MADE TO BE SEEN: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION OF AN AMERICAN COMMUNITY

A Research Proposal Prepared by

Jay Ruby

Center for Visual Communication

and

Temple University

Philadelphia, Pa., 19122

PROJECT SUMMARY

ABSTRACT - VISUAL COMMUNICATION PROJECT

It is proposed that an ethnographic study of visual communication in an American community be undertaken as a means of gaining insight into the relationship of mass communication and other visual media to culture. Film, Photography, Television, Arts and Crafts, The Built Environment, and Performance will be studied as visual domains to determine whether they are systematically related in a communication system shaped by culture. The research will be conducted by a social science research group interested in the relationship of culture to communication. A variety of techniques and methods will be employed -- some quantitative and some qualitative -- which can be subsumed under the term Ethnographic Semiotics The project is divided into three phases -- An Ethnographic Profile of the Community, A Visual Domain Analysis, and Family Ethnographies. The final phase of the research is premised upon the assumption that the community is organized around the family, and therefore the integration of the visual domains is most likely to appear within the family. The anticipated results include the construction and testing of an ethnographic methodology designed to deal with questions of culture and communication and an analytic description of the impact of visual images on the quality of American life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MADE TO BE SEEN: A VISUAL COMMUNICATION ETHNOGRAPHY

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL SUBMITTED TO THE

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES

BY

JAY RUBY

I          INTRODUCTION

We propose research designed to contribute to the understanding of the relationship of the visual/pictorial universe to culture. To accomplish the task, a group of researchers propose to make an ethnographic study of visual communication in an American community. The objectives include the systematic investigation of visual environments as culturally mediated message systems and as domains within an integrated communication structure.

Our search for understanding of the world in which we live has evolved from studies of the physical world through studies of the biological and social contexts in which we find ourselves. A fourth major environment is now apparent -- the symbolic. This environment is composed of the sym­bolic modes, codes, media, and structures through which we communicate, create cultures, and organize the world. The delineation of the various symbolic systems and the contexts in which they are employed, their relationship to each other and ultimately to the physical, biological, and social environments is the most exciting exploration of the 20th century.

One of the most pervasive and least understood symbolic modes is the visual/pictorial. We wish to study the role of this vast and complex environment in modern life. To do so we have limited the visual/pictorial universe to six domains -- television, film, photography, arts and crafts, the built environment, and performance. It seems reasonable to explore the possibility that the domains are related, perhaps analogously, to the way that speech codes are related to language -- i.e., parole to langue in de Saussere's terms (1972). While anthropologists assume that symbolic systems fit together to form a culture (Geertz 1973), there is little evidence of an integration of the visual domains listed above.

Visual mass media are becoming more and more pervasive and influential in the formation and stabilization of culture (Gerbner et al 1978), yet our knowledge of the visual domains and the inter-relationships is sparse indeed. We literally do not understand what impact the mass-mediated messages, which we consume daily in ever increasing quantities, have on the quality of our lives -- from the New Guinea native who sees Sesame Street to the small town American child who sees the New Guinea native on a PBS documentary.

Research being conducted in other modes (e.g. verbal -- Cf. Hymes 1964) causes us to assume that symbolic modes are integrated systems. However, we don't know how this integration works within the visual/pictorial uni­verse. The purpose of the proposed research is to articulate the systematic relationship which we assume must exist among these visual domains. To be concrete, it is argued that the kind of house one lives in must be related in some way to the clothes one buys, the photographs one takes, the art one prefers, and how one watches television. While these relationships might not appear to exist on the surface, they must be present even if they re­main outside the awareness of the individual. Otherwise, we must hypothesize a chaotic world where our activities are unrelated.

For most of Western history our visual world has been examined from one vantage point -- that of "art" or "high culture." Not only have we concentrated on examining the "masterpieces" of art, but these "masterpeices" have been analyzed and interpreted through the eyes of the critic, professor, and the connoisseur. The visual world in general has been the world of the "elite" artifact studied and admired by elites, and the analysis of the popular arts of film, photography, and television utilizing aesthetic concepts derived from the study of these "masterpieces" (Worth 1966).

The purpose of the proposed project is to study our visual universe from a broader perspective; one which employs a variety of approaches and methods derived from the social sciences and humanities; one which has as its goal the examination of the impact of visual images on modern life.

The research will be accomplished using a variety of techniques. Initially a survey instrument will be constructed to provide us with an overview of the community and its interaction with the domains. Next, ethnographic studies of the six domains will employ qualitative techniques of participant! observation, interviews, the analysis of personal documents such as family photograph albums, and the generation of life histories of key individuals in the community such as professional photographers, painters, etc. Capitalizing on anthropologists' ability to walk the fence between the humanism of qualitative methods and the more traditional scientific quantitative methods, this project will generate data with a variety of shapes and purposes.

Preliminary research suggests that this community is integrated through the family. It is an economic, religious, social, and probably, political focal point and the logical place to discover the integration of these visual domains. The final phase of this project will, therefore, consist of a series of family/household ethnographies.

This research is designed to have practical and theoretical results. Theoretically, it will provide insight into the possibility of a visual communication system which functions as a meta-system integrating and informing our visual symbolic environment. Practically, it is designed to explore the role of visual arts and communication in our society -- a concern which touches all of us daily in profound ways.

II             THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The proposed research is founded on the application of several theoretical tendencies which have been developing in anthropology, linguistics, and communication to the study of the visual/pictorial universe. Scholars interested in the systematic investigation of the human condition have for a long time concentrated on the study of the artifacts of human consciousness -­the material manifestations of humanness. The archaeologist looked at pot­tery and projectile points. The folklorist collected the text of the tale. The linguist studied transcribed speech. And the visual scholar examined the picture, the film, the painting, and the television program. These artifacts were weighed, measured, and counted. Their distribution through time, space, and culture were plotted. Some truly unique human products were admired as works of art and the genius of their maker was appreciated. Finally, in recent years, these objects -- both unique and commonplace -- were studied for the hidden messages or codes contained in their texts.

While the textual-artifactual approach to studying human beings produces remarkable insights and important understandings, it tends to separate the artifacts from the stream of human behavior that produces and uses them. The text needs to be studied as a unified whole. The human process should be the object of the study. One can trace a movement in this direction through a number of thinkers and researchers. Two are the most directly relevant: Dell Hymes -- the concept of the ethnography of communication (1964), and Sol Worth -- the study of visual forms as culturally structured communicative systems (1966).

Hymes' work represents a shift in linguistics away from an emphasis on the text of language to a study of the socio-cultural processes of speaking as a social act. Some linguists became interested not only in the product but also in the process and the producer. In 1964, Hymes saw the possibility of expanding his "ethnography of speaking" model into a more inclusive "ethnography of communication." It was to include all modes, media, and codes in all possible contexts 1 -- thus allowing for the possibility of exploring the relationship between culture and communication -- an Anthropology of Communication (Hymes 1967).

For a number of reasons linguists have not pursued the idea of an ethnography of speaking beyond traditional linguistic concerns and few communication scholars have employed the concept of the ethnography of communication to non-linguistic forms. 2 It is not the primary intention of the proposed research to examine the utility of Hymes' model. However, his ideas do figure in the formulation of this project. It will be interesting to see whether a model derived from the study of a dyadic interaction of short duration (that is, two people speaking to each other) will be able to encompass a socio­cultural communicative process as complex -- involving many people, settings, and events -- as family photography or television.

While Hymes and other linguists were dealing with the problem of studying language in society, Sol Worth was grappling with the development of a systematic means for studying visual forms. Using film as an example, Worth examined the adequacy of the two most common approaches -- film as art and film as language. By 1966 he had contextualized the aesthetic model as one aspect of the communicative process. He suggested that film will be better understood as a sign system analogous to but different from verbal language (Worth 1966) -- a semiological approach to the study of film as a culturally structured communicative system (Worth 1969).

With the Navaho project (Worth and Adair 1972) in which he and anthropologist John Adair taught Navaho Indians to make movies and then studied the films and the social processes which surrounded their production, Worth moved from the textual to the socio-cultural, contextual study of film. Shortly before his untimely death, Worth delivered a paper entitled Ethnographic Semiotics (1977), suggesting that scholars interested in the study of meaning through sign systems should turn their attention away from their personal analysis of cultural texts to the ethnographic study of how people make meaning in their everyday lives. Ethnographic Semiotics is predicated upon a particular approach to semiotics -- one that advocates a theory of sign less dependent upon structual linguistic paradigms and more concerned with an inclusive and general science of sign systems, and upon the assumption that support for any semiotic analysis lies in the information generated from field research rather than the elegance of the researcher's argument. One

purpose of this research project is to explore, elaborate, and operationalize the concept of Ethnographic Semiotics for the study of visual communication. [3]

Up to the proposed research, studies of the symbolic visual aspects of Western cultures have used as their units of analysis the content of spe­cific television programs, films, graphic arts, urban design, or the content of specific time segments or taxonomic groupings -- Saturday morning children's programs, situation comedies, documentary film, etc. The proposed unit of analysis for this research is not the product alone but the context -- that is, the community and the community's members' interaction with these symbolic visual events. Each of the six domains listed above will be studied within the context of some of the major forces of public socialization such as schools, 4-H Clubs, art leagues, etc., and within the dominant agent of private socialization -- the family. We wish to discover how people become competent in and use these visual domains in their everyday lives.

II-A. CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION

The proposed research is formulated upon a set of general assumptions called Culture and Communication. In order to situate the research within its intellectual tradition, some discussion of these assumptions is necessary. [4]

Culture is seen as an integrated series of symbolic systems: A meta system or system of systems which is generated by the sets of rules shared by its members. It is assumed in this research that human beings create and share symbolic codes (that is, culturally defined patterns of symbolic behavior) which permit them to organize their experiences and ultimately their world into meaningful categories. To share the codes is to share a culture. Because these codes and the contexts in which they are used are patterned, structured, and often out-of-the--awareness of the user, they lend themselves to socio-cultural study.

This approach derives from a theory of communication posited by Worth and Gross: "Communication shall therefore be defined as a social process, within a context in which signs are produced and transmitted, perceived and treated as messages from which meaning can be inferred." (Worth and Gross 1974:30).

To restate the argument, it is suggested that to study human communication is to study symbolic codes in their social contexts; or, research problems in culture and communication are best understood as problems in ethnographic semiotics.

There are many approaches to the study of communication and a vast literature that cannot be critiqued in detail here. This literature differs sufficiently in orientation and basic assumptions so as not to be particularly useful. There is a virtual "famine" of anthropological studies of mass media (Cans 1974). With the exceptions of Mead and Metraux's (1953) content analysis of feature films continued by Weakland (1975), and Powdermaker's study of media among Rhodesians (1962) and her ethnographic account of Hollywood film production (1950), mass communication studies have been accomplished by scholars other than anthropologists. Peck (1967) and Chalfen (1978) have offered explanations for this lacuna and argued for the development of a media anthropology in the form of an anthropology of visual communication (Worth 1978 and Ruby 1973).

Most studies of mass media, mass communication, mass culture, or popular culture are based upon a non-anthropological definition of culture which differs fundamentally from the definition in our research (i.e., culture as taste -- with sophisticated taste equalling high culture, and common taste equalling popular culture. CF. Gans 1974). They are characterized by being either critical evaluations by an elite scholar (MacDonald 1957), or quan­titative surveys which aggregate audiences into masses without exploring cultural differences as a possible significant variable. These studies often concentrate on the effects of mass media on society and employ experimental methods. As Gerbner et al (1978) has suggested, "The problem of studying television's 'effects' is compounded by the fact that today nearly everyone 'lives' to some extent in the world of television. Without control groups of non-viewers it is difficult to isolate television's impact. Experiments do not solve the problem for they are not comparable to people's day-to-day television viewing."

