REVIEWS Paradigm for Looking: Cross-Cultural Research with Visual Media, by Beryt L Bellman and Bennetta Jules-Rosette. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishin8, 1977. 211 pp. npl. Sue Curry Jansen State University of New York College at Buffalo This book carries the burden of an inflated title. The reader expects an inquiry in philosophical anthropology: a broadly conceived work with implications for epistemology, the theory of knowledge, and cognitive psychology. Post-Kuhnian connotations of 'paradigm' combine with seductive dustjacket promises to support this expectation. Consequently, the reader feels shortchanged when the authors deliver a set of very limited observations filtered through a screen of extreme ethnomethodological reticence. Bellman and Jules-Rosette may also be victims of the "commodification of scholarship. But, a more accurate, if less marketable, title would have been, "Informant Use of Film and Video-Tape in Participant-Observation: An Exploratory Study." Bellman and Jules-Rosette do deliver the goods suggested by that title. They give a good accounting of their use of visual media in field work situations in Central and West Africa. They provide a detailed set of guidelines for others to emulate. And, they offer two very convincing briefs for the use of video equipment by informants in participant-observation: (I) it focuses researchers attention on aspects of interaction which otherwise go unnoticed; and (2) it allows for informant feedback at a much earlier stage in the research process than other methods. These advantages clearly justify Bellman and Jules-Rosette's enthusiasm. They could have provided a resource for a powerful monograph. Stretched into a book, they provide a little thin and require padding. Thus, Bellman and Jul~s-Rosette's criticism of Edmund Leach's apology for including field work data in one of his studies may be a diversionary tactic. Much of the data Bellman and Jules-Rosette include in their study is padding. It consists of shorthand descriptions of film action accompanied by identification of "cademic markers" (what is being done with the camera: panning, zooming, tilt, follow shots, dolly). A brief sample would have been welcome. Accompanied by the films, all of it might be useful. Standing alone, it is of little value. Like Leach, but unlike Bellman and Jules-Rosette, I am interested in discovering the "principles behind the facts." Thus, I wonder what a Malinowski, Benedict, Whorf or Herskovits would have done with Bellman and Jules-Rosette's materials. And, I question whether methodological reflexivity has to foreshorten conceptual horizons. Bellman and Jules-Rosette acknowledge that their approach cannot secure 'objectivity': "Neither, on the one hand, do we claim that analysis should be based solely on interpretive procedures (although introspection contributes to the analysis).., nor, Qualitative SocioJo~y, VoL 4(2), Summer 1981 0162~0436/81/1400~167500.95

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on the other hand, do we argue for the positivist hope that wholly 'objective' procedures can be found that would be used to analyze any interactional data" (p. 20). But, this epistemological bind can also be reinterpreted as a warrant--even a license--to launch a more significant genre of inquiry. Inquiry with the sort of humanistic sweep and vision that made possible the classic traditions in social science! Such inquiry may require a new rhetoric or stylistic structure. We may need to divide our accounts into frames in which we alternate acknowledgements of methodological insecurity with others in which we make daring, even speculative, cognitive leaps which are plausible if not firmly demonstrable. Surely a convention can be devised whereby departures from strict inferential logic can be marked by a suitable identifier--perhaps a contrasting typeface. Without such cognitive leaps, Marx's theory of ideology, Weber's 'Protestant ethic', Freud's psychoanalytic theory, or Foucault's 'archaeology of knowledge' could not have been articulated. None of these are demonstrable, all are clearly v a l u a b l e - - f a r more v a l u a b l e than the epistemological asceticism produced by rigid adherence to ethnomethods. Bellman and Jules-Rosette divorce their work from the large and impressive literature that is available on cross-cultural perceptual research: Experimental studies have demonstrated the influence of environment and learning in perception. For the most part, these studies have concentrated on the perception of depth, contour, and color and have been less concerned with motion (Segall, Campbell, and Herskovits, 1966...). Discussing some of these experimental findings with regard to film is almost tautological, since the film image is itself a visual trick created by the rapid movement of still frames across an alternately light and dark screen. Furthermore, except by inference, these findings have not provided basic descriptions of perception and attention in natural settings (p. 9). This decision cuts them off from insights (based upon experiments in ethnographic settings) that could greatly enrich their own accounting procedures. For example, in attempting to account for "the influence of environment and learning on perception," Bellman and Jules-Rosette give us rudimentary biographical sketches of the informants noting their education and previous exposure, if any, to electronic media. In comparison, consider the suggestion from the irrelevant work of Herskovits, Segall, and Campbell, who stress the importance of examining the details of the visual environment of groups being studied: Such details include the typical form of houses, the maximum distance at which objects are typically viewed, whether or not vistas over land or water occur, typical games, skills, artistic training, and other aspects of culture that might affect habits of inference . . . . In the carpentered Western world such a great proportion of artifacts are rectangular that the habit of interpreting obtuse and acute angles as rectangular surfaces extended in space is a very useful one •.. In a culture where rectangles did not dominate, this habit might be absent., etc. (Herskovits et al, 1956: 2-5). The frustrating thing is that Bellman and Jules-Rosette undoubtedly know a lot more than the rest of us about the social bases of perception but because, as they put it, " W e saw ourselves in danger of constructing what Garfinkel and Sacks called 'anthropological quotes' (p. 19); they refuse to share

