Comments on: What the Camera Does – #RoR2018

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 07:26:00 +0000

Update! I just clicked on “Deej” and discovered taiwansoundscapes.org, a fascinating site about a hugely interesting and, to the best of my knowledge, highly innovative work. Which brings me to another dreary moral, nicely captured in the title of my favorite book on Web design, Don’t Make Me Think. The academic habit of expecting others to search for your work instead of making it easy to find may be good in the classroom. It is a path to oblivion in a wider world where millions of voices clamor to be heard and attention is always in short supply. So let me repeat once again: http://www.taiwansoundscapes.org/.

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 23:21:40 +0000

In reply to Deej. Deej, as someone whose connections with Taiwan run long and deep, from fieldwork 1969-71, to teaching two spring semesters at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, I would like to learn more about your work. Where should I be looking? Any links you can share?

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 23:18:53 +0000

In reply to McDreary. True. But my time in the advertising industry has made looking for hooks a reflexive part of my habitus. The empirical evidence seems straightforward. Nicely written, aesthetically and intellectually closed posts elicit fewer comments than those which address controversial topics in a judgmental tone. I could, of course, be mistaken since I am extrapolating from personal impressions instead of systematic research.

By: Deej

Deej — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 02:30:39 +0000

Addendum: also, I’ve often tried to explain to people that my work with sound often precedes writing; it is as if my work with sound reveals more of the texture of cultural conditions that I would like to explore in writing

By: Deej

Deej — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 02:29:13 +0000

Thanks for this post. Although you are discussing photography, your concerns about how photography might be generative in ethnographic practice and how we might approach the ethics of photography resonate with other modalities of ethnography. I’m thinking here in particular about my own reluctance always to use my microphones and the ways that I try to negotiate how I engage in sound recording with the people with whom I live and work here in Taiwan. With that in mind, I might ask to use this blog post for discussion with my students in a sound studies course during the coming semester…

By: McDreary

McDreary — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 20:08:21 +0000

And yet, John, you still managed to publish a comment on this piece. Seems to me you could find a ‘hook’ in almost anything!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 19:07:30 +0000

Thanks for this post Dick. That’s a great quote from Schonberg: “One reason I chose anthropology, as opposed to journalism, was because anthropology allows me to put my camera down. I don’t always need to ‘get the shot.'” I appreciate this take on photography, especially in comparison with certain approaches to ‘street photography’ etc. I’m all for capturing decisive moments, so to speak, but it’s important to think about when it’s time to aim the camera, and when it might be time to set it aside. Sometimes there are other things (or relationships) that matter far more than getting the shot (as Schonberg puts it). Thanks again. It got me thinking.

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 00:38:25 +0000

Dick, what you have written here is very interesting. Please pardon a tangential remark.

I have, I believe, noticed a trend in the last three posts on Anthro{dendum}, this one, Adam Fish on permisionless innovation, and Daniel Miller’s on cookbooks. All three are interesting, informative, readable…and closed. What I mean by “closed” is that none of these carefully crafted essays includes the gaps or hooks that stimulate comment and conversation. I am aware that in parts of the world where the academic year stretches from fall to spring, the summer vacation has begun and online traffic on academic sites has predictably declined. Still, if I compare the response to these essays to those that address such hot-button issues as the #HAU controversy, I glimpse something more than seasonal fluctuation. That is where those missing gaps and hooks come in.

Working in advertising in Japan, I learned the importance of gaps between word and image, openings in which readers or viewers can insert themselves and become engaged with the message. Reading Henry Jenkins, I later learned the importance of the shift in popular culture from production of carefully framed aesthetic wholes to sprawling franchises with innumerable hooks (cameos, unfinished story lines, trailers, that sort of thing) to attract and engage fans. In the essays mentioned here, I detect an older habitus, the writing of essays conceived as finished works of art instead of interventions in on-going conversations. I could be wrong. Given, however, our now perennial concern for public interest and appreciation of anthropology…Am I completely off the wall?