VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

sequencing of the major participants. The film is coordinatedwith the people depicted in it and there is a "People Menu" fromwhich an individual can be selected. Clicking on a name in themenu produces a screen with the person's statistical/biographi-cal data, and the person will be centered in the window contain-ing the genealogical diagram. Clicking a "film data" button willthen retrieve textual material from an essay containing the per-son's name and then by clicking on the person's name, the filmwill be cued to the moment described in the text One can, thus,readily follow an individual's activities throughout the film.This provides a nonlinear means of analyzing The Ax Fight thatoffers a truly unique means of examining the activities in theFilm.

Y§nomamd Interactive is an innovative approach to ethno-graphic and cinematographic analysis. The CD-ROM brings to-gether film with textual descriptions, interpretations, back-ground details, and genealogical data mat enables an individualto examine events in a complex, nonlinear format. This type ofanalysis was not possible before digitalized information storageand communication. But whether this will lead to some new in-sights for anthropologists remains to be seen. I sometimes imag-ine that measuring the distances between the spots of color in aneo-impressionist's work will inform us more about the paint-ing. But more details do not always lead to a better under-standing of the material before us. Occasionally, it is more ap-propriate to stand back and examine the whole picture. •*

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology throughFUm. Karl G. Heider. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997.347 pp.,2 videotapes.

JEFFREY DAVID EHRENREICHCornell College

Textbooks are, I believe, imperfect but often necessary tools.They all have strengths and weaknesses, and none of them canbe all things to all people—students or professors. Each mayhave features that may recommend or condemn them undervarying circumstances. In deciding what text to adopt it is fairfor any instructor to ask, Why use this particular book? Whatwil 11 or my students gain from its adoption? In turn, it is also rea-sonable to question what will be missing when a particular bookis used.

Seeing Anthropology, Karl G. Heider's recent entry in thecultural anthropology textbook sweepstakes, has much to com-mend it to teachers and students alike. As implied in its subti-tle—Cultural Anthropology through Film—the text is organ-ized around the use of ethnographic film as a pedagogic devicefor introducing cultural anthropology (ethnology) to college(and maybe even high school) students. As the coauthor ofFilms for Anthropological Teaching (8th edition) and as an eth-nographic filmmaker himself, few anthropologists are betterpositioned than Heider to attempt a textbook with this theme.

Whether or not ethnographic film is a specialty held by an in-structor, it is highly unusual today for any introductory course tofai I to expose students to at least a few of the instructor's favoriteethnographic films. Occasionally, instructors may even be ableto coordinate these films with the texts, articles, readers, or eth-

nographies included as required reading. Rarely, however, caninstructors match up all the films that they are comfortable usingwith the readings they have chosen. Rarer still is the direct men-tion of an ethnographic film in introductory texts, let alone theprivileging of one as a central component of either text orcourse. In contrast, Heider's textbook elevates ethnographicfilm to a significant source of anthropological data. Likewise, itelevates the ethnographic filmmaker to the status of ethnogra-pher. It makes the reading of ethnographic film—interpretation,analysis, critique, synthesis—as much a part of the process oflearning anthropology as is the reading of written ethnographicaccounts. Despite the fact that for most courses it will be impos-sible to use all of the 21 films selected for inclusion in the text,the integration of the data and interpretation of these films as ex-amples in the text is both an extremely effective strategy at theintroductory level and the overwhelming virtue of the book.

Seeing Anthropology comes packaged with two videotapes.Significantly, books cannot be purchased without the tapes. Thecost to students is about $50.00 for the package. According tothe publisher the tapes are "for free." This, of course, is ab-surd1—tapes obviously add to the overall cost of the packageeven if they are thrown in for cost. When I used the book last yearmy college's bookstore was in no position to repurchase bookswith tapes. How would they know if the tapes were damaged, oreven if they were the right ones? How would they repackage thebooks with the tapes so that students could see and judge thecondition of either? For the instructor who really wants thetapes, new books may be the only option, a fact that I am sure isnot lost on the marketing department of the publisher.

