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record certain activities” (Pink 2001: 40).
　　Margaret Mead speaks with a sense of urgency about the vanishing cultures and societies of the world and advocates the use of filming to capture these moments before they are lost. She sees the role of anthropology as recognising how “forms of human behaviour still extant will inevitably disappear” (Mead 1995: 3). She laments the rapid loss of cultures as, “all over the world… irreproducible behaviours are disappearing” (ibid: 4). In an impassioned piece, she charts the loss of these cultures and extols the validity of ethnographic filming, her passion could be regarded as not necessarily taking into account the actual individuals she regards as worthy of filming. “The isolated group or emerging new nation that forbids filmmaking… will lose far more than it gains”. (Mead 1995: 7-8). Issues of trust and respect emerge here, for all her ardour about the permanent loss of cultures, Mead could be missing the point that many of these cultures will continue to exist in an ever developing form, and their own sense of value and worth may be unchanged regardless of whether they are filmed for posterity or not. The desire to capture on film before change eradicates practices and social processes could be driven by a fear of change and a lack of recognition that all cultures are likely to alter and adapt to some extent. And though, as with all change some things may be lost to the detriment of the culture, so too there can be gains.
　　Ethnographic film is deservedly valued by anthropologists as capturing diverse and isolated groups from all over the world, but to imagine other cultures are best when static and unchanging is to misunderstand the purpose of ethnographic study. The very nature of visual images tends to fix life at a certain point, denying the future reality any recognition, “the inherent problem in visual representation is… that it reifies and freezes” (Hastrup 1992: 19). This not to say that Mead is necessarily wrong in wanting to capture changing cultures before their practices are lost forever, rather, the fear of loss suggests that some ethnographers consider changing lifestyles lack the validity of earlier, more ‘authentic’ ones. Whilst it is of value to observe and record customs and to celebrate their breadth of diversity, it is unhelpful to dictate how these may be recorded for posterity; for cultures that prioritise verbal acts of memory; images may not be of such importance.
　　“The appropriateness of visual methods should not simply be judged on questions of whether the methods suit the objectives… evaluations should be informed by… how visual knowledge is interpreted in a cross-cultural context” (Pink 2001: 33).
　　This sense of urgency and loss may, however, have some weight, in Anne Makepeace’s filmComing to Light, she uncovers the work of Edward Curtis and his extensive recording of the North American Indians. Curtis utilised a romantic and staged photographing of the culture, often depicting individuals in their best clothes and removing signs of contemporary life such as clocks. But this has been appreciated as a reminder of lost traditions for a nation who to some extent have lost their sense of identity in the larger mass and press of American society. With this valuing of former and to some extent lost traditions, perhaps Mead has a point, the archiving of tribal and cultural practices can be valued from within the culture itself. Makepeace o本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。