This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels.

Part 1 Authority, representation and anthropological knowledge: anthropological visions - some notes on visual and textual authority, Kirsten Hastrup; the lexical spaces of eye-spy, Chrisopher Pinney; admissible evidence? film in anthropology, Peter Loizos; film as discourse - the invention of anthropological realities, Peter Ian Crawford. Part 2 Image, audience and aesthetics: complicities of style, David MacDougall; the aesthetics of ambiguity, Dai Vaughan; which films are the ethnographic films?, Marcus Banks; who constructs anthropological knowledge? towards a theory of ethnographic film spectatorship, Wilton Martinez. Part 3 Politics, ethics and indigenous imagery: anthropological transparency - film, representation and politics, James Faris; myths, racism and opportunism - film and TV representation of the San, Keyan G. Tomaselli; visual imperialism and the export of prejudice - an exploration of ethnographic film, Kathleen Kuehnast; picturing culture through indigenous imagery - a telling story, Richard Chalfen; representation by the Other - Indonesian cultural documentation, Felicia Hughes-Freeland; the ethics of ethnographic film-making, Timothy Asch. Part 4 Television and new technologies: anthropology in broadcasting, Andre Singer; television narrative and ethnographic film, Terence Wright; putting anthropology on television - reflections of an anthropological consultant, David Turton; hypermedia in ethnography, Gary Seaman and Homer Williams; the potentials of videodisc in visual anthropology - some examples, Alan MacFarlane.

This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels; that they are hierarchically related; that whereas writings may encompass the images produced by film, the inverse of this cannot be true. The author argues for this position further by suggesting that the visual is to the written mode as "thin description" (giving a record of the form of behaviour) is to "thick description" (giving an account of meaning).