Because we intend to deal with questions of mass communication as an aspect of the analysis of visual communication and to employ mainly qualitative methods, the literature on mass media is of little immediate relevance.

11-B. ETHNOGRAPHY:

It is suggested that visual communication be studied utilizing an ethnographic approach. Since method proceeds from theory, it is necessary to at least mention the theory of ethnography which informs this work. It should be remembered that it is not the method in this work that constitutes any novelty or innovation, but rather its application to the study of visual communication which is unique.

The term ethnographic is used here to imply both a process and a product. We wish to behave like ethnographers. We plan to participate and observe within the culture for extended periods of time in order to produce an ethnographic account of the relationship of visual communication to culture. Ethnography is a thick description (Geertz 1973). The theory constructs descriptive categories and cannot be separated from the description. Since participant/observation is the primary method of data generation, the "instrument" is the researcher. Once this view is assumed regarding the nature of cultural knowledge, it becomes mandatory to maintain a reflexive stance between the ethnographer as producer , the methods employed in the research as process and the ethnography as product within the presentation of the ethnography.

Mead has articulated this approach to ethnography. "The human scientist has had to learn how to relate self-knowledge of him- or herself as a multisensory being with a unique history as a member of a specific culture at a specific period of ongoing experience and how to include as far as possible this disciplined self-awareness in observations on other lives and in other cultures." (1976:907). A reflexive attitude towards ethnographic research is particularly difficult but essential if the site of research is not an exotic locale where cultural differences are blatant and where cultural relativism is relatively easy to maintain, but rather a rural community 150 miles from the researchers' home.

III. THE SELECTION OF THE RESEARCH SITE:

In order to study the visual domains and their complex interrelationships, the proposed project has to be undertaken in a culturally homogeneous community. To introduce cultural differences as a variable at this point in our understanding of the interface of culture to the visual universe would produce too many problems and make it impossible to deal with questions we wish to address.

In addition to being culturally homogeneous, the community should contain people who are engaged in photography, arts and crafts -- on both a vocational and avocational basis -- and have access to television, film, and other mass-mediated messages. In other words, the community should be sufficiently isolated as to maintain its own cultural identity yet have the opportunity to experience mass media. Juniata County, Pa., appears to meet all of these requirements quite well. [5] Moreover, it has been a site for research for more than seven years, and a Community Profile of the county has already been written [6].

One interesting feature of the county's cultural profile is the presence of Amish families. Since they do not take photographs, make paintings, go to the movies, or watch television, they provide a contrast as well as crosscultural comparative opportunities within the county, without making those comparisons overly complicated. In 1978, a feasibility study was conducted. The people contacted were generous with their time and information and were uniformly receptive to the idea of having their community be a research site. It was discovered that the county contains photography clubs in both high schools, several arts organizations with at least 50 amateur painters, professional and amateur photographers, an art gallery and several professional painters, two local weekly newspapers, and displays of local original art in virtually every public building in the county. The more we learned about Juniata County the more certain we were that it is an excellent research site. this disciplined self-awareness in observations on other lives and in other cultures." (1976:907). A reflexive attitude towards ethnographic research is particularly difficult but essential if the site of research is not an exotic locale where cultural differences are blatant and where cultural relativism is relatively easy to maintain, but rather a rural community 150 miles from the researchers' home.

This project is designed to study visual communication within a cultural unit. A county is an arbitrary political unit. However, it is clear from the initial field work that people in the county regard themselves as a cultural unit and see the county border as having real significance.

One cannot obtain the prior permission of all 15,000-plus inhabitants, nor does any one organization speak for all. During our preliminary investigations an effort was made to speak to people who were representative of those who we wish to study. Everyone responded warmly and with extreme cooperation. This response leads us to believe that doing research in Juniata County will be easy and comfortable, and when formal agreements for permission to study are required, they will present no problem to anyone.

Since we believe that people will continue to be generous with their time and knowledge, it is incumbent upon the researchers to reciprocate. While the precise forms of repricocity will vary from situation to situation, we intend to discover collective rather than individual needs to be met. For example, the county public library is a source of free films for organizations like the Naturalist Club. The library could benefit from professional advice about sources of free films. The researchers have the expertise to provide that advice.

Juniata County is a place where nothing of great significance -- to the outside world - - has occurred. No one of national or international importance was born there. No great Revolutionary or Civil War battles were fought there. Neither the area nor the people are "quaint" enough to be reconstituted as a tourist attraction. Even the Amish and the Mennonites are not regarded as curiosities.

The people appear to us to be very involved with their own lives and their local world. They know about the options available in the nearby urban centers and the alternative worlds presented via the mass media. These alternatives do not seem to interest them very much. The community provides us with an excellent chance to see how a group of people integrate a visual world of their own creation with the mass-mediated images from outside.

IV       THE RESEARCH PLAN AND METHODS:

The project has three phases: 1) An Ethnographic Profile; 2) A Visual Domain Analysis; and 3) An Ethnographic Study of Families. The methods to be employed proceed from a tradition within anthropology of methodological eclecticism. However, a commitment to the production of an ethnographic account predisposes the researchers to favor qualitative methods. It is initially important to obtain a cultural overview or profile of the site of research which builds upon and expands Jahn's Community Profile, and deals with the people's interaction with visual domains. The researchers plan to participate in and observe the activities deemed relevant for the analysis of each domain and for the understanding of families as an agent of socialization. Structured and unstructured interviews will be employed as well as life histories (Langness 1965). Some interviews will be structured around photographic interview kits (Collier 1967) and some will be more open­ended. Personal documents such as family photo albums will be a significant source of information. Historical documents -- both public and personal -­will be sought. In short, the researchers intend to become as much a part of the community as possible. We are wedded to the idea that in-depth participation generates a kind of data unobtainable through any other method.

The ideas which this research is designed to explore are too complex and encompassing to be pursued by a single scholar. To deal adequately with all of the domains and the possibility of an integrated system of visual communication requires a variety of talents and interests. This team approach to an ethnographic study of visual communication is a unique feature of the project.

The research group shares a common interest in an exploration of the relationship between culture and visual communication and a commitment to Worth's ethnographic semiotic (1977). The individual skills represented by each researcher make it possible to divide the work into managable units. However, it must be stressed that the division of research tasks is as arbitrary and heuristic as the visual domains -- that is, simply a means of accomplishing our goal. This "team" began to function as a unit with the writing of this proposal -- a group effort.

While detailed academic biographies are appended to the proposal, a brief description of the duties and qualification of each member of the research team will serve to explain the research design.

Jay Ruby is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Temple University; President of the Center for Visual Communication; and Co-editor of Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication His education includes studies in: theology, classical history, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and communication. His research interests include: culture and communication, visual communication, visual anthropology, the theory and practice of ethnography, the anthropology of the visual arts, and American cultures. He is the Director and Principal Investigator of the proposed project. He will oversee, supervise, and coordinate all aspects of the work. His research duties will be to study photography and film.

Barbara Lynch is a Research Associate of the Center for Visual Communication; and a Film Consultant for the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Insti­tute. Her research interests include: the ethnographic and microanalytic study of communication patterns, kinesics, man/environment relations, visual communication, and ethnography of family communication. Lynch will be responsible for the study of performance and the ethnographies of families.

Daniel Schiller is a Research Associate of the Center for Visual Communication. Schiller's interests include: general communication theory, mass communication and culture,, and the conventions of television, photography, and film as culturally mediated systems. Schiller will be responsible for the study of television and also participate in the study of photography, film, and the family.

Robert Aibel is a Lecturer in Communication and Director of the :Exploratory Cinema Series at the Annenberg School of Communications of the University of Pennsylvania; Secretary-Treasurer of the Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication; and a Research Associate at the Center for Visual Communication. His research interests include: art and communication, film, photography, and video as aids to and objects for social scientific inquiry, ethnographic methods in research, semiotics, film theory, and documentary film production. Robert Aibel will be responsible for the study of arts and crafts and participate in the study of film, television, and the family ethnography.

Two additional members of the team are yet to be added -- the architectural/built environment researcher and the staff photographer.

The team will meet on a regular basis in the field for seminars. Members will present progress reports, and consultants and other knowledgable persons will join the seminars.

The use of a group to do an ethnographic study is somewhat unusual and breaks with the tradition of the lone field worker (Vidich, Bensman and Stein 1964:ix). By utilizing an eclectic approach we hope to overcome some of the criticism of ethnography as being not systematic or rigorous.

Funds are requested for a three year period. The work is designed to begin with the

Ethnographic Profile and the Domain Analysis -- to be completed in eighteen months. The Family Ethnographies will follow and take approximately twelve months. The remaining six months will be spent correlating the field data and preparing the final report.

IV-A. ETHNOGRAPHIC PROFILE

The proposed research will be initiated with an ethnographic profile based upon interviews conducted with a numerically significant households sample. The survey will provide a cultural overview with special emphasis upon their interaction with the visual domains.

The survey instrument will be designed, tested, and administered under the supervision of Marilyn Jahn, a sociologist who designed and executed the Community Profile for the University of Pennsylvania Rural Dental Health Project. Jahn has already trained eight local interviewers who will be employed again, thus providing temporary employment for local people, and enabling the researchers to interact with individuals who can function in two roles, subject and researcher.

For the community survey, a 6% sample of households in Juniata County will be drawn. The sample will be stratified by township: 6% of the households in each township will be randomly selected from complete listings of all households already obtained by. this research group. This stratification will assure representative inclusion of households in sparsely populated hill areas as well as the more densely populated river valley. There are 5,750 households in the county; a 6% sample will yield a research population of 345 households, and approximately 1,000 individuals. (Households rather than individuals will be sampled because of the interest in presence and use of visual material in the home. Questions dealing with activities will be asked of all household residents separately).

Survey analysis will focus on: 1) Description of visual materials inventoried -- including objects and activities; 2) Analysis of associations amongst these items; 3) Analysis of configurations if these can be discerned (cluster analysis of visual items); and 4) Social and cultural characteristics associated with visual items and the possible clusters of these items.

The interview instrument will be constructed and tested as the first field research task. The areas of information to be explored are as follows: A general description of the household in terms of the dwelling, geographical location; description of family members (age, incomes, occupations, kinship, etc.); television viewing habits and attitudes towards television as a source of information; film viewing habits; involvement with photography; involvement with home movies; interior of house in terms of decor; use of magazines, newspapers, and other printed materials which contain pictures; involvement with arts and crafts; recreation and vacation and other leisure time activities; participation in organizations; habits of dress; and attendance at public events such as theatre, political rallies, etc.

Since there has been a traditional split in the social sciences between the ethnographers who were thought to be humanists or "soft" scientists and social scientists who employed quantitative methods and were considered "hard" scientists, the use of quantitative methods to produce this profile might appear to be out of place in a research project which is wedded to producing an ethnographic account.

Two reasons justify combining these research styles: 1) A survey is the most efficient way to obtain a rapid overview of the people, their culture, and their interaction with the visual domains. This information is essential in the shaping of the other phases of the research; and 2) The lack of quantitative techniques in ethnographies -- at least in anthropology -- is more the result of the type of culture that anthropologists studied than anything else. Conducting interviews with a sample of households in a non-literate, non-Western culture where the interviewer's linguistic competence may be minimal is not feasible. In the case of the proposed research not only do the researchers speak the language of the "natives," but we have "native" interviewers.

