Push it along: on not making an ethnographic film in Baltimore
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Author/Creator
Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2017-06-09
Type of Work
Department
Towson University. Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
Program
Citation of Original Publication
Durington, M. , Collins, S. , Randolph, N. and Young, L. (2017), Push It Along: On Not Making an Ethnographic Film in Baltimore. Transform Anthropology, 25: 23-34. doi:10.1111/traa.12096
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Abstract
Perhaps the most demonized group following the uprising that occurred after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore were the youth of the city. As ethnographers working in the same neighborhoods where the Baltimore Uprising took place, we debated the representations we would make, cognizant that, in an atmosphere of both overt and covert racism, any representation we produced would be subject to political appropriation from the same mass media we were criticizing. However, we were not the only actors in Baltimore's representational field, and, instead of making our own ethnographic films, we began to look to the representations of the city produced by the youth who were directly impacted by the structural forces that precipitated the uprising. In doing so, we are advocating anthropologists on certain occasions to “push it along,” or in other words, speak alongside our collaborators to ascertain a more nuanced vision of events through a networked anthropology.