BOOK AND FILM REVIEWS
Fig. I.Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson with the latmul of New Guinea, 1938.
BOOKS
Margaret Mead. Gregory Bateson. and Highland Bali:
Fieldwork Photographs of Bayung Gede, 1936-1939.
Gerald Sullivan. U Chicago Press. 1999.
Hll DRH) GEF.RTZ
Princeton Univeisit}'
In 1952 as a \ e n green graduate student about to
leave tor m> first fieldwork in Java. 1 paid a visit to
Margaret Mead in her office in the tower of the
American Museum of Natural Histor>. together with
my then husband. Clifford Geert/. She welcomed us
warmly, and spent most of the afternoon instructing us
on field methods. She was particularly eager to convert
us to the extensive use ot photography, both still and
motion. She showed us her field notes and how they
were meticulously linked to each d a y \ photographic
records. She also produced a small dailv diar\, and to
demonstrate its usefulness boasted that from it she
78 Voume16 Number 1 Spring-Summer 2000
could tell us exactly when, the day and the hour, she and
Bateson had realized that the systematic use of photog-
raphy could be a powerful research tool, a realization
that determined the course of their work in Bali and.
ultimate!), the form of their main publication on it.
Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis.
This use of photographs in research is explored b\
Gerald Sullivan. Mead often said that the Bali research
made **a quantum leap"" in anthropological methodol-
og\ and theory. Her metaphor was from physics and she
meant by it that the method had created a new level of
objectivity in ethnographic field study, one which
would answer the criticisms leveled at their earlier v\ ork
that it was subjective or too abstract therefore untestable.
Sullivan, in examining and reproducing a selection
of the still photographs from that expedition, attempts
to ev aluate Mead and Bateson s uses of photographs for
the discovers of hypotheses, their validation or justifi-
cation, tor record keeping and for ultimate persuasion
ot others of the factuality of their findings. In his
graceful introduction. Sullivan sets out clearly the
complex circumstances ot the photographing, the in-
Visual Anthropology Review
tentions of the ethnographers, and hints that the pictures It was this moment of revelation thai Mead boasted
tell us something about of the actual Balinesc world of to me rn 1952. And she pointed to a photographing
into which the anthropologist has peered." He also tells session, recorded in Balinese Character on page 162-3.
us of the disjointed nature of the archives in the Library dated July 31, 1936. Similarly Bateson in Balinese
ot Congress in which these photographs have been Character says about this same photograph that "this
stored and the consequent impossibility of achieving picture, in 1936, was the first clue tor the formulation
his aim. But it was more than the nature ot the files that the Balinese mother avoids adequate response to
which prevent Sullivan (and the readers of this book) the climaxes of her child's anaei and Ime ' ( 1942 163).
from looking over Bateson and Mead s shoulders and This date came only a few months after the beginning
seeing the Balinese world through different eves. ot their tieldwork.
In the course ot 27 months of tieldwork in Bali. However. Sullivan shows through detailed exami-
Bateson took and Mead documented some 25 000 strll nation ot the man) documents left by Mead, that it could
photographs, of which only about 760 have been not have been the photographs themselves that stimu-
published. In the field. Bateson had facilities only to lated their hypothesis since the} probably did not see
develop the negatives. After the return of the couple to an) prints until September or perhaps even November
New York, rolls of diapositives were made, which of 1936. when they had the first few made bv a local
required projection as slides on a screen. To his commercial photographer. Despite their assertrons. the
disappointment. Sullivan was not permitted to study anthropologists were iUiided less by their methods and
most of the photographs because ot their fragility, experiences than by their theoretical preconceptions.
confining his study to the limited number of these that Their faith that photographs would provide them with
had been printed on paper. Mead" s attempts to prov ided independent validation was a delusion.
verbal context for each picture (which were never as My ovvn studies of the notes and correspondence of
complete as she claimed) are stored in a different
section of the Library, and hence difficult to correlate
with the visual images. It should be said that the Library
of Congress, together with Mead's Institute ot Cultural
Studies, are in the process of converting the still
photograph trie into digital. CD-Rom tiles. But the
difficulties of "reading"'these field photos will remain.
