An ethnography of the eye : authority, observation and photography in the context of British anthropology 1839-1900

• Main Author: Tomas, David.
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 1987
• Subjects: Ethnology > Great Britain > History > 19th century; Ethnology > Methodology; Observation (Psychology)
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=75671

Anthropological classics such as E. H. Man's On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (1883) and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown's The Andaman Islanders (1922) are generally regarded as products of an emergent nineteenth century social science. These anthropological classics were accepted by contemporaries as authoritative statements in their authors' fields of competence, and the ethnographic 'pictures' of the aborigines they presented were accepted as accurate descriptions of indigenous life. The following thesis argues for an alternative approach to the history of the production of anthropological knowledge. It begins by exploring the gradual codification of observational practices in the nineteenth century British anthropology. The codification of ethnographic observation is examined in the case of anthropological manuals published between 1840 and 1892, and their methodological impact on the possibilities of data collection are discussed. Ethnographic observation is then approached from the point of view of media use, and the relationship between drawing and photography is discussed in relation to nineteenth century physical and cultural anthropology. The codification of ethnographic observation and the anthropological use of various representational media are the problematic for an intensive exploration of the production of anthropological knowledge in the Andaman Islands. The approach adopted focuses on unacknowledged strategies and marginalized knowledge which were nevertheless directly implicated in the production of ethnographic texts. Following this approach, the discipline of Anthropology comes to seem less an isolated intellectual activity, and more a residue of broad social, cultural, and political processes. Drawing on this perspective, the works of Man and Radcliffe-Brown on the Andaman Islanders are treated as the culmination of a history of representation that is built on and incorporates administrative strategies, representational media and s