From Colonial To Postcolonial:A Study Of The Practice And Development Of Visual Anthropology In Indonesia

Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world,with a large number of islands and a complex and diverse national culture.Since the 15 th century,Indonesia has been gradually colonized by the Netherlands,and the impact of Western civilization has made the Indonesian society a polyhedron.Indonesian visual anthropology also has the dual attributes of art and science.Since Margaret Mead and Bateson conducted a series of field investigation with visual methods in Bali,visual anthropology has gradually become an independent discipline and attracted people’s attention.In this paper,following the 100-year history of Indonesia from colonial to post-colonial,the paper combs the context of the practice and development of visual anthropology in Indonesia,and explores the changes and rules intertwined with the anthropological writing style.The first chapter takes the practice of visual anthropology of the Netherlands and Japan during the Indonesian colonial period as the object of analysis,exploring its role and function as a means to serve the imperialist colonial rule,and the influence of the scientific paradigm of anthropology on the writing of visual anthropology in the early stage of development.The second chapter explains the practice of visual anthropology in Indonesia after independence under the extreme conflict between neocolonialism and nationalism.First of all,Indonesian national films face the oppression of cultural hegemony led by the United States,and the domestic corrupt politics also impose heavy obstacles,national films in the new order(Orde Baru)to survive.In the middle stage of the new order,Western scholars tried to explain the political problems of the Indonesian authorities through images,but peeping from the outside could not solve the internal problems rooted in the Indonesian society.In the anthropological images,"Indonesia" was still the other constructed by Westerners.This chapter takes Robert Gardner’s "Dead Birds" and other classic ethnographic films as the research object,and analyzes the new practice method of visual anthropology to balance science and art.The third chapter reveals that after the end of the new order in Indonesia,visual anthropology found ways to solve social problems through reflection under the shadow of post-colonialism,and the themes presented by anthropological images were liberated.In this period,the films not only directly or tacitly expressed the taboos of Indonesian society such as politics,women and homosexuality,but also proposed new methods of experimental fictional ethnographic films.The combination of different disciplines and visual anthropology brought new possibilities,and excellent practical works also emerged in an endless stream.To sum up,the development of visual anthropology in Indonesia roughly went through three stages,from the direct interference of colonialism,to the powerful means of interference in domestic politics and economy during the neocolonial period,and finally to the subtle influence of cultural infiltration under post-colonialism.The practice of visual anthropology in Indonesia changed with the word "colonization".Interwoven with colonial history,the development of Indonesian visual anthropology is the evolution of anthropological writing techniques.From rigorous scientialism to "fictionalized" writing style,the changes made by anthropology are absorbed and integrated by visual anthropology,forming the current ethnographic film works combining virtual and real.Visual anthropologists are still exploring and trying more possibilities to make a deeper point.