Announcement: A Virtual Talk at the American Anthropological Association 2021 Annual Meeting - 「Visual Ethnography of Drinking Establishments in Japan」

It's time for the AAA! If you are registered, you can see my presentation (on-demand) and so much more...

Abstract

This research project is a visual ethnography based upon over two years of fieldwork at a local drinking establishment in Japan examining photography in public, privacy issues and image rights. The intended final product was a photo exhibition with prints illustrating the atmosphere of the shop along with portraits of the owner, employees and regular customers. But rather than a final product I found the exhibition and interactions with the gallery audience to be a source of important data about the photographs, the subjects and spectators. Viewers were doing more than merely looking at my photographs, they were analyzing, scrutinizing, reacting and providing various interpretations and valuable feedback, shedding light in terms of heuristic processes, meaning-creation, evocation and multivocality. In this presentation I will discuss the "post-fieldwork encounters" of the photo exhibition as a research method and a collaborative media event along the lines of the relatively new multimodal perspective in visual anthropology.

I should say, I went old school with a talking head presentation. It might seem odd that a talk about a visual ethnography has no photos. But to be honest, the accessibility requirements made it virtually impossible to do a visual presentation like I would usually do. I am not criticizing accessibility in general, but the AAA, in my opinion, has become too politically correct and turned barrier free into accessibility for some at the expense of others. Barrier free should be barrier free for all... Still, a lot of good stuff at the AAA. Check it out.

2021 AAA Annual Meeting Website
https://annualmeeting.americananthro.org/