www.vejournal.

org
DOI: 10.12835/ve2016.1-0061

VOL. 5 | N. 1 | 2016

AINA AZEVEDO1
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE
DO NORTE, BRAZIL

MANUEL JOO RAMOS

CENTER OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES,
ISCTE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF LISBON

DRAWING CLOSE - ON VISUAL

ENGAGEMENTS IN FIELDWORK,
DRAWING WORKSHOPS AND
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
IMAGINATION
ABSTRACT
Participatory visual methods are becoming the new hype
in anthropology. Researchers tend to present participatory
visual methods as attractive approaches to not only
promote innovative research that engages informants in
original and collaborative ways but to engage students
eager to find bridges between the academic world and a
world progressively addicted to visual consumerism. But
while still and moving image-capturing devices are being
democratized as anthropological tools thanks to their recent
wide availability and ease of use, some view the practice
of drawing (participatory or not) as a more serendipitous
niche activity. Unlike photographing and filming, doodling-
sketching-drawing participatory or not is more about
linear image mental processing and communicating (and
thus somewhat akin to handwriting, lack of linguistic
encoding and propositionality notwithstanding) than an
objective visual method. Drawing thus elicits a completely
different kind of comprehension of the field, as well as new
forms of social interaction, such as the public and open
spectacle of recording that anthropologist-draftswoman
Carol Hendrickson describes (2008: 119). Based on
discussions from a workshop dedicated to ethnographic

1
Aina Azevedo is indebted to CAPES (Coordination for the
Improvement of Higher Education, Brazil) for the grant received during
her post-doctoral research at Aberdeen University, which was crucial
to her contribution to this article.

135
 drawing in the University of Aberdeen, we propose to
tackle some of the features of the drawing practice, hoping
that its much-misunderstood potential as a knowledge tool
helps us reconsider what anthropological understanding is.

KEYWORDS
Drawing, graphic anthropology, fieldwork methods,
representation vs imagination

AINA AZEVEDO
is Teaching Fellow at the Department of Anthropology
at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
Her PhD thesis was developed with Zulu-speaking people
in South Africa where she focused on land reform and
the struggle to realise rituals, such as weddings, in post-
apartheid era. Recently she did a post-doc at the University
of Aberdeen, United Kingdom, focusing on drawing and
anthropology.

MANUEL JOO RAMOS

is Associate Professor at the Dept of Anthropology and
Senior Researcher of the Centre of International Studies,
at ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon. He is the head of
the Central Library of African Studies. After completing
his PhD thesis in Symbolic Anthropology (at ISCTE-IUL),
on Christian mythology and visions of the East, he began
research in Northern Ethiopia. Hes presently interested
in verbal and non-verbal cognition, and topics of risk and
violence in society. He pursues a parallel career in graphic
art and is involved in NGO activism.
Corresponding Author: Manuel Joo Ramos manuel.
ramos@iscte.pt

2
136
 (RE)INTRODUCING DRAWING

Is drawing a suitable medium for acquiring and transmit-

ting anthropological knowledge? If yes, is it definable as a
visual method in anthropological research?
These are questions seldom put forward and answered in
mainstream anthropological theoretical publications. These
questions, however, are quite engaging for a growing number
of researchers who are also practitioners of an equally in-
creasing variety of graphic-based productions: sketchbooks
made during fieldwork, illustrations of anthropologic ma-
terials, creation of comic art and graphic novels, and uses
of drawing in participatory research approaches (Collore- 2
For further reference to
do-Mansfield 1999: 49 ff, 2011; see also Afonso & Ramos, drawing and anthropol-
2004).2 There is a fundamental ambiguity upon which cur- ogy see: Newman (1998),
rent research and teaching are based: anthropologists grow- Ramos (2010 and 2015)
and Azevedo (2014)
ingly use visual non-graphic recording techniques such as explorations of drawing
photographing and filming, to go about collecting field data, as a tool for field research
and also use visual materials produced by others to comple- in anthropology and a
mentarily compose anthropological discourses.3 These activ- means to present its
ities tend not to be clearly distinguished from that other one results; Ingolds approach
on graphic anthropol-
that is to understand how cultures construct, constrain and ogy (2011a, 2011b and
direct visualisation, be it at an individual perceptive level or 2013); Geismars (2014)
as collective imagining.4 The need to be clear about what we analysis of fieldwork
mean by visual anthropology, and to neatly distinguish the sketches by Bernard
Deacon; Kuschnirs (2014)
above two activities, are basic requirements when it comes
work on teaching drawing
to the use of participatory methods: when the anthropolo- to anthropology students
gist invites, requests, lures or gives people with whom they as well as Colloredo-
relate the opportunity of having a say at a specific phase of Mansfeld (1999 and 2011),
the production of a discourse (graphic or otherwise) that Ramos (2004), Hen-
drikson (2008), Taussig
somehow involves them. Inter-subjectivity is an appealing
(2011), Kuschnir (2011)
catalyst for a discourse that aspires at richness in meaning, and Azevedo (2016) for
and participatory methods seem to have the potential to of- general methodological
fer that possibility. But to which extent is this valid? Arent reflexions on drawing in
they rather a rhetoric claim, on the part of the anthropolo- anthropology.
gist, of effectiveness in bringing in the others vision into 3
On multidisciplinary
work in his/her discourse, that becomes even less question- visual participatory ap-
able when he/she uses non-graphic methods to frame that proaches, see Pink, 2006:
inter-subjective, participatory or collaborative discourse? 90-96; 2013: 23.
As with everything in life, there are drawbacks to an exces- 4
On a good recent ex-
sive reliance in the benefits of the so-called visual methods ample of this, see Segre,
in the production of anthropological knowledge. Some of 2007; on the ambiguous
these drawbacks are practical; others are more of the epis- intersection of the two
temological kind. approaches, see Banks
&Ruby, 2011: 3 ff. Already
The present paper does not directly address these mud-
in 1996, Jay Ruby had
dles. However, in discussing the use of drawings in anthropol- identified this ambiguity,
ogy, partly involving a measure of social participation by way as well as the fragmen-
of presenting the results of a recent group discussion on this tary nature of the field,
same theme, we modestly wish to offer some clues for a future the gap between the
broadness of the subject
clarification of the questions delineated above.
and the limitedness of
the practices (Ruby, 1996:
1345).