IV-B. VISUAL DOMAIN ANALYSIS

As stated in the introduction, v isual communication has been divided into six domains for the purpose of this research. It would be a mistake to place much stress on the categories as the division is arbitrary and heuristic. The domains are not modes or even codes. Some of them are based upon a technology such as photography, film, and television. Others are more conceptual, such as the built environment. As a way of dividing research tasks and labor into reasonable units, the domains are designed to overlap and interrelate. Their importance is temporary since the goal of this study is to discern an integration of the domains into a system.

The analysis of these domains has two immediate functions: 1) To generate an ethnographic account of the cultural role of each domain within this community; and 2) To examine the "public" varieties of socialization to these domains. Once accomplished, it will then be possible to explore the family as the primary agent of "private" socialization. A discussion of each of the domains follows.

IV-B--1. VISUAL DOMAIN ANALYSIS PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography is unlike film or television because not only do we "consume" the products of professionals, but we frequently participate in some production. It is estimated that Americans take over 7 billion photographs per year (Wolfman 1974). In Juniata County, over 90% of the people own and use a still camera, Photography is the only visual domain where the people are producers, users, purchasers, and subjects.

There has been an increased interest in photography in recent years. Photography is now widely regarded as high art and at the same time the personal historical importance of the family album is recognized. This rise in self-consciousness is exemplified by the popularity of Susan Sontag's book On Photography (1977).

Scholarly attempts to understand photography have dealt with it as: 1) High art -- Cf. Ward (1970); 2) Vernacular art that generated a high art form (the snapshot aesthetic as seen in Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander's work -- Cf. Green (1974); 3) Social science research tool -- Bateson and Mead (1941) and Collier (1967); and 4) Culturally relevant personal document -- Cf. Lesey (1973), Musello (1977), and Chalfen (1977).

The last of these approaches deals with family photography as a culturally structured communication where not only the photograph as a cultural artifact is studied, but also the social processes surrounding the production and subsequent display are recognized as essential elements for analysis.

While this approach comes the closest to resembling our research, "home mode" photography, as Chalfen calls the snapshots and other family uses of photography, does not include the range of activity encompassed here.

We wish to study all aspects of photography -- the snapshots produced by the people themselves; photographs purchased from professionals such as wedding pictures and high school graduation portraits; photographs in newspapers, magazines and catalogues, and on calendars; the slide shows in schools; and in displays where other forms of art appear -- in short, any and all photographs which exist in their visual environment whether the people of Juniata County produced them or not.

This study is not confined to an analysis of photographs as artifacts (although it will be necessary to locate, describe, and analyze their content and form), but rather to a study of them in their socio-cultural contexts. Therefore, the social behaviors, settings, etc., surrounding the production and utilization of these photographs will be examined. Our goal is to understand the cultural role and function of all kinds of photography -- not just the "art" photographs or the snapshots -- in the lives of these people.

From the Ethnographic Profile we will obtain information about the ownership of photographic equipment, the uses of family photography -- frequency, importance, and display styles (e.g., in albums, on the wall, etc.), the number of people interested in photography as a hobby, the occasions when they employ a professional photographer, the frequency of social viewing events (i.e., when do they look at their photographs, and with whom?), their attitudes towards photographs as news, as an educational tool, and as a selling device. These statistically based descriptions will serve to guide and shape some of the research questions in this phase as well as during the ethnographic studies of families.

The study of this domain has been broken down into six components: professional photography; hobbyists; public exhibition events; historical; photography in education; and family photography.

Professional Photography

At present, the county's needs for professional photography are being met by one full-time and several part-time photographers. Weddings and high school graduation portraits are the occasions when a professional's services are most often sought.

It is our intention to produce at least two life histories (Langness 1965), and ethnographic accounts of professional photographers in the county

P.S. [7] is a 78 year old retired photographer. Until a stroke forced his retirement he was the only professional photographer in the county. His professional career began in 1925. However, as early as 1916 he was a serious hobbyist and did most of the film processing for the county. The historical perspective P.S.'s life history provides will be invaluable.

The Juniata Photo Service is owned and operated by R.L. -- the county's only active full-time professional. His life history and an ethnographic account of his work will provide the study with a contemporary perspective. A researcher will work with R.L. as assistant and apprentice, thus repaying R.L. with his time and also providing the researcher with a social work role in the setting.

The part-time professional photographers will be interviewed and a researcher will observe and participate in some of their professional tasks. Since each of these persons assumes roles relevant to other aspects of the study, the interviews and observations will have multiple purposes. For example, D.S. is a high school industrial arts teacher who has a studio and darkroom in his home. On a part-time basis he 'does' portraits and weddings. He is also the advisor to the high school photography club, and has entered and won competitions with his photographs.

This analysis will concentrate upon production events in professional photography as seen from the perspective of the photographer. During the ethnographic studies of the families their perspective will be examined -­e.g., the role of the subject in these photographs, the utilizations of the photographs in the everyday lives of these people, etc.

Hobbyists

In Juniata County there are people interested in photography as a hobby, an avocation, and as an outlet for artistic expression. In some cases the involvement is primarily an adjunct to other interests, e.g., one may decide to learn something about photography in order to take pictures while bird­watching. These people tend to purchase more sophisticated equipment than the average snapshooter and often have their own darkrooms.

These hobbyists will be interviewed and their activities observed. For example, C.Q. is a hobbyist who is the head of an arts and crafts organization

Photography in Education

Visual aids have long been a part of the educational process in public schools. The body of research on the effectiveness of these aids in the process of education is extensive (Dwyer 1977). It is not the purpose of this project to evaluate the role of photographs in learning, but rather to observe and seek an understanding of how people are taught to understand photographs -- that is, the generation of meaning in a photograph (Ruby 1976b; Sekula 1975).

The school system will be examined to discover the various educational contexts in which photographs appear -- i.e., in textbooks, magazines, wail displays, and class projects. Once their usage is discovered, classes will be observed. The goal of the observations will be to ascertain the varieties of formal and informal instructions students receive which cause them to regard photographs in certain ways. Interviews will be conducted with teachers and students to gain additional information.

There are photography clubs in both high schools. P.S., a part-time professional photographer, is the advisor to one of them. The Photography Club meetings and field trips will be observed. Since the Photography Club members constitute the majority of the county's photographic hobbyists, their activities, both during the formal meetings of the club and at other times when they are practicing their hobby, are of some interest to the researchers. It is, therefore, anticipated that some Photography Club members will be extensively interviewed.

Family Photography

Family photography is the most prevalent form of photography in the county. It is a place which both exemplifies the heuristic nature of the domains and the integrated nature of the research design. To study family photography as an isolate would cause the researchers to miss the opportunity to use the family's involvement with photography as a means of understanding the domain in an holistic fashion and using that knowledge to relate photography to the other domains. Family photography will, therefore, be dealt with during the ethnographic study of families.

IV-B-2   VISUAL DOMAIN ANALYSIS - FILM

In this study, film is regarded as being more than theatrical film. To confine the research to films shown in movie houses would cause us to exclude 50% of the county [9] and to ignore the film viewing that occurs elsewhere. Based on our preliminary investigations, it seems that here, film functions more as a medium of enlightenment and instruction than as art or entertainment. It is, therefore, essential that we examine all of the settings where films are seen -- theatrical, educational, religious, etc.

The approach which motivates our interest in film is replicated in the approach to all of the domains. We are not so interested in critical or evaluative analyses of the art of the film or its power to educate, persuade, affect and inform, nor in the quantitative or experimental approach to the study of film's effect on society as a mass media (Wagner 1978 has suggested that these interests have dominated film research), but rather in the following question: How do these people make communicational sense out of a film and how does film "fit" with other forms of visual communication? Ultimately we wish to understand how film "fits" into the fabric of their lives -- of what consequence film is to them.

Since people in Juniata County are seldom involved in the production of films we will concentrate on the exhibition events. [10] The researchers will observe and describe the settings and the behavior which surrounds these events; participate in them; and conduct interviews with audience members and the organizers of the screenings.

The interest in the setting is consistent with our previously stated assumption that context may be the most significant factor in the generation of socio-cultural meaning (Worth and Gross 1974). We wish to understand whether the setting predisposes the audience to understand the film in a particular way (Ruby 1976a and Sekula 1975).

Utilizing the results of the initial survey and other sources such as the local newspapers, a list of exhibition events will be compiled together with some general information about the event, the setting, organizers, purpose, and the titles of the films shown. A sample of events will be selected that is qualitatively based (at least one event from each of the types dis­cerned will be studied). The researchers will attend these events to observe and participate. When formal discussion naturally occurs, it will be recorded for subsequent analysis. Where no organized discussions follow the screening, the researchers will attempt participant/intervention; ask to lead a discussion and through their leadership solicit responses from the audience, thus creating a natural experiment where the researchers can test some of their ideas about the social norms of film discussion. The researchers also intend to interview the organizers of the events and some audience members to generate more intensive and directed information.

While the stated emphasis of the study is directed toward an analysis of the socio-cultural processes surrounding the exhibition of films, it is necessary to examine the films as well. To do so we will construct an in­strument for content and formal analysis (Holsti 1969) which will be analogous to the analytic/descriptive approach developed for the other domains. The instrument will provide the researchers with an opportunity to generate a set of "meaningful" analytic categories which will be designed to describe and analyze the content and the form of the films. The categories will be validated by using persons from the county as coders and adjusting the cate­gories until the inter-coder reliability reaches an acceptable level. The goal of this analysis will be to discern a set of content/form categories which are grounded in the films and which in turn reflect the culture of the audience, thereby explaining their response to these films.

IV-B-3. DOMAIN ANALYSIS - TELEVISION:

Television is the most commonplace visual medium in the world. Most Americans own at least one television set and watch it (or at least have it turned on) three to six hours per day (Lyle 1972). By the time a child reaches the age of eighteen, he has spent more hours in front of the television than in front of a teacher (Schram, Lyle, and Parker 1961).

Our survey indicates that Juniata County replicates the national tendencies in television habits. Television has been frequently studied and America's viewing habits scrutinized on a regular basis (e.g., the Nielson ratings). We know something about television as a mass medium for a mass audience, and something about the content of the shows from the vantage point of the critic and content analyst, and we have statistics about viewers' habits and preferences, However, this type of information is minimally useful since it is based upon theoretical assumptions which differ significantly from our proposed research. We have already made an argument as to how these approaches differ and why they are of limited use to this work (Cf. The Theoretical Background).

We regard television as one of several domains and do not assume that it is dominant simply because people spend a lot of time watching it. Television must be studied in the context of the other visual symbolic environments and within the everyday routines of the viewers in order to understand its role and significance in their culture. Until this is done, the a priori claim of television's dominant impact made by many scholars (e.g., Gerbner 1978) remains an unsupported assertion. We are committed to the idea that television should be examined within the socio-cultural context of a specific set of viewers, utilizing an ethnographic approach. To study audiences as an undifferentiated mass and solely with quantitative methods produces limited findings about the impact of this mass medium on the quality and everyday conduct of our lives.

When comparing television to the other domains two major differences relevant to the research design emerge: 1) The people of Juniata County are never involved in the production of the messages, nor do they have any control over the content and form of the messages consumed by them; and 2) Exhibition is usually a private event. Public exhibition in bars, schools, and other institutional settings is infrequent.

These differences initially necessitate the use of some quantitative methods. Qualitative ethnographic data will be collected during the family ethnographies since that is where private patterns of viewing and exhibition are most accessible. The initial phase will provide some information regarding existing patterns and a basis for the analysis during family ethnographies.