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it w i t h us. Instead of contributing to the 'sociology of perception' (c.f.

Arthur Child); they offer us 'recipe knowledge' (c.f. Alfred Schutz) for crosscultural media analysis: Cademic markers, are second-order analytical devices since they are themselves the products of an analysis. Although we differed in particular ways in our location of markers, we make the following recommendations for anyone attempting to employ our concepts: 1. Make a transcript of the content of the production. 2. Then, make a transcript of all camera techniques and movements without seriously attending to what is occurring in the production. 3. Discover which techniques found in the second step appear to be associated with events that were [ocated in the first step. 4. Record which techniques were used by the cameraperson as responses to his interaction with the event (e.g. dollying or moving away from the action as it moves in on him). 5. Record which techniques were used to posit acts embedded within events (e.g. in the Sande dance tape the cameraperson pointed out the entrance of the male priests or Zo into the ritual area by slightJy tilting the camera up and narrating what was occurring into the microscope). 6. Record, which techniques were used to terminate an event (e.g. shutting off the camera, fast pans away from the previous action, down tilts, and fast dollies to new locations). 7. Record which techniques were used in variation with other techniques. Note what was occurring in the event to discover if the difference was the result of the cameraperson's reactions to some action (e.g. the Poro priest's use of zoom rather than dolly when the Sande priestess danced with a medicine bundle on her head). 8. Keep a note book on nil decisions made throughout the analysis and explicate reasons for the choices made. This is a useful recipe: one that merits a permanent place in the files of anyone w h o intends to d o research with film or video-tape. But a recipe is not a paradigm. It has little to contribute to the tradition of epistemologicai studies in anthropology: a tradition which recommends that reports on cultural differences make explicit the cultural commonalities which provide the contextual anchoring of differences {Northrop and Livingston, 1964). Bellman and Jules-Rosette d o c u m e n t differences in media use by informants and researchers (two American sociology students, Chris and Peter) in the same situation. They find filming as an order of reality differed for informants and researchers; the choice of shots was different; conceptions of social events differed; filming behavior contrasted; visual repertoires of informants and researchers differed sharply; and use of film language and technique varied. Their sample is very small (a handful of informants and t w o student-researchers). Herskovits et al. (1956) explorations of cross-cultural differences in the perception of optical illusions was based on over 2,000 cases. The intrusive properties of the camera itself cannot be ignored. Bellman and Jules-Rosette acknowledge Carpenter's assertion that media tend to destroy traditional culture. But, they diminish his claim, " O u r research suggests that such changes are by no means universal in their extent or direction". Rather, they contend, " m e d i a are the servants of accepted forms of c o m m u n i c a t i v e forms rather than their masters" (p. 199). The data indicate that informant camera techniques respect the meni of palavers and rituals

