Reading National Geographic

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Summary: Ethnocentrism gleamed from the pages of National Geographic
Review: I found this book to be thorough in its research of the geographic as an American institution. It presupposes that the reader is well aquainted with Gramsci's notion of mass media and the Frankfurt school borne out of this belief of hegemony perpectuated by a controlling elite. The author also takes liberty that the reader is aquainted with research methods using coding to differentiate subjects responses to pictures portrayed. Lastly, the author's use of interviewing technics and the subsequent interpretation of those responses enables the reader the opportunity to realize how the geographic and social background of the readers influence the perceptions people have when encountering this quasi-scientific journal. As an anthropological study this book illuminates the ethnocentric idealations of the Geographic's demographic readership, that is upper middle and middle class white euroamericans.

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Summary: anthropology schmanthropology
Review: In this book, Lutz and Collins deconstruct the system of misrepresentation in which National Geographic functions as purveyor of cultural/historical fact. The authors problematize NG's systematic misrepresentation of the non-West and examine how those misrepresenations resonate with its 'American' audience through reinforcing the self-other binary. NG encodes a white, middle-class, male (straight) worldview, and as such, tells us more about the standardized/naturalized/anesthetized 'American' culture than about those it 'studies.' Through analyzing photographs and their captions and interviewing NG staff, the authors reveal the racism and paternalism that are at the heart of the National Geographic gaze.

Rating:
Summary: Give me a break...
Review: Quite simply, I don't buy into 90% of the authors claims, and the authors seemed to be completely blinded by their own preconcieved ideas that they can't be at all objective in their interpretation of the subject matter.

Ultimately, this books is nothing more than rhetoric about "white male dominated racist Western culture".

The authors clearly had this notion in mind when they wrote this book, and it taints virtually the entire book to the point where their conclusions aren't even remotely believable as being the result of objective research.

Rating:
Summary: Give me a break...
Review: The book is about the "making and consuming of images of the non-western world." And images, after all, "have taken over from written texts the role of primary educator." The two look at a set of 600 photographs published in the magazine from 1950 to 1986 (roughly their NG -reading lifetimes). They argue the photos are selectively chosen to present a view that does not disturb middle-class American self-identities and connected views of the 3rd world. The photos usually show a gentle, peaceful, content, colorful exotic people who, though they might not be wealthy yet, are on the road to modern progress on the Western model. The non-Western world is appropriated, its description has helped maintain social hierarchies in the First World. Even worse, the NG's practice goes so far as to abet war-making on the people it purposefully misunderstands.

There three methodological steps are to look at the process of producing the images (a social endeavor over which no individuals have total say throughout the process), examine the structure and content of the images, and identify how readers view the photographs.

"We chart the tendency of the magazine to idealize and render exotic third-world peoples, with an accompanying tendency to downplay or erase evidence of poverty and violence. The photographs show these people as either cut off from the flow of world events or involved in a singular story of progress from tradition to modernity [ahem, two very different things unless you're not thinking hard about "modernity"], a story that changes with decolonization."

Their goal is make NG and other mass media "understand and historicize the differences that separate interconnected human beings," to heighten empathy without fostering stereotyping or paternalism.

Criticism: I can't deny that the writers made such a negative impression on me with their dogma and attacking hyperbole (and dripping class resentment) that their useful ideas are weakened in my view. I wouldn't assign this to students I hope will write well.

Rating:
Summary: Good, basic points. Flawed book.
Review: The book is about the "making and consuming of images of the non-western world." And images, after all, "have taken over from written texts the role of primary educator." The two look at a set of 600 photographs published in the magazine from 1950 to 1986 (roughly their NG -reading lifetimes). They argue the photos are selectively chosen to present a view that does not disturb middle-class American self-identities and connected views of the 3rd world. The photos usually show a gentle, peaceful, content, colorful exotic people who, though they might not be wealthy yet, are on the road to modern progress on the Western model. The non-Western world is appropriated, its description has helped maintain social hierarchies in the First World. Even worse, the NG's practice goes so far as to abet war-making on the people it purposefully misunderstands.

There three methodological steps are to look at the process of producing the images (a social endeavor over which no individuals have total say throughout the process), examine the structure and content of the images, and identify how readers view the photographs.

"We chart the tendency of the magazine to idealize and render exotic third-world peoples, with an accompanying tendency to downplay or erase evidence of poverty and violence. The photographs show these people as either cut off from the flow of world events or involved in a singular story of progress from tradition to modernity [ahem, two very different things unless you're not thinking hard about "modernity"], a story that changes with decolonization."

Their goal is make NG and other mass media "understand and historicize the differences that separate interconnected human beings," to heighten empathy without fostering stereotyping or paternalism.

Criticism: I can't deny that the writers made such a negative impression on me with their dogma and attacking hyperbole (and dripping class resentment) that their useful ideas are weakened in my view. I wouldn't assign this to students I hope will write well.

Rating:
Summary: Do I need a Sociology degree to read National Geographic?
Review: The title of this book grabbed me: READING NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. I now wish I had not grabbed up the book. Doing what the title suggests is a fairly benign activity; the only danger you face in reading the magazine is falling asleep in an inappropriate place. Let's admit it, National Geographic articles are written in a very prosaic style. This however is not news. We have been reading the magazine long enough to know the truth behind what one of it's past editors is quoted as saying: "only what is is of a kindly nature is printed about any country or people, everything unpleasant or unduly critical being avoided". Most of us have been around long enough to know that such cultural relativism, homogenization, and plain-vanilla humanism makes for some very boring reading.

That however is probably the only thing that you really need to know about NG. I certainly didn't need to know - and now knowing, don't believe, - as the authors believe that in depicting the naked breasts of native women: "the magazine and its readers are caught between the desire to play out the cultural fantasy of the oversexed native woman and the social controls of sexual morality..." This fixation which makes up an entire chapter "Women and Their Breasts" only highlights the real difficulty with the book's analysis. It is shallow and leans heavily towards a feministic cultural critique; it's also narrow in that it mostly looks at how NG depicts cultures. What about the other subjects the magazine looks at?

Boring writing aside my continued enjoyment of National Geographic comes from its explorations of wild places and its emphasis on nature. I much prefer this to what READING NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC would have me do - ponder whether the magazine is a pernicious contributor to the spread of Western supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, and the homogenizing influences of a white middle class world view.