Ethnography's origins date back to the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece (Wikipedia, 2014).;xNLx;;xNLx;The Father of Ethnography, Herodotus wrote "The History", an inquiry into the origin of the Greco-Persian wars (Wikipedia, 2014).;xNLx;;xNLx;;xNLx;Ethnology is a branch of Anthropology that analyses and compares cultures - in fact, it is also called cultural anthropology. As such, all ethnographers are anthropologists and the terms are often, correctly or not, used interchangeably in media. Anthropology is therefore a relevant term that can be found in this presentation.;xNLx;Media used for recording or documenting ethnography include text, audio and/or video recording, and photography. Consequently, documentary is an integral media dimension of ethnographic history, which you will find in this timeline.;xNLx;The nature of ethnography is educational in that it captures the infinitely complex yet unique ways that human beings express, experience, and live life - from ancient traditions to current day trends - which is why it is used in many of the largest corporations and hi-tech companies today. Find out more about modern applications of ethnography at the end of your journey through this timeline. Bon Voyage!;xNLx;;xNLx;
Eadweard Muybridge - who later became know as the father of motion picture - experiments with sequential photographs of horses in motion and develops the zoopraxiscope in 1879 to project and "animate" his photographic images (Stuart Freeman, 2007).
Étienne Jules Marey experiments with chronophotography, the photography of people in movement. (Brain Pickings, n.d.)
The world's first public screening - Paris
Félix-Louis Regnault and Charles Comte film a Senegalese woman in their seminal work on cross-cultural studies of human movement. The story is about Wolof women making pottery, and is later presented at Paris' Exposition Éthnographique de l'Afrique Occidentale (footage unavailable). However, other early footage by Regnault is provided in lieu. (Docot, 2012)
Queensland Native Dance Footage - "The Life in Torres Straits" (Book, n.d.) (Torres Strait Islanders, 2014).
This Russian filmmaker calls for a new style of cinéma reportage that documents real life, which he coins Kino Pravda. This later becomes a genre called cinéma vérité. (Dziga Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera, n.d.)
A precursor to ethnographic production this "salvage ethnography" is a silent documentary with dramatisation, of Nanook the Inuk man and his family. (Nanook, n.d.), (Nanook of the North, 2014).
One of the most prominent anthropologists of the 20th century, her seminal ethnographic work was published in a book entitled "Coming of Age in Samoa" (Margaret Mead, n.d.)
Margaret Mead's second ethnographic book (Book, n.d.).
Initially known as the National Film Commission, it was created by an act of Parliament in 1939, with John Grierson appointed as Government Film commissioner. Its mandate, as set forth in the National Film Act, 1950, is “to produce and distribute and to promote the production and distribution of films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations” (Government of Canada, 2013), (Logo, n.d.)
Jean Rouch, veteran ethnographer in African filmmaking, and Edgar Morin shoot "Chronique d'un Été" dealing with Parisians' thoughts and feelings at the end of the Algerian war.
PBS is a private, nonprofit corporation, founded in 1969, whose members are America’s public TV stations -- noncommercial, educational licensees that operate more than 350 PBS member stations and serve all 50 states, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa. PBS’ mission is to create content that educates, informs and inspires. To do this, PBS offers programming that expands the minds of children,documentaries that open up new worlds, non-commercialized news programs that keep citizens informed on world events and cultures and programs that expose America to the worlds of music, theater, dance and art. PBS has transformed itself from a solely broadcast organization to a multi-platform leader that serves Americans through television, mobile TV, the Web, interactive whiteboards in the classroom and more. PBS reaches nearly 109 million people through television and over 28 million people online each month.
Known as the ethnology of communication, and examines how we communicate, most often set in a classroom environment.
Quote: "The most striking change in ethnographic film since its beginnings, and especially since World War II, has been the shift in the orientation of the camera, which no longer looks out at the world, but rather inside one’s world” (Docot, 2012).
Incorporating online questionnaires, digital video, social network websites, blogs, chat rooms, and online forums with traditional "face-to-face" fieldwork, creating "multimodal ethnography". Also known as Virtual Ethnography, Netnography, or Online Ethnography.
On October 24, 1995, the Federal Networking Council unanimously passed a resolution defining the term "Internet". This definition was developed in consultation with members of the internet and intellectual property rights communities. The term "Internet" refers to the global information system that, among other items, is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol, and makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related structures B.M. Leiner, V.G. Cerf, D.D. Clark, R.E. Kahn, L. Kleinrock, D.C. Lynch, J. Postel, L.G. Roberts, & S. Wolff, n.d.) (Internet, n.d.)
A corporate designer probably based their usability studies on ethnographic research to design that new phone you want to buy. A trend researcher at a large corporation used ethnographic data to decide which new products to market - like the new line of kitchen gadgets and hi-tech gizmos that keep popping up in trendy shops! (Book, n.d.)
The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) is an experimental laboratory at Harvard University that promotes innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography. It uses analog and digital media to explore the aesthetics and ontology of the natural and unnatural world (Harvard, 2010).
The answer to this question is an emphatic NO! Reality TV is a huge misnomer. With its sound crews, lighting crews, scripts, the promise of fame, fortune, and celebrity status, this brand of reality couldn't be any further from the naturalistic approach that ethnographers endeavour to take (Reality TV, n.d.).
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