Social anthropology (purposes, politics, problems): is the branch of anthropology that studies how currently living human beings behave in social groups [...].

Anthropology and cultural studies: Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the natural sciences, and the humanities [...]. Cultural studies is an academic discipline which combines political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies [...].

Dialectical materialism: is the philosophy of Karl Marx which he formulated by taking the dialectic of Hegel and joining it to the Materialism of Feuerbach. According to many followers of Karl Marx's thinking, it is the philosophical basis of Marxism [...]. As the core of marxist thinking and basis of critical theory and Cultural Studies, the term has the following key theses: (1) matter precedes thought and is independent of our perception of it; (2) "matter in motion": a/ all things are inter-connected and inter-dependent, and in a ceaseless state of movement and change; and b/ internal contradictions within things cause change and development; (3) the world is knowable; (4) Progress (change & developmentt: unnoticeable quantitative changes leadings to fundamental, qualitative changes.

Ethnomethodology: is a sociological discipline which studies the ways in which people make sense of their world, display this understanding to others, and produce the mutually shared social order in which they live. The term was initially coined by Harold Garfinkel in 1954 [...].

Objects and things: In philosophy, an object is a thing, an entity, or a being. This may be taken in several senses. In its weakest sense, the word object is the most all-purpose of nouns, and can replace a noun in any sentence at all. In a more restricted sense, an object is something that can have properties and bear relations to other objects. In a further restricted sense, objects do not include abstract objects, but only physical bodies located somehow in space and time — minds and bodies, for instance. Numbers, ideas, and the like are excluded. Lastly, objects are often just the material objects (excluding minds), or even just the inanimate material objects (the protons, neutrons, and electrons we are made of, but not we ourselves) [...].

A thing can mean 1. a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object; 2. some entity, object, or creature that is not or cannot be specifically designated or precisely described; 3. anything that is or may become an object of thought [...].

The open-ended quality of research, ethnography and history, visual ethnography and art-making, archive collecting: Research is defined as human activity based on intellectual application in the investigation of matter [...].

Ethnography is a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies. It presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other [...]. History is the study of the Past, with special attention to the written record of the activities of human beings over time. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events [...].

Visual ethnography is the study of a particular field (eg: urban culture) using visual media such as photography, sketches, maps and video. It is also the investigation of cultural objects and artifacts that are themselves highly organized visual representations with embedded meanings, or that organize our everyday life indirectly because of its visual presence.

An archive refers to a collection of historical records, and also refers to the location in which these records are kept. Archives are made up of records which have been accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime [...].

Michel Foucault’s notions of archaeology and genealogy: Foucault's early work used a methodological approach called archaeology. By this he means the exploration of the specific and determinate historical conditions under which statements are combined and regulated to form and define a distinct field of knowledge/objects requiring a particular set of concepts and delimiting a specific 'regime of truth' (i.e. what counts as truth).

Foucault argues that in the transition from one historical era to another the social world is no longer perceived, described, classified and known in the same way. That is, discourse is discontinuous, it is marked by historical breaks in understanding, changes in the way objects are conceptualized and understood. Different historical eras are marked by different epistimes, or configurations of knowledge that shape the social practices adn social order of particular historical periods. Foucault's stress on discontinuity is an aspect of his questioning of modern themes of genesis, telology, continuity, totality and unified subjects.

While archaeology suggests excavation of the past in one specific site, geneology (Foucault's name for his later approach) takes the form of tracing the historical continuities and discontinuities of discourse. While archaeology digs up the local sites of discursive practice, geneology examines the way in which discourse developes and is brought into play under specific and irreducible historical conditions through the operations of power.

[Barker, C. Cultural Studies; Theory and Practice. Sage Publications, 2000. p. 144-6].

Erving Goffman’s notions of presentation of the self in everyday life and frame analysis: In the The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life, Goffman seeks to show the reader how everyone sets out to present themselves to the world around them, always trying to maintain the role they have selected for themselves, since those whom they meet not only try to decide what role it is you are playing, but also whether or not you are competent to play that role. More significantly, impression management is a function of social setting. Erving Goffman portrays everyday interactions as strategic encounters in which one is attempting to sell a particular self-image--and, accordingly, a particular definition of the situation [...].

Performativity: Judith Butler's concept of performativity places emphasis on the manners in which identity is passed or brought to life through discourse. Performative acts are types of authoritative speech. This can only happen and be enforced through the law or norms of the society though. These statements, just by speaking them, carry out a certain action and exhibit a certain level of power. Examples of these types of statements are declarations of ownership, baptisms, inaugurations, and legal sentences. Something that is key to performativity is repetition. The statements are not singular in nature or use and must be used consistently in order to exert power [...].

Utterance: is a complete unit of speech in spoken language. It is generally but not always bounded by silence.

A performative utternace is a linguistic expression used to do something. When spoken by someone in an appropriate position: "I'm sorry." makes an apology; "Play ball!" begins a baseball game; and "I now declare you husband and wife." performs a marriage. Thus, performatives are important instances of what J.L. Austin later called illocutionary acts [...].

Articulations: Refers to the formation of a temporary unity between elements that do not have to go together. Articulation suggests both expressing/representing and a 'putting-together'.

[Barker, C. Cultural Studies; Theory and Practice. Sage Publications, 2000. p. 9-10].

Governmentality: A concept first developed by Michel Foucault; 1. the way governments try to produce the citizen best suited to fulfill those governments' policies; 2. the organized practices (mentalities, rationalities, and techniques) through which subjects are governed [...].

Instrumental reasons: In social and critical theory, instrumental rationality is often seen as a specific form of rationality focusing on the most efficient or cost-effective means to achieve a specific end, but not in itself reflecting on the value of that end. Thus, to the extent that rationality is concerned with critically evaluating actions, instrumental rationality tends to focus on the 'hows' of an action, rather than its 'whys'. According to Jürgen Habermas' three different forms of knowledge interests, instrumental rationality would be "the interest in understanding the necessities of nature and the potential for technically harnessing natural laws, and manipulating living and dead nature, constitutive of the natural sciences" [...].

Self-technique:

Spatial narratives:

Making space:

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Representing Others in Film:

Functions of visual ethnography:

Visuals in ethnography;

Interdisciplinary approach to the visuals in ethnography:

Distinctions between ethnographic film and anthropological film:

Historical development in visual anthropology:

Limitations and benefits of using photography and video in anthropological research:

Visual ethnography as cultural intervention:

Visual anthropology; the case of Maya Deren: Maya Deren [...].

Direct Cinema: is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America, chiefly in Canada (Quebec) and in the United States. It was characterized initially by a desire to directly capture reality and represent it truthfully, and to question the relationship of reality with cinema [...].

Visual ethnography and avant-garde cinema:

Creating subjective voices:

Ethics in ethnographic film:

Debates in documentary filmmaking: