List of Illustrations
Notes on Text

Part I: Introductions

Introduction: Tracing a Trajectory
David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab

Chapter 1. Visual Anthropology: Image, Object and Interpretation

Part II: Raju and His Friends

Chapter 2. Forty-Minute Fieldwork: 2a Raju Film Synopsis as Box Insert
Chapter 3. Reclaiming a Soul Stolen by the Camera
Chapter 4. Revisiting Raju

Part III: Photo-Elicitation and Image Analysis

Chapter 5. Analysing Images
Chapter 6. Photography, Memory, and Affect: Two Fragments from the History of an Indian City Chapter 7. Slow Research: Exploring One’s Own Visual Archive

Part IV: Archives and Visual Research

Chapter 8. An Anthropologist in the Film Archives: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Chapter 9. Visual Anthropology: Image Technologies in the Field
Chapter 10. What Can We Learn from Visual Methods?

Afterword: After Marcus: Visual Methods, Visual Pedagogies
Howard Morphy

Index

Understanding Social Images

Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology

Marcus Banks

Edited by David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab
Afterword by Howard Morphy

206 pages, 30 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-006-6 Hb Published (June 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-005-9
web ISBN 978-1-83695-005-9

Details

“This book ambitiously addresses a wide array of topics, including ethical issues and presents a diverse range of perspectives.” • Aleksandra Gracjasz, Leiden University

Marcus Banks was one of the scholars who changed the way visual anthropology and visual methods were regarded in social and cultural anthropology. This collection of Banks’ essays considers the role of collaboration in the making of ethnographic films and makes the case for slow research. It discusses the meaning of anthropological research in film archives and illustrates how to analyse a wide range of visual material like maps, diagrams and enigmatic photographs. Howard Morphy’s afterword is written in response to the essays in the book and as a part of an interrupted dialogue with Marcus. It focuses on how visual anthropology’s distinctive methodology engages with the central theoretical issues of contemporary anthropology.

Marcus Banks was Professor of Visual Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford until he passed away in 2020. He was a pioneer in integrating visual approaches into the mainstream of social and cultural anthropology. With Howard Morphy, he edited the influential volume Rethinking Visual Anthropology (Yale University Press, 1999).

David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford. He collaborated with Marcus Banks on the 2nd edition of Visual Methods in Social Research (SAGE, 2015). He won the 2023 Curl Essay Prize awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Chihab El Khachab is Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College. His most recent publication is Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry (Cairo Press, 2021).

Series: Volume 53, Methodology & History in Anthropology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Area:

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC052000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Media Studies; SOC026040 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Social Theory

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Understanding Social Images

Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology

Marcus Banks

Edited by David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab
Afterword by Howard Morphy

Series: Volume 53, Methodology & History in Anthropology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Area:

Home -> Title

Contents

Understanding Social Images

Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology

Marcus Banks

Edited by David Zeitlyn and Chihab El KhachabAfterword by Howard Morphy

Series: Volume 53, Methodology & History in Anthropology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Area:

Edited by David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab
Afterword by Howard Morphy