137
 ETHNO-GRAPHIC DRAWING?
AN ENGAGING WORKSHOP
At a recent two-day Workshop5 organized by the authors of
the present paper at the University of Aberdeen, UK, a group of
interested academics examined a number of aspects concern-
ing past, present and potential future connections between
drawing and anthropology. The participants ranged from an-
thropologists doing fieldwork with no prior training in drawing
techniques but enjoyed (or aspired to) doodling and sketching
to artists who had an appetite for, but lesser knowledge of, an-
thropological research heuristics. In between, there were peo-
ple sketching during fieldwork and/or using various ways of
graphic thinking and communicating as part of their anthro-
pological or artistic production, and engaging others through
their sketches at different stages of their research.
The most stimulating result of the workshop was partici-
5
The workshop was held
at the Meeting Room
pants coming to a consensus around two ideas:
of the Kings Museum, - that drawing is not to be seen as a specific area of what has
Old Aberdeen Town come to be agreed as visual anthropology;6 and
House, University of - that such thing as ethnographic drawing though a
Aberdeen on 22nd and growingly attractive catch-word is a highly questionable cat-
23rd October 2015, under
the umbrella of the ERC
egory.
project Knowing from the Also quite relevant, but more contested, was the debate
Inside: Anthropology, Art, that participants generated around the blurring of borders be-
Architecture and Design, tween writing and drawing. In all, this was possibly the most
led by anthropologist Tim
epistemologically challenging debate we have participated in
Ingold,
for years. What the workshop exposed was that by thinking
6
At least not in the nar- through drawing, the centrality of grand ideas and the valid-
row, traditional, sense, ity of argumentation formats in anthropological thinking and
where Visual Anthropol- doing was as very much likened to the emperors clothes. The
ogy tends to be con-
strange exercise of knowing from the inside made possible,
flated with ethnographic
film and ethnographic even if for a brief moment, looking at the discipline from the
photography. outside of its academic mental borders.7
Very much at stake was the concept of what it means to do
7
It would be tempting ethnography, and by implication, that of qualifying graphic
at first sight, to qualify
the issue in terms of
practices in the field as method. The open-endedness that the
pre- and post-processing, drawing-writing activity implies goes against the grain of all talk
but that would imply the of outputs, results and finished products as the raison-dtre of
acceptance of rational anthropological knowledge. We took the question, how can all
thinking is fundamentally this translate into, and be reconciled with, the academic and
language-based fas-
cinating discussion but
publishing requirements that engulf us daily and shackle us
beyond the scope of the permanently, as a fundamental, even if non-answerable, ques-
present paper. tion.8
It is worth referring the above discussion here since the sort
8
All the more so as
of questions that framed it point to a particularly acrid subject
drawing isnt (at least
yet) eligible for scientific from which anthropologists ought not shy away. If drawing can
financing in social sci- be conceived, using Tim Ingolds terms, as a knowledge from
ences programmes, part the inside, then it does not really relate to visual anthropol-
of mainstream teaching ogy inasmuch as it is not a visual research method but a two-
programmes, and quot-
way (from the outside world to the hand, through the brain,
able and countable in
bibliometric platforms and back again) immersive and unending understanding and
(Ramos 2015: 144). imagining practice. As such, it is more engaged comprehension

138
than method, and more doing than done, thus being both be-
yond (academic) argumentative format and beneath (commer-
cial) artistic format.
Originally titled Ethnographic Drawing, the Workshop
had the following intentions, as stated in the announcement:9
Although drawings have been present in anthropological
works from the dawn of the discipline, they have increasing-
ly disappeared from view, side-lined by other visual practices
such as photography and film. There is a forgotten history of
ethnographic drawing that has still to be recovered and studied.
Today, interest in drawing is being revived in a number of fields,
including anthropology. This workshop will take a critical look
at the practice of drawing in contemporary anthropology. Can
anthropologists draw? Where, why and how should they do so?
The aim of the workshop was to consider the practice of
drawing both as a method of anthropological research and as
a way to present its results. Thus we are not concerned with
the illustrative uses of drawings, nor with studies in which the
drawings of our research subjects are to be analysed. Our con-
cern is rather and specifically with drawing as a practice of
anthropology, done by anthropologists, and as a way of anthro-
pological thinking and knowing.
Around 20 people of differing backgrounds, ranging from
PhD students, post-doc researchers and lecturers in anthropol-
ogy to graphic artists, painters, designers and architects, of a
variety of nationalities, enrolled in the workshop and enthusi-
astically attended it until the final celebration in a nearby pub.

CONFESSIONAL BRAINSTORMING
At the start of the first day, we invited the participants to
present drawings produced during their fieldwork and to talk
briefly about how they felt about the connection between the
activity of drawing and anthropological research. The intention
was two-fold: to perceive if drawings were present in the an-
thropological work and how participants faced this presence or
absence. During this Confessional Brainstorming Introduction
(participants views), we registered and grouped the following
testimonials from the participants:
- Drawing and/as writing: Enrico Marcor mentioned
instances of suffering sketching blocks during his fieldwork
with the villagers of Pescomaggiore, Italy, during the unof-
ficial reconstruction of their dwellings after the 2009 Aquila
earthquake; he would feel freer to draw upon return, as a com-
plementary activity to writing. Just as it happens with writ-
ing, drawing has a set of internal rules that foster imaginative
processes; as such, it is also naturally subject to blocks during
fieldwork (Ramos 2014: 239). Sketching after fieldwork, when
rounding up information, helps structuring the writing process.
- Is ethnographic drawing what one does? Paolo Gruppu- 9
In www.abdn.ac.uk/
so, who did fieldwork with the farmers and environmentalists of research/kfi/news/7157/
two protected wetlands in Agro Pontino, Italy, insisted on the un- retrieved on 8 March,
finished nature of sketching in fieldwork: sketching would then 2016.

