Picturing Pity: Pitfalls and Pleasures in Cross-Cultural Communication.Image and Word in a North Cameroon Mission - Hardcover

Gullestad, Marianne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1845453433 ISBN 13: 9781845453435

Publisher: Berghahn Books, 2007

Synopsis

Picturing Pity Based on an in-depth analysis of the published photographs taken by Norwegian evangelical missionaries in Northern Cameroon between 1925, the start of their activities, and 2005. This work takes part in the "pictorial turn" in academic teaching and research, constituting visual images as an site of conversation across disciplinary lines. Full description

About this title

Review:

""As the Australian historian Max Quanchi recently observed, research on the educative and propaganda power of images in the public domain is still at a formative stage. Gullestad's book is a considerable contribution to a critical understanding of the visual output of a European mission society. It convincingly shows that photographs not only convey ideas, meanings, perceptions, and beliefs, but that they can also configure them. Scholars interested in visual records, missionary history and/or actual questions about the continuous existence of asymmetrical relations between the North and the South will find in Gullestad's final contribution a stimulating study - one which hopefully will trigger a series of similar and expanded research works."."African Affairs"

"As the Australian historian Max Quanchi recently observed, research on the educative and propaganda power of images in the public domain is still at a formative stage. Gullestad's book is a considerable contribution to a critical understanding of the visual output of a European mission society. It convincingly shows that photographs not only convey ideas, meanings, perceptions, and beliefs, but that they can also configure them. Scholars interested in visual records, missionary history and/or actual questions about the continuous existence of asymmetrical relations between the North and the South will find in Gullestad's final contribution a stimulating study - one which hopefully will trigger a series of similar and expanded research works." - African Affairs

-As the Australian historian Max Quanchi recently observed, research on the educative and propaganda power of images in the public domain is still at a formative stage. Gullestad's book is a considerable contribution to a critical understanding of the visual output of a European mission society. It convincingly shows that photographs not only convey ideas, meanings, perceptions, and beliefs, but that they can also configure them. Scholars interested in visual records, missionary history and/or actual questions about the continuous existence of asymmetrical relations between the North and the South will find in Gullestad's final contribution a stimulating study - one which hopefully will trigger a series of similar and expanded research works.- - African Affairs

Synopsis:

Empirically, this book is based on an in-depth analysis of the published photographs taken by Norwegian evangelical missionaries in Northern Cameroon between 1925, the start of their activities, and 2005. Norway sent out more missionaries per capita than any other country in Europe. Marianne Gullestad's main contention is that the need to continuously justify their activities to donors in Europe has led to the creation and maintenance of specific ways of portraying Africans. The missionary visual rhetoric is both based on earlier visualizations and has over time established its own conventions which can now also be traced within secular fields of activity such as international development agencies, foreign policy, human relief organizations and the media. "Picturing Pity" takes part in the present "pictorial turn" in academic teaching and research, constituting visual images as an exciting site of conversation across disciplinary lines.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1845453433
• ISBN 13: 9781845453435
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368