The initial phase is comprised of three parts: 1) An ethnography of public exhibition; 2) A visual system analysis; and 3) A cultivation analysis.

Ethnography of Public Exhibition

The public locations such as bars, bowling alleys, schools, etc., where television is available will be examined as ethnographic situations primarily through observation, although interviews will be conducted with those responsible for the selection of programs and some viewers.

Visual System Analysis

Gerbner and Gross (1973) have developed a methodology for the content analysis of the television message system which has been applied to a longitudinal sample of nationally televised programs and commercials. Our research will employ a modified version of their methods. First, we intend to analyze the visual system rather than the message system. Our coding instrument will be devised to look at both the content and form of the system with an emphasis upon the visual form of the messages. Therefore, the story itself will be of considerably less importance than the visual presentation of characters, location, objects, and the formal properties of individual shots and narrative. The coding instrument will be comprised of items referring to the visual design of clothing, furniture, make-up, etc.; the composition, light­ing, movement, etc., within shots; and the rhythm and structure of the narrative. Secondly, we are concerned with a very specific universe, one comprised of programs and commercials received in Juniata County. The sample must solely reflect local viewing habits and not represent national patterns as Gerbner and Gross (1973) have done.

Thirdly, the coding instrument and the coding itself will be modified. The instrument will be constructed in concert with Juniata County residents so that taxonomic selections reflect native categories, and the subsequent coding will be done by county residents. The process of construction and use of the instrument will be closely observed in order to generate data concerning their visual taxonomies and interpretive strategies.

Other aspects involved in the construction of the instrument of analysis, the training of analysts, the coding procedure, and the assessment of the reliability of the observations will reflect the Message System Analysis model (Gerbner, Gross, and Signorielli 1978).

Once the content analysis has been completed it will be compared to the resulting content analyses in the other domains in order to locate similarities and differences, and provide a basis for the cultivation analysis.

Cultivation Analysis

A cultivation analysis instrument will be employed to determine whether the patterns found in the visual system analysis have any measurable impact upon those who watch television. In other words, the question we are asking is whether the visual patterns found in television images are somehow reflected in the images produced and displayed by its audience, and whether the interpretation strategies they employ for television are used in other domains.

To accomplish this task, the findings from the content analyses will be used to construct questions and projective tests. Each question and test will have a "television response" (the visual patterns evident in the world of television) and other, different responses (biased in the opposite direction). Interviews will be conducted with a sample of adults and children drawn from those questioned during the ethnographic profile. Responses will be related to age, television exposure, other media habits, and a number of other demographic characteristics. The responses of light, medium, and heavy television viewers -- with other characteristics held constant -- will indicate what visual patterns the viewing of television tends to cultivate in what groups and to what extent (Gerbner, Gross, and Signorielli 1978).

During the interviews, questions will be asked about patterns of television viewing and its uses and gratifications. The information generated in this domain will be used to frame the study of television during the family ethnographies. Because of the private, consumptive basis of this domain, the most valuable qualitative data will be available there.

It is our contention that it is the qualitative aspects of television viewing that have been so consistently neglected, thereby causing researchers to draw premature conclusions. In an effort to understand what impact television has in the lives of people, the social context and attendant cultural variation must be taken into account. Quantitative research which consistently treats the mass audience erases the rich and varied socio-cultural backgrounds which comprise the audience.

IV-B-4   DOMAIN ANALYSIS - ARTS AND CRAFTS

In this study, the term arts and crafts refers to painting, sculpture, wood carving, pottery, quilting, toleware, macrame, etc. While all arts and crafts will be examined, qualitative choices concerning the intensity of in­volvement with each medium have to be made. It is impossible to judge, in advance, the relative significance of each medium to the community. Therefore, painting will be used to exemplify the approach to be employed.

Painting as "high" art has been the subject of countless volumes of historical, stylistic, formal, sociological, and psychological analyses. It has also been studied as folk art (Glassie 1972; Hansen 1967); primitive art (Janis 1965); native or visionary art (Friedman 1974); kitsch art (Dorfles 1968; Greenberg 1961); vernacular art (Kouwenhaven 1948); and tourist art (Ben-Amos 1977). We wish to look across these arbitrary boundaries and study everything produced and exhibited within this community.

While anthropologists have studied the "tribal" art of exotic communities, an in-depth study of the art of an American community has not been attempted. Painting in Juniata County is particularly interesting since it may be representative of the most commonly seen and prevalent type of painting in America, and possibly the Western world. While ubiquitous, scholars have ignored it and not treated it as a product worthy of study.

The subject matter is characteristically landscapes and still-lifes. While rarely technically inept, it would probably never be treated seriously by any who would look at these paintings stylistically or formally. It would be most unlikely that those who have learned to think about art in such terms would ever stop to look at these paintings at all..

The paintings tend to be "soft-line" realist, imitative of the most accessible aspects of a Wyeth or a Hopper, employing early Impressionist color values. When not painted by one's relatives or friends as a hobby, it is that type of painting available at a discount department store or the recently popular, low-priced "original oil galleries," and on motel walls. The variations run all the way to the abstract, rarely displaying any familiarity with the conceptual structure of abstract art movements, but always imitative of the surface "look." These paintings reveal a command of the techniques necessary to imitate the style of "high" art.

Whatever a serious student of "high culture" might think of these paintings, they are being painted, sold, and given as presents by many people. They serve a purpose in the lives of those who paint and exhibit them. These paintings, their production, and their exhibition within a particular social context, are social acts which have a meaningful and serious impact on many people. Whether they serve as an outlet for personal or social expression, serve associational functions (social groups), help one identify as belonging to a particular community (by displaying the "proper" paintings), etc., is unknown since thus far no one has systematically dealt with the phenomenon. We assume that this art involves a series of socio-cultural processes which necessarily serve to contribute to the quality of life, and since these paintings display a consistent aesthetic, they must be related to the larger cultural configuration..

We seek to understand the role the visual arts play in the lives of the people of Juniata County. To facilitate the analysis, the domain is approached in terms of four areas: 1) Professional Painting; 2) Hobbyist Painting; 3) Children's Painting; and 4) Exhibition Events. Each area will be exam­ined in terms of both public and private production and/or exhibition events, with an emphasis at this stage on the public events.

Professional Painting

There are two men living in the county who are professional painters. Apparently only one other professional painter has ever lived in the county, H.P., no longer alive. He is considered by the residents to have been in­fluential as a teacher and co-founder of the first Art League. Paintings done by H.P. in the 1930's may be the first in the county that would not be called folk art. His was the first work to draw attention to non-traditional forms of secular painting and stimulated all that followed. Therefore, a reconstructed life history of H.F. will serve as a partial history of painting in the county, and supplement the history of arts and crafts which will be undertaken to place the present visual arts in context.

The two living professional painters previously mentioned are G.L. and D.H. G.L. lives on the county's edge, and makes his living solely from his paintings. He sells his work through a gallery in his home and at county and art fairs. D.H. is employed as a commercial artist in a food processing company. His income is supplemented by the sale of commissioned work and paint­ings displayed in restaurants and department stores.

Both men will provide us with a perspective on the aesthetic of the county, while at the same time giving us the opportunity to study the social, economic, and aesthetic role of the professional painter in the county. In­depth ethnographic work will be done with both of them through extensive interviewing and observation of painting, exhibition/sales, and any teaching events.

Hobbyist Painting

It appears that there are between 75 and 150 hobbyist painters in the county, the majority of whom are female. As stated by one of the women in a recent newspaper article, "...the biggest reason most people paint is for fun, relaxation and self-satisfaction."

There are three formal art associations -- The Arts League, The Arts Council, and The Arts Guild, and at least one informal association. The associations organize classes, present and promote art fairs and exhibits, and have planning/social meetings. As do all associations, they serve other functions somewhat less consciously, e.g., status conferral, social support, the maintenance of aesthetic and social standards, etc. In-depth histories and ethnographies will be done of each of the associations through participant/observation in classes and at fairs, through interviews with officers and members, and through examination of by-laws and other formal documents. Some members will be observed and interviewed during private painting sessions and art in their homes observed. While the private display of paintings will be seen again during the family ethnographies, in this phase it can be looked at as part of the artistic process rather than the interior decor of a private space.

These methods will allow the researchers to gain an overview of the hobbyist painters in terms of production, exhibition, and education. However, this approach only deals with people who participate in the activities of the associations. To avoid this bias, those who are self-taught or who learned to paint in high school, through a correspondence course, through personal acquaintances, etc., will be contacted through personal referrals, student lists. from correspondence schools, initial survey data, and a call for cooperation in the local newspapers.

A sample of the paintings will be subjected to content and formal analysis. The instrument employed and the use of local coders as well as outside professionals is parallel to the analytic approach used with the other domains.

Children's Painting

Children's painting will be studied through educational institutions. While learning occurs in the home, educational institutions are clearly a: major factor in teaching children how to look at and make art. Additionally, ideas about the artist and the significance of art in society are taught in schools. Since most Juniata County art teachers are natives, the values being taught can be assumed to have some generational continuity.

We will study what is taught and how it is taught in terms of the creation and appreciation of painting/drawing in schools, churches, 4-H Clubs, and classes offered by hobbyist painters for both children and adults (which provides a natural laboratory for the study of the differential approach to the teaching of children and adults). The educational process will be observed, the teachers and students interviewed, and some students will be selected for home visits where we can observe what is done with the paintings/drawings when taken home, and interview parents. Clearly this is the place where the family ethnographers will reveal the domestic process of aesthetic socialization in greater depth than through these brief: visits and the reports of the parents.

A sample of the children's painting/drawing will be subjected to content and formal analysis. Paintings will be sampled from the various classes observed in order to compare and contrast the resulting work across classes, and with the analyses of the professional and hobbyist paintings.

Exhibition Events

Private exhibition of painting will primarily be observed during the family ethnographies. However, there will also be various opportunities for observation in the course of the investigation of this domain, thereby leading to the interface with the family ethnographies.

There are two types of public exhibition events: 1) Public buildings; and 2) Art and county fairs and special art exhibits (usually in banks and schools). An inventory of paintings and their distribution will be undertaken along with other items of decor during the study of the built environment. This phase of the study will enable us to see how paintings are part of the public visible environment. That is, we will enumerate the contexts in which we find paintings and discover the range of style, authorship, etc.

Observations will take place at all art fairs and exhibits, and the behavior exhibited by both artists and viewers examined. These events will constitute a place where the analyses of a number of domains will co-occur -­photography, arts and crafts, performance, and the built environment.

Finally, a sample of those paintings exhibited will be content and formally analyzed and provide a comparison with the paintings displayed in people's homes.

Arts and crafts, like photography and the built environment, is a domain where people participate in production and exhibition, and in addition, have available products produced elsewhere (e.g., reproductions of "masterpiece" paintings). The analysis provides a glimpse into its private functions as evinced in the study of the practitioners. The family ethnographies will give us insight into the congruence of arts and crafts within a range of households (some that' contain only consumers and not producers of an art or craft) and an opportunity to see arts and crafts in the context of the other domains.

IV-B-.5   DOMAIN ANALYSIS - THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT:

The built environment and performance are conceived as being closely related to each other and substantively different from the other domains. It is clear that film, photography, arts and crafts, and television are communicational media. Buildings, highways, clothing, and interior furnishings appear to be of a different order. It is possible, for example, to argue that a highway is merely a means of transportation.