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(community definitions of situations). But, the American visual productions tend to violate meni in an attempt to simulate participants' perspectives: •.. the upward tilt and panning to follow action that Peter used was a product of effort to preserve his orientation to the ritual and calculated use of the camera. Nevertheless, Peter's use of the camera proxemically constituted a challenge to the preacher. Filming upward resembled looking upward from the seated position directly into the preacher's face. The contradiction is that the lower status or seated position is expected to look down as a sign of deference (p. 196). In time, we are told, informants began to emulate researchers' film techniques. If Pat Loud's testimony on how features of community organization are highlighted by the presence of a camera merits consideration (163); then, I think Jeremy Tunstall's thesis that "the media are American" also warrants attention (Tunstall, 1977). Tunstall focuses on technological constituents of media use not content. He contends that the camera presupposes (or imposes) an egalitarian ethos: it requires violation of the proxemic conventions of hierarchical traditions, It assumes that the cameraperson cannot only meet the gaze of a tribal elder but that the camera can dissect the elder's perspective from privileged vantage points. If Tunstall is correct--and I think he is--then, the very presence of the camera violates the integrity of the situation Bellman and Jules-Rosette so conscientiously strive to preserve in their decision to use in-film editing. In attempting to escape the methodological imperialism of positivism, they may have become unwitting agents of cultural imperialism. Informant visual productions ("visual tricks") may only project refracted after-images of the kwii (Western/modern) culture Bellman and Jules-Rosette import. The critical tenor of parts of this review should not eclipse Bellman and Jules-Rosette's achievement. They have expanded the repertoire of qualitative methods in human studies. Very few researchers can claim this distinction.

REFERENCES Herskovits, M., M. Segall and D. Campbell 1956 A Cross-Cultural Study of Perception. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Memll. Northrop, F.S. and H Livingston 1964 Cross-Cultural Understanding: Epistemology in Anthropology. New York: Harper, Row. Tunstall, Jeremv 1979 Media are American• New York: Columbia University Press.

The Emerging Goddess by Albert Rothenberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. 440 pp. $22.50 cloth. Arnold W. Foster State University of New York at Albany This is a book about creativity. It was written by a psychiatrist who is research director at the Austen Riggs Center. The purposes of the book are to

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learn more about psychological processes and to "help artists, scientists, and other creators to know themselves and their psychological functions better . . . . . " and in so doing perhaps contribute to the "creative enterprise" (p. x). The focus of attention is on the "conscious willed aspect of creative functioning" (p. xi). Creativity is defined as "the state or the production of something both new and valuable." [author's italics] (p. xi). The method was to use psychiatric interviews with major artists and scientists deemed creative by their peers, with novices also deemed creative and with some noncreative people. Data from word association tests with other groups is also used. Rothenberg's review of the literature on creativity differs greatly from Farnsworth's (1969) and Child's (1968). In the first chapter, the author reverses Freud's statement that art is dream work by declaring that "the creative process is the mirror image of the dream" [author's italics] (p. 32). Dr. Rothenberg finds that "the creative process is the obverse of dreaming in that the creator consciously uses the mechanisms and processes of abstracting, conceptualizing, and concretizing as wel[ as reversing the effects of unconscious censorship" (pp. 40-41). Dreaming and creating are also biologically obverse states because dreaming is involuntary and creativity must be consciously invoked. Dreams tend to reduce anxiety, while creating arouses it. Creativity has social value while dreaming does not. Next, Janusian thinking is analyzed, It "consists of actively conceiving two or more opposite or antithetical ideas, images, or concepts simultaneously" [author's italics] (p. 55). Creativity also involves homospatia[ thinking. It "consists of actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities" [author's italics] (p. 69). These are both aspects of the mirror image process that marks creative thinking. We find that scientific creativity is similar to poetic creativity, because the mirror image process operates in both. But there is more to the creative process. "Knowledge, fantasy, drive for discovery, intense motivation and concentration, and pleasure and gratification characterize the creative process" (p. 136). A short nod is given to social factors. They affect the subject matter, not the formal qualities, of art. Janusian thinking leads to the transcendence of time; homospatial thinking leads to the transcendence of space. "Both of these thought processes Logether allow the creator to move from what exists and what is known to the limits of knowledge, spatiality, temporality, and experience, and therefore to move into the realm of the unknown" (p. 343). In the excellent last chapter, Dr. Rothenberg clearly sets out the relationships of Janusian and homospatial thinking to the unconscious, to anxiety and arousal, to specification, symmetry, encapsulation, to unity and fusion, and to articulation and freedom. These are all aspects of mind. The focus of the book is always on the mode of thinking of creative people considered in isolation from other psychic, material and social factors. The conscious and abstract mode of thinking Rothenberg describes as part of creativity fits best his novelists, dramatists and poets, Their communication with the public is through the use of language. But what about the painters, sculptors and musicians who start with doodling on paper, in clay, or with sounds? In the act of "arting,'" happy accidents or developing perception at each stage of development of the object change the direction of

