Reorienting Visual and Digital Anthropology: Southeast Asian Perspectives - Alison L. Kahn

This volume reorients visual anthropology beyond its historically Western vantage point through a collaborative, cross-cultural editorship. With contributions from anthropologists with cultural connections to the Indian subcontinent, it presents contemporary ethnographic practice as it unfolds across both analogue and digital media. It examines representation across multiple forms—from film and photography to social media ethnography, immersive virtual and augmented realities, and the emerging horizons of artificial intelligence.

Visual anthropology itself emerged from the intellectual ferment of the late 1960s, shaped by debates across literature, visual arts, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, alongside the political reckoning of the post-colonial moment. For students of social and cultural anthropology, its catalytic technologies were the hand-held camera and synchronised sound—tools that allowed ethnography to move, speak, and circulate beyond the written text. Yet the field has always extended beyond cinema. Visual and digital anthropology encompasses photography, art, ritual performance, and material culture, recognising that visual knowledge emerges through diverse representational practices. In the age of the Internet, social media, and mobile devices, images circulate globally and instantly, transforming how ethnographers document, interpret, and share social worlds.

The book will be of value to students, researchers, and teachers of visual anthropology and sociology, as well as to visual ethnographers, documentary filmmakers, and scholars in museum studies. It will also serve as an important resource for practitioners working with artificial intelligence, curators, filmmakers, and general readers interested in photography, video creation, and the expanding visual worlds of the twenty-first century.