to utilize their skills outside the confines of academic visual anthropology; and academic and professional visual and applied anthropologists who seek to share their theoretically informed practices of re-search and representation with non-anthropologists. This

Sarah Pink is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University. She has conducted research in Spain and England on visual and material culture, the senses, gender and performance in public con-texts and events, and the home. She uses visual images and technologies in research and representation and has combined academic with applied work. Her published works include Women and Bullfighting (1997), Doing Visual Ethnography (2001), Working Images with Laszlo Kurti and Ana Isabel Afonso (2004), Home Truths (2004) and Applications of Anthropology (forthcoming). Contact: s.pink@lboro.ac.uk.

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demand is emerging in a context of changing attitudes of mainstream anthropology to its applied and visual subdisciplines. Both applied and visual anthropology have grown up in troubled relationships to academic anthropology, which classified the work of applied visual anthropologists as either applied or visual. In neither case was this work regarded as contributing to the disci-pline, theoretically or empirically. Shifts in the practice and perception of visual and applied anthropology are generating changes in this pattern. Visual anthropology is now understood to include more than ethnographic film; academic anthropologists increasingly use visual methods and media; and applied anthropology, already well established in the United States, is gaining status in Britain. Applied anthropology is now seen as a vi-able career route that is not necessarily detached from academic anthropology’s concerns, and its potential contributions to the discipline are recognized.

In this article I ask how applied visual anthropol-ogy might be defined. Next, I examine contemporary applied visual anthropology. What substantive areas does it cover? How is its relationship to the mainstream developing? Which practices of research and representa-tion distinguish it as a subdiscipline of anthropology? How might applied visual anthropology inform clients’ expectations and contribute to the theoretical and sub-stantive agendas of visual and mainstream academic anthropology? Finally, what is the future of applied visual anthropology?

WHAT IS APPLIED VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY?

To my knowledge, there is no existing systematic attempt to define applied visual anthropology. Reports of applied visual research are disseminated in special-ist publications (e.g., medical, education, or business journals, publications on the anthropology of media) that do not address general issues relating to applied visual anthropology. Some applied projects are mentioned in visual anthropology texts on ethnographic film (Mac-Dougall 1998; Ruby 2000; Grimshaw 2001) or visual ethnographic methods (Pink 2001; Banks 2001) but not discussed specifically as applied visual anthropology practices. Likewise, applied anthropology literature does not account for visual anthropology practice. Applied anthropology textbooks cover the field’s history, eth-ics, methodologies and substantive areas (MacDonald 2002; Ervin 2000; van Willigen 2002; Nolan 2002; Gwynne2003), but the only reference to visual practice

I located is in James Beebe’s contribution to James MacDonald’s reader (2002). Under a section headed, “Direct Observation”, Beebe suggests:

Where locally accepted a camera can be an ex-tremely important research tool. Photos can be used to document conditions before an interven-tion. Sometimes the rapid appraisal team can do the local correspondents a favor by sending back or returning with photos. [2002:80]

This advice does little to promote the potential of the visual in applied anthropology. Marietta Baba and Carole Hill’s (1997) edited global overview of applied anthropology does not mention visual anthropology, and only one of 39 chapters in Patricia Higgins and J. Anthony Paredes’ (2000) collection discusses a visual anthropology project.

Nancy Tongue et al. (2002) suggest a definition of applied visual anthropology based on their experience of producing a multicultural AIDS prevention video in Arizona. For them, visual anthropology involves the documentation of cultural forms, communication of “anthropological material and theories to the general public” (2002:212), and collaborative practices that involve film producers and subjects. Thus, “Applied visual anthropology engages in all these activities, but it gives priority to using anthropology to design and implement effective change programs for target audi-ences” (2002:212). This definition is a good starting point. A broader definition is needed, however, to ac-commodate contemporary developments in practice and theory in visual anthropology and the range of global and local contexts in which applied anthropologists work.4 It should incorporate the “anthropology of visual communication” approach developed by Sol Worth and Jay Ruby in the 1970s and advocated by Banks and Morphy as “the anthropology of visual systems, or more broadly visual cultural forms” (1997:5). Visual methods of anthropological research and representation, encompass art, drawing, photography, video, new digital and visual media, and multimedia technologies includ-ing hypermedia (Pink 2001; Pink et al. 2004). Rather than influencing target audiences primarily through anthropologically informed films, for example, other media and objectives might shape the design of visual representations in applied work. Posters, hypermedia projects and exhibition can inform decision-making in commercial and public sector contexts.