However, that point of view is too simplistic. While a building must have a utilitarian function, it is also made to be seen. We are not interested in the highway as a transportation system or clothing as a means of protection. Our interest is in these artifacts as signs in a symbol system. "If the shaping of the built environment is, indeed, related to images, values, and symbols and if the environment acts on people through communication and code legibility, then it must be intimately linked with culture." (Rapoport 1977:24). It is in this sense that the remaining domains are conceptually related to the previous four.

It is important here to re-affirm our earlier statement about the heuristic nature of the domains. The distinction between what we are calling the Built Environment and Performance is based more upon the interests and abilities of the researchers than anything else. By the Built Environment we literally mean any human alteration of the environment which is immobile and permanent. [11] The built environment provides behavior settings where certain behaviors occur (Roger Barker 1968). Performance includes the behaviors and the "props" or material objects necessary for the performance. Performances range from the formality of a play to the unself-conscious presentation of self in everyday life.

The Built Environment is a concept borrowed from Rapoport (1969, 1977) and others. [12] It encompasses the symbolic relationship between humans and their physical environment as expressed in the purposive and permanent alteration of that environment. We wish to examine this domain from the grand scale of the "sense of the region" (Lynch 1977) to the windows and doors of the houses. Since we are looking at this domain as providing behavioral settings, and since each domain needs a setting or context, the Built Environment inter­sects the other domains in a very complex manner.

The analysis is divided into five parts: 1) A description and visual analysis of the county as a physical and cultural unit; 2) A survey and analysis of the architecture; 3) A survey and analysis of the interiors of public spaces; 4) The construction and testing of a Built Environment Preference Kit; and 5) A study of the interiors of private spaces.

The Sense of the Region

The recreation of the natural world into a symbolic environment is a complex and intriguing process (Levi-Strauss 1970; McHarg 1969). We wish to explore the perceptions of the environment shared by the people of Juniata County. We seek to understand their culturally conditioned environmental aesthetic.

Most studies of the "sense of the region" (Lynch 1977) have either been problem oriented or concentrated upon the cognitive maps that people have of the cities they inhabit. Our scale is larger and we are not interested in evaluation.

We will employ the methods of Kevin Lynch -- "the interview of a small sample of citizens with regard to their image of the environment, and a system­atic examination of the environmental image evoked in trained observers in the field" (1960:140). Since the unit of environment under study is an entire county and Lynch's unit was a city, we anticipate having to modify the methodology.

We will begin with the analysis by the "outside" expert, i.e., the researcher. Once completed, a sample of residents will be interviewed. The results of the two perceptions and evaluations will be compared and contrasted.

Based upon our findings, a component in the Built Environment Preference Kit will be constructed which will deal with the sense of the region -- the environmental preferences of the people of Juniata County as a symbolic system.

Architecture

Architectural historians and theoreticians have focused their attention on "important" buildings designed by "significant" people (Rapoport 1969:1), and more recently on the "anonymous genius" of primitive architecture (Rudofsky 1964), or the "native genius" of vernacular architecture (Kouwenhoven 1948).

When Rapoport suggested in 1969 that one should study the relationship between house form and culture -- that is, to examine the built environment as a symbolic communicative system, he was uncertain as to how the "modern" or popular building style which dominates Juniata County would fit into his conceptual scheme since it was neither academic, primitive, folk, nor vernacular.

Some social scientists have also become interested in the study of architecture, environment, and human behavior (e.g., Hall and Hall 1975; Hall 1966; Sommer 1972; and Esser 1971). The majority of work has been aimed at the solution of specific design questions -- that is, discovering ways in which social science knowledge and methods can be useful to architects, inte­rior designers, and urban and regional planners.

It is the work of Venturi, Brown, and Izenour (1973) which most closely resembles the approach to architecture and the built environment that guides the proposed research. They have suggested that if one wishes to understand how people live in and with their built environment, it is necessary to study, in a non-judgemental way, the common and ordinary buildings in our society. [14]

We are not concerned with the built environment as a problem which needs re-designing to improve the quality of life for the residents in Juniata County. We are interested in learning how people's culture is expressed through their built forms.

We are not suggesting that a concern with deliberately designing an environment to preserve or improve the quality of life is not worthwhile. We are arguing that basic research concerned with understanding the relationship of people, their built forms, and the environment through the concept of culture and communication will augment and enhance applied design research.

We wish to explore the built environment in a way that will allow us to understand how the forms are congruent with a culturally derived system. To accomplish this task it will be necessary to record, describe, and classify the buildings. This analysis will be accomplished according to the traditional canons of architectural history and theory and, at this stage, without much recourse to the people who build or use these buildings. We wish to understand how these buildings appear to outsiders -- scholars of the built form.

The work will be accomplished by an architectural researcher and a photographer. Since it will be necessary to generate a comprehensive photographic record of the buildings, the team will be able to render a service to the community. The Juniata County Planning Commission is beginning a project of locating, photographing, and describing all buildings in the county that are more than 100 years old. It is our intention to coordinate our research so that our staff photographer can offer his/her services and advice to the Planning Commission.

The final phase of this study will be to conduct a series of structured interviews and some participant/observation with the builders of the county.

The goal will be to generate information on the process of form/style selection and construction from the point of view of the producers, and to be able to compare the analysis of the "outsider" analyst with the "native" builder. Since almost no buildings in the county are designed by architects, the builders and contractors are the major designers. Our preliminary studies indicate that the private homes follow a design constructed elsewhere with slight modifications -- that is, the houses have a "derived" style rather than one unique to the area.

Once the architectural study is completed, the findings will be used in two ways: 1) To generate material for the Built Environment Preference Kit (see below); and 2) To publish an architectural history and description of the county.  

Interiors of Public Space

If one looks at a building as a shell which provides a behavior setting, the interior becomes a place where further clues are provided as to the nature of the setting; that is, which performances the setting enhances and which performances it inhibits. It is assumed that the interiors are decorated in a way which is somehow congruent with other design elements in the culture. The prime functions are to reinforce values by providing a predictable visual display which makes the "purpose" of the setting clear.

This section is devoted to the study of the interiors of public spaces. By public we mean simply interior spaces which are open to public access -­banks, stores, churches, schools, government offices, etc. Obviously, the category is large and requires a means of establishing a sample. The sample will be qualitative and based upon the need to study at least one each of the categories discovered during the architectural analysis.

Some attempt will be made to produce general descriptions of the spaces, with special emphasis upon the pictorial as a design element. By pictorial we mean photographs, paintings, calendars, newspaper articles, etc., in other words, those decorative elements which are contained by a frame and hung on the walls. These settings are places where people see and learn to expect to see certain kinds of photographs and paintings. These settings may be "significant" exhibition settings like banks, galleries, or places of more casual display like diners or a supermarket bulletin board.

The justification for our emphasis on the pictorial is twofold: 1) An exhaustive description of these settings is impossible. Some narrowing of focus is essential; and 2) The emphasis on the pictorial ties in this domain directly to two other domains -- art and photography.

A qualitative sample of settings will be established reflecting the architectural survey and information generated by the researchers dealing with art and photography. The settings will be subjected to similar tech­niques of analysis: 1) A setting will be extensively photographed; 2) A description will be generated by the researchers; 3) The person(s) responsible for the settings will be interviewed to establish his design choices, motivations, and assumptions about the "look" of the place; and 4) Patrons of the setting will be interviewed to determine the degree of congruence between the "designer' and the "user."

Built Environment Preference Interview Kit

Once the first three phases are completed, the findings will be employed to construct an interview schedule and kit. It will be used to ascertain the existence of systematic cultural preferences in the built environment. The interview will be constructed around a set of photographs and range from questions concerned with the sense of the entire region through house forms to-the details of interiors. The respondents will be asked to deal with older buildings as well as contemporary forms. They will be asked to respond in terms of their own preferences and to make assumptions about the type of people who like certain forms (e.g., What type of person would live in this house?).

The intention of the interview kit is to construct an instrument which will allow the researchers to ascertain whether there is a systematic relationship between the preferences people express toward certain built forms. The interview kit will be pre-tested and then used during the family ethnographic studies. The findings will provide a contrast with the other analyses of the built environment already completed. Together they will allow us to deal systematically with the similarities and differences between the "outside" experts' view and the users' view.

Since the county appears to be quite homogeneous culturally, the built environment should reflect that homogeneity. We anticipate discovering a system which accommodates the 19th century stone farm houses, the split-level aluminum siding ranch houses, and the mobile homes that currently exist into an aesthetic.

IV-B-6  DOMAIN ANALYSIS PERFORMANCE

Performance is the domain concerned with those socially learned and patterned manipulations of self and objects which can be regarded as communicative. It occurs in the built environment and is an essential element of the domains of photography, television, film, and art. Performances range in formality from posing for a wedding portrait to the presentation of self at the family breakfast on the morning of the wedding.

Aspects of performance have been studied from a variety of perspectives: popularly as "body language" (Fast 1970); as "nonverbal communication (Davis 1975); as "paralanguage" (Trager and Smith 1951); as "kinesics" (Birdwhistell 1970); and as "proxemics" (Hall 1974). Our approach is based upon the presumption that a number of (heuristically separable) communicative codes are employed in face-to-face interaction. We plan to focus our attention upon the visible behavior which is found within community events. Our model for analysis Is derived from a variety of sources -- among them are Birdwhistell (1970), Scheflen (1973), Goffman (1959), Yoder (1974), and Hymes (1964).

The research is divided into five parts: 1) The development of an in­ventory of community events derived from community announcements, and reports and observations of daily activities of the people in the county; 2) The elicitation of a linguistic framework shared by residents in referring to the body and to body communication; 3) An analysis of the similarities and differences between local performance and performance portrayed in other visual domains; 4) Context analysis; and 5) The study of performance learning.

These five phases, their relationship to each other, and the relation­ship of this approach to the study of performance, to the other domain analyses and to the family ethnographies is described below.

Inventory of Community Events

An organizing strategy for the study of communication behavior is to focus on naturally occurring "events." An inventory of community events will begin with an informal content analysis of the local coverage of community happenings. The typology of public events drawn from this analysis will serve as a preliminary guide for types of performances to be observed.

A number of community events occur routinely, e.g., school classes, occupational activities, church services, auctions, etc.). Others are seasonal or more impromptu (political rallies, city planning commission meetings, etc.). Each event is attended by particular types of participants who congregate in a limited variety of social groups, and who share a range of fashions in clothes and cosmetics, and of styles of speaking and moving.

Features of participant performance which cut across events will be sought. A range of community conventions will be described for: 1) Styles of age-and-gender-specific hair and dress fashions; and 2) Regional varieties of physiognomy and body build. These are features of the "presentation of self" (Goffman 1959) which together indicate a participant's age, gender, ethnicity, and general health status.

Next, a general description of each informant contacted will be made by the researchers. These researcher descriptions will later be compared with descriptive comments about the same individuals made by community members. Still later, the researcher and resident descriptives will be analyzed with reference to the linguistically-mediated "body construct" shared by members of the community.

The "Body Construct As A Linguistic Framework

It is presumed that members of a cultural region share a linguistic framework for the conception of body parts and movements, a "body construct," (Birdwhistell 1971). To acquire a linguistic repertoire representative of community speech patterns (for later construction of interview schedules concerning performance), we will investigate local impressions of the "body as an organ of visual communication" (Birdwhistell 1970). Using regionally familiar themes from folklore, literature, and art, we will develop and employ projective devices to elicit data in the out-of-awareness "set" held by Juniatians toward the human body and body motion communication. Body constructs of residents will then be compared to discover commonalities and differences associated with social status. It may be discovered, for instance, that teenage boys of a par­ticular class share one body construct, and adult men of the same class another.

