Peoples & Cultures in Film, Anthropology - General & Miscellaneous, Ethnic & Minority Studies - Media Studies

Scoping the Amazon: Image, Icon, and Ethnography

Name: Scoping the Amazon: Image, Icon, and Ethnography
Author: Stephen Nugent
ISBN: 9781598741773

by Stephen Nugent, Nugent Stephen

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Overview

The image of the Amazon Indian is an icon that straddles the world between the professional anthropologist and the popular media. Presented alternately as the noble primitive and savior of the environment or as a savage, dissolute, cannibalistic half-human, it is a representation well worth examining. Stephen Nugent does just that, critiquing the claims of authoritativeness inherent in visual images presented by anthropologists of Amazon life in the early twentieth century and comparing them with the images found in popular books, movies, and posters. This heavily illustrated book depicts the field of anthropology as its own form of culture industry and contrasts it to other similar industries, past and present. For visual anthropologists, ethnographers, Amazon specialists, and popular culture researchers, Nugent's book will be enlightening, entertaining reading.

About the Author:
Stephen Nugent teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is director of the Centre for Visual Anthropology

Synopsis

Savage cannibal or utopian proto-environmentalist? Nugent examines both popular images of Amazon peoples in film and general books as well as changing anthropological views of the rainforest and its people.

About the Author, Stephen Nugent

Stephen Nugent is professor of anthropology and director of the Centre for Visual Anthropology at the Goldsmith's College, University of London. He has done fieldwork in Brazil since the 1970s. He is author of five books on the Amazon, elite culture, and cultural studies and a member of the Critique of Anthropology editorial collective.