Observers Observed
Observers Observed

Author: George W. Stocking

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 1984-01-17

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0299094537

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History of Anthropology is a new series of annual volumes, each of which will treat an important theme in the history of anthropological inquiry. For this initial volume, the editors have chosen to focus on the modern cultural anthropology: intensive fieldwork by "participant observation." Observers Observed includes essays by a distinguished group of historians and anthropologists covering major episodes in the history of ethnographic fieldwork in the American, British, and French traditions since 1880. As the first work to investigate the development of modern fieldwork in a serious historical way, this collection will be of great interest and value to anthropologist, historians of science and the social sciences, and the general readers interested in the way in which modern anthropologists have perceived and described the cultures of "others." Included in this volume are the contributions of Homer G. Barnett, University of Oregon; James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz; Douglas Cole, Simon Frazer University; Richard Handler, Lake Forest College; Curtis Hinsley, Colgate University; Joan Larcom, Mount Holyoke College; Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley; and the editor.

Techniques of the Observer
Techniques of the Observer

Author: Jonathan Crary

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1992-02-25

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9780262531078

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Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle. In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing the historical construction of the observer. He insists that the problems of vision are inseparable from the operation of social power and examines how, beginning in the 1820s, the observer became the site of new discourses and practices that situated vision within the body as a physiological event. Alongside the sudden appearance of physiological optics, Crary points out, theories and models of "subjective vision" were developed that gave the observer a new autonomy and productivity while simultaneously allowing new forms of control and standardization of vision. Crary examines a range of diverse work in philosophy, in the empirical sciences, and in the elements of an emerging mass visual culture. He discusses at length the significance of optical apparatuses such as the stereoscope and of precinematic devices, detailing how they were the product of new physiological knowledge. He also shows how these forms of mass culture, usually labeled as "realist," were in fact based on abstract models of vision, and he suggests that mimetic or perspectival notions of vision and representation were initially abandoned in the first half of the nineteenth century within a variety of powerful institutions and discourses, well before the modernist painting of the 1870s and 1880s.

The Assignment
The Assignment

Author: Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-02-15

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 022653054X

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In Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s experimental thriller The Assignment, the wife of a psychiatrist has been raped and killed near a desert ruin in North Africa. Her husband hires a woman named F. to reconstruct the unsolved crime in a documentary film. F. is soon unwittingly thrust into a paranoid world of international espionage where everyone is watched—including the watchers. After discovering a recent photograph of the supposed murder victim happily reunited with her husband, F. becomes trapped in an apocalyptic landscape riddled with political intrigue, crimes of mistaken identity, and terrorism. F.’s labyrinthine quest for the truth is Dürrenmatt’s fictionalized warning against the dangers of a technologically advanced society that turns everyday life into one of constant scrutiny. Joel Agee’s elegant translation will introduce a fresh generation of English-speaking readers to one of European literature’s masters of language, suspense, and dystopia. “The narrative is accelerated from the start. . . . As the novella builds to its horripilating climax, we realize the extent to which all values have thereby been inverted. The Assignment is a parable of hell for an age consumed by images.”—New York Times Book Review “His most ambitious book . . . dark and devious . . . almost obsessively drawn to mankind’s most fiendish crimes.”—Chicago Tribune “A tour-de-force . . . mesmerizing.”—Village Voice

Observing by Hand
Observing by Hand

Author: Omar W. Nasim

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-01-06

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 022608440X

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Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena. Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim investigates hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge. An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers.

Astronomical Observations
Astronomical Observations

Author: Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Publisher:

Published: 1901

Total Pages: 1172

ISBN-13:

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Vols. for 1841-1914 include Rates of box and pocket chronometers on trial for purchase by the Board of Admiralty (varies slightly); 1888-1914 include Rates of chronometer watches on trial for purchase by the Board of Admiralty (varies slightly); 1838, 1845- include Reports of the Astronomer Royal to the Board of Visitors (these titles also issued separately).

Observing Children in Their Natural Worlds
Observing Children in Their Natural Worlds

Author: Anthony D. Pellegrini

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1135620369

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This second edition updates the methods based on new technologies, updates and increases the number of examples, and reorganizes so the theoretical material is up front. The author's decisions were guided by having used the first edition in classes at two universities. Consequently, he received feedback on the book from a variety of different perspectives--from groups of very conscientious and competent students and from colleagues around the world who have used the book. By consensus, the most popular aspect of the first edition was the organization of the book, where the student/researcher is guided through conceptualizing, designing, implementing, and writing up the research project. This basic organization is the same as in the first edition, however, within this organizational frame things have changed. The discussion of the place of direct observational methods in relation to different "qualitative" and "quantitative" research traditions has been kept, but expanded. Discussions of the use of direct observations in naturalistic settings (drawing from research methods in ethology and ethnography) and in more contrived settings (drawing from experimental psychology) are extended. Relatedly, an extended discussion has been added on theories of science guiding different research assumptions. In addition, sections of validity, reliability, and the ethics surrounding the research enterprise are also expanded. These constructs are not specific to observational methods but relevant to the general research process. In revised chapters in these areas the author provides grounding in the general concepts and then draws more specific focus to observational methods. The extended discussion of ethics is important, since issues related to who gets authorship on papers, how to complete Institutional Review Board forms, and honesty in reporting findings are all issues that face both junior and senior researchers alike. Practical issues of writing research papers are expanded in this edition, providing discussions of writing both review and empirical articles. Lastly, a new and extensive chapter on using technology in direct observational methods has been added, which reviews the available hardware and software in direct observational methods.