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the process in midstream. In Rothenberg's illustrations showing the development of a poem, a play, the m o v e m e n t is one w a y - - f r o m the mind to the object. It is as if the object were neutral, as if there were a m i n i m u m of feedback to the artist, and then only as errors. Although errors sometimes lead into new directions in the work, the impression is given that the process is a hunt in the mind for ways to fabricate a preconceived product. The author's stated purposes are met in this book. One finishes it with greater understanding of the creative mind. But it is not useful to people w h o are interested in the production of and influence of art in the world. Dr. Rothenberg pays no attention to social phenomena such as the cycles of creativity found by Kroeber (1944). Are there more naturally creative people in some periods and places? Has the psychologist done all he can do if he describes the emotional and intellectual processes of the artist on the one hand and of the spectators on the other? Does it elucidate artistic creation, if we know the elations and disappointments, the feelings of drudgery, of inferiority and superiority, through Which the artist may pass during his creative work, or the 'associations' that supply him with his imagery and metaphor? (Koffka, n.d.: 185-86) He answers his own questions in this way. it is my contention that if we divide the psychology of art in the traditional manner into a psychology of the artist and a psychology of the spectator, we have left out the central part of our field of study, viz. the work of art. There must, then, be a psychology of the work of art, and this third task of the psychologist would be the fundamental one, since it would determine the course which the psychology of the artist and the spectator would have to take. (186-87) •

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In perhaps the best discussion of creativity by a sociologist, Florian Znaniecki writes, " I t is manifestly impossible to divide this total course of progressive formation and realization of a purpose into t w o parts: a mental, inner, subjective process of thinking before acting and an outward, objective process of performing the action" (1980: 203). To more fully understand the process of creating, one must take into account feedback from the art o b j e c t as it is developing and the social/cultural influences on thought. The artist does not simply create. As a social being, he or she creates something for one or more other social beings even though the other may be merely him or herself. The connection between inner thought and the action of creation is not made in this book~

REFERENCES Child, Irvin L. 1968 "Egthetics." in Gardiner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology Ill. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 853-916. Farnsworth, Paul R. 1969 The Social Psychology of Music~ Second Edition. Ames: Iowa State University Press.

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Koffka, K. n.d. "Problemsin the psychology of art." in Bryn Mawr Symposium in Art. Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr Notes of Monographs IX, 180-273. Kroeber, Alfred L 1944 Configurations of Culture Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Znaiecki, Florian 1980 Cultural Sciences: Their Origin and Development. New Brunswick: Transaction Books. The Human Condition Department of Anthropology, Temple University, 1980. Jay Ruby, Editor.