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Any definition should indicate the full range of ap-plications of visual anthropology in the private, public, and NGO sectors. This includes overseas development, social intervention projects, medical anthropology, con-sumer ethnography, and design anthropology, among others. Changes in business insights resulting from applied visual anthropology research might be realized as business actions applied to new product designs or branding strategies. This involves two forms of social intervention. First, it can influence how business or policy makers think. Second, through its input into the design of policies or products, applied visual research intervenes in the creation of technologies, experiences, and everyday practices which impact the lives of con-sumers and providers.

As social intervention, applied visual anthropology usually takes the form of problem solving that involves collaboration with informants and brings about social change (see Chalfen and Rich and Jayasinhji Jhala’s contributions in this volume). This characteristic sets it apart from academic visual anthropology that may also be collaborative but is exploratory rather than problem solving. Moreover, as Chalfen and Rich and Tracey Lovejoy and Nelle Steele’s contributions to this volume show, applied visual anthropology usu-ally involves cultural brokerage in that is entails the representation of one “culture” to another. A review of recent debates suggests that this distinguishes it from applied anthropology practice, the definition of which is being expanded to include the role of applied anthropologist as decision-maker or project assessor (Green in press). To date, applied visual anthropology practice is not identified with such shifts or roles but remains located in the collaborative practice of visual production and communication.

I argue that applied visual anthropology is a practice with a set of methods distinct from those of applied or visual anthropologies. Definitions should, then, account for historical factors that impact contemporary applica-tions of visual anthropology. In some key studies visual anthropological methods have developed as non-aca-demic applications of anthropology. Practices such as the “cultural inventory” (Collier and Collier 1986) and some styles of ethnographic filmmaking formed in non-academic contexts have informed, and become defined as, visual anthropological rather than applied practices. In the case of the Disappearing World documentary films made for television, they may have influenced the practices of academic ethnographic filmmakers.

In my own experiences, developing applied video ethnography methods appropriate for research in the home led me to a method I also advocate for academic research (Pink 2003 and my article in this issue). Chal-fen and Rich’s method, Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA), is an excellent example: “While rooted in visual anthropology, it is important to recog-nize that VIA was neither started as a project in applied anthropology nor grounded in medical anthropology or media anthropology. Nonetheless, VIA has taken on features that place it in all four contexts” (p.) I, there-fore, seek to establish applied visual anthropology as a practice in its own right, with its own history. Applied visual anthropology and its methodological and ethi-cal concerns differ in important ways from applied or visual anthropology.

At the beginning of the 21st century, visual and applied anthropology are increasingly recognized and incorporated into mainstream anthropology. Both have a capacity to influence and, in some ways transform, mainstream anthropology, making it a more engaged discipline that provides knowledge accessible to a range of audiences. In doing so, it employs the visual as a method of research and representation, thus rendering anthropological knowledge more widely accessible and influential outside academia and making such knowledge available through a range of media. Curiously, however, applied visual anthropology is taking us to methodolo-gies that have been abandoned by the kinds of visual anthropology that are now more widely adopted by the mainstream. This includes the development of new forms of archiving and comparative analysis. I outline some of the more concrete forms such developments are taking in the next section.

CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS IN

APPLIED VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Private, public (government), and NGO (nongov-ernmental organization) sectors value (audio)visual means of producing and disseminating knowledge that may be less accessible through written or verbal media. Recently, such applied visual anthropology projects have been carried out in medical, development, and community contexts, as well as in industry. One aim of this issue is to survey the field by juxtaposing articles that describe applied visual anthropology projects with diverse aims, clients, geographical foci, and media.

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Public sector applications of visual anthropology are evident across a range of contexts. Some involve anthropologists taking activist stances, others are produced directly for public sector clients. Applied medical anthropology and health research is becoming more widespread and accompanied by an increase in the use of visual methods. Most of this work involves anthropologically informed documentary filmmaking. For example, collaborative documentary filmmaking has been an important tool in HIV prevention campaigns in the United States (Tongue et al. 2000; Biella 1988; Biella and Drufovka 1989). A particularly interesting project is the STEPS to the Future, Southern Africa AIDS education film package produced by indigenous filmmakers, with anthropologist Susan Levine of the University of Cape Town as consultant, focus group specialist and trial screening ethnographer (http://www.dayzero.co.za/steps/, accessed July 6, 2004; VAR 19:2004). In this issue, Chalfen and Rich provide another example of applied visual anthropology in a medical context where visual production is undertaken by the informants, and the target audience is composed of clinicians. The types of visual text produced differ from those of academic visual anthropological repre-sentations and include multimedia CD ROMs for the training of clinicians.

In community and social development contexts, applied visual anthropology involves different types of collaboration, social intervention, and target audience. In Spain A Buen Común, an independent documentary video unit, produces ethnographic and anthropologically informed videos as part of social intervention projects (Camas Baena et al. 2004). This unit has developed unique methods, combining anthropological and psycho-logical principles to produce collaborative documentary films with their “informants”. Their goals are to impact the lives of participants through the self-awareness gained in the reflexive process of documentary produc-tion. A second aim is to “reveal the hidden” – to make explicit the voices of those who are not usually heard in public domains. To develop the documentary, Mujeres Invisibles (Invisible Women), A Buen Común worked with women from marginalized barrios in the city of Córdoba, the city council, and two grassroots organi-zations working towards equality. The film, composed mainly of interviews with the women concerned, aims to bring their voices into the public domain, since they “represent a reality that usually remains hidden or at best forgotten for the comfortable educated consumerist

urban middle classes” (Camas Baena et al. 2004:134; see also Martinez 2000).

New applications of visual anthropology are also be-ing introduced in overseas development as demonstrated in Dianne Stadhams’ article in this issue. In a project sponsored by the British Department for International Development (DfID), Stadhams, a tourism development specialist, produced a television program collaboratively with Gambian partners. This project drew from visual anthropological methodologies to represent the mul-tiple perspectives of different stakeholders in Gambian tourism. Screened on Gambian television as well as to NGOs, the program aimed to promote awareness and thus establish a process of negotiation and collabora-tion in the development of tourism as a strategy for poverty alleviation in the Gambia. By using innovative methodologies to achieve poverty elimination goals within DfID’s parameters, Stadhams framed her work within development practice and simultaneously chal-lenged it.

As Flores’ article in this issue shows, develop-ment objectives shaped by NGOs can also shape the way indigenous media is produced. Flores’ work with Maya-Q’eqchi’ filmmakers in Guatemala’s post-con-flict context was facilitated by equipment provided by a development project. However, in the position of a doctoral student rather than a consultant anthropologist the author was able to deconstruct the subject matter and editing styles of his informants’ video productions as representing developmentalist agendas. Flores encour-aged the filmmakers to collaborate with him to make observational style films that more closely reflected both his training in visual anthropology and their own concerns. Flores argues that a shared anthropology can allow people to “gain greater control over which markers of identity they chose to preserve, modify, or reject’” as well as allowing the anthropologist to arrive at new understandings (p). Jhala’s contribution to this issue discusses the appropriation of visual anthropology methods by governmental, NGO, religious, caste, and media agencies involved in the disaster relief context following an earthquake in India in 2001. Considering this alongside his own work as a visual anthropologist, Jhala shows how video technology can help create cul-turally appropriate routes for expressing loss or grief. In doing so, he argues that applied visual anthropologists have a role as activists and advocates.