The question of how useful the tapes are will depend on boththe instructors and the students who use them. The tapes containexcerpts or "clips" from the 21 films that have been coordinatedto the 14focus cultures used throughout the text. The clips rangefrom a few to 12 or more minutes. I agree with Heider's conten-tion that the use of film clips will eventually become much likeusing quotations from written texts (p. xvi). However, in practi-cal and real terms, I did not really find the tapes all that useful inthis way when I used the book. While I do not fault Heider's se-lection or editing, I simply found no occasion to rerun the clips inmy small discussion classes. Students, in turn, did not report us-ing the tapes in this way. What I think was most significant abouthaving the tapes was the opportunity to visualize directly all ofthe focus groups, that is, to see even those groups discussed inthe book whose films were not selected by me to be shown in thecourse. (For the record, I used nine of the films Heider selected,and two others not mentioned by him.) Pictures really are wortha thousand words ethnographically, especially when the wordsare themselves mostly second-hand descriptions that are sum-maries and excerpts. I believe that the videos are a great idea, ifonly to give students a feel for all the cultures focused on in thetext.

Moving from the broad idea of the book to the text itself, Ifound the preface and introduction—with an ethnographic map.list of films, information on where to acquire the films. 1 h\ of thefocus cultures (oddly missing two, the Malay villagers and theMaring, p. 2). a summary table of important descriptive featuresof the cultures (pp. 6-7), film worksheet, and a very brief historyof ethnographic films—to be highly useful and an excellent wayto introduce students to the idea of using film as text. The layoutof each of the subsequent 17 chapters integrates one or two films

780 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

into the body of the text and draws on the rich and extensive lit-erature that exists for each of the focus cultures, among them theBalinese, Yanomamo, !Kung San, Dani, and Nuer. Given thelimitations of any such selection, Heider's choices seem ex-tremely well thought out, relatively balanced, and wise. In addi-tion to the discussion of the focus cultures and films—contextu-alized in the chapter subject—each of the 21 films selected ishighlighted to provide interesting and useful information aboutit, for example, the name of the filmmaker and the anthropolo-gist who made the film, commentaries and interpretations of thefilm, etcetera. There are also simple but eloquent "focus cultureoverview" boxes that provide basic information, for example,population size, geographical information, and so on, oftenmissing in texts and films, and not necessarily known to all in-structors. "Set up questions" for discussion and to guide studyare also provided. My students and I found these to be very use-ful. What Heider's text does best is to integrate successfully in-formation from the films into the process of introducing culturalanthropology to students. Importantly, even if only some of thefilms are used in a given course, the text material on films notshown still helps in presenting the discipline overall. As such,the text lives up to its stated goal—to see "cultural anthropologythrough film."

For me, nevertheless, there are some noteworthy problemswith the text. Many anthropology textbooks are compilations offacts and theories, presented as if there is little or no theoreticalcontroversy, or, in a manner that suggests the text occupies someneutral, objective, or mediating middle ground. Others are or-ganized around a theme of the discipline, for example, global-ism, fieldwork, environmental ism, et cetera, while still otherscenter on a favored or partisan theoretical position—culturalmaterialism, cultural ecology, Marxism, cultural evolutionism,structuralism, et cetera. Heider has chosen to make holism thecenterpiece of theory and explanation throughout his book, andalso to keep controversy to a minimum. As an organizing themefor an introductory text, holism has, for me, no inherent difficul-ties. However, the actual presentation of holism, as well as moregeneral applications of theory throughout the text, together un-derscore some limitations of Seeing Anthropology.

Holism as a concept is well presented by Heider (pp.14-16),yet it is not fully incorporated into the book. Holism, in my opin-ion, never really rises to the level of theory in Heider's hand.Rather, Heider argues correctly for its significance as a perspec-tive in anthropology and duly notes its limitation as well:"Warning! Holism does not imply that everything is always har-moniously tied in with everything else" (p.15). Fair enough, butthen only occasionally is holism utilized explicitly again in anexplanatory mode. The effect leaves the reader with the sense ofan unfulfilled promise or a lack of conviction with the premiseon the part of the author. In either case, the theme of holism re-mains only partially realized in the text

A similar theoretical limitation has to do with the way defini-tions are sometimes handled. There is an adequate glossary forterms, and some terms appear in bold type in the text, but manyimportant concepts are given short shrift or inadequate treat-ment. To illustrate briefly, consider the term emic. Heider firstuses it to describe "more modern films, often made from a moreemic, or native, point of view" (p. 5). The glossary definitionreads: "ideas, categories, and explanations of the people them-selves" (p. 317). No further explanation or commentary is of-

fered, and the term does not appear in the index although it isused sporadically throughout the text. Instructors who have at-tempted to employ this concept in their classes will be struck bythe limited discussion by Heider of this complex and sometimescontroversial concept I believe that other basic concepts—cul-tural relativism, ethnocentrism, and culture, to name just afew—receive somewhat shallow coverage as well. Simplifyingdifficult vocabulary can be judged a virtue in an introductorytext Some concepts, however, implicitly demand more rigor-ous, complex, and problematic rendering than Heider's textprovides.