Initial descriptions of the residents made by the researchers will then be contrasted with the "body construct" shared by our sample of residents for the purpose of underscoring differences in linguistic frameworks employed by informants and researchers and of sensitizing research observers to their own linguistic biases. Our assessment of linguistic patterns concerning body communication will be invaluable in the employment of the procedures to be described next.

Performance and Its Representation

The relationship between performance and representations of the body has long been questioned but rarely systematically studied. Throughout history, variously labeled body parts have been exposed, covered, supported, compressed, padded or bound into the fashion of an era. Hollander (1971) hypothesized that the ideal clothed image has often been reflected in the nude art of a period (e.g., Goya's "Maja Desnuda" and Courbet's "La Source"). Goffman (1976) conjectured that stylized social conventions of gender display are depicted in advertising and news photos and in illustrations. We would add film and television, which record fashions in preferred body shapes and period costumes, but with the important addition of motion.

As stated earlier, the impact of mass-mediated message systems has been the subject of many studies. In this instance we are interested in the relationships between the performance seen on television, film, photographs, magazines, etc. (i.e., performances constructed for mass audiences by people who are not apart if the world of Juniata County) and performances within Juniata County undertaken by the people who live there. For example, are the aesthetics of personal appearance of people in Juniata County modified in any per­ceptible way because of mass media?

A number of strategies will be developed to discern empirical relationships between media portrayals of performances, reported and observed performance, and the ideals of performance. For example, informant descriptions of family photographs will be sought to contrast with researcher descriptions and to determine preferences in ideal body shape and dress. From these (informant and researcher) descriptions, a typology of "presentation of self" will be derived. Difference in behavior related to media portrayals of performance will be analyzed as potential status markers One approach will include an investigation of display areas and storage spaces for childhood, adolescent, and adult performance "ideals" and family photographs (i.e., classroom and bedroom wails, mirror edges,-wallets, albums, racks in barber and beauty shops, et c.). In some family homes, one or more types of display and storage areas may be conspicuously absent, and may be an indicator of the stage of the family life cycle. Posters of Farrah Fawcett or John Travolta may only be found in family homes having teenagers, for instance.

Context Analysis

Humans. often respond to their own behavior and to the behavior of others below the level of awareness as though such behavior (or the perceived events of which it is a part) were segmented into discrete units. The segmentation of the stream of communication behavior into behavioral contexts must be observationally examined. We will employ procedures developed by B. Lynch (1978), adapting context analysis techniques (Scheflen 1973) to study naturally occurring "events."

Rounding out the immediate behavioral context of an individual performance is the relationship between status of those present, conditions of time and place, and the behavior being performed. This contextual definition of performance allows actual performers to change while patterned performances may be seen to recur again and again independently of the actual participants. For example, posing for a wedding photograph may vary with: 1) The place and time (altar rail or backyard reception); 2) The types of performers present or absent (bride alone or wedding couple with the bride's family, of whom the mother is deceased); and 3) The behavior of "an audience" or of the photographer (the husband's mother grimacing and coaching "don't look so glum" or the photographer directing the about-to-be-photographed participant(s) to "smile")

Our selection of contexts for observation will be determined by our interest in visual communication and our decision to confine our looking to direct observations of larger "slices" of behavior (rather than to pursue analyses of filmed microbehaviors). At this stage in the exploration of the interaction of the visual domains with patterns of performance, we wish to explore under what conditions visual domain products such as a painting are produced, maintained, stored, and viewed in Juniata County.

To discover the potential relationship of age, gender, economic, and social relationship status with (context-specified) self-presentation, we will next focus on the daily round of activities of several individuals from each status group. This focus will provide data on a broader range of performance events than that provided by our original media typology. and will provide observational descriptions to be contrasted with self-reports of performance "rules." For example, a teenage girl will first be questioned about how she dresses for a range of (etic) type activities. She will then be observed or accompanied to a sample of each of these activities to determine which con­textual features are associated with exceptions to her reported patterns of dress, etc.

Again, the context control method (Birdwhistell 1970; Scheflen 1973) will be employed to determine conditions under which particular types of performances occur. For instance, it may be discovered that "going to the movies" may be segmented into a number of contextual features, combinations of which correlate with specific types of performance. This same teenage girl may report going to the movies with parents, with a date, with girl friends, or with a younger sibling. On each of these occasions she may go to the same theatre but sit in a different location. With each constellation of participants she may also see a different type of film. In addition, the time of day she attends a movie may vary with the type of co-participant(s). However, her selection and management of dress and cosmetics may vary only between the dating situation and all other participant constellation events. This variation may be related to the series of events included in the larger social occasion, the "date." A date may include going to the movies, going out for pizza afterward and discussing the movie, and driving to the girl's home to "park" for a short time before the girl is escorted to the door of her family home.

The larger situational context for performance events includes the relationship of each type of event to a community schedule of events and to the differential knowledge and skill of a full range of statuses (gender, age, etc.) of event participants. For instance, this may be the second marriage for the bride who does not wear a white wedding gown. However, some partici­pants, unaware of these circumstances before the wedding, come to the church wearing long dresses. During the reception at the bride's family home later in the day, an even greater range of dress than at the morning service may be seen, as men and boys begin to remove their jackets, etc. Here a greater number of candid "wedding photographs" may also be taken.

In this manner, reported rules will be compared with observational data for each type of event (reported in the media) and for its larger social occasion (discovered through the investigation of the daily rounds of events of several informants). An emphasis will be placed on the treatment of reported events and discovered occasions as isolated instances of contexts in which codes for interaction have been established by the past behavior of regular participants. A final determination of the "appropriateness" of individual context-specified presentations will rest upon the responses of co-participants rather than interview data. In other words, informant reports will be treated as data requiring observational verification, not as evidence.

In summary, the community offers a bread range of local fashions of dress, movement, and body appearance. An individual may choose from these a style more-or-less appropriate to contexts in which he or she participates in a daily round of activities. Some aspects of participant performance may be seen to vary noticably with changes in the context of the occasion and may enter into impressionistic definitions of changing "frames" (Goffman 1974) for performance (i.e., "being high" versus "being drunk).

Performance Learning

Institutionalized training for the acquisition of performance skills will also be investigated. This community offers a wide range of formal prepatory experiences for its youth. We will seek informant reports about (and where possible observe): 4-H Club classes in fashion and decorating, dance classes, sports training sessions, horseback riding classes, physical fitness and hygiene classes, photography classes, and hair dressing and cosmetology classes. Contrasts will be made with comparable classes for the elderly in senior citizens centers.

Observations are also planned for the full range of beauty and barber shops serving the community (i.e., those located in private dwellings and commercial buildings, and those run by one or several operators). Observational data will also be collected in clothing shops and stores selling cosmetics and body shaping equipment.

Less formal training, in the way of ministerial, physician, teacher, and parental sanctions and admonitions relating to child presentation will be collected and correlated with changes in body appearance following specific recommendations (i.e., the mand "comb your hair" may be followed by a period of erect posture and a flattening of the abdomen ). Comparable recommendations made to individuals of all other ages will also be collected and contrasted with those offered to youths.

To place all of this individual- and event-centered performance data in perspective with the social organizational patterns of the community, multi­generational family ethnographies will be included in the final phase of this project. Much of the investigation of the daily round of activities of in­dividuals and of the more public events of the community will have been exploratory. From this broad survey of community patterns will be drawn correlatives which will structure the family ethnography phase of the investigation.

IV-C. FAMILY ETHNOGRAPHIES:

Since the proposed project is composed of many separate tasks, it is essential to keep in mind the overall goal. It is to demonstrate the inter- relatedness of the visual domains to each other and to the culture -- that is, to generate an ethnography of visual communication. As stated earlier, the family and the home are the major unifying forces in this culture and the place where we expect to discover the level of integration among the domains.

The ethnographic study of families is sufficiently commonplace that a review of the literature and a general explication of the methods seems un­necessary; particularly since we are not interested in any theoretical issues involved in the study of the family as a socio-cultural institution. We will simply use the family as a socio-cultural unit, the home as its physical focus, and the occasional manifestations of a bilateral kindred (e.g., family reunions and various rites of passage celebrations) as sites of research rather than research problems. This section will, therefore, only elaborate upon some of the unique aspects of the proposed family ethnographies.

This phase is scheduled to occur during the second half of the project, about 18 months after we have begun the initial work. Some pilot family ethnographies will have already been conducted; an interpretation of the quantitatively based profile completed, and a description of the culture based on this initial survey produced. We will also have completed the field research on the domains and will be in the process of analyzing these data. Having gone through the exercise of first describing the culture holistically and then breaking it apart and, examining heuristic domains as if they were separable, we will now reintegrate the pieces in a qualitative field study of the social organization of the community, using family households as a focus for investigation.

The plan is rather simple to describe. Based upon the findings of the ethnographic profile, the domain analyses, and a "general sense" of the culture that the researchers have acquired, a list of the types of households that we need to study to gain an understanding of the range and interaction of family types will emerge. Since we are interested in socially patterned varieties of household compositions, status relationships, and interactions with visual domains, a random sampling of households is inappropriate.

Families will be selected on the basis of their fit to our schema of household types and their willingness to be studied.

While the size of the schema cannot be determined in advance, we assume that more than one family from each type will be studied. Two or more generations of each family will be studied (where possible) to provide data on the intersection of family life cycles with the personal life cycles of individuals, and a full round of family rites of passage (i.e., the death of a grandparent, the birth of a grandchild).

After the families are selected and permission secured, a period of intensive participant/observation will ensue. Some activities will require a formal agenda and a schedule of interview topics (e.g., the Built Environment Preference Interview Kit). Other activities will simply emerge from the observation of and participation in the daily round of family activities.

The data will be initially ordered into categories comparable to those generated for the Ethnographic Profile. In addition, the researchers will employ as a guide a set of questions, developed during the phase of domain analysis, concerning family involvement with each domain. These questions and profile categories will serve as ordering devices in establishing prior­ities and focusing observations. In other words, the domains per se will continue to have meaning in that they will provide the researchers with a list of activities to pay attention to. However, instead of concentrating on a domain to the virtual exclusion of everything else, the domain will now be examined to see the manner in which it fits into the fabric of the other domains and into the everyday life of these people.

Since the researchers who generated the survey instrument, interpreted the survey data, and conducted the domain analyses are the same researchers who will do the family ethnographies, the integration of the information will be enhanced and make possible the creation of a cohesive ethnography of the visual communication patterns of the community.

Although context-specific methods of investigation cannot be articulated in advance, some activities can be described with relationship to particular domains. The following descriptions should be regarded as merely indicative rather than exhaustive.

Photography

The study of photography in the families can be broken into two categories, photographs produced or photographs purchased by family members. The latter consists of professional photographs of family members for weddings or graduations, of calendars and catalogues, and of newspaper and "art" photographs. The former are the snapshots and photo albums produced by and for the family.

Contrasts will be made between the evaluation of the two types of photographs by various family members. Under what conditions are the two types evaluated in the same way? In different ways?

Family photography will be studied as a social process utilizing an approach similar to that employed in the study of paintings and home movies. The process will be investigated from inception to display. The various social roles of camera operator, subject, displayer, and audience will be examined. The rules of display will be discerned (i.e., what happens to the photographs upon their return from the lab).

Since photography is a domain where both production and consumption occur, the study of the entire process and its fit into the lives of the people is crucial. Photography is the domain that most enables us to compare the products made by local residents for themselves with products made extralocally for mass consumption.

