Aina Azevedo Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brasile
Manuel João Ramos ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Portogallo
DOI: 10.12835/ve2016.1-0061
Abstract
Participatory visual methods are becoming the new hype
in anthropology. Researchers tend to present participatory
visual methods as attractive approaches to not only
promote innovative research that engages informants in
original and collaborative ways but to engage students
eager to find bridges between the academic world and a
world progressively addicted to visual consumerism. But
while still and moving image-capturing devices are being
democratized as anthropological tools thanks to their recent
wide availability and ease of use, some view the practice
of drawing (participatory or not) as a more serendipitous
niche activity. Unlike photographing and filming, doodling
sketching-drawing – participatory or not – is more about
linear image mental processing and communicating (and
thus somewhat akin to handwriting, lack of linguistic
encoding and propositionality notwithstanding) than an
“objective” visual method. Drawing thus elicits a completely
different kind of comprehension of the “field”, as well as new
forms of social interaction, such as the “public and open
spectacle of recording” that anthropologist-draftswoman
Carol Hendrickson describes (2008: 119). Based on
discussions from a workshop dedicated to “ethnographic
drawing” in the University of Aberdeen, we propose to
tackle some of the features of the drawing practice, hoping
that its much-misunderstood potential as a knowledge tool
helps us reconsider what anthropological understanding is.
Keywords
Drawing, graphic anthropology, fieldwork methods, representation vs imagination.
