Digital Storytelling and Implicated Scho

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Journai »/ Canadian Studies • Revue d'études canadiennes

Digital Storyteliing and implicated Scholarship

in the lassroom

Ch ristopher Fletcher and Carolina C ambre

This essay describes the development of digital storytelling as a popular multime-

dia work and how the autho rs have ap plied it in th e university classroom. As a

pedagogical tool, digital storytelling offers a unique learning experience for stu-

dents.

The authors explore student discourse about the learning and situate this

experience within a framework of

implic ted scholarship

an ongoing engagement

between the academy and society. Implicated scholarship is developed in the

metho dology and practice of the French visual ethnograp her Jean Rouch and has

a deep historical lineage running through Canadian applied anthropology. Digital

storytelling in an im plicated vein protects and illuminates social com plexity.

Cet essai décrit le développement du récit numérisé comme travail multimédia

populaire et com m en t nou s l avons appliqué d ans u ne classe universitaire. En

tan t q u ou til pédagog ique, le récit numérisé offre un e expérience d apprentissage

unique pour les étudiants. Les auteurs explorent le discours étudiant au sujet de

l apprentissage et situent cette expérience à l intérieur d un cadre d érud ition

engagée, un engag em ent c on tinu entre l enseign em ent universitaire et la société.

L érudition engagée est développée d ans la m éthodo logie et la pratiqu e de

l ethno logu e visuel français Jean Rouch et possède un e généalogie h istorique p ro-

fonde q ui se retrouve dan s l ensemb le de l anthrop ologie appliquée can adie nn e.

Le récit num érisé, dan s un esprit engagé, protège et illum ine la com plexité sociale.



hristop her Fietcher and aroiina amb re

Storytelling is for an other as much as for

oneself

In the reciproc-

ity that is storytelling, the teller offers herself as guide.... The other's

receipt of that guidance not only recognizes but values the teller. The

moral genius of storytelling is that each, teller and listener, enters the

space of the story for the other. (Frank 1995, 17-18)

If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, one

could say that its fundam ental purpose is to ensure tha t all students

benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in

public, community, and economic life. (Cazden et al. 1996, 60)

Christopher Fletcher December 2006:

For weeks, students have been coming to

door to share their experiences of working on the digital story assignment they

are required to do in my visual anthropology class. Digital storytelling is a simple

method of using widely available image editing software iMovie, Premiere,

M

Photo

Story,

PowerPoint

to blend together digitized still photographs and narr

tive to create short, evocative, and informative multimedia pieces. Their task is to

create original pieces that address theoretical and topical issues pertinent to the

discipline. Sometimes the y are elated, hav ing m anage d to get the image software

to do what they want it to do. At other times, they are shaking with frustration

over their failure. Some are sleeping (or cam ping ) in th e lab so the y can work on

their assignm ents after h ours, leaving their shoes wedged in the doorw ays tha t are

locked at night. For hours they build, refine, and shape their stories, editing the

narratives and image transitions until they are satisfied. They are creating. They

say tha t th ey lose all sense of time w he n they are working. We celebrate th e final

products with a showing of the work they have produced. Friends of mine and

of the students, colleagues, and representatives of the university administration

come and go for the more than two hours it takes to watch and discuss them all.

The subjects of one of the stories, a retired couple— he suffering from Parkinson's,

she not— com e, watch the stories, and talk w ith th e stu den ts. Several of the stories

are so moving that tears well up as we watch them; others send us into gales of

laughter. The distance would normally feel when examining student coursework

shrinks, and it is clear tha t we have all been sharing an unus ually in tense learning

experience. We all recognize how much effort students have applied to produce

the sights and sounds of their digital stories. The showing is the culmination



lou rna i o f Canadian Studies • Revue d étude s canadiennes

Pedagogy Excellence and Implication

Many Canadian universities, including the one we work/study at, are going

through a process of re-visioning teaching. This is occurring in the context of new

forms of com petition and an ethos of excellence tha t mark the neo-liberal and

postmodern transformation of post-secondary education (Readings 1996). Teach-

ing, some feel, has been stranded in a professional limbo. Research-dollars-in and

publications-out measures now dominate the faculty evaluation process and the

cultural capital of the academic star system (such as it is), and contribute to the

pressure on graduate students in arts, humanities, and social science programs.

Our research on digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool emerges from this pro-

cess and is focussed in the first instance on the student experience: What place

does the undergraduate and graduate student body have in the contemporary

research-intensive university? How can students become engaged in the full spec-

tru m of w ha t a university does tod ay? F inally, with specific reference to th is essay's

opening vignette, what constitutes an excellent learning experience?