139
 be part and parcel of the immersive understanding of a social
context.
- Doodling, sketching or drawing? Germain Meulemans,
who works on anthropogenic environments, and particularly
on the epistemology and ontology of urban soils, introduced
the notion of minimal drawing as an open-ended flow where
sketching, mapping and writing meet.
- Drawing and context: Anne Douglas, who explores the
role of the artist as a catalyst for social change, testified on the
importance of drawings role in ones being in a place, i.e. in dis-
covering the meshwork of ones relationships with that place.
- Drawing and mapping as a way to understand social
context: Mitch Miller, who produces what he calls dialecto-
grams (or dialetic diagrams) of urban locations, a meeting
point between ethnography, documentary, socially engaged
practice and mytho-geographic aesthetics, in depicting a range
of often vulnerable urban locations, stressed the importance of
drawing as a meditative practice in developing a pigeon-eye
perspective of social and spatial contexts.
- Thinking and drawing: Tim Ingold, who presently leads
the ERC-funded Project Knowing From the Inside, an inquiry
into how knowledge derives from thinking with, from and
through beings and things, which hosted the workshop, re-
flected on how drawing is a performative and communicational
thinking tool.
- Drawing and future memory: for Peter Loovers, who
investigates human-animal relations in the Canadian Arctic,
drawing maps and plans of places, paths and tracks, is an es-
sential pinpointing activity for memorization of a constructed
imagination of the field.
- Participatory drawing and mapping (making plans)
during fieldwork: Rachel Harkness, who has been research-
ing into the interfaces between anthropology and architecture,
expanded on the uses of populating maps and plans together
with informants, insisting that drawing together is an ad hoc
yet precious social ice-breaker.
- Drawing, and painting: Laura Siragusa, working on ver-
bal and non-verbal communication between humans and ani-
mals with Russian Finno-Ugric speakers, reflected on the dis-
tinction between lines and colours: for her, colours are used for
relaxing, non-verbal mind processes, namely memorisation,
that help noticing a context; drawings, on the other hand, acts
more as an exchanging material: drawings are offered and in
some instances exchanged - people usually ask for her draw-
ings, which thus enable conversation and comments from peo-
ple.
- Drawing as out-of-the-box thinking: Caetano Sordi, who
researches into feral pig trapping in Southern Brazil protected
areas, a Brazilian, views drawing as a tactic to understand men-
tal boundaries and overlapped spaces in fieldwork, and a way
to gauge the relevancy of both the collected materials and the
methodological tools used by the anthropologist.

140
 - Thinking through sketching or sketching through think-
ing: Pelayo Benavides, currently studying knowledge dynamics
around protected predators in south-central Chile, considered
sketches a helping tool to (re)thinking processes, either in the
field or during the subsequent writing process; they are also ma-
terializations of a wandering, imaginative thought.
- Drawing and fictional work: an unidentified participant
referred that drawing can be part of thinking and imagining
processes during the post-fieldwork writing process, but one
that risks being blocked due to the requirements of the academ-
ic writing format.
- Drawing practice and anthropologic research: Ina
Schrder, a PhD Candidate in Germany researching on moral ed-
ucation of indigenous youths in Western Siberia, dealt upon the
difficulties of connecting drawing as a free graphic practice with
the highly formatted production of knowledge in anthropology.
- Drawing as embodied knowledge: Kari Korolainen, who
studies the place of the drawing in Finnish scientific production,
hinted at the creative potential originating from the ontological
connections between ones drawing activity, and ones research
into earlier anthropologists sketch- and notebooks.
- Drawing as training in observation in the field: for Maria
Nakhshina, researching into fishing practices in North-western
Russia, the play between photographing and drawing is not nec-
essarily contrasting: drawings can be made life or from photos;
as they are frequently a way to memorise aspects captured in
photos, drawings are not about objective or realist visualiza-
tion but about imagination and memorization.
- On drawing and sketching in the field: Christine Mod-
erbacher, a ethnographic documentarist working with Arab-
speaking migrants, noted that in her experience sketching
tended to disturb and disrupt concentration of verbal and non-
verbal interactions, but then again so was taking written notes,
photographing and filming.
- Contrasting drawing and photography: for Jennifer
Clarke, working on art and environmental issues in Britain and
Japan, drawing tends to be less obtrusive than using a camera
as it isnt an obstacle to eye contact.
- Photographing, filming and drawing: Joo Loguercio,
who uses photographs and videos in his researches into animal-
human relations in everyday working practices in Southern
Brazil, preferably produces abstract sketches as thinking aid; in
his case, drawing comes after, not during, fieldwork.

The main goal of the Workshop was clearly not the cel-
ebration of drawing in anthropology as a tool to produce final
research outcomes; neither was it to look at the so-called eth-
nographic turn(s) in contemporary art and its rather predatory
engagements with anthropology (on this, see Sansi 2014: 37, 44).
It was rather a collective reflection on the relationships between
perceiving, thinking and exercising graphic and linear hand skills
as part of immersive experiences during and after fieldwork. This

141
 meant that being blocked by lack of skill to draw or question-
ing the relevance of the connection between drawing and an-
thropology was not an obstacle but rather an added motiva-
tion to the debates taking place. Still, most participants in the
Workshop declared their motivation to draw at some point in
their research, either during or after fieldwork, which testifies
to the presence of this kind of inscription in anthropological
knowledge production. But the confessional recognition that
drawings can be present in research and even in inter-person-
al communication is, to a certain degree at least, unrelated to
the public use and recognition of the art of drawing. During
the Workshop we looked at both these two aspects: the (sub-
jective and even intimate) practice of drawing and drawing as
an expression of anthropological knowledge - sharing (offer-
ing, exhibiting, publishing).
We hence propose to list the main questions raised by the
participants of the Workshop as follows: (1) drawing during
the fieldwork; (2) drawing as a communicational tool; (3)
drawing in the post-fieldwork; and (4) the specificities of the
drawing.
Basically, we brought the relation between drawing and
fieldwork into the debate as part of the process of observation
(what could be called training in observation), description,
registration, comparison, memorisation, meditation, relax-
ing, thinking, understanding, noticing, finding relations and
being present in a place. We also regarded the act of drawing
during fieldwork as a communicational tool such as in partic-
ipatory drawing, participatory mapping, populating maps and
also as gifts exchanging material that enables conversation.
In the post-fieldwork phase, drawing practice complements
the act of writing as a thinking-focusing tool. Actually, we dis-
cussed drawing through thinking and thinking through draw-
ing as two sides of the same coin. So, we mentioned drawings
as an important way to rounding up information and to struc-
ture the writing process. For some of the participants, to draw
is something that relates mainly with the writing tasks that
take place after fieldwork.
Participants best highlighted some specificities of drawing
when contrasted to photographing and filming, drawings being
regarded as less obstructive but also less used than photogra-
phy and film during fieldwork.
We directed the debate to compare the notion of drawing
with that of sketching, doodling and cartooning and wonder
about their differences and similarities and to questioning
the qualitative specificity of ethnographic drawing, not as
practice but as a communicational (and self-legitimizing) tool.
We elected minimal drawing as a concept to encompass
different styles of drawings that participants conceived and pro-
duced with anthropological intentions irrespective of its form. A
more encompassing view of the specificities of drawing related
to its capacity of producing future memories, of enabling non-
verbal mind processes, and of being a performative action.

142
 LINING UP ARGUMENTS
AND SPLITTING HAIRS
Academic workshops generally intend to produce intellec-
tual debate via verbal communication. But it is also a context
where many other exchanges do occur through eye contact,
body postures, joint practice of attentiveness and sharing of im-
ages (in PowerPoints, for instance). In the case of a workshop
such as this, where drawing was subject to verbal analysis, but
also potentially promoted as a participative ritual, the reflex-
iveness and self-referencing nature of the workshop activity be-
came a ghostly presence. Drawing was both present and absent
throughout the duration of the workshop, and a sense of pos-
sibility, and of potentiality, guided the spirit of the discussions.
To draw is primarily defined as an individual action inhabiting
the space of freedom, dream and fresh inquiries, that combines
with, or runs parallel to, the concrete space of achievements
and realisations. So, the major concern of the group seemed
not to be what we accomplished in the workshop, but how we
could, both individually and as a group, accomplish it. A feeling
of doubt never left the room, as we all seemed to have more un-
formulated questions to ask than answers to offer (verbalized
thought, anyway; but also paralysis and hesitation in the act of
drawing itself). The main concern was to highlight the (actual
or potential) coexistence of drawings and anthropology. Hav-
ing started with a session on the previous presence, disappear-
ance and current rise of drawing in anthropology, the challenge
throughout the workshop was to establish, discuss and ques-
tion how drawing connects with anthropology, and critically
revisiting notions such as ethnography, visual anthropology,
methodology, art, and so on.
A number of questions resurfaced frequently throughout
the two-day workshop. In what follows, our objective is to pro-
vide an overview of the discussion, not any final words about
it or achievements from it. These were, in our view, the major
topics debated: (1) the specificities of the drawing; (2) time and
drawing; (3) relations between drawing, visual anthropology
and art; (4) drawing and imagining; (5) drawing and writing;
(6) style; (7) methodology; (8) drawing and skill; (9) drawing,
imprinting, impacting; and (10) terminology.

1. SPECIFICITIES OF DRAWING
Everyone knows, or thinks they know, what a drawing is,
but when time comes to define it certainties seem to wane
quickly.10 When trying to talk about drawing, notions such as
10
Or, as J. T. Jacobs has
doodling and sketching appeared again and again. For some
put it, What is drawing?
people, the doubt about their own drawings as real drawing At first glance the question
or simple doodling/sketching was quite central. The distinc- seems simple enough to
tion between one and the other tended to relate to distinc- be superfluous; but upon
tions one would make between the private and public realms. reflection it becomes not
only difficult, but perhaps
If I am drawing to myself, a doodling is helpful and useful,
not even definable
but this same kind of inscription can be completely unintel- (J. T. Jacobs, in Ashton,
ligible to my peers. It is important to emphasize these doubts 2014: 47).

143
 about the nature of the drawing. As we highlighted before,
the notion of a minimum drawing may be a way to assem-
ble together drawing, doodling and sketching as traces, lines
and inscriptions of different kinds. Nevertheless, it does not
solve the question of inner differences. The debate around
drawing as doodling, sketching or even painting led us to ex-
plore the notion of intergraphicity as a tool to examine
how, within a particular field, different graphic activities are
joined.11

2. TIME AND DRAWING

The connection between drawing and time surfaced in re-
gard to thinking about the future, to the potential, in anthro-
pological practice and knowledge formation. A question that
arose from evoking personal cases of inevitable anxiety occur-
ring during fieldwork was about the relevancy of ones subject
choices and research courses. Is it possible to draw potential
things? Can drawing help lining the future? This unsolved
and slightly pataphysical question led us to reflect about the
temporalities of drawing as an (un)finished process. Searching
for a common ground or a departure point, the discussion was
tumultuous (in a good sense) and inconclusive, but with some
interesting clues: we generally perceived a contrast between
drawing as a finished product and sketching as an unfinished
process. In this sense, we considered a drawing closer to the
artistic object, as painting was, than just sketching. In turn,
we perceived drawing, alone, as a process, as layers, as life.
Inscribed in ones research, the researcher can conceive even
the finished drawing as just a step in an unfinished process. Fi-
11
Although interesting nally, in what concerns its relation to anthropology specifically,
studies were carried
out in the seventies
we did not perceive a drawing as a finished product an artistic
and eighties at the form but mostly as a process, even in those moments when
intersection between drawings become part of the (exhibited and/or published) out-
iconology and structural comes of ones research.
analysis (see for
instance Bucher 1977),
intertextuality studies
3. RELATIONS BETWEEN DRAWING,
seldom thought fit to VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ART
extend methods and Commonly, researchers tend to assign ethnographic
heuristics to researching drawing alongside visual anthropology and art. Some demar-
into corpuses of
cation between these fields may be useful to emphasize their
graphic images. The
proposed meaning of similitudes and differences. The main question in regard to
Intergraphicity bears anthropologists drawing and artistic drawing was: do an-
clear correspondence thropologists have to be aware of the art-scholars views on
with that of what drawing is? This question echoes a broader relation
intertextuality. It isnt
between anthropology and art: how to address the views
really a neologism, since
the British sci-fi writer from both fields? which means an inquiry about the limits
Brian Aldiss, in his and possibilities of an interdisciplinary dialogue (see Ingold,
novel Life in the West, 2013: 8 ff). But in regard to drawing, specifically, our major
had already cooked concern was: is drawing to be considered a visual art? Far
up a fictional First
International Congress
from wishing to get at a definite answer to the question, the
of Intergraphic Criticism discussion gave us the opportunity to think about the place
(Aldiss 1980: 18 ff). drawings occupy both in the outside world and in our par-