Mead's claim to a quantum leap in methodolog)
had two main thrusts: photography was to be both a
powerful instrument for discovery and also a method
for testing hypotheses. The camera was to be an
additional eye for the ethnographei that would be
sternly neutral and objective.
Sullivan (p. 14) quotes Mead from her Blackberry
Winter

We looked at each other, we looked at the notes, and

we looked at the pictures that Gregory had taken so
far and that had been developed by a Chinese in the
town...Clearly we had come to a threshold to Fig. 2. Mead with a mother probably Men
cross it would be a tremendous commitment in Sama, and child. (3B18:26-28 November
money, ot which we did not have much and in 1936; MM GBP46.
work as well.

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 16 Number 1 Spring/Summer 2000 79

Mead and Bateson back up Sullivan s account. Both
Mead and Bateson were committed to the systematic
deductive development of hypotheses prior to field
work. They worked out certain basic ideas of logically
limited of types of "ethos ot human societies in their
discussions ot Benedict s Patterns of Culture during
field work in New Guinea, before Bateson had written
Naven or Mead Sex and Temperament. They had
documented cases tor three ot their tour psychological
types and on return to New York, found the fourth one
in talking with Jane Belo about "the Balinese temper.
I found that during their first lew months in Bali even
before they moved to Bayung Gede, which the> spent
preparing to work in the mountain village, they were
attending and filming performances that were later to
be the center of their documentary film called "Trance
and Dance in Bali. The photographs did not give them
'clues nor generate their hypotheses, which set out the
main outlines of their model ol Balinese ethos, but
rather confirmed and filled out those ideas.
It seems as though what Mead and Bateson were
looking for, even in their first month, was validation of
Fig. 3. Mead before the shrrne for
Mead and Bateson's houseyard
(8H?; 8-9 April 1937; MM/GB P47)
80 Vo ume 16 Number 1 Spring-Summer 2000
their preliminary thesis, and they sought from their
photographs the same reassurance. They never at-
tempted the complementary procedure, that of falsifi-
cation of the hypothesis.
While Mead and Bateson made a distinction be-
tween the use ot photographs in note-taking and as
illustration, claiming that the first was primary, it seems
to me now that illustration was. in the end. the major
function of the photography, even in Balinese Charac-
ter. A brilliant intellectual tour-de-force. carrying a
beha\ ioristic culture-and-personality theory as tar as it
could go. the book is hardly ever referred to by
contemporary students of Balinese culture.
The flaw in the idea that photography could be an
objective aid in field research lies in the nature of
photographs themselves. Pictures appear to stand
separately from their verbal context, but in fact they
cannot stand independently as "evidence" since they
don't speak for themselves, fn Balinese Character the
pictures are embedded in text, in the brilliant abstract
organization ot ideas such as "industrialization."
"Awayness" and ""Elevation and Respect. In life
visual images ot any sort are convoyed by verbal
interpretations and often unmentioned cultural precon-
ceptions. In Sullivan s book almost all of photographs
stand virtually alone and silent. However, there is much
about what is going on in these scenes that we cannot
know without adequate conkxtuaiization from the
ethnographers. As Sullivan says:
'Balinese undertake their ceremonies: they work,
raise their children, perform and watch performances.
They make offerings, which they present to the spirits-
just as those spirits present to them an offering, the
world in which they live. If. looking at photographs,
we find in these shadows of activities beauty and
intricacy, there is also labor and emotion that perhaps
we know not. (40)
Sullivan s "perhaps suggests a residual faith in the
autonomy of photographs. Without denying the many
ways that pictures augment and enrich experience and
report, one can't really read them without interpretive
help. However, with only the minimal assistance
prov ided from Mead's notes. Bateson's pictures remain
opaque.
Some readers, less familiar with Bali than I. might
find their most general pleasure and profit in the book
from an overall sense of the wav Bali and Balinese
Visual Anthropology Review
looked in the 1930s. A large part of Sullivan's essay
is given over to necessary ethnographic background,
and the selection and organization of the pictures seems
largely to follow this aim.
Sullivan seems also to have been interested in what
the pictures say about fieldwork. and to have repro-
duced every photo he found in which Mead or Made
Kale'r. their talented and industrious field assistant
happen to appear. Bateson, as the photographer, is in
none of them, and Mead and Kale'r are only shadowy
presences in the background, as in the cover picture.
There are two exceptions to this dissembling, one
showing Mead examining the stomach of a child (fig.
2) and another with her praying before their household
altar (fig. 3). The hiding of personal interaction with
the subjects of the photographs of course fits with the
general attitude of Bateson and Mead toward their own
presence in Bayung Gede as neutral observers. Mead's
accompanying notes on the photographs also reveal her
own predominantly behavioristic attitude, since she
reports very little talk or her own personal responses to
the situations recorded.
The pictures in Sullivan's book most appealing to
me are the portraits, which directly give any viewer a
sense of the particular humanity of Balinese individu-
als. Although, again, I wonder when I am projecting
feelings or traits onto these faces, for I know also how
well schooled most Balinese are in concealing some of
their feelings and dramatizing others.
I read this book in manuscript for the University of
Chicago Press and recommended it for publication,
because it raises well some important issues about the
use of photography in scholarly research and in subse-
quent report. Printing up an album of pictures that have
been cut out of their original social context and provided
with minimal interpretive commentary provides us
with an extreme case in point. What can they tell us?
Do they differ now from those photo albums of Balinese
life that fill the hotel bookstores? These are issues
which may be ultimately unresol vable but which cry out
for thought.
REFERENCES
Bateson. Gregory and Margaret Mead. Balinese Char-
acter. New York: N.Y.Academy of Sciences. 1942.
Mead. Margaret. Blackberry Winter. New York. Simon
and Schuster. 1972.
Visual Anthropology Review
The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales
of Progress. Shelly Errington. Berkeley. University
of California Press. I99.S. xxvri + 309 pp.
RICHARD HANDLER
University of Virginia
This work is a lively synthesis of much interdisci-
plinary discussion of the past decade concerning art and
anthropology, nationalism, identity, and authenticity,
primitivism and progress, and material culture (objects)
and meaning. Errington tells us that her 1982 visit to
the newly opened Michael C. Rockefeller Wing oi'
Primitive Art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York
started her on the trajectory that led to The Death of
Authentic Primitive Art. She undertook much "oppor-
tunistic" field work since then (xx). surveying museums
and heritage sites in the Philippines. Indonesia (includ-
ing Java. Sulawesi, and Bali). Mexico. Sweden. Ha-
waii, and of course Walt Disney World in Florida.
The Death of Authentic Primitive Art con^is of a
substantial introductory essay and two parts, the first
comprised of five chapters on notions of authenticity,
the primitive, and art. and the second, three chapters on
Mexican and Javanese heritage sites. Errington con-
tends that the notion of "authentic primitive art" is an
enduring element ofa larger "metanarrative of progress"
(f>). In this narrative, "the primitive" is the time before
history proper, which is the development of Western
civilization. The notion of authenticity, as applied to
the primitive, speaks to the absolute isolation of this
prehistoric stage from all that follows. The primitive
world is one without time and money, a world in which
the motive for art is spiritual and traditional as opposed
to pecuniary—a world, in short, that "contact" with the
West or with history destroys (71-72).
Which brings us to "art": there are three ways.
Errington argues, to tell the history of art. In two of the
three, art is taken as a human universal. The first, the
Hegelian "story of the unfolding of Man's Spirit." is the
story of Western development, with all humanity's
noble attributes (rationality, science, art) originating in
the Ancient World, reviving in the Renaissance, and
blossoming in the Modern (51). The second, "the
discovery narrative" ("the one most beloved of collec-
tors, dealers, and curators"), focuses on the relationship
of connoisseurship to our understanding of what is to
count as art (54). Like the first one. this narrative treats
Volume 16 Number 1 Spring/Summer 2000 81