Capturing Context Is Not Enough

doi:10.1017/9781108695374.023

17 - Capturing Context Is Not Enough

The Embodied Impact of Story and Emotion in Ethnographic Film

from Part II - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020

Robert Lemelson and

Annie Tucker

Edited by

Laurence J. Kirmayer,

Carol M. Worthman,

Shinobu Kitayama,

Robert Lemelson and

Constance A. Cummings

Show author details

Laurence J. Kirmayer: Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Carol M. Worthman: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Shinobu Kitayama: Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Robert Lemelson: Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Constance A. Cummings: Affiliation:
The Foundation for Psychocultural Research

Book contents

Get access

Summary

In cultural anthropology, ethnographic film is useful for documenting diverse cultural practices and presenting research. Film’s ability to capture behavior in its holistic context is a key contribution to interests of cultural neuroscience, which has been challenged to better illustrate the impact of its findings outside the laboratory. Still, ethnographic film might go further by accounting for the interaction of culture, mind, and brain in the embodied aspects of the film experience. Neuroscientific inquiry into various storytelling genres reveals the embodied effects of storytelling, which activates neural mechanisms putatively evolved to strengthen social and cultural bonds. In this, storytelling strategy and structure are important; effective stories both engage sustained attention and elicit empathetic response. Character-driven emotional stories following a dramatic arc have greater impact than dispassionate ones. This translates directly to film, which also affords opportunities for emotional attunement and sensory-motor resonance with characters onscreen. Ethnographic film conventions have not adequately developed a methodology responsive to this nuanced understanding, despite anthropology’s long-standing investment in the power of storytelling. A “visual psychological anthropology” approach produces emotionally resonant, character-driven film stories in a dramatic narrative structure. Such films can convey cultural information and impart key concepts in a more immersive way.

Keywords

ethnographic filmvisual psychological anthropologyemotionstorytellingembodimentIndonesia

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Culture, Mind, and Brain
Emerging Concepts, Models, and Applications
, pp. 426 - 437
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108695374.023 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Angelillo, C., Rogoff, B., & Chavajay, P. (2007). Examining shared endeavors by abstracting video coding schemes with fidelity to cases. In Goldman, R., Pea, R., & Derry, S. J. (Eds.), Video research in the learning sciences (pp. 189–206). Erlbaum.Google Scholar

Asch, T., & Chagnon, N. (1968–1971). Yanomamö series. 7 hrs, 8 min. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/yanomam-series-p970.aspx Google Scholar

Asch, T., & Chagnon, N. (1975). The ax fight. 30 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/the-ax-fight-p180.aspx Google Scholar

Asch, T., Marshall, J., & Spier, P. (1973). Ethnographic film: Structure and function. Annual Review of Anthropology, 2, 179–87. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.02.100173.001143 Google Scholar

Banks, M., & Ruby, J. (Eds.). (2011). Made to be seen: Perspectives on the history of visual anthropology. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Barbash, I., & Taylor, L. (1997). Cross-cultural filmmaking: A handbook for making documentary and ethnographic films and videos. University of California Press.Google Scholar

Bateson, G., & Mead, M. (1942). Balinese character: A photographic analysis. The New York Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar

Boyd, B. (2009). On the origin of stories: Evolution, cognition, and fiction. Belknap Press.Google Scholar

Brand, S. (1976). For God’s sake, Margaret [Conversation between Stewart Brand, Gregory Bateson, and Margaret Mead]. CoEvolutionary Quarterly, 10(21), 32–44. www.wholeearth.com/issue/2010/article/361/for.god’s.sake.margaret Google Scholar

Buckner, R. L., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., & Schachter, D. L. (2008). The brain’s default mode network: Anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124(1), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1440.011 CrossRef Google Scholar

Connor, L., Asch, T., & Asch, P. (1979–1983). The Jero Tapakan series. 2 hrs, 26 min. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/the-jero-tapakan-series-p967.aspx Google Scholar

Curtis, E. S., & Hodge, F. W. (Ed.). (1970). The North American Indian, being a series of volumes picturing and describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska (20 Vols.). Johnson Reprint Corp. (Original work published 1907–1930).Google Scholar

Damasio, A. (2018). The strange order of things: Life, feeling, and the making of cultures. Pantheon Books.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W. (2017). Culture and the individual: Theory and method of cultural consonance. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315164007 Google Scholar

Edwards, E. (2001). Raw histories: Photographs, anthropology and museums. Berg.Google Scholar

Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Fruzetti, L., Ostor, A., & Sarkar, A. N. (2005). Singing pictures. 40 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/singing-pictures-p422.aspx Google Scholar

Gallese, V. (2017). Visions of the body. Embodied simulation and aesthetic experience. Aisthesis, 10(1), 41–50. https://doi.org/10.13128/Aisthesis-20902 Google Scholar

Gallese, V., & Guerra, M. (2019). The empathic screen: Cinema and Neuroscience (Anderson, F., Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 2015)CrossRef Google Scholar