The work discussed above suggests that applied visual anthropology does not simply involve tacking an

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applied component on to existing ethnographic filmmak-ing methods. Rather, it entails designing visual produc-tions that are informed by anthropological theory, have ethnographic integrity, are appropriate to the context, and can communicate with specific target audiences. Here, however, ethnographic integrity does not necessarily imply long-term fieldwork, but an understanding of both the researcher’s and local people’s subjectivities, de-veloped though a reflexive process of collaboration and research. Mujeres Invisibles is theoretically informed by anthropological gender theory (Pink 2004a,b) and Stadhams’ program by an understanding of multiple gazes (Stadhams 2003). In these projects applying vi-sual anthropology involves promoting self-awareness by representing individuals and groups to others and to themselves. This resonates in some ways with the use of applied visual anthropology in industry, which also visually represents the subjectivity of individuals and categories of persons to other target audiences. All involve a form of what Chalfen and Rich call cultural brokerage (this issue).

Visual anthropology methods are used internation-ally in commercial research, for example in Design An-thropology (Sperschneider and Bagger 2003). They are also used in consumer research by multinationals such as Unilever (see Pink’s article in this issue) and the anthro-pological consumer research agency, Context Research (http://www.contextresearch.com/context/index.cfm, accessed July 6, 2004). Kodak, where anthropolo-gists do ethnographic research about photography, has engaged in the anthropological study of photographic practices (News Section 2001:28, 2002:31). Their in-house anthropologists might, for example be:

…seated in an easy chair in a living room as a middle-aged couple review their photos of a recent trip to Bermuda and explain how and why they put together their vacation album; walking from the roller coaster to the flume ride with a family of four, observing how and when they take pho-tos and shoot video during their amusement park visit; or watching as assistants apply makeup and hairspray to a young Chinese girl in preparation for her portrait session with an “art photographer” in Beijing. [Kodak 2002]

My own consultancy work in applied visual an-thropology with Unilever Research includes consumer ethnography projects using video technology, photo-

graphic methods, and hypermedia, preparing visual and written reports, and disseminating materials for diverse audiences including consumer scientists, chemists, and marketing and advertising professionals. Tracey Lovejoy and Nelle Steele, in this issue, describe similar applications of visual anthropology methods in research and dissemination. They utilize visual ethnographies of everyday life and use intranet to disseminate research products that combine written text and images within their organization. Such anthropological project-based approaches have led to the production of small-scale visual ethnographies of particular groups of research subjects with specific research targets in mind. More wide-ranging projects are also under development. For example, the website of Everyday Lives, a company that makes extensive use of video recording, co-founded by Siamack Salari, includes the following statement: “Using anthropological techniques, we live with and film people in countries ranging from the USA to the People’s Republic of China” (http://www.edlglobal.net/, accessed July 6, 2004). According to this website, the company is “creating what will be the largest archive of everyday life observations anywhere” and will pro-vide “stimulating and consumer centered thinking about their brands, consumers and competitors (http://www.edlglobal.net/dream.html, accessed July 6, 2004). Such large-scale visual documentation projects initially appear to have ideas in common with archiving projects that preoccupied visual anthropology in the 1970s. Yet, further research into the practices, data, and knowledge that inform this commercial work would be needed in order to comment on similarities. Like the public and independent sector projects described above, these applications of visual anthropology in industry do not engage in the type of long-term participant-observation that is associated with conventional anthropological narrative.

