This paper traces the proliferating spread and circulation of images of the Wodaabe people of Nig... more This paper traces the proliferating spread and circulation of images of the Wodaabe people of Niger, presenting a model and structure for how such visual proliferations develop and an imaginary of "otherness" is reproduced and perpetuated. The journal African Arts has made the paper available with open access at the weblink included here: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/AFAR_a_00390.
2009 “Communicative Resonance across Settings: Marriage Arrangement, Initiation and Political Mee... more 2009 “Communicative Resonance across Settings: Marriage Arrangement, Initiation and Political Meetings in Kenya.” Wenner-Gren Foundation volume on Ritual Communication. Edited by Ellen Basso and Gunter Senft. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
emory university & museum of international folk art abstract A commentary on Paul Mullins's artic... more emory university & museum of international folk art abstract A commentary on Paul Mullins's article "The Banality of Everyday Consumption," this essay engages questions concerning domestic objects that might be collected in urban settings. It discusses challenges involved in documenting the complex meanings associated with such objects, what happens when objects are incorporated into museum collections and exhibitions, and how museum visitors interpret exhibitions in relation to their own expectations, assumptions, and narratives. [collecting, exhibitions, objects, narrative, visitor reception] museum anthropo lo gy
2001 "Conversations and Lives." In African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral His... more 2001 "Conversations and Lives." In African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History. Edited by Luise White, Stephan Miescher, and David William Cohen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 127-161.
“The Ethnographic in the Museum: Knowledge Production, Fragments, and Relationships”. In Beyond M... more “The Ethnographic in the Museum: Knowledge Production, Fragments, and Relationships”. In Beyond Modernity: Do Ethnography Museums Need Ethnography? Edited by Vito Lattanzi, Elisabetta Frasca and Sandra Ferracuti. Rome: Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini”, pp. 61-78.
In this article, I trace the history of focus groups as a method and consider how they produce an... more In this article, I trace the history of focus groups as a method and consider how they produce and filter knowledge, interaction, and engagement; their nature as communicative settings; and their political–ideological associations. I analyze focus groups conducted for a primary health care project in Kenya that involved health officials, Washington, DC- and Nairobi-based staff, a U.S. photographer, a U.S. anthropologist, and local women from the project area. This case provides insights into knowledge production in the context of the transnational development industry, how anthropological methods are incorporated and represented in the process, and the epistemological grounds of ethnographic methods.
2006 “Museum Frictions: Introduction.” In Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformatio... more 2006 “Museum Frictions: Introduction.” In Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations. Edited by Ivan Karp, Corinne Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto et al. Durham NC: Duke University Press, pp.1-31. With Ivan Karp.
2002 “Persistent Popular Images of Pastoralists.” Visual Anthropology 15 (3-4):247-265.
Pastor... more 2002 “Persistent Popular Images of Pastoralists.” Visual Anthropology 15 (3-4):247-265. Pastoralists have long been recurrent figures in visual images and other representations of Africa and Africans. Whether seen in positive or negative terms, pastoralists have provided means for thinking about and imaging cultural difference and identity, with considerable continuity in representational forms and themes. As popular visual media proliferated and changed over the past two centuries -- from postcards, trade cards, and live shows to Hollywood films and video games -- African pastoralists have continued to appear in each new form, often replicating the types and stereotypes of Euroamerican understandings even as they register new and varied circumstances. The proliferation and reverberation of similar images through diverse visual media is one way these images have come to seem``natural'' and to develop such remarkable persistence [Kratz 2002]. Using cases drawn from eastern and southern Africa, this collection of articles considers the multifaceted processes of representation involved in imaging African pastoralists. It invites attention to how such representations are produced in diverse visual media and through interconnections among visual and verbal media, examining the range of actors, interactions, and mediations involved in crafting representations of African pastoralists at different times and in different places.
2007 “Seeking Asylum, Debating Values and Setting Precedents in the 1990s: the Cases of Kassindja... more 2007 “Seeking Asylum, Debating Values and Setting Precedents in the 1990s: the Cases of Kassindja and Abankwah in the United States.” In Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context. Edited by Ylva Hernlund and Bettina Shell-Duncan. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 167-201.
Starting in the early 1980s, media coverage of customary African genital surgeries for females ha... more Starting in the early 1980s, media coverage of customary African genital surgeries for females has been problematic and overly reliant on sources from within a global activist and advocacy movement opposed to the practice, variously described as female genital mutilation, female genital cutting, or female circumcision. Here, we use the more neutral expression female genital surgery. In their passion to end the practice, anti-mutilation advocacy organizations often make claims about female genital surgeries in Africa that are inaccurate or overgeneralized or that don't apply to most cases.
The aim of this article—which we offer as a public policy advisory statement from a group of concerned research scholars, physicians, and policy experts—is not to take a collective stance on the practice of genital surgeries for either females or males. Our main aim is to express our concern about the media coverage of female genital surgeries in Africa, to call for greater accuracy in cultural representations of little-known others, and to strive for evenhandedness and high standards of reason and evidence in any future public policy debates. In effect, the statement is an invitation to actually have that debate, with all sides of the story fairly represented.