Derral Cheatwood University of Baltimore In the preface to The Human Condition Jay Ruby provides us with a statement of the goals the work was designed to fulfill. First, The Human Condition was intended to "find photographers who were exploring the outer w o r l d . . , of 'real life' while at the same time not denying or ignoring the inner world that caused them to regard 'real life' in a particular way," Second, the catalogue seeks to "encourage the innovative use of photography by social scientists and the incorporation of social science ideas about human behavior into the consciousness of professional photographers." Finally, the Conference on Visual Anthropology and the monograph sought to "present the human condition through human means and ... to explore new ways of making these presentations." To do this, Professor Ruby explicitly states, "We have made a high quality well designed fine arts catalogue." The catalogue contains thirty-seven black and white photographs by elevent photographers in nine subject groupings. The images were selected from the 1980 Conference on Visual Anthropology Photographic Exhibition. The topics of the photographs range from "Religion in Cuba (1979): The Case of the Jews" through "East Baltimore: Tradition and Transition" to "in the Middle--The Eskimo Today/' Some units, such as the pictures of Mexican political leaders, are collections of portraits while others, such as the study of Hutterites, tend to focus on the cultural objects of the people. The photographs are generally excellent, although many tend to be stereotypical and reminiscent of the documentaw work of Dorothea Lange or W. Eugene Smith. Each photograph is allotted a full page for presentation, and onb/three have any text beyond their title. All of the prints are of superior technical quality and the images overall are also excellent aesthetic objects~ They vary significantly in the anthropological or sociological impact they convey, and the sma[I number of images on any topic (from three to seven) makes evaluation of any specific subject unit from a social science perspective impossible. The scholars involved have undoubtedly created the "high quality fine arts catalogue" which they intended to produce. However, this is the flaw in the work as well as its achievement. It is difficult to appiy any critical vocabulary from anthropology or sociology to the monograph, only a critical analysis drawn from aesthetics or photography seems apropos. The first goal, then, of finding photographers to explore real life without denying their inner perspective, is achieved. I must admit, however, that [ have a great deal of trouble with the concept of "real life" explored from an

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inner perspective. What is "false life," then, except my definition of your reality? I could not say, however, that the work encourages the innovative use of photography by social scientists. The work contained, although beautiful, is very traditional. As such, it could better be described as a statement of the current quality rather than an exploration of new ways of making the visual presentation of the human condition. Through its professional quality The Human Condition should help to "incorporate social science ideas about human behavior into the consciousness of professional photographers." For social scientists it is another example of the growing body of high quality work in the use of visual methods and imagery in social science.

Fietdwork Experience: Qualitative Approaches to Social Research, edited by William B. Shaffir, Robert A. Stebbins, and Allan Turowetz. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. 329 pp. $8.95 paper. Rob Faulkner University of Massachusetts--Amherst Anne SHay Cornell University A book on fieldworkers' working would be a good subject for a structural stud% It would be highly thematic, intensely personal, occasionally narcissistic, crammed full of its own categories, heroes, tall tales, fulfillments, failures, and even exis~tential principles. One principle would be that a spirit of hard work and personal exploration is inherent in social research, and that the adequacy of qualitative data is therefore decided by how the investigator feels about the project and his or her participation in it. A second principle would be that choices in participant observation are at least as much a process for discovering goals and purposes as for acting on them. Despite the dictum that you cannot find the answer until you have formulated the research question, fieldworkers often do not know the question for their research until they have found the answer. Still a third principle might be that successful entry into other people's lives is accompanied by exhilaration--but followed by a deep unpleasantness that stems from too many tradeoffs, compromises, betrayals, and, at base, the nagging awareness of one's precarious status as a participating observer. descriptions of social settings; personal points of view would be coupled with claims about the "reality" of the setting and the people whose collective actions constitute its structure. Throughout, we would be shown how the social reality bounded by the qualitative program of data collection and analysis is not the field worker's own reality, for it is not his or her enduring life situation. In such a description, careers of research projects are produced by investigators laying out lines of activity, getting entry into situations, and making judgments about what to study and how to study it. At the same time, the people being

