It’s been three months since I’ve first started to write on this blog. Today, I want to summarize the most important things of the ‘Anthropology: Art or Science?’ debate. I want to start with briefly outlining all the texts that the blog posts are based on. Then, I will summarize my blog post and finally I will conclude the work by depicting the results that I gathered from this debate.
In general, the texts and discussions on this blog so far evolved around three main concerns: First, locating the boundaries between art and anthropology, which includes all discussions on the definition and differentiation of these two fields. Second, the ways in which anthropology studies art and art studies anthropology (this part is mainly concerned with the content of such study). And third, the intersection of anthropology and art, where the boundaries between art and anthropology are more or less dissolved and the concerns are more methodological.
People and Baileys textbook introduction and Carrither’s text ‘Is anthropology art or science?’ deal with our first concern. While both try to maintain a clear distinction between art and science, People and Baileys text does this in a very classical scheme of science and art opposition, while Carrithers rejects the criterion of ‘absolute certainty’. People and Bailey’s text also deals with the second concern: The study of art in anthropology and vice versa. Once again, People and Baileys text represent the classical Art-Anthropology with the assumption that artists communicate encoded ‘meanings and messages in symbolic forms’. Victoria Walter’s text deals with the opposite. Here she depicts artists employing ethnographic methods which enable them to study how ethnographers work. All these texts indirectly imply the question ‘What is art and what is anthropology’ but the question is either never explicitly asked or inherently answered. Therefore, they bring little insight to the ultimate question of where to draw the line between anthropology and art.
Moving to the third concern (the intersection between art and anthropology) we expand into the heart of the debate. Schneider’s ‘Three modes of experimentation with art and ethnography’ suggests using visual experimentation in ethnography as a way of improving general research in anthropology. The three examples that Schneider discusses have obvious traits of an artwork, two are even works by artists. So, to put it in simple terms, Schneider suggests using artistic practices to change the way anthropologists do research. The boundaries between art and anthropology are clearly dissolved with one reaching to the other and the other way round.
Ingold’s and Latour’s texts don’t really deal with the question in the way Schneider does but rather uncover the general flaws of the patterns we think and classify in. In a way, one could say that their concern is the intersection between everything in life.
The sources of impulse for writing the blog posts came from a variety of input. That input material was not only diverse in form (texts, films and digital projects) but also quite versatile regarding its content. So naturally, during the process of coming up with something to write on the blog I had to focus on aspects and subjects that spoke to me the most. I want to take a brief look at what my subjects of interest were and the aspects that had the biggest impact on my learning process.
The main question I had on my mind during the course and while writing the blog was ‘Where do we draw the line between art and anthropology?’. There is still no definitive answer but the material I considered points to one answer in particular. From the dichotomy between art and science to all the assumptions we make about the things in the world, it seems that we might have to rethink everything. And at this point art could be a helpful pathfinder.
I would say that the core of what I learned is reflected in the blog post ‘Ethnography is about experience’. Schneider’s text as well as the works of the Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (especially Castaing-Taylor’s and Paravel’s ‘Leviathan’) demonstrate that visually creative attempts to capture the lives and environments of people are of high anthropological value and offer forms of immersion in a way that textual approaches are not able to.
In conclusion, looking into this debate offered an insight into the ways in which anthropology uses art and the ways in which art practices can be useful for anthropology. Dealing with the question ‘Art or anthropology?’ as an isolated issue seems to be an impossible endeavor since it is always linked to more general, ontological concerns about the nature of research and the way we come to know.
Generally, there are a lot of scholars in contemporary anthropology identifying new perspectives and ways in which anthropology can be thought of. However, this is still happening within the framework of classical research practices, which, for now, makes it difficult to see how the proposed changes can be put into practice. To me, the practical examples of anthropologists at the SEL indicate how future anthropology could look like.