Paper presented at "The Future of the Ethnographic Museum," a conference for the European project... more Paper presented at "The Future of the Ethnographic Museum," a conference for the European project on “Ethnography Museums and World Cultures”, Oxford, 19-21 July. Podcast link above. ABSTRACT: Exhibition styles and genres are often associated with different subject matters: art exhibits, history exhibits, science exhibits, ethnographic exhibits. Yet while such canonical notions of genre persist, we also know and confidently assert that exhibition genres have blurred. Ethnographic museums today are not the ethnographic museums of a century ago, although they certainly bear the legacies from which they have grown. How do they communicate both their histories and their contemporary orientations to visitors through their exhibitions?
This paper traces the proliferating spread and circulation of images of the Wodaabe people of Nig... more This paper traces the proliferating spread and circulation of images of the Wodaabe people of Niger, presenting a model and structure for how such visual proliferations develop and an imaginary of "otherness" is reproduced and perpetuated. The journal African Arts has made the paper available with open access at the weblink included here: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/AFAR_a_00390.
2009 “Communicative Resonance across Settings: Marriage Arrangement, Initiation and Political Mee... more 2009 “Communicative Resonance across Settings: Marriage Arrangement, Initiation and Political Meetings in Kenya.” Wenner-Gren Foundation volume on Ritual Communication. Edited by Ellen Basso and Gunter Senft. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
emory university & museum of international folk art abstract A commentary on Paul Mullins's artic... more emory university & museum of international folk art abstract A commentary on Paul Mullins's article "The Banality of Everyday Consumption," this essay engages questions concerning domestic objects that might be collected in urban settings. It discusses challenges involved in documenting the complex meanings associated with such objects, what happens when objects are incorporated into museum collections and exhibitions, and how museum visitors interpret exhibitions in relation to their own expectations, assumptions, and narratives. [collecting, exhibitions, objects, narrative, visitor reception] museum anthropo lo gy
2001 "Conversations and Lives." In African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral His... more 2001 "Conversations and Lives." In African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History. Edited by Luise White, Stephan Miescher, and David William Cohen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 127-161.
“The Ethnographic in the Museum: Knowledge Production, Fragments, and Relationships”. In Beyond M... more “The Ethnographic in the Museum: Knowledge Production, Fragments, and Relationships”. In Beyond Modernity: Do Ethnography Museums Need Ethnography? Edited by Vito Lattanzi, Elisabetta Frasca and Sandra Ferracuti. Rome: Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini”, pp. 61-78.
In this article, I trace the history of focus groups as a method and consider how they produce an... more In this article, I trace the history of focus groups as a method and consider how they produce and filter knowledge, interaction, and engagement; their nature as communicative settings; and their political–ideological associations. I analyze focus groups conducted for a primary health care project in Kenya that involved health officials, Washington, DC- and Nairobi-based staff, a U.S. photographer, a U.S. anthropologist, and local women from the project area. This case provides insights into knowledge production in the context of the transnational development industry, how anthropological methods are incorporated and represented in the process, and the epistemological grounds of ethnographic methods.
2006 “Museum Frictions: Introduction.” In Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformatio... more 2006 “Museum Frictions: Introduction.” In Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations. Edited by Ivan Karp, Corinne Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto et al. Durham NC: Duke University Press, pp.1-31. With Ivan Karp.
2002 “Persistent Popular Images of Pastoralists.” Visual Anthropology 15 (3-4):247-265.
Pastor... more 2002 “Persistent Popular Images of Pastoralists.” Visual Anthropology 15 (3-4):247-265. Pastoralists have long been recurrent figures in visual images and other representations of Africa and Africans. Whether seen in positive or negative terms, pastoralists have provided means for thinking about and imaging cultural difference and identity, with considerable continuity in representational forms and themes. As popular visual media proliferated and changed over the past two centuries -- from postcards, trade cards, and live shows to Hollywood films and video games -- African pastoralists have continued to appear in each new form, often replicating the types and stereotypes of Euroamerican understandings even as they register new and varied circumstances. The proliferation and reverberation of similar images through diverse visual media is one way these images have come to seem``natural'' and to develop such remarkable persistence [Kratz 2002]. Using cases drawn from eastern and southern Africa, this collection of articles considers the multifaceted processes of representation involved in imaging African pastoralists. It invites attention to how such representations are produced in diverse visual media and through interconnections among visual and verbal media, examining the range of actors, interactions, and mediations involved in crafting representations of African pastoralists at different times and in different places.
2007 “Seeking Asylum, Debating Values and Setting Precedents in the 1990s: the Cases of Kassindja... more 2007 “Seeking Asylum, Debating Values and Setting Precedents in the 1990s: the Cases of Kassindja and Abankwah in the United States.” In Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context. Edited by Ylva Hernlund and Bettina Shell-Duncan. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 167-201.
