Collection of data is not knowledge?: Ethnographic research and visual documentation among the Banjara people of India?, Prof. Pnina Motzafi-Haller

We are happy to anounce Prof. Pnina Motzafi-Haller's talk titled “‘Collection of data is not knowledge’: Ethnographic research and visual documentation among the Banjara people of India” on November 4, 17.00.

You can click on the following link to join Prof. Motzafi-Haller's talk:

https://boun-edu-tr.zoom.us/j/91835887435?pwd=dHdXcjN6djcxYlB5ZElHd010eU1HZz09.

(Meeting ID: 918 3588 7435, Passcode: 283991).

‘Collection of data is not knowledge’: Ethnographic research and visual documentation among the Banjara people of India

The presentation will offer a contemplation of the nature of our social representations in both classical documentary film making and through ethnographic research methods. Exploring the strength and weaknesses of each approach she had employed in her work in India, Israeli anthropologist Prof. Motzafi-Haller reflects on the following larger

questions: What constitutes data? How does one portray a shifting reality of life at the margins of Indian society using both visual and empirical ethnographic methods? Whose perspective counts?

After a short introduction that frames her work among the Banjara people, Prof Motzafi-Haller will screen parts of her ethnographic film which is still in process of production and invite a discussion about the film and the larger epistemological questions it addresses.

Pnina Motzafi-Haller is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Educated in the US (PhD Brandeis University 1988) she had taught at Harvard, Boston University and Brandeis before returning to teach and work in her native Israel.

She carried out extensive research in Africa, Israel and India. She is the President of the Israeli Anthropological Association.