Southwest China's Development In Visual Anthropology

The term, Visual Anthropology, has been drawn into China in less than30years.As a sub-discipline of anthropology and ethnology, visual anthropology is still in theinitial stage in China and in the process of developing. In addition, the contributionwe have acquired on theoretical research of visual anthropology is verylimited.However, when it comes to the practical field, Chinese professors could keeppace of international colleagues. Since the beginning of last century, some overseasscholars have made use of visual methods to carry out field investigation ofanthropology, and they have preserved some visual records. Since1930s, Chinesepeople have taken part in the field investigation, transferring from photographers toprofessors of anthropology and ethnology, and from that time they started to adoptvisual ways to initiate field investigation. The reason why I titled my graduatedissertation as the southwest China visual anthropology of the development is that Ihave noticed the southwest region of China has been playing a critical role in thedeveloping process of Chinese visual anthropology in both theoretical research andfield activities during my study. Numerous relative events occurred in this region, aswell as plenty of anthropology videos. In addition, a variety of videos were shot bythe academic institutions and scholars of that region, and a range of papers and thesiswere written by the professors living there too. In conclusion, I will represent thedeveloping process of visual anthropology and the regional advantage of thesouthwest region of China to demonstrate and prove the region have been playing acritical role for the development of visual anthropology in China, and it has formed aterm in anthropology named “Southwest Effect”.This dissertation will be divided into three parts, the first part is mainly discussedthe concept of visual anthropology and the development of international anthropologyin history, the second part of the paper is the Chinese visual anthropology, whichmainly introduced the southwest the development of China anthropology, and thethird part of the paper is the southwest China development visual anthropologyadvantages and development mode, and the future development made certain thispaper.