Applied ethnographic research and representation differs from academic practice according to practical factors such as time-scales, budgets, and the needs of different audiences. Typically, although not always, applied work involves shorter periods of participant-observation, greater use of interviewing, and multi-sited research. It is important to note that these methods of research and analysis are anthropologically informed. Frequently, their subject matter differs from that of tra-ditional anthropology, and may include examples such as studying the use of domestic information technology (IT), laundry practices in a sample of 50 homes, or staff-

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ing on a nursing ward. Their essential aims are problem solving and social intervention. In this situation there is little point in continuing to define anthropology in terms of its long-term fieldwork method. Instead, we need to see anthropology as a way of understanding and approaching questions, issues and problems (Pink in press a). Likewise, to take an applied visual anthropol-ogy seriously we need to dissociate visual anthropol-ogy research from long-term participant-observation. Paul Henley identifies parallels between observational cinema and participant-observation. Both “involve a judicious mixture of observation and participation” and share a “belief that understanding should be achieved through a gradual process of discovery, that is through engagement within the everyday lives of the subjects rather than by placing them within predetermined ma-

trices, whether a script in the case of the filmmakers or a questionnaire in the case of anthropologists” (2000:218; see also Pink 2003). Such an exploratory approach to discovering and representing other people’s lives is not usually viable in applied visual anthropology. Research requirements and time-scales are more clearly defined. Visual exploration can be a part of this but only within the framework of the project. In this sense there are parallels between the constraints experienced by ap-plied anthropologists and those practicing an applied visual anthropology. However, there are also key dif-ferences between applied anthropology and applied visual anthropology. A range of applied methods is outlined in existing applied anthropology textbooks.5 These are anthropologically informed and appropriate to the research subjects they engage. I argue, however, that applied visual anthropology does not simply add video technology or photography to these methods. The contributors to this volume show that applied visual anthropology methods of research and representation are developed as a response to particular subject matter, can inspire new working practices themselves, and offer new ways of reaching target audiences.

Fig. 1 (above and right). Four frames from John Collier’s super 8 research film footage of a Head Start program in Kwethluk, Alaska, winter 1969. The images are separated from each other by 1-2 seconds in real time. Photograph by John Collier, Jr., reproduced courtesy

of the Collier family Collection.

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PRACTICES AND ETHICS

I would not want to prescribe the kind of project to which applied visual anthropology is most suited. Existing work suggests that visual research is success-fully applied to projects that seek to represent the ways people experience certain dimensions of their everyday worlds and that create platforms on which people can represent their experiences, views, or culture. It fa-cilitates the representation of embodied aspects of self that can be expressed audiovisually. It encourages the use of metaphor and the empathetic communication of knowledge and experience that cannot be expressed us-ing words alone. This, combined with the technological possibilities of using visual and digital media and the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of applied work, invites specific working practices. For example, visual methods and materials support practices suited to the teamwork and collaboration often involved in applied research. Video and photographic data, especially when distributed digitally, can be shared between researchers and with informants.

The results of applied work need to be represented in easily accessible forms that will engage otherwise busy professionals and decision-makers. Possibilities include using methods traditional to applied and visual anthropology, such as documentary filmmaking, televi-sion programming, photographic exhibition, and essays and report writing. This is increasingly combined with other media, such as posters and multimedia hypermedia formats. CD, DVD, and intranet multimedia representa-tions are discussed by Chalfen and Rich, Lovejoy and Steele, and Pink in this issue.

Practicing applied visual anthropology offers unique opportunities and requires certain working practices. Visual methods are by nature collaborative. If they involved covert recording, they would be considered unethical by most anthropologists (Pink 2001; Banks 2001). Applied research involves collaboration, not only with informants, but also with clients, co-researchers from other disciplines, and other interested parties. This requires flexibility to, and appreciation of, other people s̓ agendas and needs. Our interpretations of ethnography must be flexible and adapted to fit the research context. This, as I have argued elsewhere (Pink 2001:18), leads to defining ethnography as a methodology rather than as a specific method or set of methods for data collec-tion. Methods used in applied visual anthropology are

likely to include participant-observation, interviewing, and other interactions with informants, but the extent to which these are used, and the amount of time they are used for, will vary. It is the approach of the researcher, not the application of the method, that makes research ethnographic. I feel that the goal of research should be to produce a loyal and reflexive account of other peopleʼs experiences, an account based on collaboration and recognition of the intersubjectivity of the research encounter. Finally, applied visual anthropology gives us the chance to develop new ways to represent work to different types of target audience.

Applied visual anthropology raises ethical issues unaccounted for in existing ethical codes for applied or visual anthropology. Ethical codes for practicing anthropologists published on the websites of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA ) and the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA) emphasize the responsibility of practicing anthropolo-gists to the people researched and their communities, their colleagues, sponsors and employers, students, and to society at large (http://www.sfaa.net/sfaaethic.html; http://www.practicinganthropology.org/about/?section=ethical_guidelines). In practice, ethical deci-sions are made by individual researchers in the field. While these decisions reference specific ethical codes of conduct, they are also contingent on local circumstance. Indeed, to be an anthropologist to some degree requires being an anthropologist of ethics (Pink 2001:30-46). This is definitely the case in the context of applied research. We need to assess not only our own ethics and those of our informants, but the ethical codes of collaborators, clients, and other interested parties. Their codes could vary from those guiding the anthropological element of the research. This constitutes an informal anthropo-logical analysis of the plural moralities of the applied research context.

Visual anthropological research and representation raise ethical issues that do not figure in written anthro-pology. Elsewhere (Pink 2001:30-46), I argue that an ethical approach to using images in research necessitates an understanding of local visual cultures and the ways visual meanings and notions of visual truth are inferred by research subjects and audiences. The same applies to applied visual anthropology, where the number of stakeholders usually increases. The ways images will be interpreted and used must inform, and be informed by, decisions about access to and use of the data.

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Questions of ownership of data can be complex but must be dealt with before the data is produced. Three examples highlight the key issues. In my own work with Unilever Research as described in this issue, my data was to be owned by Unilever, to whom I would have to apply for approval to publish any work based on this project. In this context, the informants agreed to partici-pate in the project on the basis of confidentiality. The work was to be used at Unilever by the research team. Later, in order to use the data for academic publication, I first sought written consent from my informants and asked Unilever to approve my work prior to publication. Also in this issue, Chalfen and Rich describe a project in which their informants were initially offered confi-dentiality but were later given the option of agreeing to the dissemination of their data beyond the research team. When informants are unavoidably identifiable on videotape or in photographs, such strategies are necessary to insure that, at all stages of research, their images are only used with their consent.

Making documentaries for a public audience raises a new set of ethical issues recognized by Garry Marvin in his discussion of filming his research on fox hunting in the United Kingdom (Marvin in press). Television production companies work with different ethical codes and understandings of informed consent from those that guide anthropologists. Consequently, the anthropologist needs to work between these codes, acting not only as a cultural broker to facilitate the representation of one culture to another, but also to protect the local culture. Marvin was further bound with a series of contractual and moral responsibilities to the informants, the hunt association, and the filmmakers.

Each project provides a new context and another set of rights, responsibilities, and ethical concerns. Not only must applied visual anthropology research engage with the ethics of organizations and the ethical practices of non-academics, but also with the ethical codes of other disciplines. For example, applied visual medical anthropology research is subject to the ethical codes established for medical research. In Chalfen and Rich’s collaborative work discussed in this issue, the VIA protocols for the pilot study of asthma, which involved measures to ensure informed consent and confidentiality giving participants control over how the materials were used, had to be approved by the Children’s Hospital Committee on Clinical Investigation (Rich et al. 2000). This might involve a more formal

procedure of consent and ethical clearance than is usual in academic visual anthropology.

