The context of presenting “others”: the construction of meaning and the potential of communication in ethnographic film

Abstract

How can images be used as an expressive, yet clearly limited, tool to represent “the other” in ethnographic films? Based on the objectives of visual anthropology and visual communication, this article analyzes the four presentational traditions of meaning construction. These traditions have been incorporated into the audio-visual communication context to illustrate the similarities or differences between ethnographic films and ethnographic texts in terms of traditions, structures, features, and limitations. Through the analysis of the four traditions, the relationships between visual presentation and text writing, visual patterns and communication concepts, and visual potentials and ethnographic films have been fully examined. In the context of Chinese ethnographic films, the four presentational traditions have been well showcased and developed. These works, in their different contexts, have constituted a meaningful visual text system of contemporary Chinese anthropology.