The Problem of the Ethnographic Real [and Comments and Reply]

Inductivism, romanticism, and the hope of bettering the world, the founding philosophies of anthropology, also inspire documentary film making. The necessity of selection and the inescapability of theory, however, require a different philosophical basis than inductivism. In anthropology the required philosophy is the solving of intellectual problems by improving theories; in film making the better philosophy is to see film as expressing a vision of the world. Hence the inevitability of a clash between anthropologists and film makers, between science and art. Both anthropology and film making are jeopardised by the phenomenological argument that attempts to break down the distinction between the observer and the observed. Conceding to this argument by acknowledging the constructionist aspect of modelling, yet insisting that our models are models of something, we can defuse the objection. Film remains, however, hearsay evidence and must therefore be supplemented and legitimated by documents. Because film concretizes the things it records, it is difficult to see how it can convey the disputed character of the conceptualizations of anthropology. Hence, it is at best a supplement to anthropological work. Films are not integral to the processes of history and society the way documents are. They neither participate in nor can they be discussions about the real.