Although a goal of applied research of any kind includes interventions to improve the personal or social conditions of its subjects, not all applied visual anthropology is specifically designed to directly benefit the subjects of the research. In business research and commercial documentary production, we might quite rightly ask what the research “gives back” to the infor-mants and what benefits, if any, they accrue. In much commercial research informants are paid a fee for their time and contribution to the research (Roberts in press). Ownership of data is clearly stated, and further payments will be made for subsequent research events. For more open-ended participant-observation, repayment is not so simple, particularly when what was an academic project then becomes a filmmaking or commercially rewarding enterprise. Normally, these issues need to be resolved on a project-by-project basis. There are no hard and fast rules, and the issue deserves further study.

I have briefly surveyed methods and practices of applied anthropology in the public sector, NGO contexts, and industry. There are interesting similarities among these different domains, particularly in terms of their methodology and time constraints. There are also key differences, some of which I have touched on already. Whereas public sector and NGO projects often aim to improve social, economic, or personal conditions for a target group, industry seeks to increase profit and markets. In each scenario, relationships with infor-mants or participants are negotiated accordingly. This does not mean that encounters with paid informants in commercial projects are necessarily any more business-like or less engaging for researchers and informants. Nevertheless, the intersubjectivity of the encounter often includes an economic transaction and motive that needs to be accounted for. Questions of confidentiality and ownership of visual data, while always designed with informants’ confidentiality as a primary concern, differ in other ways. Whereas original research under-taken in the public sector or NGO research might be disseminated for the sake of sharing good practice or research findings, anthropologists working in applied contexts in industry are often limited in the extent they may share research results or findings. Their innovative methodologies could risk giving competitors access to the knowledge that would offer them a commercial advantage.

Volume 20 Number 1 Spring 2004 Visual Anthropology Review12

THE IDENTITY AND FUTURE OF

APPLIED VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

I have noted that applied visual anthropology’s long history is infrequently reported in the visual an-thropology literature. Yet, recent projects demonstrate that academic insights and outputs can be generated from research materials that begin life in applied visual anthropology. Flores’ contribution to this issue describes his combined use of a variety of theoretical and meth-odological perspectives. Revisionist approaches to anthropology based in the “writing culture” debate of the 1980s, visual anthropology, critiques of develop-ment, and applied anthropology all informed his work. The outcomes of his “shared” anthropology include both academic analysis and anthropologically informed documentaries, part of a process of post-conflict re-construction for the Maya-Q’eqchi’. This relationship between applied work and academic outcomes is also possible in commercial work. My own consumer video ethnography has contributed new methodologies and substance to my academic work, as I discuss later in this issue.

Not all applied visual anthropology impacts theory in academic anthropology. Projects may be constrained by time imperatives, especially for anthropologists who carry out applied work full time. Nor must all applied visual anthropology projects be reproduced as academic texts. In my view, applied visual anthropology should develop as an enterprise that exists between, and com-municates with, both the academy and its non-academic sponsors. Ongoing dialogue and exchange between applied and academic visual anthropologists will ben-efit the theory, substantive knowledge, and practice of both. It is in this sense that I propose that applied visual anthropology has transformative potential for the disci-pline – through the introduction of new forms of visual knowledge and visual representation, the acknowledge-ment of new substantive fields, and the development of methodologies suited to them. The innovative uses of multimedia, intranet, CD ROM and DVD in applied visual anthropology projects are a case in point. Within academic visual anthropology, there have been calls for, and experimentation with, these media for ethnographic representation (Ruby 2000; MacDougall 2001; Biella 1997; Pink 2003, 2004a). Some of the most inspiring work with hypermedia has developed in projects that apply visual anthropology for ends that are not entirely anthropological. One example is the multimedia work

of documentary filmmaker, Rod Coover (2004) exem-plified in his Cultures in Webs CD Rom. Another is the work of applied visual anthropologists like Lovejoy and Steele who have developed ethnographic hypermedia projects in industry to resolve questions surrounding the dissemination and communication of audiovisual and photographic knowledge. They describe their work in this issue.