Starting in the early 1980s, media coverage of customary African genital surgeries for females ha... more Starting in the early 1980s, media coverage of customary African genital surgeries for females has been problematic and overly reliant on sources from within a global activist and advocacy movement opposed to the practice, variously described as female genital mutilation, female genital cutting, or female circumcision. Here, we use the more neutral expression female genital surgery. In their passion to end the practice, anti-mutilation advocacy organizations often make claims about female genital surgeries in Africa that are inaccurate or overgeneralized or that don't apply to most cases.
The aim of this article—which we offer as a public policy advisory statement from a group of concerned research scholars, physicians, and policy experts—is not to take a collective stance on the practice of genital surgeries for either females or males. Our main aim is to express our concern about the media coverage of female genital surgeries in Africa, to call for greater accuracy in cultural representations of little-known others, and to strive for evenhandedness and high standards of reason and evidence in any future public policy debates. In effect, the statement is an invitation to actually have that debate, with all sides of the story fairly represented.
Paper presented at "The Future of the Ethnographic Museum," a conference for the European project... more Paper presented at "The Future of the Ethnographic Museum," a conference for the European project on “Ethnography Museums and World Cultures”, Oxford, 19-21 July. Podcast link above. ABSTRACT: Exhibition styles and genres are often associated with different subject matters: art exhibits, history exhibits, science exhibits, ethnographic exhibits. Yet while such canonical notions of genre persist, we also know and confidently assert that exhibition genres have blurred. Ethnographic museums today are not the ethnographic museums of a century ago, although they certainly bear the legacies from which they have grown. How do they communicate both their histories and their contemporary orientations to visitors through their exhibitions?
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Papers by C. Kratz
Pastoralists have long been recurrent figures in visual images and other representations of Africa and Africans. Whether seen in positive or negative terms, pastoralists have provided means for thinking about and imaging cultural difference and identity, with considerable continuity in representational forms and themes. As popular visual media proliferated and changed over the past two centuries -- from postcards, trade cards, and live shows to Hollywood films and video games -- African pastoralists have continued to appear in each new form, often replicating the types and stereotypes of Euroamerican understandings even as they register new and varied circumstances. The proliferation and reverberation of similar images through diverse visual media is one way these images have come to seem``natural'' and to develop such remarkable persistence [Kratz 2002]. Using cases drawn from eastern and southern Africa, this collection of articles considers the multifaceted processes of representation involved in imaging African pastoralists. It invites attention to how such representations are produced in diverse visual media and through interconnections among visual and verbal media, examining the range of actors, interactions, and mediations involved in crafting representations of African pastoralists at different times and in different places.
The aim of this article—which we offer as a public policy advisory statement from a group of concerned research scholars, physicians, and policy experts—is not to take a collective stance on the practice of genital surgeries for either females or males. Our main aim is to express our concern about the media coverage of female genital surgeries in Africa, to call for greater accuracy in cultural representations of little-known others, and to strive for evenhandedness and high standards of reason and evidence in any future public policy debates. In effect, the statement is an invitation to actually have that debate, with all sides of the story fairly represented.
Talks by C. Kratz
ABSTRACT: Exhibition styles and genres are often associated with different subject matters: art exhibits, history exhibits, science exhibits, ethnographic exhibits. Yet while such canonical notions of genre persist, we also know and confidently assert that exhibition genres have blurred. Ethnographic museums today are not the ethnographic museums of a century ago, although they certainly bear the legacies from which they have grown. How do they communicate both their histories and their contemporary orientations to visitors through their exhibitions?
Pastoralists have long been recurrent figures in visual images and other representations of Africa and Africans. Whether seen in positive or negative terms, pastoralists have provided means for thinking about and imaging cultural difference and identity, with considerable continuity in representational forms and themes. As popular visual media proliferated and changed over the past two centuries -- from postcards, trade cards, and live shows to Hollywood films and video games -- African pastoralists have continued to appear in each new form, often replicating the types and stereotypes of Euroamerican understandings even as they register new and varied circumstances. The proliferation and reverberation of similar images through diverse visual media is one way these images have come to seem``natural'' and to develop such remarkable persistence [Kratz 2002]. Using cases drawn from eastern and southern Africa, this collection of articles considers the multifaceted processes of representation involved in imaging African pastoralists. It invites attention to how such representations are produced in diverse visual media and through interconnections among visual and verbal media, examining the range of actors, interactions, and mediations involved in crafting representations of African pastoralists at different times and in different places.
The aim of this article—which we offer as a public policy advisory statement from a group of concerned research scholars, physicians, and policy experts—is not to take a collective stance on the practice of genital surgeries for either females or males. Our main aim is to express our concern about the media coverage of female genital surgeries in Africa, to call for greater accuracy in cultural representations of little-known others, and to strive for evenhandedness and high standards of reason and evidence in any future public policy debates. In effect, the statement is an invitation to actually have that debate, with all sides of the story fairly represented.
ABSTRACT: Exhibition styles and genres are often associated with different subject matters: art exhibits, history exhibits, science exhibits, ethnographic exhibits. Yet while such canonical notions of genre persist, we also know and confidently assert that exhibition genres have blurred. Ethnographic museums today are not the ethnographic museums of a century ago, although they certainly bear the legacies from which they have grown. How do they communicate both their histories and their contemporary orientations to visitors through their exhibitions?