This essay addresses these questions through participant observation, eth-

nographic field notes, focus-group interviews, and first-person narrative of the

experience of teaching and learning through multimedia digital story assign-

ments. We situate this assessment at the conjunction of several theoretical and

practice threads. We are interested in examining how visual media coursework

contributes to embodied learning, the incorporation of disciplinary knowledge

through praxis. As we discuss in this article, students feel that the digital story-

telling exercise engages them in a form of learning that is categorically different

from traditional written work. Our analysis shows that working in narrative and

visual modes generates a complex intellectual engag em ent tha t is at once creative,

socially oriented, and pedagogical. Part of the reason for this is that the assign-

m ents tap into studen ts' underlying altruism. They want to take part in som ething

th at w ill make a difference in th e lives of othe rs, to co ntrib ute to th e well-being of

the env ironm ent, or to respond to disparities they perceive. In short, students are

socially conscious and aware of their privileged position within the wider society.

They are also at times discouraged by their inability to go beyond simply con-

templating change. An evolving understanding of students as both constrained

and emboldened by their social positions serves to underscore the necessity for



Christopher Fietcher and Carol ina Cambre

and real worlds as separate entities. Instead it situates th e intellectual as a social

actor within any social system he or she may be attempting to describe. To be

implicated, in this sense, is to recognize the effects of knowledge production and

dissem ination on the object of study, however that ma y be framed. The p edagogy

of implication requires that stu den t and teachers explore these interaction s as part

of the teaching and learning dynamic. Our work with digital storytelling points

towards a means of learning through visual media, narrative, and collaboration

that foregrounds student subjectivity within the topic of study. Implicated schol-

arship has deep roots in the disciplinary history of Canadian social and cultural

anthropology and its relationship to international currents of visual ethnography.

These are described in more detail in the last section of the article.

Visual An throp olog y Culture and Pedagogy

In recent years, visual anthropology has undergone a renaissance of theoretical

development and applied work (Ginsburg 1998; MacDougall 2006; Pink 2006a,

2006b). One im po rtan t feature of this revitalization is scholarly eng agem ent with

and tow ards alternative media an d th e my riad of image-based technologies, from

cellphones to closed-circuit security systems, surrounding us. For anthropology,

advanced media techno logies afford new m eans of gathering, analyzing, and dis-

sem inating ethn og raph ic inform ation. At the same time, global cultural organiza-

tion is being transformed by the information flows enabled through these same

technologies. Visual culture is global culture, and we have the sense that visual-

ity as cultural process—creating, communicating, consuming, and encountering

imagery—is at a new apogee. Naturally, the Canadian university student body

participates in this vast and stun nin gly co mp lex global dialogue in manifold and

layered w ays. Most university stu den ts h ave sp ent the ir lives imm ersed in a visu-

ally oriented social context and have sophisticated levels of technical and socio-

visual skills. This can be seen as one example of the multiplication of literacies in

the era of digital reproduction (Alvermann 2002; Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Pahl

and Rowsell 2005). The learning potential of visual culture has received attention

in the education literature. For example, Brian Goldfarb proposes that

Popular media is a legitimate source of knowledge and culture, and that

students make productive use of popular media texts in their social for-



Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'études canadiennes

Despite such o ptimistic portrayals, visual literacy and pedagogy rem ain m arginal

to traditional print-textual approaches. We may well wonder whether the visual

competencies of our students go unacknowledged and untapped in their uni-

versity experience, with its emphasis on canonical and neo-canonical textuality.

In developing a course on visual anthropology, it was clear that there was an

opp ortun ity to teach anthropology w ithin the visual worlds of our students an d,

perhaps, to help situate them as authors with a critical foundation, rather than

simply consu mers, of visual culture.

Clearly, there are strengths to be found in both traditional textua l and emer-

gent visual scholarship; these strength s are, in turn , co nting ent on the larger soci-

etal expectations of intellectual work, practice regimes, and flows of information.

