VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY: UNDERSTANDING VENEZUELA’S HUMANITARIAN DISASTER THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
2018 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Venezuela faces today an unprecedented social and political collapse that extends beyond the critical economy and the violence; a deadly combination of severe shortages of food and medicine which makes it extraordinarily difficult for most Venezuelans to obtain essential medical care and the adequate minimal nutritional intake to ensure survival. The primary concern of this research is to answer the question of how do visual representations of Venezuela’s humanitarian disaster elucidate the deterioration of the quality of life of its younger citizens? This study aims to examine and better understand the effects and implications of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis on its citizenry through the use of photography as a method of qualitative research, by paying particular attention to young Venezuelans and their role as social and political agents. The study of young people’s reali- ties through photographs provides an unique opportunity to appraise and comprehend real processes of social exchange; the ways in which visual images can be understood differently by different sub- jects in different socio-cultural spheres in the context of a humanitarian disaster. However, in order to enlarge the possibilities of conventional empirical research and withstand the intrinsic subjectivi- ty of qualitative research, these visual representations were inserted into photo-interviews. Both the photographs and the photo-interviews of this study were analysed and interpreted by using the ana- lytical approach of thick description. In this regard, this dissertation seeks to examine the length and complexity of an emergency situation by seeking to raise awareness and procure critical understanding about the colossal dimension of Venezuelan’s humanitarian crisis and its disastrous consequences on more than 30 million people.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö universitet/Kultur och samhälle , 2018. , p. 64
Keywords [en]
Venezuela, humanitarian disaster, crisis, emergency, food, medicine, shortages, hunger, violence, quality of life, visual ethnography, photography, photo-elicitation, thick description
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23029Local ID: 24416OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-23029DiVA, id: diva2:1482986
Educational program
KS K3 Communication for development
Supervisors
Examiners
2020-10-272020-10-27Bibliographically approved