Directions and Diversions
in Visual Anthropology            
  1. Introduction
  2. Objects of Affect
  3. The Burden of Representation
  4. Uncertain Evidence
  5. Digital Media Infrastructure

  6. Collaboration
  7. Sovereign Vision(s)
  8. Opacity and Refusal
  9. Alter-Futurisms
  10. Visual Anthropology beyond the Visual

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CC BY-NC-SA 2024 Isaac Marrero Guillamón

5. Digital Media Infrastructures


This week looks at digital media ecologies. We will consider how visual anthropology may contribute to understanding the infrastructures, publics and desires that partake (or not) in the circulation of digital imagery.

Part 1/2 (21’): diverging theorizations of digital media practice; unpacking digital materialies/environments/infrastructures.



  • Required reading/watching:
  • Steyerl, Hito. 2009. “In Defense of the Poor Image.” e-Flux Journal, no. 10 (November). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/.
  • Jurgenson, Nathan. 2019. “Documentary Vision” [Fragment, pages 7-21]. In The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media. New York: Verso Books. 
  • Myarrka Media. 2020. “Keynote: Making Worlds Otherwise.” Distribute 2020 Conference. 27 min. Available here.

  • Part 2/2 (18’):  conversation with anthropologist and filmmaker Steffen Köhn. 
  • Suggested reading: Köhn, Steffen. 2019. “Unpacking El Paquete: The Poetics and Politics of Cuba’s Offline Data-Sharing Network.” Digital Culture & Society 5 (1): 105–24. https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2019-0107.




  • Further reading:
  • Christen, Kimberly. 2005. “Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons.” International Journal of Cultural Property 12 (3): 315–45. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0940739105050186.
  • Dattatreyan, E. Gabriel. 2020. “Circulating Ethnographic Films in the Digital Age.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video, edited by Phillip Vannini. Oxford and New York: Routledge.
  • Dattatreyan, E. Gabriel. 2020. “Policing the ‘Sensible’ in the Era of YouTube: Urban Villages and Racialized Subjects in Delhi.” Television & New Media 21 (4): 407–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419870511.
  • Dowell, Kristin L. 2018. “Digital Sutures: Experimental Stop-Motion Animation as Future Horizon of Indigenous Cinema.” Cultural Anthropology 33 (2): 189–201. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca33.2.03.
  • Favero, Paolo. 2014. “Learning to Look beyond the Frame: Reflections on the Changing Meaning of Images in the Age of Digital Media Practices.” Visual Studies 29 (2): 166–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2014.887269.
  • Garritano, Carmela. 2017. “The Materiality of Genre: Analog and Digital Ghosts in Video Movies from Ghana.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 4 (2): 191–206. https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2017.12.
  • Ginsburg, Faye D., Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: Univ of California Press.
  • Gürsel, Zeynep Devrim. 2016. Image Brokers. Berkeley: UC Press.
  • Hearne, Joanna. 2017. “Native to the Device: Thoughts on Digital Indigenous Studies.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 29 (1): 3–26. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.29.1.0003.
  • Mukherjee, Rahul. 2019. “Jio Sparks Disruption 2.0: Infrastructural Imaginaries and Platform Ecosystems in ‘Digital India.’” Media, Culture & Society 41 (2): 175–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718818383.
  • Noble, Safiya Umoja. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: NYU Press.
  • Plantin, Jean-Christophe, and Aswin Punathambekar. 2019. “Digital Media Infrastructures: Pipes, Platforms, and Politics.” Media, Culture & Society 41 (2): 163–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718818376.
  • Stout, Noelle. 2014. “Bootlegged: Unauthorized Circulation and the Dilemmas of Collaboration in the Digital Age.” Visual Anthropology Review 30 (2): 177–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12047.

Other suggested films:
Jones, Arthur. 2020. Feels Good Man. US 93 min.