In arguing for a processual view of pedagogy, educational theorist David Lusted

asks that we address

the how questions involved not only in transmission or reproduc tion of

knowledge but also in its production. Indeed, it enables us to question the

validity of separating these activities so easily by asking under w ha t cond i-

tions and thro ugh what means we com e to know . How one teaches ...

becomes inseparable from what is being taught and, crucially, how one

learns. (1996, 2-3)

The content of knowledge acquired in university education is changing, as are

the ways learning takes place. Visuality, we argue, has an important yet under-

developed and under-theorized role to play in the relationship between learn-

ing, knowledge production, and transmission in the university. Tools like digital

storytelling present one way to explore this dynamic. In our research, we seek to

understand better the learning potential of visual coursework. Our methodology

is exploratory, qualitative, and g roun ded in the experiences of the s tuden ts in th e

visual anthropology course. Our venue for the research is the classroom, and the

subjects are the students engaging with visual coursework.

igital Storytelling

In recen t years, the digital story genre has beco m e associated with a specific style

of popula r m edia work developed in California in th e early 1990s. A small gro up



Christopher Fletcher and Carol ina Cambre

Ce nter for Digital Storytelling (CDS) and began ru nn ing a series of worksho ps, fes-

tivals, and training seminars. Since then, the CDS has trained hundreds of people

in the genre, and they have gone on to create thousands of stories. Daniel Mead-

ows, a CDS-trained lecturer in journalism at the University of Cardiff facilitated a

major foray into digital storytelling by the British Broadcasting Corporation Wales

(Meadows 2003 ). The

apture Wales

project has resulted in the creation of a larg

number of stories by a mobile production bus that travels through Welsh towns

and villages. The

apture Wales

website features hundreds of offbeat and brillian

stories of idiosyncratic quirkiness, love, family, home, belonging, and difference

(BBC Capture W ales 2008). Many are compa ct oral histories concerned w ith time

and memory that focus on the complexities of intergenerational relationships

and commemorations of relatives now gone. The stories are characterized by a

stron g ton e of nostalgia, as well as discussion and reflection on ho w th e passing of

time ch anges one s perspective on the m ean ing of life s even ts. The past is bro ug ht

to the present, and the present related to the past, the participants different per-

spectives mutually forming and informing each other as unique experiences are

shared . Collectively, th e

apture Wales

stories po int to a found ational prob lemati

of social anthropology: namely, the complexity of individual articulations within

social contexts that nevertheless facilitate the emergence of

shared sense of iden-

tity and place over generations.

In Canada, digital storytelling has been applied in a variety of settings. Many

of these have been facilitated by a loose grouping of affiliates to a new CDS satel-

lite operation established at the University of Calgary. Primary and secondary

school educators have been trained in th e techn iqu e in several cities, and thro ug h

them young students in a number of schools have worked with the digital story

process. Community organizations like Central Neighbourhood House (2008) in

Toronto have developed several story programs offered to immigrant and refugee

women. Workshops in nursing, chronic disease management, and other health

professions have featured digital story efforts. The techniques developed in the

visual anthropology course have been adapted to other classroom settings at the

University of Alberta. While pedagogical and community-based applications of

digital storytelling in Canada appear to be developing quickly, there is, at this

point, no academic literature that evaluates the effectiveness of the technique in

this country. In the absence of a critical assessment, such as we are putting forth



lournai o/ Canadian Studies • Revue d'études canadiennes

The digital story Cookbook (Lambert and Mullen 2000), created by CDS

founders Joe Lambert and N ina M ullen, lays ou t the format tha t defines the g enre.

Of importance here is the emphasis on editing one's story for effect, the collec-

tive experience of making digital stories, the reflective process of narrating one's

s lf and the catharsis that d oing so w ith othe rs produ ces. If there is an overriding

qua lity foun d in digital stories, it is their sincerity. Brevity, too, is im po rta nt in this

genre: aroun d three m inute s is the ideal leng th. D igital storytelling w ebsites share

a passing similarity to the hugely popular

You ube

and other video-sharing and

netw orking sites. Unlike

YouTube

with its wide-ranging thematic content, digital

storytelling sites aggregate tow ards an ethos of thou ghtful earnestness. In m an y

cases,

it is the practiced sincerity that makes them so endearing and effective.

While this describes a formalized popular genre, digital storytelling does not

represent a categorically new form. Rather it emerges from a diverse lineage of

cultural production, among which we could include home video, photoessays.

Bandes Desinées, and pho tovo ice. The term has also been used to refer to th e pro -

duction of longer first-person and multi-voiced oral histories. As is the case with

oral history, anthropological concerns with sharing voice and empowering the

subjects of research have long been debated. Exp erimental forms of ethnog ra-

phy, visual representation, and historical writing have produced new insights into

the relationships between culture and narrative (cf. Clifford and Marcus 1986).

The discussion of culture as an academic concept and as a feature of global simi-

larity an d difference is being enriched by a growing open ness to multi-perspective

and multi-voiced ethnographies and histories, many of which are influenced by

the insights of cultural studies. This has been aided by publications and websites

featuring what would once have been considered primary data, including inter-

views, dialogues, and performances with people under study. The academic shift

we note and the emergence of digital storytelling both point to a renewed con-

cern with the authentic and the local as counterpoints to the generic and banal

rende rings of th e global. It also focusses our at ten tio n as educators a nd researchers

on the place of narrative in the dialectic between the general and the particular.