This community is a place where people tend to live for several generations. It is, therefore, reasonable to expect two or three generations of family albums to be available, providing us with the opportunity to study the role of photography through several generations. We may learn about changing conventions of representation (i.e., the positions assumed by various family members in photographs of parents and children may have changed in a patterned way through time and generations of a family). Family photographs of the same family members may be exhibited (or stored) in different rooms in the homes of children, parents, and grandparents. We may also learn about changing conventions for subjects for photographs. What constitutes an event worth photographing? how are changes in conventions related to changes in technology and availability of equipment?

Film

As stated in the domain analysis, exhibition events are of primary concern in our study of film. We intend to accompany family members to the movies and participate in the social occasions which surround film-going in order to situate the film event within the lives of particular family members. We may find performance patterns which vary with age and stage in both the family and personal life cycles. For example, young families with small children may attend drive-in movies together. Older families with teenagers may split up into various constellations of particular family members (and non-family members) to attend movies. Teenagers may rarely attend movies with parents. Parents of teenagers may attend fewer movies than when they themselves were teenagers or parents of younger children.

If we locate any families involved in the production of home movies, we will, of course, make a study of both the production and display of home movies in the manner previously discussed. These home movie patterns will then be contrasted with patterns of commercial movie-going.

Television

The study of television within the context of these families is crucial. Since the home is where most television is watched, we plan to watch tele­vision with families, join in conversations before, during, and after television viewing, and examine the routinization of television viewing into the daily round of family activities. The scheduling of daily agendas around television viewing will be investigated. And the placement of television sets with relationship to social organization in particular rooms (and the. surrounding dwelling spaces) will be studied.

Arts and Crafts

It is anticipated that some families will engage in the production of arts and crafts and that all families will consume some art objects or craft artifacts. As in our approach to photography, we will study the entire process when it is present. In addition, we will, strive to compare the process surrounding locally produced artifacts with performances relating to extralocally produced artifacts.

Built Environment

As stated earlier, the analysis of the built environment ends prior to the study of the interiors of homes. The researchers will make a formal description and analysis of the interiors of the homes of families we study, utilizing an approach similar to the one used for the study of public spaces. This description will include data relevant to several domains -- painting, photography, television, etc., since it will concentrate on the pictorial and visual. After completing the description of dwelling spaces of family members, the researchers will interview each family member about design pre­ferences, employing the Built Environment Preference Interview Kit.

Performance

The interaction of performance patterns of various family members will be investigated during this phase. We will study the differential knowledge and performance skill of family members that are particularly associated with activities associated with the visual domains. We will now concentrate on the performances which are confined to the home and the integration of the "private" performances with those studied during the domain analysis of per­formance, i.e., the public.

The data generated during this final phase will be analyzed and organized into two forms:                            

1) Ethnographic accounts of each family will be generated; and 2) An attempt to integrate the separate accounts into an ethnography of visual communication will be undertaken as the final product.

V.   FUNDING SOURCES FOR THIS PROJECT

In addition to the National Endowment for the Humanities, funds have been requested from the National Science Foundation (proposal submitted November 10, 1978. Notification will occur in March 1979. Proposal I.D. number BNS 7906181 Anthropology). Also, on March 1, 1979, this proposal will be submitted to the Behavioral Science Division of the National Institute for Mental Health.

A pre-proposal was sent to the following funding agencies: The Ford Foundation; The Markle Foundation; The JDR, III Fund; The Exxon Educational Foundation; The Russel Sage Foundation; The Edward W. Hazen Foundation; The Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; The Rockefeller Bro­thers Fund; and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The majority responded favorably to the idea of the research, but all felt that it was outside of their current guidelines.

At the present time, a possibility of partial funding is being discussed with The Rockefeller Foundation; The National Institute of Education; The National Endowment for the Arts, Services to the Field, Media Arts Division; and several private Pennsylvania foundations. It is from these sources that the Principal Investigator hopes to raise the funds necessary for cost-sharing.

NOTE: While the National Endowment for the Humanities does not specifically require a statement of pending support for other projects, it should be noted that the Principal Investigator is the Project Director for another research proposal that will be submitted to the National Institute for Mental Health. If funded, the project would begin January 1, 1980, and end June 30, 1981. The Principal Investigator's percentage-of-effort would never exceed three days per month, and would in no way conflict with this proposed project.

VI. DISSEMINATION OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT PRODUCTS

This project will generate a number of interim and final products. The research team is committed to making the information available in a variety of media to a number of publics -- the people in the study; the scholarly world; and the public at large. The work is designed to produce the following:

1. Preliminary reports at the conclusion of each year to be circulated among other professionals for comment.

2. Symposia and research report papers to be presented at meetings such as The American Anthropological Association, The International Communication Association, The American Folklore Society, etc.

3. Each team member will assume the responsibility of producing articles on each of the domains for both popular and scholarly periodicals such as The American Anthropologist Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, Humanities in Society, Journal of Communication; and the New York Times Magazine

4. The team will produce an "overview" book of the project.

5. At the project's conclusion, the team will prepare a presentation for the County and present it whenever asked.

6.  Funds have not been requested to produce a film about the work. The possibility has been discussed among the team members and with Michael Ambrosino, Executive Producer of Odyssey, the new P.B.S. series devoted to Anthropology and Archaeology. It was decided to wait until the project was underway and the team has had the chance to discuss the idea with the people involved before making a decision. Once we have determined that the people in the county are agreeable to having a film made about their lives that could be aired on public television, funding agencies such as N.E.A., N.E.H., and others will be approached.

It is assumed that the research products listed above are minima, and that the number of articles, photo essays, and books will be far more numerous.

VII. CONCLUSION

The results of the proposed research will be important for several areas. An anthropological study of visual communication will provide our society with a unique means of understanding the symbolic forms and events which we create and use. We are convinced that "of all the changes in what has come to be called the quality of life, none has had a larger direct impact on human consciousness and social behavior than the rise of communication technology (Gerbner 1972:111). Some people regard mass-mediated message technologies as having the significance equal to that of the invention of the wheel or the industrial revolution -- a fundamental re-ordering of the world. We seem to vacillate between seeing mass media as a means to technological salvation (Goldmark 1972) and as a font of repression and low­mindedness (Marcuse 1969).

If we, as a nation who controls the "Image Empires," wish to use these devices for our own and the world's betterment, we must understand more about how these message technologies fit into our lives and how we learn to under­stand and accommodate them on a day-to-day basis.

George Gerbner has called for "cultural indicator" studies to determine our social policy toward "the mass production and, distribution of the most broadly shared messages of our culture" (1973:3). We support his argument and extend it to include ethnographic studies of visual communication as knowledge essential to enable us to institute any social policy concerned with the mass communication industry. We cannot control what we do not under­stand nor can we manage the mass media in a way that maximizes its benefits and minimizes its harm if we do not know how it fits into the other symbolic systems we already use.

We have chosen to study the least understood and most pervasive form of human communication -- the visual/pictorial -- in a part of America which is virtually invisible. We have decided to do so not because we wish to be obscure or esoteric but because we are convinced that this approach is an excellent way to discover how things that are "made to be seen" have meaning for people in their everyday lives.

We do not wish to imply that the sophisticated opinions of specialists about significant achievements of professionals are not important. We wish to augment rather than replace this approach by offering another perspective -­an anthropological one concerned with the cultural and the communicative and not the evaluative.

We feel that at present we lack sufficient understanding of the role of visual images in our lives and that it can only be gained through a long-term intensively participatory and comprehensive study of movies, houses, snapshots, television, etc., as they appear in the everyday lives of people. Our systems of mass communication literally circle the globe from the New Guinea native to the New York urban sophisticate. Their pervasiveness and seeming power cannot be questioned. We need a holistic understanding of their place in our lives.

We presented an argument in this proposal that to study one aspect - even the most pervasive and potentially important one -- television -- in isolation away from other visual forms and away from its socio-cultural contexts and the human encounters which surround it would be a mistake if our goal is to understand the impact of these domains on the quality of life. In addition to the societal issues, there are other implications to the work. Foremost is the development of an anthropological perspective for the study of visual communication. As stated earlier, anthropologists have not developed theories and methods which specifically deal with the study of visual communication nor have scholars of visual communication attempted to adapt an anthropological perspective to their work. We intend to provide anthropologists with evidence that visual communication in a complex society can be success­fully studied from an anthropological perspective. We will also demonstrate to communication researchers the value of an ethnographic approach.

To be more specific, the research is designed to produce a number of contributions: Methodology

The project will be innovative in its use of an ethnographic approach. In anthropology, ethnography has, by and large, been a qualitative, single­scholar method for the study of small-scale non-industrialized cultures. In spite of an interest in urban anthropology and ethnographies of America, the concept of ethnography is underrated and underemployed. We intend to demonstrate that ethnography can be accomplished utilizing both qualitative and quantitative techniques with a research team in an American community. We shall validate the idea that the concept of ethnography is a powerful one useful for the study of questions pertaining to the relationship between culture and communication. It can enhance and expand our knowledge of mass media and visual arts in Western cultures as well as the small-scale cultures that ethnography was designed originally to explore.

We acknowledge the complexity and enormity of the task we have set for ourselves. We feel that not only is it possible to accomplish but that it is the only way to come to an understanding of the questions we are asking. Like all ethnographers, we will have to constantly make decisions which limit our focus of study. To study all possible avenues with equal intensity would be impossible. Since we are committed to being reflexive, the decisions will be made self-consciously, the important ones will be discussed by the team, and as much as possible, we will strive to regard our own behavior as data. The resultant product -- a reflexive ethnographic account of the research will make available the decisions and the rationale behind the decisions. It is an essential task if we are to validate our approach and make it readily available to other scholars.

Domain Analysis

The ethnographic accounts of each domain will be structured in such a way as to accomplish three tasks: 1) Provide an analytic description of each domain; 2) Discuss the congruence among the domains; and 3) Explore the relationship between the domain and the culture. Once completed, the work will expand our knowledge of the role of photography, film, television, arts and crafts, the built environment, and performance in the lives of the people of Juniata County and ourselves. While they are designed to be integrated into the research design, the domain analyses in their own right will be extremely useful for scholars whose interest lies primarily in only one domain. In other words, we are suggesting that our approach to, for example, the built environment is sufficiently unique to be of interest to architectural scholars who have no interest in visual communication.

Visual Communication

The scientific study of visual communication is not very old and the number of empirical or ethnographic studies not very large. The literature in the field tends to be conjectural, evaluative, or programmatic. e are going to step out of the cloistered, speculative world occupied by the critic and theoretician who are mainly concerned with the elegance and congruence of their arguments. We wish to examine ideas such as semiotics to see if they aid our understanding of how people actually organize, their world. We feel that it is time to "field test" the model. If semiotics and other theories of visual communication cannot be ethnographically supported then their utility must be called into question.

Culture and Communication

Our knowledge of the relationship between culture and communication has primarily been confined to the verbal. Most general theories of communication have a linguistic base. While structural linguistics gave birth to structuralism and semiology in Europe and greatly contributed to our understanding of the communication process, it has also caused us to look for "the language of film, the language of the body, etc.," without much success.

The research is designed to expand our understanding of the relationship between culture and communication through an exhaustive examination of a non­linguistic mode of communication. The shift in perspective into another mode and the shift into a non-linguistic based semiotic will broaden our understanding of the symbolic environments.

We feel that it is time to examine in a holistic fashion the visual-pictorial symbolic environments that people create to organize and make sense out of the world. We are convinced that spending time with the people of Juniata County and learning about their world will make our own world more comprehensible.

