How do visual technologies change the kinds of questions researchers pursue? Drawing on photography projects on ballroom dancing in the U.S., heath and healing in the Andes, and collaborative research in Belize, two visual anthropologists, Jerome W. Crowder, Ph.D. and Jonathan S. Marion, Ph.D. explore the ethical principles and challenges with image-based social science research. Visual anthropologists guide visual projects on ethics related to extended participation with people and use photography to convey an insider perspective on cultural and social experiences. The presenters also explore how ethics may shift for projects in photojournalism and artistic representation.
BIOGRAPHIES
Jerome W. Crowder, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor & Associate Director, Institute for the Medical Humanities
The University of Texas Medical Branch
Dr. Crowder is a medical and visual anthropologist who has worked in Bolivia (since 1989) and Perú (since 2003) and most recently in East Houston (since 2006) and Galveston (since 2010). He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1998 and then held a National Cancer Institute Post-Doc at the U-Texas Health Science Center-Houston, School of Public Health for a year through (2000). Crowder then moved to the University of Houston as a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and by 2006 became an Assistant Research Professor with several federally sponsored grants, including two from the National Science Foundation, as well as the Associate Director of the Visual Studies program at U. Houston. In 2009 Crowder was made Assistant Dean for Technology and Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences where he served until moving to UTMB in the fall of 2010. Crowder has published in professional journals, including Medical Anthropology Quarterly as well as Visual Anthropology. His exhibit of photos documenting the lives of rural-urban migrants in Bolivia, Sueños Urbanos: Urban Dreams- The Search for a Better Life in Bolivia has toured the United States and South America since it opened in 2000. Most recently it has hung in the National Hispanic Cultural Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and last fall opened in the Student Center at the University of Colorado, Colorado springs. Crowder is the co-author of a recently published book by Bloomsbury Academic Press titled, Visual Research: A Concise Introduction to Thinking Visually (2013). Among other obligations Crowder serves on the Board of the Society for Visual Anthropology, reviews applications for the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio program and many visual and anthropology journals, as well as teaches colleagues systematic visual analysis for the NSF sponsored Short-Courses in Research Methods
Jonathan S. Marion, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology; President, Society for Visual Anthropology
University of Arkansas
Dr. Marion received his Ph.D. in psychological and cultural anthropology from the University of California San Diego in 2006. He conducted his research among competitive ballroom dancers across North America and Western Europe. His dissertation, “Dance as Self, Culture, and Community: The Construction of Personal and Collective Meaning and Identity in Competitive Ballroom and Salsa,” focused on how participation in this expressive, performative, and aesthetic activity shaped personal and collective constructions of deeply gendered meanings and identities. Dr. Marion’s ongoing research continues to explore the interrelationships between performance, embodiment, and identity, and he also researches, presents, and writes about visual ethics, theory, and method in social research. Recent work has also included applied visual research projects in Dangriga, Belize, documenting traditional Garifuna drum-making and cassava-processing. Marion currently serves as President of the Society for Visual Anthropology, President-elect of the Society or Humanistic Anthropology, is the co-author of Visual Research: A Concise Introduction to Thinking Visually (London: Bloomsbury, 2013, w/Jerome Crowder) and author of Ballroom: Culture and Costume in Competitive Dance (Oxford: Berg, 2008) and Ballroom Dance & Glamour (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).
Co-Sponsored by Project Vis