By: Dave Young on September 17, 2014
I would never have imagined an entire field of study for anthropological knowledge that focuses on senses and aesthetics. However, just because I’m naïve regarding such scholarly work doesn’t mean I don’t see its relevance, especially when entering into new cultures. When we go into a new culture we’re bringing our subjective perception of our…
By: Mary Pandiani on September 16, 2014
Someone once told me that as individuals we end up all singing the same song again and again, meaning that no matter what sermon I preach, paper I write, or even conversation I have, it usually revolves around the same guiding principle that I value and is unique to me. For me, reading Sensory Ethnography…
By: Travis Biglow on September 13, 2014
What a good book to describe the time we live and the affects of social media on life and on how life is viewed. I find it very fascinating how Sarah Pink connects the way visual ethnography is so interconnect with anthropology. I like how she shows how the Internet and social media have become…
By: Dawnel Volzke on September 12, 2014
Before reading Pink’s book, Doing Visual Ethnography, it helped me to understand first what ethnography is about. Knowing that it is the systematic study of people and cultures helped to provide me with a better context in order to understand the concepts that Pink covered. There are entire fields of study given towards understanding social…
By: Brian Yost on September 12, 2014
When I ordered the book Doing Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink, I was not sure what to expect. I had never heard the term “visual ethnography”, so I began to search for a good working definition. I discovered that there are schools, like Leiden University that offer specialties in Visual Ethnography. Apparently it is something…
By: Mary Pandiani on September 10, 2014
Two thoughts come to mind in reading Pink’s book, Doing Visual Ethnography: First, her work parallels the movement of the modern world to the post-modern world by articulating the argument that anthropologists have had over the years of how to make the best observation of culture: scientific-realist vs. reflexive. In an exploratory manner, she gently opens…
By: Nick Martineau on September 10, 2014
A good picture can tell a story but according to Sarah Pink so can a bad picture. It’s not about the picture that is taken but the approach to representing knowledge. I found Doing Visual Ethnography by Sarah Pink to be way more interesting then I initially thought. I love different cultures so the study…
By: Dave Young on September 10, 2014
I think I did visual ethnography—or at least a homespun version of it—but I just didn’t know it. When I was a teenager I spent four summers with a group called Teen Missions International (TMI). TMI sends teams of teenagers around the world on mission projects; some of those projects are primarily construction while others are…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on September 10, 2014
Painfully Reading about Visual Ethnography Before reading Sarah Pink’s book, Doing Visual Ethnography, I would have to admit, I had never heard specifically of ethnography. Anthropology, yes. Cultural studies, yes. Sociology, yes. But ethnography, not so much. So first, I found this book to be helpful in opening my eyes to a new field, or…
By: Jon Spellman on September 10, 2014
I’m reflecting on the arrival of my first batch of books for this semester. That happy little brown box with the smiley symbol emblazoned across the front always brings me joy when it arrives and in this case, the joy was a little more pronounced than usual. It was also accompanied by another sensation I…
By: Travis Biglow on September 5, 2014
Good evening to everyone. I just want to give you heads up. I just got in from work and went to copy and paste and my Micro soft word would not open. So I am going to wing it tonight. I also did not get my book from Rowntree so I will be will be…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on September 4, 2014
From the moment I saw the title of the book, How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard, I became implicated by the title. Not only for my past, but in an immediately predicting sense of what was about to take place. While not even owning the book, with just the mere…
By: Brian Yost on September 4, 2014
To read or not to read, that is the question. At least that seems to be the question posed by Pierre Bayard in his book How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Bayard draws our attention to an obvious but often overlooked reality; we can’t read everything and we immediately begin to forget that…
By: Dawnel Volzke on September 4, 2014
I can’t say that I have always enjoyed reading, especially those books outside of genres that most capture my interests and attention. Looking back, I must honestly admit that I haven’t truly read any textbook or novel in its entirety. Despite this admission, I have been able to effectively gain the knowledge needed through my…
By: Jon Spellman on September 4, 2014
If I’m completely honest, when it comes to academic texts, I must admit to expending a lot of mental energy figuring out what portions I can get away with not reading while still capturing the essential message of a book. In the time spent attempting to avoid them, I could probably get those portions read…
By: Mary Pandiani on September 3, 2014
Reflecting on the title of our first book, How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, my hope was to find some practical tools that would provide an efficient mechanism to get through all the anticipated, required, and copious reading. While I enjoy reading, articulating main points comes with laborious effort because of my desire…
By: Nick Martineau on September 3, 2014
I have a 5-year-old daughter and soon we will start teaching her to read. Should we even bother? I read a lot of books when I was younger but truth is I can’t even recall what they were actually about, not to mention what they were even titled. What was the point? While those are…
By: Dave Young on September 3, 2014
My first response to the title of Pierre Bayard’s book– “How to talk about books you haven’t read”—was to think it was a joke. The author couldn’t intend for us to feign knowledge we don’t possess, could he? That response got to the heart of what I found interesting as well as uncomfortable about this…
By: Jon Spellman on August 29, 2014
Author’s note. The Kindle edition of the book provides “locations” rather than “pages.” In-text citations are reflective of this. For many, the discipline of ecclesiology is neither practical nor prophetic. Rather, ecclesiology is understood by most to be primarily and essentially reflective, pondering the historical progression of the church in an attempt to understand it…