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studied have options and choices; they can facilitate or impede the work of the fieldworkers. In this way, the objects of our study are both opportunities and obstacles. This duality between the investigator and the investigated, and the tightness or looseness of the match between the two, would become the unit of analysis and reflection in its own right. Fieldwork Experience is an important but partial contribution to the sociology of the relationship between investigators and investigated. This collection of original articles is not only a sourcebook on how to enhance the adequacy and scope of observation while securing and maintaining trustful relations with those whose activities and lives we study, although it is partly that. It is not just an analysis of how to get fieldwork done, and done well, although it is partly that also. Nor is it mainly a set of empirically grounded vignettes and re-collections about how professional issues and personal feelings may be subjectively experienced, although it is partly that, too. Fieldwork Experience is at heart a series of personal meditations and reflections on the ways in which the factual reality of the social world impresses its hold on qualitative sociologists. Twenty-five researchers provide, in 21 articles, descriptions, comments, analyses, and recountings of their unique experiences. Each piece covers a different research topic. The range of setting is wide: boards of directors, seminary students, Times Square, newsrooms, the Unification Church, medical students, Little League baseball, widows, major figures in psychiatry, and more. The researchers' capabilities reflect factors that change as the research unfolds (eg., connections, competence, insight, experience) as well as factors linked to the exigencies of "getting in," "learning the ropes," "maintaining relations," and "leaving the field." The volume is organized around these four major sets of interests, each of which has its own unique tasks and troubles. A clear message emerges: the research product is intimately tied to the research process. How a researcher goes about carrying out the experience says a great deal about the outcome of the endeavor. To be sure, this message can be dismissed as a mere methodological truism. Research findings are scrutinized in the light of how information was gathered and analyzed; the truth, value and generalizability of conclusions are substantiated by the rigor, scope, and reliable estimates of error reported for the research process. The emphasis in Fieldwork Experience, however, is different. While attempts to systematize the methods for doing qualitative sociology aim at objectifying and perhaps depersonalizing the acts of observing, interviewing, and using archival data, fieldwork by its very nature begins and remains at the personal and highly subjective level. The investigator's untangling of affect and cognition allows the reader to examine the use of qualitative methods that highlight and preserve rich detail about context. A key feature of the context is the sociologist in it and for it. Another feature, of course, is the sociologist's retrospective reconstructions about what he or she did in order to "pull" the behavior from target populations and settings. Qualitative methodology presumes that observations can become more salient and focused as the researcher develops informed "trust" with respondents, takes on the latter knowingly discards the "myths" of those investigated, "goes native" and loses critical capacities only to eventually regain objectivity, develops "cover" for handling encounters with suspicious

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and knowing subjects, and becomes "'committed" and tied into ongoing structures which make the inevitable disengagement from the field disagreeable and often guilt-laden. These are a few recurrent themes. In all of these articles, the writers' feelings, and thoughts about those feelings, serve as evidence. To see the effects of variations in these understandings the reader has a sourcebook for comparing contexts that differ in conspicuous and meaningful ways. The issue of "being detached" or, worse, "objective" while "using" respondents, informants, and even friends is a central issue in the working experiences of these field researchers. Their simultaneous estrangement from, and immersion in people's lives resembles alienation within the workplace, for the fieldworker's workplace is societ% Precoded questionnaires, aggregate data and attitudinal scaling are criticized by qualitative sociologists as being unrepresentative of people's social worlds. As a result, they dismiss quantitative research as being removed from the subjective life worlds of those studied. It is labelled as alienating for both the investigated as well as the investigators. With the publication of Fieldwork Experience, qualitative sociologists can see how the estrangement between man and the world also occurs in research characterizedb¥ the virtues of malleability, openness, looseness, and firsthand closeness to the data sources. What interactionists used to easib/ call "getting close" may turn out to be more of a heavily intellectualized construction than a realistic directive for doing competent and sensitive fieldwork. The editors only partially show how problems of realism and issues of alienation are inherent in the methods of participant observation and interviewing. Their introductions to the four major sections can be passed over quickly. The real meat is in the case studies, which illustrate how field workers need not ordy grasp the perspectives of those they study but also understand the distortions their own activities and perspectives can introduce. introduce. For anyone familiar with the literature of fieldwork, this volume has an additional strength. Several of the most outstanding pieces in Fieldwork Experience can now be read side-by-side with their substantive articles: for example, David A. Karp's carefully-written paper on observing behavior in Times Square and "Hiding in Pornographic Bookstores" (Urban Life and Culture, 1973); Clinton R. Sander's reflections on fear in field relationships and "Caught in the Con-game" (Law and Society Review, 1975); Malcolm Spector's discussion of elite interviewing and guidelines for using names in the analysis and Constructing Social Problems (with J.t. Kitsuse, 1977)~ and Peter Letkemann's reflections on the difficulties of creating working relationships with felons and the trials of leaving the field with Crime as Work (1973). There are others. Especially when coupled with the original research works, the essays in this collection pull double duty: (1) they provide personal insights into the experience of fieldwork, and (2) they allow serious students of qualitative methods to match results with autobiographical reflections.