Paper short abstract:

This paper is devoted to the reassessment of the photographic analysis proposed by Mead and Bateson in their famous Balinese project. Presented reflections evolved after the attempt to conduct analogous analysis of the data collected with digital equipment among modern hunters of Eastern Siberia.

Paper long abstract:

In 1942 the world anthropological community got one of the most outstanding results of anthropological fieldwork - the book presented by well known anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead about Balinese character (Bateson & Mead 1942). This book became one of the classical handbooks for visual anthropologists. Despite the fine reputation of the book, the attempts to conduct analogous studies were few and mostly focused on Balinese materials. In this paper I would like to present the results of photographic analysis conducted according to the Mead-Bateson methodology but applied to the data collected among the Evenki of East Siberia. The latter is relatively poor studied community of modern hunters that live in ultimate environments of taiga. Evenki's activities are coordinated not through strict rules, orders or other verbal forms of communication, but on skills and experiences of collaborative enactments. This research project was devoted to the study of Evenki everyday life with a special focus on the role of non-verbal information in social interaction and emotional aspects.

In my presentation I plan to describe what measures helped to adjust the Mead-Bateson analysis to modern technological conditions and how these changes have affected the general methodological premises of the project. The change in the distribution of new digital technologies also affected the process of data collection, as anthropologist is no more an exclusive expert in video equipments in the field, which changes his position compared to that of Mead and Bateson.