Gardner, R. (1963). Dead birds. 1 hr, 23 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/dead-birds-p858.aspx Google Scholar

Grimshaw, A., & Ravetz, A. (2009). Rethinking observational cinema. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15(3), 538–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2009.01573.x Google Scholar

Grodal, T. (2006). The PECMA flow: A general model of visual aesthetics. Film Studies, 8(1), 1–11. http://doi.org/10.7227/FS.8.3 Google Scholar

Grodal, T. (2009). Embodied visions: Evolution, emotion, culture, and film. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371314.001.0001 Google Scholar

Grodal, T., & Kramer, M. (2010). Empathy, film, and the brain. Recherches semiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry, 30(1–3), 19–35. https://doi.org/10.7202/1025921ar Google Scholar

Gruber, J. W. (1970). Ethnographic salvage and the shaping of anthropology. American Anthropologist, 72(6), 1289–99. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1970.72.6.02a00040 Google Scholar

Gubrium, A., & Harper, K. (2013). Participatory visual and digital methods. Left Coast Press.Google Scholar

Hasson, U., Ghazanfar, A. A, Balantucci, B., Garrod, S., & Keysers, C. (2012). Brain-to-brain coupling: A mechanism for creating and sharing a social world. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 113–20. https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.tics.2011.12.007 Google Scholar

Hasson, U., Landesman, O., Knappmeyer, B., Vallines, I., Rubin, N., & Heeger, D. J. (2008). Neurocinematics: The neuroscience of film. Projections, 2(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2008.020102 Google Scholar

Heider, K. (1974). Dani houses. 35 min, 9 min extras. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/dani-films-p855.aspx Google Scholar

Heider, K. G. (1976). Ethnographic film. University of Texas Press.Google Scholar

Heider, K. G. (1997). Seeing anthropology: Cultural anthropology through film. Allyn and Bacon.Google Scholar

Honey, C. J., Thompson, C. R., Lerner, Y., & Hasson, U. (2012). Not lost in translation: Neural responses shared across languages. Journal of Neuroscience, 32, 15277–82. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1800-12.2012 CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

Hoskins, J., & Whitney, L. (1991). Horses of life and death. 28 min. [Documentary]. Center for Visual Anthropology. https://store.der.org/horses-of-life-and-death-p787.aspx Google Scholar

Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2013). Studying the effects of culture by integrating neuroscientific with ethnographic approaches. Psychological Inquiry, 24(1), 42–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2013.770278 Google Scholar

Kitayama, S., & Park, J. (2014). Error-related brain activity reveals self-centric motivation: Culture matters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(1), 62–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031696 CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. Basic Books.Google Scholar

Kohrt, B. A., Worthman, C. M., Ressler, K. J., Mercer, K. B., Upadhaya, N., Koirala, S., Nepal, M. K., Sharma, V. D., & Binder, E. B. (2015). Cross-cultural gene-environment interactions in depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the cortisol awakening response: FKBP5 polymorphisms and childhood trauma in South Asia. International Review of Psychiatry, 27(3), 180–96. https://doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2015.1020052 Google Scholar

Lemelson, R. (2015). Bitter honey. 1 hr, 21 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/bitter-honey-p198.aspx Google Scholar

Lemelson, R., & Tucker, A. (2015). Steps toward an integration of psychological and visual anthropology: Issues raised in the production of the film series Afflictions: Culture and mental illness in Indonesia. Ethos, 43(1), 6–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12070 Google Scholar

Lemelson, R., & Tucker, A. (2017). Afflictions: Steps towards a visual psychological anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59984-7 Google Scholar

Lomax, A., & Paulay, F. (1974–2008). Rhythms of the earth. 1 hr, 36 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/rhythms-of-earth-p478.aspx Google Scholar

Lutz, C. A. (1988). Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll & their challenge to Western theory. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

MacDougall, D. (1992). “Photo wallahs”: An encounter with photography. Visual Anthropology Review, 8(2), 96–100. https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1992.8.2.96 Google Scholar

Margulies, D. S., Ghosh, S. S., Goulas, A., Falkiewicz, M., Huntenburg, J. M., Langs, G., Bezgin, G., Eickhoff, S. B., Castellanos, F. X., Petrides, M., Jefferies, E., & Smallwood, J. (2016). Situating the default-mode network along a principal gradient of macroscale cortical organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(44), 12574–9. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1608282113 Google Scholar

Marion, J. S., & Crowder, J. W. (2013). Visual research: A concise introduction to thinking visually. Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar

Marshall, J. (1957). The hunters. 1 hr, 12 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/the-hunters-p798.aspx Google Scholar

Marshall, J., & Ritchie, C. (1951–2002). A Kalahari family. 6 hrs. [Documentary]. Kalfam Productions and Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/a-kalahari-family-p937.aspx Google Scholar

Mattingly, C., & Garro, L. (Eds.). (2000). Narrative and the cultural construction of illness and healing. University of California Press.Google Scholar

McCall, C., & Singer, T. (2015). Facing off with unfair others: Introducing proxemic imaging as an implicit measure of approach and avoidance during social interaction. PLoS ONE, 10(2), e0117532. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0117532 Google Scholar

Michaelis, A. (1955). Research films in biology, anthropology, psychology and medicine. New York Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-395693-4.X5001-4 Google Scholar

Muybridge, E. (1979). Muybridge’s complete human and animal locomotion: All 781 plates from the 1887 “animal locomotion” (Vol. 3). Dover Publications.Google Scholar

Nguyen, M., Vanderwal, T., & Hasson, U. (2019). Shared understanding of narratives is correlated with shared neural responses. NeuroImage, 184, 161–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.010 Google Scholar

Ramstead, M. J. D., Veissière, S. P. L, & Kirmayer, L. J. (2016). Cultural affordances: Scaffolding local worlds through shared intentionality. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1090. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01090 Google Scholar

Rilling, J. K., Li, T., Chen, X., Gautam, P., Haroon, E., & Thompson, R. R. (2017). Arginine vasopressin effects on subjective judgments and neural responses to same and other-sex faces in men and women. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 8, 200. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2017.00200 Google Scholar

Rilling, J. K., & Mascaro, J. S. (2017). The neurobiology of fatherhood. Current Opinion in Psychology, 15, 26–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.02.013 Google Scholar

Ruby, J. (2000). Picturing culture: Explorations of film and anthropology. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Scott, J.-A. (2013). Problematizing a researcher’s performance of “insider status”: An autoethnography of “designer disabled” identity. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(2), 101–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800412462990 Google Scholar

Silveira, P. P., Gaudreau, H., Atkinson, L., Fleming, A. S., Sokolowksi, M. B., Steiner, M., Kennedy, J. L., Meaney, M. J., Levitan, R. D., & Dubé, L. (2016). Genetic differential susceptibility to socioeconomic status and childhood obesogenic behavior: Why targeted prevention may be the best societal investment. JAMA Pediatrics, 170(4), 359–64. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.4253 CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

Smith, H., & Reichline, N. (1974). Potato planters. 17 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/potato-planters-p524.aspx Google Scholar

Smith, D., Schlaepfer, P., Major, K., Dyble, M., Page, A. E., Thompson, J., Chaudhary, N., Salali, G. D., Mace, R., Astete, L., Ngales, M., Vinicius, L., & Migliano, A. B. (2017). Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling. Nature Communications, 8, 1853. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02036-8 Google Scholar

Suomi, S. J. (2004). How gene-environment interactions shape biobehavioral development: Lessons from studies with rhesus monkeys. Research in Human Development, 1(3), 205–22. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15427617rhd0103_5 Google Scholar

Suzuki, W. A., Feliú-Mójer, M. I., Hasson, U., Yehuda, R., & Zarate, J. M. (2018). Dialogues: The science and power of storytelling. Journal of Neuroscience, 38(44), 9468–70. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1942-18.2018 Google Scholar

Taylor, L. (1998). “Visual anthropology is dead, long live visual anthropology!” American Anthropologist, 100(2), 534–7. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1998.100.2.534.CrossRef Google Scholar

Vatansever, D., Menon, D. K., Manktelow, A. E., Sahakian, B. J., & Stamatakis, E. A. (2015). Default mode dynamics for global functional integration. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(46), 15254–62. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2135-15.2015 Google Scholar

Vidaurre, D., Smith, S. M., & Woolrich, M. W. (2017). Brain network dynamics are hierarchically organized in time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(48), 12827–32. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1705120114 Google Scholar

Wiessner, P. W. (2014). Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(39), 14027–35. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404212111 Google Scholar

Willis, A. (2009). Da feast! 22 min. [Documentary]. Documentary Educational Resources. https://store.der.org/da-feast-p851.aspx Google Scholar

Woods, A., Hart, A., & Spandler, H. (2019). The recovery narrative: Politics and possibilities of a genre. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-019-09623-y CrossRef Google Scholar

Worth, S., & Adair, J. (1972). Through Navajo eyes: An exploration in film communication and anthropology. Indiana University Press.Google Scholar

Yeshurun, Y., Swanson, S., Simony, E., Chen, J., Lazaridi, C., Honey, C. J., & Hasson, U. (2017). Same story, different story: The neural representation of interpretive frameworks. Psychological Science, 28(3), 307–19. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0956797616682029 Google Scholar

Young, K., & Saver, J. L. (2001). The neurology of narrative. SubStance, 30(94/95), 72–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/3685505 Google Scholar

Zadbood, A., Chen, J., Leong, Y. C., Norman, K. A, & Hasson, U. (2017). How we transmit memories to other brains: Constructing shared neural representations via communication. Cerebral Cortex, 27(10), 4988–5000. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhx202 Google Scholar

Zak, P. J. (2013). How stories change the brain. Greater Good Magazine. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_change_brain Google Scholar

Zak, P. J. (2014). Why your brain loves good storytelling. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/10/why-your-brain-loves-good-storytelling Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Why this information is here

This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.