144
ticular mental processes. As doubts spread about the accept-
ed view that drawing relates (as in minor relative) to visual
art, we gave a bigger scope to the notion that drawing peo-
ple should not necessarily tie to visualization and visual rep-
resentation even if this tends to be the accepted notion in
visual anthropology (Pink et al, 2004: 7-8), and in art studies
in general. When we think about drawing, are we thinking
about visual anthropology or rather about something else?
By dissociating drawing-in-the-field from the boundaries
of visual anthropology, we could see that the question are
drawings beyond the visual? was essential for our endeavor.
Thus, we could spell off the discomfort of dealing with previ-
ous debates in visual anthropology that were not concerned
with drawings, while uncovering new possibilities for future
and original developments in research.

4. DRAWING AND IMAGINING

Following the discussion that sometimes pushes drawing
closer to and farther from other fields, we discussed the is-
sue of imagination. Our question relates to inquiries such as:
what is abstract, what is visual and what is imagination? It
is not necessary to uphold a strongly determinist Sapir-Whor-
fian view of language and thought to accept that we are bound
to frame our verbalizations by collective semantic and categori-
cal enmeshments, and that abstractness, concreteness, imagi-
nation or reality can only acquire and produce meaning within
language. When thinking through drawings and not through
words, the coherence and functionality of a verbal-based world-
view looses strength. In this sense, there is something particu- 12
The notion of spirit
lar about drawing that encompasses the imagination when it body, mentioned in the
Workshop, was how an
goes beyond the distinction between imagination and reality. Ethiopian icon painter
As drawings are not exclusively tied to the visual world and offered to translate into
the perceived reality, they are able to tap into the potential English his endeavour,
of the perceptive and imaginary processes that go on in our during an interview to
spirit-bodies.12 one of the authors of
the present paper: Im
Another important aspect of the confluence between draw- painting the body-mind
ing and imagination is the possibility of including other peo- of Christ, he said, as a
ples imaginations in the production and exhibition of ones way to try to describe in
drawings. How to integrate other peoples imagination in our English what would be
own drawings and writing, as a self-critical stance, and as a easily said in Amharic,
his native language,
way to communicate to a larger public, including peers and to express a Christian
non-peers? This kind of questioning relates to the communi- monophysite (non-
cational ability drawings can or cannot have during fieldwork dualist) worldview (see
and the crossing of the boundaries of the discipline. If we do Ramos, 2009: 293-
297). Drawing, as Alex
not concentrate so much in drawings as finished products but
Ashton puts it (Ashton,
as steps in an unfinished and ending process, their lay- 2014: 47), provides
ered and connecting nature is revealed, be it in the individual interconnected ways of
drawing itself as it comes into being, in its paradigmatic re- orientating knowledge
lation with other drawings in a never-ending flow of (re)in- that contribute
to a multifaceted
vented lines. What concerns anthropology in the drawing is
understanding of
not the artistic status of the drawing but the convolutions that [Wilhelm Diltheys] lived
its intergraphic nature causes among humans. experience.

145
 5. DRAWING AND WRITING
It seems unfair to discuss the written and the drawn tasks
side by side in anthropology, since we have been so conscious
about the former and so unaware about the later. Also, it seems
easier to write about drawing than to draw about writing. Even
so, both activities appeared to be extensively intertwined both
during fieldwork and in post-field thought processes: do we
really need to distinguish between drawing and writing in the
field, and even after the field? Probably this distinction is
not necessary, unless we are trying to give institutional room
to drawings in the discipline. In this case, it will be useful to
understand further what kinds of fiction we are dealing with
when drawing and when writing. The questions are drawing
and writing convergent or divergent fictions? and is writing
so different from drawing? may be displaced, since beyond the
comparisons between drawing and writing we may establish,
what is definitely intriguing is their actual relationship and
commonality. Of course, the question, does a drawing stand
by itself? which seems a natural query on the possibility of
a drawing being displayed without a written text that explain
it or contextualize it pertains to language, written or spoken,
and seems totally irrelevant from the perspective of drawing.
Although we were not trying to reach any final consensus about
the issue, the communicational sense seemed to be prevalent to
us when drawing and anthropology walk together and this led
us to the recognition of the need of a deeper dialogue between
drawing and writing, where drawings do not appear as illustra-
tions of texts, but, at least in some instances, the opposite. Then
again, the function that Roland Barthes aptly called leffet de
rel (Barthes 1968: 84 ff) in literature, and which has been,
since Herodotus at least, the spinal chord of ethnographic style,
is becoming equally central in todays use of drawing in anthro-
pological published productions. The Ive been there effect is
a trope that lends itself to clichs and risks impoverishing the
potentialities of drawing in anthropology. Of course, drawing is
not a magical wand for anthropologists: it does not allow us to
see completely through other peoples eyes, at best, we can try
using other peoples styles, observational techniques and aes-
thetics.13 It is deeply subjective, but a kind of subjectivity that
13
As Rudi Colloredo- does away with the self-legitimating stances upon which many
Mansfield puts it, writing
about his participatory
of the self-referencing illusions of anthropological writing rely
drawing experiences with (Gomes da Silva 2006: 14, 19).
the Tiguan of the Andes,
after 6 weeks of drawing- 6. STYLE
mediated encounters,
Naively, the style motif can appear as a simple aesthetic
I began to see and feel
in practical ways more choice. But according to the history of ethnographic drawing
of what they saw in their a history that someone still has to recover, understand and
paintings. revise we can recognize different drawing styles abounding in
I also better understood anthropology, from the typical 19th century anatomic drawings
what they intended them
(human types/human sizes), and illustrations of material cul-
to do as cultural objects
(Colloredo-Mansfield ture (including tools, artefacts, animals and techniques), to all
2011: 5). manner of abstract graphisms (diagrams, charts, maps and