To broaden this critique, I would suggest that anthropologicaltheorizing, whether we like it or not, has a deeply imbedded andhighly significant political dimension to it. This "fact" is noteasy to discern from reading Seeing Anthropology. As an eth-nographer there is little doubt that Heider is first-rate. His twomajor ethnographies on the Dani are truly exceptional worksthat describe in intimate detail the life and customs of a tribalpeople. Few ethnographers have the courage to admit in printthat they do not understand and cannot fully or adequately ex-plain some of the important behavior or customs they encounterin their fieldwork. Heider's published commentaries on thepractice of "finger mutilation" among the Dani contain exactlysuch an admission, demonstrating an honesty and integrity thatis rare in any academic arena. But these works also seem to lack astrongly developed political dimension with reference to the-ory. I cannot help but believe that the absence of a significant po-litical dimension in his writing generally—and especially inSeeing Anthropology—is a serious shortcoming in Heider'stheoretical approach.

Perhaps another way to illustrate what I am suggesting as alack of political dimension and depth to the text can be seen byexamining the treatment in Seeing Anthropology of my favoriteethnographic film, The Nuer. Considered by many visual an-thropologists, myself included, to be a "classic," the film depictsthe pastoral life of the Nuer people of the Sudan and Ethiopia.The film is notable in the history of ethnographic film for,among other things, its sparse use of narration to "explain" whatis happening in the film. As Heider points out, "this film, shot in1968 . . . is surely one of the most beautiful of our films" (p.181), a sentiment with which I agree. The set-up questions forthe film (pp. 182-183) focus on general aspects of life depicted,as well as on issues of filming and perspective (emics/etics).Only one question of 14 hints at any controversy at all concern-ing this film: "Or do you think that some shots will turn peopleoff?" Yet, surely Heider must know that many anthropologistsinterpret this film as problematic in ways that go considerablybeyond just turning viewers off. Many anthropologists believethis film needlessly "exoticizes" the Nuer. They offer what theyconsider to be gratuitous nudity, the depiction of the bloody in-itiation rites of gar, the focus on washing hands in cow urine andbodies with cow dung ashes, and the presentation of presumablysuperstitious beliefs in ghosts and ghost marriage, as examplesof an ethnocentric and even racist depiction of the Nuer to West-ern eyes. Others see the film as promoting attitudes—about theNuer and other tribal peoples—which are vestigial holdovers ofthe colonial era of anthropology that falsely "romanticizes theprimitive." While I adamantly disagree with such interpreta-tions of this film, I have colleagues whom I hold in the highestregard who hold such views. The political dimensions of such

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disagreements are to me at the heart of anthropological theoryand debate. And yet, to read Heider's text is to be left with not aclue that such issues exist, let alone are important to the interpre-tation of ethnographic film.

Whether or not the lack of apolitical edge comes from an apo-litical perspective, a centrist sense of desirable neutrality or ob-jectivity, or even the conviction that introductory students arenot ready for or interested in the ethical and pol itical debates thathave been at the core of the discipline of anthropology for thepast 30 years (or for any other speculative reason that I mightimagine), the result for me is still a major shortfall for really see-ing anthropology. I believe that many anthropologists will findthis text simplistic or naive with reference to the core controver-

sies of anthropological theory. Depending on the political posi-tions, teaching goals, or pedagogic philosophies of individualinstructors, the absence of a strong political dimension in thistextbook may make the book either very appealing or quite un-acceptable.

Despite the above criticisms, I return to my original point: notextbook can be all things to all people. Seeing Anthropology isan extremely innovative and important textbook because itbrings ethnographic film into the center core of teaching aboutcultural anthropology. My students enjoyed learning from it andI enjoyed teaching from it. Perhaps the greatest compliment Ican give this work is that I will use it again in my courses in thefuture.