FOOTNOTES

1 A theoretical discussion of the relationship between modes, codes, media, and context is out of place here. We assume that there are a variety of primary human symbolic modes which in turn are divided into codes. To transmit messages, humans employ a particular code in a particular medium that they assume to be appropriate for the social role that they are assuming in the social context within which the communication is occurring. (Hymes 1964; Worth 1966; Ruby 1976a).

2 Chalfen's (1974) doctoral work under Sol Worth is the first and most extensive utilization of Hymes' Ethnography of Communication model for the study of a non-verbal communication system.

3 This project was originally conceived as a collaboration between the Principal Investigator and Sol Worth.. Worth died in August, 1977. The Principal Investigator decided to continue the project and has organized a research group partially composed of persons trained by Worth in an ethnographic approach to the study of visual communication.

4 While the preceding section was confined to discussing only Hymes and Worth, it should be acknowledged that the work of many scholars has contributed to the concept of culture and communication expressed here -- Geertz (1973), Bateson and Mead (1941), Birdwhistell (1970), and Hall (1959) to cite a few.

5 Traditionally, anthropologists have attempted to protect their subjects by. changing their names and obscuring the location of the study, Since it will not be possible to do that, other protective measures will have to be explored.

6 Both Aaron Katcher, an investigator in the University of Pennsylvania Rural Dental health Program in Juniata County, and Marilyn Jahn, the author of the Community Profile, are Research Associates of the Center for Visual Communication. Jahn will act as consultant in several phases of the proposed re­search. Their knowledge of the county was invaluable during the preliminary phases of work.

7 While it is impossible to disguise the identity of the county, it is possible to use only initials of the persons studied.

8 Both Ruby (l976b) and Sekula (1975) have argued that photographs have a tendency toward a variety of meanings and that the context determines which potential meaning will dominate. By studying photographs in a variety of contexts and seeking to discover people's interpretations of the photographs, the study will generate data which will make it possible to examine these assertions with empirical evidence.

9 In a recent media survey only 50% of the respondents said that they ever attend the movies -- Cf., Appendix II.

10 The idea of examining film as a social process in terms of the producers or makers, the processes of production, and the exhibition of the product has been previously explored by Chalfen (1974).

11 "Designed environments obviously include places where man has planted forests or cleared them, diverted rivers, or fenced fields in certain patterns. The placement of roads and dams, of pubs and cities are all design. Roadside stands and secondhand car lots are as much designed environments as glamorous office blocks and cultural centers." (Rapoport 1977:20).

12 Ian McHarg's seminal work, Design With Nature (1969), has been a major influence on the thinking of the Principal Investigator. In 1972-3 the Principal Inves­tigator taught ethnographic field methods and other techniques of social process analysis in a Regional Planning Studio with Ian McHarg at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture.

13 "However, some reference needs to be made to these in order to complete the definition of vernacular and to clarify the areas of our concern. Avoiding for the moment the problem of whether a vernacular architecture is possible with modern communications and self-consciousness, I would suggest that there is a modern folk idiom, and that this is primarily, although not exclusively, one.of type Most of the folk architecture in contemporary America has been in terms of new types -- the motel, the diner, drive-ins of all types -- all of which originated outside the design professions and have, as it were, come up from 'below.' The forms themselves have been those currently fashionable and commonly used; their wide dissemination by the various news media, film, and travel make it im­possible to create forms in the traditional manner. I have already suggested that relationships between these buildings can no longer be achieved through the informal controls typical of traditional vernacular. Those forms which are still partly that of style -- the Doggie Diners, concrete doughnuts, and so on -­are designed for the popular taste, not by it, but they, as well as popular housing, continue to show some commonly held values more clearly than does the design subculture." (Rapoport 1969:7),

14 Rapoport (1969:126-7) agrees: "It is the tract house rather than the architect designed house that needs to be discussed in order to discover which of the values it represents might help explain its success."

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     1977              Strategies for Improving Visual Learning Services, State College, PA.

Ekman, Paul

            1973             Darwin and Facial Expression A Century of Research in Review. Academic Press, New York.

Esser, Aristide H., ed.

            1971             Behavior and Environment: The Use of Space animals and Men. Plenum Press, New York.

Fast, Julius

            1970             Body Language M. Evans and Co., Inc., New York.

Friedman, Martin, ed.

            1971 Naives and Visionaries E.P. Dutton and Company, New York.

Friendley, Fred

            1978             "Must the Industry be Ruled by the Numbers?" New York Times August 6, Entertainment Section, p. 22.

Gans, Herbert

            1962             The Urban Villagers The Free Press, New York.

Gans, Herbert

            1973             "The Famine in Mass Communication Research," American Journal of Sociology Vol. 77, No. 14, pp. 697-705.

Gans, Herbert

            1971             Popular Culture and High Culture An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste Basic Books, Inc., New York.

Geertz, Clifford

            1973             The Interpretation of Cultures Basic Books, N.Y.

Gerbner, George

            1972             "Communication and Social Environment" in Communication A Scientific Amerlcan Book, Wm. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, pp. 111-120.

Gerbner, George

            1973             "Cultural Indicators: The Third Voice" in Communication Technology and Social Policy. John Wiley, New York.

Gerbner, George and Larry Gross

            1973             The Social Reality of Television Drama. Unpublished grant proposal.

Gerbner, George , Larry Gross et al

            1978             Cultural Indicators: Violence Profile No. 9," Journal of Communication, Vol. 28, No. 3, PP-176-217.

Gerbner, George Larry Gross and N. Signorielli

            1978             Animals In Television. A Research Proposal, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Glassie, Henry

            1972             "Folk Art," in Folklore and Folklife An Introduction. Richard M. Dorson, Ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Goffman, Erving

            1959             The Presentation of Self in Everyday. Life Doubleday Anchor Books, Garden City, New York.

Goffman, Erving

            1974             Name Analysis. Harper Colophon Books, New York

Goffman, Erving

            1976             "Gender Advertisements," Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 69-154.

Goldman, Peter

            1972             "Communication and the Community" in Communication, A Scientific American Book, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco.

Green, Jonathan

            1974             "The Snapshot," Aperture Vol. 19, No. 1, Millerton, New York.

Greenberg, Clement

       1961        Art and Culture. Beacon Press, Boston.

Gross, Larry

            1977             "Television as a Trojan Horse," School Media Quarterly Spring, pp. 175-180.

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Hall, Edward

       1966        The Hidden Dimension Doubleday, New York.

Hall, Edward

            1974             Handbook for Proxemic Research Special publication of the Society for the Anthropology of Visual Commmunication. Washington, D.C.

Hall, Mildred and Edward Hall

            1975             The Fourth Dimension in Architecture The Impact of Building on Man's Behavior. Blue Feather Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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            1967             European Folk Art in Europe and the Americas. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Hollander, Anne

            1971 The Clothed Image: Picture and Performance," New Literary History Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 477-493. -

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Hymes, Dell

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Hymes, Dell

     1974      Foundations in Sociolinguistics An Ethnographic Approach University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA.

Janis, Sidney

            1965             They Taught Themselves American Primitive Painters of the 20th Century. Kennikat Press, New York.

Kaplan, Max

      1960       Leisure in America. John Wiley and Sons, New York.

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     1948      Made In America . Doubleday, New York.

Kouwenhoven, John A.

            1962             Made in America The Arts in Modern Civilization. Doubleday, New York.

Langness, Louis

            1965             The Life History in Anthropological Science Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York.

Lesy, Michael

            1973             Wisconsin Death Trip. Random House, New York.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

     1970      The Raw and The Cooked. Harper and Row, New York.

Lyle, Jack

            1972             "Television in Daily Life: Patterns of Use, Overview," Television and Social Behavior Vol. IV, Television in Day-to-Bay Life Patterns of Use Eli A. Rubenstein, George A. Comstock and John A. Murray. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., pp. 1-32.

Lynch, Barbara

      1972       Mapplng a Living Room. Unpublished paper, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

  Lynch, Barbara

            1978             Sacred Space: An Ethnographic Study of Slovak- and Irish-American Communication Patterns. Unpublished Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

Lynch, Kevin

      1960       The Image of the City. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge.

Lynch, Kevin

     1977      Managing the Sense of a Region M.I.T. Press, Cambridge.

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            1969             A Critique of Pure Tolerance. Beacon Press, Boston.

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     1969      Design with Nature. Doubleday, New York.

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            1975             Review of Darwin and Facial Expression by Paul Ekman. Journal of Communication Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 209-213.

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            1977             Home Mode Photography: A Study of Visual Interaction and Communication in Everyday Life. Unpublished Master's Thesis, Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

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            1967             "Anthropology and Mass Communication Research," Sociologus Vol. 17, No. 2.

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Powdermaker, Hortense

            1962     Copper Town Changing Africa The Human Situation on the Rhodesian Copperbelt Greenwood Press, Greenwood, Ill.

Rapoport, Amos

            1969             House Form and Culture Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Rapoport, Amos

            1977             The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Built Environment. Aldine, Chicago.

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            1971             "Towards an Anthropological Cinema," Film Comment Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 35-40.

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            1973a             "Stealing their Souls: The Anthropological Consequences of a Wired Planet." An unpublished paper presented at The Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings.

Ruby, Jay

            1973b             "Up the Zainbesi With Notebook and Camera or Being an Anthropologist Without Doing Anthropology With Pictures," P.I.E.F Newsletter Vol. 14, No. 3.

Ruby, Jay

            1975             "Is an Ethnographic Film a Filmic Ethnography?" Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication Vol. 2, No. 2.

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            1976a             "Anthropology and Film: The Social Science Implications of Regarding Film as Communication," Quarterly Review of Film Studies Vol. 1, No. 14, pp. 436-445.

Ruby, Jay

            1976b             "In a Pic's Eye: Interpretive Strategies for Deriving Meaning and Significance from Photographs," AfterImage Vol. 3, No. 9, pp. 5-7-

Ruby, Jay

Ruby, Jay

            1978             "Exposing Yourself: Reflexivity, Anthropology and Film," Serniotica (Forthcoming).

Rudofsky, Bernard

            1964             Architecture Without Architects. Boubleday, New York.

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            1973             Communication Structure. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana.

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            1961             Television in the Lives of our Children. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA.

Sekula, Alan

            1975             "On the Invention of Meaning in Photographs," Artform, Vol. 13, No. 5, pp. 36-145.

Soniner, Robert

             1972      Design Awareness, Rinehart Press, Corte Madea, CA.

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             1977      On Photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

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Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour

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            1978             "Film Research: The Need for a New Breed," Journal of Educational Communication and Technology, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 65-78.

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            1970             "The Criticism of Photography as Art," University of Florida Humanities Monograph Number 32, Gainsville, Florida.

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            1975             "Feature Films as Cultural Documents," in Principles of Visual Anthropology Paul Hockings, ed., Mouton, The Hague, pp. 231-252.

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              1974             The 1973-74 Wolfman Report on the   Photographic Industry in the United States New York.

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            1966             "Film as Non-Art: An Approach to the   Study of Film," The American Scholar Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 322-.

Worth, Sol

            1969             "The Development of a Semiotic   of Film," Semiotica, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 282-321.

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            1973             "Toward an Anthropological Politics of   Symbolic Form," in Reinventing Anthropology Dell Hymes, ed., Pantheon Books, New York, pp. 335-364.

Worth, Sol

            1977             Toward an Ethnographic Semiotic. Unpublished paper delivered at a Conference on Film and   Ethnology, Paris, France.

Worth, Sol

            1978             "Margaret Mead and the Shift from Visual Anthropology to the Anthropology of Visual Communication," in Margaret Mead Festschrift AAAS Ruth Bunzell,

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            1972             Through Navaho Eyes An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

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Worth, Sol and Jay Ruby

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