146
plans, and other figures) and even in the various geometric and
visual metaphors generally used in anthropological writing.
Researchers do not frame contemporary drawing in anthropol-
ogy in any particular acceptable style. But it is not style-free,
either. On the contrary, researchers should view the revival
of drawings in anthropology with caution. Free-style drawing
risks people denying it as it is caught by an academic discourse
that inevitably converts freedom into mandatory forms. On the
other hand, there is inevitably an implicit grammar, a perceived
choice of style, and recurring clichs. With these thoughts in
our minds, we questioned whether it is possible to do away
with style, with the (rhetorical) claim to a subjective legitimacy
as anthropological knowledge producer.
Another development of this topic related directly to the
constraints of the academic format that hurdle anthropologi-
cal production. In the Workshop, we discussed the towering
problems in which not only anthropology but all academic dis-
ciplines currently delve, is because academics frame them by
an international consensus that tends to belie creativity and
out-of-the-box productions, as an important site of dispute
where drawing does have a roll: can drawing help undo the
usual academic format in anthropological production or will it
be absorbed and formatted? This is a question that someone
can only answer once academics embrace a self-critical stance
toward what Steve Pinker called, the devilish curse of knowl-
edge (Pinker 2014: ch. 3).

7. METHODOLOGY
Drawing as a research method in anthropology was an
overhanging discussion theme throughout the meeting, and
we developed other topics as a corollary to it. If at all, draw-
ing is a soft method, relying on informality, individual free-
dom, escapism in the face of writing formats. The chances
that drawing could take centre-stage as a viable method, not
just for in-the-field observation but to guide anthropological
production of knowledge, the group considered bleak until
one of our guest speakers, Mitch Miller (a graphic artist and
post-doc researcher at the Glasgow School of Arts) presented
his work and raised the following question: can drawing it-
self offer a form to present a research methodology? Work-
ing with what he calls dialectograms (Miller 2014: 193 ff),
Miller presented his thesis methodology as a combination
of drawings and written captions combined in a single large
cartographic composition that invites the observer to engage
with the paths inscribed in the dialectogram. Although ac-
ceptable and appraisable in an art & design school today, it
may take some time until social science schools can open up
to the possibilities of presenting drawing compositions as a
research methodology in anthropology. Still, thanks to such
examples, the groups mood became more optimistic in re-
gards to the inclusion of drawing in academic research toward
the end of the Workshop.

147
 Drawing is, admittedly, a poor reflective medium. Stand-
ing alone, it does not go far in reflective terms. However,
when interacting with words, it can produce powerful and
interesting results, as Will Eisners and Scott McLouds the-
oretical works in sequential art showed (Eisner 1985; Mc-
cLoud 1993). It can also work as an important check on the
traps of verbal thinking. Thinking is not limited to verbaliza-
tion (Bloch 1998: ch. 2), as participants made clear in the
Workshop: when discussing the imaginary ekphrastic de-
pictions of unseen exotic animals (George Stubbs painted
kangaroo and Albrecht Drers engraved rhinoceros), and
Dan Sperbers anti-relativist rhetoric, where ancient stories of
Ethiopian unicorns become entangled with horned dragons in
a purported dialogue with an aged Dorze informant (Sperber
1980: ch. 2).14 The practice of drawing promotes the observa-
tion of non-verbal interactions, an immersive way of knowing
the place, of creating integrative memories, and of contouring
them in a non-abstract way. Even when put in words, memo-
ries need framing hooks that are not simply computational:
they are imaginary.

8. DRAWING AND SKILL

The distinction between drawing as an acquired or natu-
14
Dan Sperber begins ral skill was a controversial point. Despite the common sense
the chapter Apparently around the drawing skills of children, some participants were
irrational beliefs of
not so confident about their previous and actual ability to draw.
his book Le savoir des
anthropologues with a So, we questioned: is it essentialist romanticism to think that
quasi-theatrical dialogue anyone can draw or should we recognise that not everyone
extracted from his draws?
purported fieldwork An extreme view was that there is not much that differen-
diary, in which the old
man Filate tells the
tiates hand-writing and hand-drawing as mechanical projec-
anthropologist of an tions of the imagining mind. In this view, writing is but a spe-
unknown creature: Its cialized form of drawing, one that school education over-values
heart is made of gold, it and teaches to contrast to the act of drawing anything other
has one horn on the nape than letters. Regaining the ability to draw would then involve
of its neck. It is golden all
over. It does not live far,
an undoing of the mental block that creates the conceptual con-
two days walk at most trast between drawing and writing. If one focuses more on the
(Sperber 1982: 149). act of concentrating ones attention in capturing a particular
context, and not on the end product itself, confidence is likely
15
Tom McGuirk, reflecting
to build up and the ability to be rediscovered. This possible un-
on drawing as a
knowledge generating tying of the Gordian knot that is the skill or the talent to
activity that integrates draw, would not, of course, address the problem of communi-
perception, action and cation through drawings as an academic effort: one thing is
cognition, alerts to to draw and sketch, and the other is to communicate through
the fact that the main
drawback of absorbing
drawing (the same applies to writing) so, again, what is draw-
drawing, and generally art ing anthropology? Just as writing requires skill, training and
and design in university proficiency, so too does drawing as a communicable research
education derives from product entail a measure of acquired and trained ability. Yet,
what Pierre Bourdieu it can be democratically nurtured in academia as part of the
names the repressive
exclusion of mtier from
teaching of anthropological tools and techniques.15
scholastic practices
(McGuirk 2014: 297).