Emerging from early social Utopian views of the potential of the Internet for free

and decentred communication, digital storytelling has become a self-declared

mov em en t th at interjects lived experience into the digital ecu m ene . In prin-

ciple, digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool brings th e cre ator/stud ent and th e

viewer together in a dialogue around the nature of representation, meaning, and



Christopher Fietcher and Caroi ina Cambre

Student Experiences w ith Digital Storytelling

Several challenges associated with teaching anthropology emerge from tensions

inh ere nt in ho w an thropolog ical know ledge is created and dissem inated. The first

conc erns participan t observation as a m eth od . Regularly attributed to the pioneer-

ing work of Malinowski (1922), participant observarion consists of a sustained

period of total cultural immersion in which the anthropologist or student takes

part in the daily life, however mundane or extraordinary (usually both), of the

people that he or she is studying. The objective here is not to circumscribe the

area of study an d weed ou t variables bu t to see ho w w ha t interests us specifically is

con nected to an d intersected by a larger web of culture in action. In doctoral pro -

gram s, it is still the nor m th at a year in the field, how ever tha t is con strue d, is

requisite to achieving the fullness of experience necessary to produce an original

disciplinary contribution. Participant observation is trying and exhilarating. It is

one of the more unusual things that a person can do and, not surprisingly, most

of us come home from our first field experiences unsure of what we know, but

qu ite certain th at we will never be the sam e again (cf. Young and G oulet 1994). In

this sense, becoming an anthropologist is a process of existential and social trans-

formation that is ultimately inscribed onto paper and recognized with letters. Of

course, it is no t possible to replicate this ex perience in a classroom . We are obliged

to recount, to narrate, the experience of long-term fieldwork, hopefully in some

intellectually coh erent fashion. Throug h such efforts we com m unic ate know ledge

abo ut cu lture and society as complex ideas and processes.

In many instances, ethnography is the product resulting from extended par-

ticipant observation. Ethnography is the genre of writing that seeks to convey

th e intense first-hand experience of the lived worlds of others. Ethno graphies are

narrative accounts of other peoples' lives, and it is ultimately narrative that ani-

mates the discipline and, through it, the possibility of sharing culture. Producing

ethnography, as Michael Jackson (2002) among many others has pointed out,

is a political process in all its iterations. The ability and willingness to narrate

are highly variable betwe en individuals, over time, and across languages an d cul-

ture.

This metho dology and its outcom es have allowed anthrop ology to m ake

particular kinds of knowledge claims based in part on th e primary auth ority of I

was the re and the subjective fact of I experienced tha t. This dialogue betw een



tournai o^Canadian Studies • Revue d'études canadiennes

balanced on the difficult but productive tension of the experience (subjective)

and the authoritative (objective). In all of our work, we are confronted by the

challenge, if not impossibility, of transmitting or translating the significance of

actually being there in

a

format tha t can only

be

an approxima tion of doing so.

The digital storytelling assignment described at the beginning of this essay

was intended to go beyond a didactic approach to the teaching of social cultural

anthropology and to move students into a way of know ing that privileges direct

experience,

a

precursor or proxy for field experience. Students in the visual anthro-

pology course were a mix of upper-year undergraduates and graduate students

from anthropology and other disciplines and

faculties,

includ ing sociology, educa-

t ion,

and m odem languages and cultura l studies.

s

part of the research in to the ir

learning experience, they were given a short, open-ended, qualitative question-

naire exploring the ir motivations for taking the course and general impressions of

their university education. The survey prefaced the development of focus group

and individual interview sessions. The survey data indicated that many of the

students had actively sought out a course that they viewed as different, one that

seemed to have room for creativity in assignments and that privileged

a

hands-on

learning environment. Word of mouth was the most common way of finding out

about the

course,

particularly for students from outside the department.

Students were required to produce a dig ital story in the CDS style—^brief, con-

cise, and w ith a juxtaposition of imagery and narrative producing a greater under-

standing than either would have on their own— with the caveat that they should

address anthropological issues they had been exposed to in the course. This could

either be explicit w ith in the story or im plic it and developed w ith in a comple-

mentary written report, also required, on the digital story process and content.

