Research Video: Audiovisual Ethnography and Beyond

• Main Authors: Léa Klaue, Martin Zimper
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad de Los Andes 2019-09-01
• Series: Dearq
• Subjects: research video; scientific storytelling; visual anthropology; digital storytelling; childhood studies
• Online Access: https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/doi/ref/10.18389/dearq26.2020.03

“Research Video” is an interdisciplinary state funded research project (2017 - 2020, Switzerland) in the fields of design, artistic research, and visual anthropology; its aim is to explore the possibilities of video for science communication. The project aims to develop a new standard for scientific publication—comparable to scientific journal publications—through video annotation. Through the development of a video annotation-tool and its application in two exemplary PhD theses, which are used as case studies, these questions are explored. This paper is going to present the author’s PhD project: her ethnographic fieldwork in Bolivia. It investigates child labor in a country where rates are high, but children’s help and lucrative activities have a cultural anchor. Through observation, video workshops, interviews and mixed methods, an audio-visual ethnography is created of people’s lives who had to start work at an age deemed too young by Western understanding. A series of short videos (the research data) reveals the voices of the child and youth workers who are the main actors of this research topic.