18/12/2024
📕CALL FOR PAPERS 🖊
Special Issue Visual Ethnography - Vol. 15 (1), June 2026
📄"Visual anthropology of the body and its material cultures" // Edited by Marie-Pierre Julien (Université de Lorraine) e Denise Pettinato (Università degli Studi di Milano)
📍 This special issue of Visual Ethnography proposes to illustrate what visual anthropology provides to an anthropology of the body, that places the action (whether it is accomplished or not) and the senses (whether they are extended or not) within the unbreakable bond with the material culture that makes our human nature. For this reason, this issue is not purely methodological, but rather, it is an invitation to the authors to reflect on their works, considering what visual methodologies bring to the analysis of human practices, or in other words, of the bodies in motion with manifold material cultures, contemplated within various power relations. What specific tools do they offer in order to explore the efficacy of actions on both materials and the subject in his or her bio-psycho-social dimensions? This also would require to consider how efficacy is understood and how it may fail.
🔎 In the 1930s, during a period when the analysis of representations and the symbolism were central in anthropology, Mauss’s proposal to work on a bio-psycho-social body through the techniques of the body was daring and innovative. Leroi-Gourhan, Mauss’ student, traced the relationship between humans and their material cultures back to the dawn of humanity. More recently, Diasio (2009:21) reminded us that the relationship between bodies and objects has always been problematic in anthropological analysis. Throughout its development, cultural and social anthropology has either focused on the bodies to put humanity in a showcase, or on objects to categorise cultures according to what they produced (Ivi:23), continuously acknowledging the inseparable connection between humans and objects, as well as the power dynamics that this relationship creates (Warnier 2005). In revisiting Mauss, in an effort to better understand the role of sensory and emotional perception within their material contexts (Candau 2005), we propose to examine the various modalities of human socialization and subjectivation. Indeed, techniques of the body, techniques of the self, or of objects – depending on the focal point – can result in subjectivation and the exercise of power (Julien – Rosselin-Bareille 2009).
📝Linear writing constitutes a specific way of analyzing the impact of actions on both materials and subjects. It examines the means by which these techniques are imposed – e.g. through education –appropriated, and transformed, as well as their incorporation into various social relations, including gender, class, age, and race, contingent upon specific social contexts (MacDougall 1992). In this issue, authors are invited to explore the contributions of visual anthropology to the understanding of social practices – both material and symbolic (Grimshaw – Ravetz, 2009) – in a manner that considers the individual bio-psycho-social contexts and their respective materialities. Furthermore, the exploration should focus on the socialization processes that individuals experience, whether these processes occur voluntarily or involuntarily, and consciously or unconsciously.
📸 Visual anthropology is, broadly speaking, the use of audiovisual techniques (drawing, photography, videomaking, films, collage, painting, sound recording, maps, sensory maps, etc.) to capture and analyse human practices (Banks – Jay 2011). Visual techniques were used by Morgan, Boas, and Malinowski, and they coincide with the inception of anthropology (Piault, 2000; Meloni 2023). Throughout the 20th century, visual anthropology has been focused on two principal objectives: first, the description of the modalities of action of various socio-cultural groups, aimed at documenting (and potentially salvaging?) what colonialism and industrial development were about to destroy; and second, its transformation into a critical method for reflecting on the colonialist dichotomy between modernism and traditionalism. During the Algerian War of Independence, Bourdieu turned photography into an important tool for reflexivity on his own scientific positionality. Today, anthropological literature has been enriched by other visual forms such as collages and drawings (Hendrickson 2008; Fassin et al. 2020), and analytical tools have extended to emic audiovisual productions such as family albums and amateur footages (e.g., Gribaldo 2023).
📍 This call offers multiple levels of reflectivity based on the visual anthropology of the bodies and their material cultures. From an analytical standpoint, regarding the subjects of appropriation, transformation, learning, and the transmission of practices, what unique insights does visual anthropology offer that cannot be conveyed through the medium of writing? How do these forms of production enable a critical exploration in postcolonial memory studies? On a more epistemological level, what type of evidentiary demonstration do they provide? How does audiovisual expression contribute to questioning the objectivity and subjectivity of the body-entangled-with-materiality? From an ethical perspective, the examination of the relationship between scientific and aesthetic elements as a tool for analysis is not a novel endeavor (Clifford – Marcus 1986; MacDougall 1998). Today however, it includes an exploration of the social interactions between the (technical) knowledge holders, the anthropologists interpreting this social phenomenon, and the viewers. It is imperative to critically examine the status of the author and the subsequent implications (Pink 2007; Henley 2016). Is the anthropologist the sole participant deemed a professional, and, as a result, is he or she the only one entitled to financial remuneration? Who are the owners of the technical knowledge, and how can we avoid unethical dissemination of this knowledge and of the images of the acting subjects? Finally, from a more methodological perspective, how can still images (such as photographs, drawings, and maps) or moving images (including films and videos) effectively illuminate embodied practices? How much space should be given to narratives and commentaries? And more specifically, to whose narratives and commentaries? Are elicitation interviews, which allow actors to comment on their own actions, sufficient? How do the different forms of writing on these themes complement one another?
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This special issue of Visual Ethnography proposes to illustrate what visual anthropology provides to an anthropology of the body, that places the action (whether it is accomplished or not) and the senses (whether they are extended or not) within the unbreakable bond with the material culture that ma...