Hand in hand with the contemporary demand for applied visual anthropology outlined in this introduction, is a demand for training in its methods, theories and technologies, especially by visual anthropology students seeking career options outside academia. The Applica-tions of Anthropology seminar series, funded in 2003 by the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), demonstrated a need for providing graduate students training in the research and interpersonal skills necessary for applied work. These include skills in ap-plied visual anthropology. In the United States, some visual anthropology programs, Temple University, the University of California, and the University of Florida, offer courses in applied visual anthropology. In Great Britain, MA students in visual anthropology are not trained in applied visual anthropology. Yet only 40 per cent of MA graduates in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester’s Granada Centre pursue academic careers. Many seek media production work (Henley in press). Some Granada Centre graduates, such as Werner Sperschneider (Sperschneider and Bagger 2003) and I, have adapted academic visual anthropol-ogy skills to commercial research. Still, academic skills are not directly transferable, and new skills are required to apply these to organizational contexts. Finally, the Applications of Anthropology seminar identified a need for methodology training and theory updates for applied anthropologists. Visual anthropology methods fall within these needs. Before such training can be offered, however, the theoretical and methodological concerns of applied visual anthropology need to be identified and analyzed. The goal of this issue is to take a first step in this direction, to raise the questions that set this process in motion and inspire the debates that will allow it to continue.

Although applied anthropology is no longer resisted by the mainstream in the United States and Great Britain, it is not always encouraged. A divide persists between applied and academic anthropology. Likewise, there remains work to be done in putting applied visual an-thropology on the agenda of professional associations,

Visual Anthropology Review

Volume 20 Number 1 Spring 2004 13

representing it in panels in mainstream conferences and film festivals, and making public the social and academic benefits of this work. The climate in which this might be undertaken is good. Visual anthropological methods and media are now becoming integrated into mainstream anthropological research, and visual anthropology is becoming part of undergraduate and graduate studies at a growing number of universities. Likewise, applied anthropology’s practitioners are increasingly vociferous in demanding that it be taken seriously by the academy. They are more active in creating links between applied and academic work. The creation of an identity, as well as a publication and discussion forum, for applied visual anthropology will depend on the activity of practitioners located in and out of academic departments. If allowed to develop, applied visual anthropology practice has the potential to make important contributions to academic visual anthropology and applied anthropology.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Researching the history of applied visual an-thropology involves seeking out unpublished material and work that has been neglected in visual anthropology. In particular, I would like to thank Malcolm Collier for his help in sourcing and providing information and im-ages from the work of John Collier. I am also grateful to Peter Biella and Najwa Adra for their support and encouragement during the development of this issue of VAR.

NOTES

1Leadership in applied and visual anthropology can be traced though the generations of the Collier family. In the previous generation John Collier (senior) established the Applied Anthropology Unit at the Office of Indian Affairs in the 1930s (van Willigen 2002: 26).2 The history of applied visual anthropology might be constructed back to colonial photography in the early 20th century. I take this issue up in a future article.3 I will not focus on indigenous media because its study has already been well covered. My aim is to develop a focus on applied uses of visual anthropology that have not been analyzed extensively to date. I shall, therefore, dedicate most of this article to projects that involve anthropologists in some form of consultancy role and that situate them as active producers rather than facilita-tors. I also do not want to reduce indigenous media to

a form of applied visual anthropology.4 It is not my intention to discredit Tongue et al.’s ar-ticle, which describes a specific case of applied visual anthropology. Rather, I am using this example to argue that a project-based definition of applied visual anthro-pology is too narrow to form the basis of a widespread and divergent practice. 5 North American applied anthropology textbooks normally outline a series of established methodolo-gies that their authors identify as forming the skills set of an applied anthropologist. This list includes participant-observation, key informant interviewing, surveys, questionnaires, participatory action research, rapid ethnographic assessment, needs assessment, social impact assessment, focus group research, and social network analysis (see for example, Ervin 2000, Gwynne 2003:36-42).

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Fig. 2. The promotional poster for the film The Hunt (Marvin 1997) The members of the hunt are clearly identifiable.