User:Siffat05/Visual Ethnography

Visual Ethnography

As a methodology, visual ethnography is able to guide the design of research as well as the methods to choose for data collection. Visual ethnography seeks to provoke a deeper reflexive engagement in the ethnographic search for meaning and understanding in educational processes. There are many methods available to conduct visual ethnography. Visual ethnography is a research methodology that brings “theory and practice of visual approaches to learning and knowing about the world and communicating these to others”. Visual ethnography brings “theory and practice of visual approaches to learning and knowing about the world and communicating these to others”.

Pink was concerned about the subjectivity of the researchers in producing ethnographic knowledge. Individuals’ reality should be constructed through the researchers’ point of view. Here, the reality is subjective- not objective, thus, it should not be recorded through scientific methods. The reflexive approach takes central stage here to foster a clear focus on how “ethnographic knowledge about how individuals experience reality is produced, through the intersubjectivity between researchers and their research context”. Visual ethnography suggests a negotiation of the participants’ view of reality and a constant questioning on the part of the researcher (Barrantes-Elizondo, 2019).

Schembri and Boyle explained the process of analysis in visual ethnography, and how the researchers develop systematic modes of analytical processes on location. They suggested ways to read cultural experience and interpret a visual text. This is the process of cultural immersion. They said here, “the treatment of written text, visual text is compared, contrasted, and sorted into categories until a particular aspect of the culture is identified”.

Historical Development of Visual Ethnography within Qualitative Research
In terms of visual ethnography, beginning in the early 1900s, researchers have recognized the importance of visual methods which has largely emerged from anthropology. That is when photography as well as video became ways of recording targeted populations during field work which are called “salvage ethnography” or “salvage anthropology.” Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), Margaret Mead’s and Gregory Bateson’s video and photos of the Balinese, and Evans-Prichard’s photographs of the Nuer are examples of this “salvage ethnography (Pink, 2006, cited in van den Scott, 2018). Boas as explained by Pink was an early user of photography who did not trust it and was thought that surface images could be an issue in which might shift the historical understanding of culture. Through the 1900s to 1950s, mainstream anthropology rejected visual methods. Ethnographic photography was still in use- less for analysis and more for context. Despite the move away from applied anthropology through the 1970s and 1980s, ethnographic filmmaking is still common. Still marginal, Visual methods slowly became a tradition and exploded when reflexive research made a dramatic turn. Visual methods shaped interdisciplinary interest during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Visual methods became recognized across social sciences as digital technology became available, maintaining their roots in ethnography and anthropology. Sarah Pink claims for an “anthropology of the relationship between the visual and other elements of culture, society, practice and experience and the methodological practice of combining visual and other media in the production and representation of anthropological knowledge”.

Qualitative Research and Visual Ethnography
In describing the importance of visual ethnography in qualitative research, Banks explained that as images are present in society their illustration should be included in the studies of society, and that study of images in the accumulation of data may reveal sociological understanding that may not be accessible. Images can be the central part of analysis of social-cultural views and perceptions created by researchers, and/or participants. According to Van Maanen in using visual ethnography as a qualitative research methodology, “the researcher studies an entire cultural or social group on its natural setting, closely examining customs and ways of life, with the aim of describing and interpreting cultural patterns of behaviour, values, and practices".

Research into “Visual Ethnography” Area
After looking at two books- one by Savin-Baden, and another by Creswell on qualitative research, I found that the qualitative research methodology starts with the research types or approaches, then comes data collection and analysis at the end which includes grounded theory, ethnography, phenomenology, and narrative research approaches. There were several similar methodological topic areas mentioned in those books: Artifacts, Arts-based research, Autobiography, Autoethnography, Case study, Ethnographic research, Feminist research, Hermeneutics, Interpretive, Narrative research, Observations, Phenomenological research, triangulation of data, Thick description, Verisimilitude, Virtual artefacts, and etc. I found Visual methodologies/ visual-based methodologies, Visualization, and Visual data as key words while I was searching for visual ethnography in those books. Among those topics, I chose “visual ethnography”. I was introduced to “visual data” in my Qualitative Research Methodology course which I think gives a new dimension of the study. While searching articles published in the last ten years on “visual ethnography” through the UMass Lowell Library, I found that visual ethnography is being used not only in the education field, but in public health, business, social science, and different science fields. Ethnography as a separate field was prominent.

Current state of affairs regarding Visual Ethnography
Sarah Pink and many other researchers focused on visuals as data collection method through photography as an example, as well as data analysis through sociological examination of traditions. Visuals methods are used to disseminate knowledge such as photographs at a conference. Visuals are also used to collect data and as a storytelling mechanism. At its most fundamental level, regardless of the kind of ethnographic or qualitative study, the approaches always gather data through asking questions, and noticing patterns. The same rule applies to visual ethnography. There are visual method interest groups in both the American Sociological Association and the Canadian Sociological Association.

Significant contributors
Sarah Pink published “Doing Visual Ethnography” in 2001, and the most recent version was written in 2013. Many writers working in the field of visual ethnography make reference to her work. Her book contains a basic introduction to visual ethnography and its different approaches to collect data and analyze those. The names of Schembri, & Boyle should also be called when we think about contribution in visual ethnography. Their article “Visual ethnography: Achieving rigorous and authentic interpretations” to provide a clearer idea about this methodology.