148
 9. DRAWING, IMPRINTING, IMPACTING
If drawing and writing are akin, that is chiefly because they
are variations of a basic, universal and primal human behav- 16
Though not at all
iour: that of making marks in surfaces, of inscribing, of creat- concerned with drawing,
ing traits in surfaces, of carving materials. Tim Ingolds previ- Margaret Mead coined
ous theoretical work on these matters (Ingold 2011a: 220-226; the notion of discipline
of words to remind us of
2013: 129-132) chaperoned our exploration of the relation- the belittled role of the
ships between the diverse attributes of that behaviour: doo- visual in the history of
dling, sketching, calligraphying do vary because they serve dif- Anthropological research
ferent purposes but they derive from the same double cradle: (Mead 2003: 3-4).
they are visible inscriptions that mirror and activate our mind 17
Tim Ingold is clearly
processes, and they are tools and signs of our will to commu- unsatisfied with
nicate the images in our mind to fellow humans. They are both associating drawing and
creative developments of an evolutionary social need: that ethnography. For him,
of sharing with others the imagery that flows in ones mind. ethnography is burdened
with descriptive
Drawing in the field is helpful, not necessarily or primarily
accuracy in a particularly
to share a finished result but for sparking further intellectual formatted writing style,
processes through memorized imaginations. Would we call and as such opposed to
this knowledge from the inside or as embodied cognition? world-engaged creative
No matter how we wish to define this gripping subject, the fact process; in his vision,
anthropology gains in
remains that a greater concern with the rapports between the
being taught by the
oral, the written and the drawn would have made possible an world, from the inside,
alternative path in the history of the discipline of words that and arts and crafts
is anthropology,16 had field researchers been less obsessed practices may foster
with knowledge from the outside and verbal-based cogni- a new anthropology,
providing new directions
tion (Bloch 1998: 15-17). in immersed research. Dan
Sperbers view is worth
10. TERMINOLOGY noting here: although his
We initially titled the workshop, Ethnographic Drawing prospects for the future
Workshop, referring to the traditional relation between draw- of anthropology differ
radically from Ingolds
ing and anthropology since the dawn of the discipline. Obvi- (on the debate, see
ously, we distinguish ethnographic drawings from other kinds Whitehouse 2001), he
of drawings, and refer to the specificity of the anthropologists is even less benign on
practice. However, we soon considered the workshops name an characterizing as flawed
the forced marriage
unhappy choice, since it was not our aim to endorse previous
between anthropology
practices, but to imagine a new one. One possibility would be to and ethnography and he
endorse graphics, a growingly popular catch-word, but eth- pushes for an outright
nographic graphics would have sounded an oxymoronic pun. divorce between the
Instead, we focused in a more far-reaching conceptual doubt: two (Sperber 1982:
16). Interestingly, its
why ethno in the graphic? Why not simply graphic anthropol-
the interpretative and
ogy or drawing anthropology?17 There is a paradoxical laxity in creative character of
the accepted and generalized use of the expression ethnogra- ethnography that Sperber
phy as defining a practical research practice and writing style abhors, though he later
that directly contradicts the otherwise quasi-neurotic critical in the text recognizes
the highly formatted
attitude to that has historically marked anthropologists ap- style of ethnographic
proaches to the disciplines lexicon. Furthermore, if colonial academic monographs
anthropology was partly responsible for popularizing anything (1982: 46), whereas for
ethnic, people have long criticized and dropped this concept. Ingold, anthropology
So, we tried to move away from this misnomer that felt hardly as an interpretative,
engaged and creative
a valid heuristic, and incapable to describe what was our topic: process, needs to distance
the uses of drawing as knowing and imagining practice by pre- itself from formatted
sent-day anthropologists. ethnography.

149
 CONCLUSION: WHAT IS TO DRAW?
A question has been left hanging in the preceding pages:
when we ask what is it we do when we draw? are we not actu-
ally asking, can we know what to draw through talking and
writing about it? We can of course talk and write about how
drawing serves the purpose of knowing and imagining a place,
a social context, etc. We can hint, as we did above, at its apti-
tudes as a tool for observation of social practices, as a medium
for interaction and active participation in the field. We can
even delve into its complex relationship with written and visual
techniques of representation. But at the end of the day, we best
answer the question, what is to draw?, from the inside
that is, through drawing. By saying this, we are not simply of-
fering a poetic subterfuge to conclude a paper. We are, on the
one hand, giving testimony of the tension felt during the two-
day workshop between the various forms of verbal interaction
among the participants on the subject of drawing and the doo-
dling and sketching that kept recurring both as an individual
(with a certain degree of privacy) practice and as a collective
dialoguing endeavour. Participants took up drawing spontane-
ously and it acted as a mnemonic register of the workshop and
as a silent dialogue with words that people uttered and ideas
that popped up. On the other hand, we are inviting the reader
to understand through the practice of drawing in the field that
the academically formatted graphic reason (a term coined
by Jack Goody, 1977: 81) has not been able to adequately tap
into vast areas of non-verbal knowledge and communication
prevalent in all human societies (on a critical take on Goodys
perspective, see Bloch 1998: 152 ff; Gomes da Silva 2006: 15 ff;
Ramos 1999; Street 1984: 44 ff).
It is only fitting that this paper ends with a double caution-
ary word. The practice of drawing in the field helps make it
clear that there are grave limitations in the stance that verbal
and written (preferably in English) cognitive tools are suffi-
cient to successfully forage the world of the human mind in
society and that such limitations are not understandable by
simply erecting a categorical wall (as Edmund Leach would
have put it: 1971: 3) between the written and the visual. But
is also important to state that we are not naf to the point of
suggesting that the practice of drawing in the field ought to
be elevated to the status of a wand that can magically clear
the anthropological horizons from deeply ingrained epis-
temological and methodological conundrums. Ours is but a
modest invitation to look into how much there is still to know
about what drawing can and cannot do, and to inquire about
it really is when practiced by an anthropologist during his/her
fieldwork immersions.
It is our hope that the reader accepts this invitation. In
regard to the testimonial nature of this paper, namely about
what went on beyond-beneath-behind-beside words in the
Aberdeen workshop, we feel it is appropriate to conclude it
with a non-filtered presentation of the drawings made by its

150
participants.Like most doodles and sketches, the intention
was not for publication, and indeed, no one did them con-
sciously thinking we would share the drawings at all beyond
the four walls of the meeting room of the Old Aberdeen Town
House. That later decision was somewhat external to the prac-
tice and, even if the participants authorized their use, the or-
ganizers are to be held solely responsible for publishing them.
We depicted the main topics of this paper, which includes, the
situation of the workshop itself, its participants, variations of
a Stubbs-like Ethiopian dragon-rhinoceros-unicorn,18 dialec-
tograms, and illustrations made during a field visit to the
hyper-modernist building of the new Sir Duncan Rice Library
of the Aberdeen University.19 So, let the sketches become draw- 1. BEGINNING WITH EYES
CLOSED. PARTICIPANTS
ings and talk to the reader-become-watcher. STARTED THE WORKSHOP
BY CLOSING THEIR EYES FOR
FIVE MINUTES; THEREAFTER,
THEY WERE INVITED TO DRAW
WHAT THEY SAW, HEARD,
IMAGES IMAGINED (DRAWINGS BY
PELAYO BENAVIDES, RACHEL
JOY HAARKNESS AND JOO
LOUGUERCIO).

18
An ironical take on
Dan Sperbers extract
of my fieldwork diary
where a Dorze informant
describes an animal with
a horn, a golden heart
and golden skin, and the
researcher oddly classifies
it as a dragon, setting
him out to analyse the
outlandish and apparently
irrational exotic beliefs of
(Christian) Ethiopians, as
if the concept was totally
alien to French religious
symbolism (Sperber, 1982:
51).

19
Designed by the Danish
architect group Schmidt,
Hammer & Lassen, the
Sir Duncan Rice Library
was inaugurated in 2012.
The 57m zebra-skinned
cube-shaped building
stands in the universitys
grounds and towers over
all the surrounding area.
Its most striking feature
is the oval spiraling
atrium connecting all
eight stories.

151
2. CONFESSIONAL
BRAINSTORM. THE FIRST
HOURS OF THE DRAWING
WORKSHOP: TALKING,
LISTENING, IMAGINING
(DRAWINGS BY RACHEL
JOY HARKNESS AND JOO
LOUGUERCIO).

3. DRAWING A LINE. DRAWING

CONTINUOUS LINES WAS A
PROPOSED STARTING POINT
FOR THOSE PARTICIPANTS
WHO WERENT FEELING
CONFIDENT ABOUT
THEIR OWN ABILITY TO
DRAW (DRAWINGS BY AN
UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT
AND ENRICO MARCORE).

152
4. DRAWING LIKE STUBBS.
INSPIRED BY GEORGE STUBBS
- AND ALBRECHT DURER
- WHO USED EKPHRASTIC
DESCRIPTIONS TO DRAW
ANIMALS THEYD NEVER
SEEN, SOME PARTICIPANTS
DREW AN UNKNOWN ANIMAL
DESCRIBED BY AN OLD
DORZE MAN TO DAN SPERBER
(1982: 149) (DRAWINGS BY
MITCH MILLER AND PAOLO
GRUPPUSO).

5. THE NOT-ROUND TABLE. THE

LARGE TABLE AROUND WHICH
THE PARTICIPANTS GATHERED
DURING THE WORKSHOP
WAS DEPICTED IN DIFFERENT
WAYS (DRAWINGS BY JOO
LOUGUERCIO AND RACHEL
JOY HARKNESS).

153
6. EXPERIMENTING WITH
MATERIALS. ONE AIM OF THE
WORKSHOP WAS TO TRY
OUT DRAWING MATERIALS,
TECHNIQUES, STYLES AND
TOPICS (WATERCOLOUR BY
CHRISTINE MODERBACHER,
BALL PEN AND CHARCOAL
DRAWINGS BY ANNE
DOUGLAS).

7. DIALECTOGRAMS. THIS
DRAWING-WRITING STYLE
INTRODUCED BY MITCH MILLER
ONE OF THE PARTICIPANTS
FAVOURS A PIGEONS EYE
VIEW TO MAP A PARTICULAR
SOCIAL CONTEXT (DRAWINGS
BY AINA AZEVEDO AND
MANUEL JOO RAMOS).

154
8A AND 8B. DRAWING SIR
DUNCAN LIBRARY. WHILE
SOME PARTICIPANTS
STAYED AT THE OLD TOWN
HOUSE EXPERIENCING AND
DISCOVERING NEW MATERIALS
AND TECHNIQUES - OTHERS
LEFT ON A OBSERVATIONAL
FIELDTRIP TO THE
MODERNIST SIR DUNCAN
RICE LIBRARY BUILDING THAT
TOWERS ABOVE THE OLD
CITY (8: DRAWINGS BY AINA
AZEVEDO AND CAETANO
SORDI; 9: DRAWINGS BY ANNE
DOUGLAS AND MANUEL JOO
RAMOS).

155
9. CADAVRE EXQUIS. DURING
THE TWO-DAY WORKSHOP,
THE PARTICIPANTS WERE
OFFERED A COLLABORATIVE
DRAWING EXPERIENCE: EACH
WAS INVITED TO DRAW A
SECTION OF A PIECE OF
WRAPPING PAPER, FOLD IT
AND LEAVE ONLY THE BOTTOM
TIP OF THE DRAWING VISIBLE
THE FOLLOWING PERSON
TAKING THESE VISIBLE LINES
AS THE STARTING POINT OF
HIS/HER OWN CONTRIBUTION,
LIKEWISE PARTIALLY FOLDED.

156
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