Students were given the option of doing the assignment in partnership with the

Com munity Service-Learning Program on campus (Com munity Service-Learning

Program 2008). Community Service-Learning brings student volunteers together

with community organizations as part of their university courses. This provided

another way for students to be introduced to the practicalities of fieldwork with

ample administrative support to pair students with organizations, mitigate any

problems arising (these were almost exclusively concerned with difficulties in

scheduling meetings between students and organization representatives), and

ensure an ethically sound working environment. Approximately one third of

the 38 students who have taken the course opted for the Community Service-




already involved in some capacity as volunteers with community organizations

and did their assignments in a similar fashion. Other students opted to produce

reflective pieces that touched on questions of identity and culture. Still other sto-

ries, instead of being narrative-driven, became in-depth reflections on an image or

an object, meditations upon what had taken place and how those present had felt

about it. Images cross boundaries that language cannot. The eye perceives in the

image much more information in all its subtlety and nuance, and is vastly faster

in doing so than when we read or hear words explicating or describing some-

thing . We all know this; and w e also know th at images embody ing an d conveying

authentic emotion can powerfully transmit that emotion across time and space to

impact those who witness them.

An important part of the story-building process was a probing of the ethical

exigencies of fieldwork and ethnography. Given that the assignments potentially

involved human subjects, the course and each student were required to gain an

ethical certification from the university research ethics board before proceeding

with the work. An additional and more significant issue for an implicated peda-

gogy was the question of ethics as an ongoing negotiation around the process,

meaning, findings, and potential effects of research with the people involved. The

use of imagery provoked particularly deep discussions about the politics of repre-

sentation. In one notable case, a student worked with an organization devoted to

helping marginalized youth through theatre. In her story, the narrative focussed

on her reflections about the legitimacy of her involvement with the group while

the imagery described th e world she was working in. The piece produ ced an inter-

action of voices between the student and the youth involved with the organiza-

tion such that the complex problematic of brief ethnographic encounters was

acknowledged and explored. This extends far beyond the mechanistic process of

gaining an administrative ethical approval and engages students in the broader

issues of doing ethnography, particularly when the divides of class and opportu-

nity are bridged throu gh coursework.

s

we see it, an imp licated scho larship is no

simply a rhetorical high road to betterment but an ongoing process of situating

pedagogy and research as processes that require constant probing to understand

their effects.

Students w atched Agnes Varda s doc um enta ry film

Les glaneurs

t

la glaneu

{The Gleaners and F (2000) early in th e term . This film serves as an a nc ho r p oin t



Journal of Canad ian Studies • Revue d étude s canadiennes

time , as these i nte ntio nal scraps are given significance merely by their inclusion.

In these periods, students begin to question what it means to look, or to show,

as well as what telling might be. In the end, the work of gleaners, who pick and

choose and collect those things they need in order to compose their works and

worlds, is parallel to the work of filmmakers and researchers who do the same

under a different lexicon. This in turn informs how visual media may be under-

stood and ho w it impacts those represented.

Students' perceptions of the course, the assignments, and the process of

buildin g a digital story were explored du ring the interviews and focus groups. We

excerpt and comment on some of their discussion below. While a full treatment

of student discourse is beyond the scope of this essay, what follows is presented

as a means to foreground the students' voices in this discussion about learning

with the digital storytelling technique. The focus groups were held in a seminar

room at the university. For some of the students, this was the first time they had

seen each o ther since taking the course wh ile others saw each oth er regularly. The

atm osph ere was very relaxed, w ith lots of laughter. The discussion was guided by a

list of topics; muffins and coffee were provided. Interviews were held one-on-one

with the same list of topics as in the focus group. All conversations were recorded

and transcripts prepared from these. Pseudonyms are associated with the excerpts

to indicate multiple speakers.

All the participants in the study supported the thesis that working with digi-

tal stories engenders an educational experience different from a traditional text-

and -term paper appro ach. In particular, stud ents em ployed the tropes of op eni ng

up and looking outw ard to describe their experience of und ertak ing th e assign-

ment. Their experience in university is intensive and yet isolating from the city

they live in and the things they see around them everyday. In one characteristic

statemen t, a stude nt said.

This course in visual anthro pology left different impression [than othe rs ]...

because i t w s different feeling, really different. It helped open the doors to

the larger co mm un ity ... especially in the city. Before I didn t have a chance

to go out and really see the city and different communities in the city. The

assignment made me do this first step and I really enjoyed this when I

worked for [the o rgan ization], it was a really valuable experience for me and

I really appreciate it... this time and these people and the assignment itself



Christopiner Fietcher and Caroiina Cambre

the conn ection between visual coursework and real ly seeing the city indicate

that the sensory modalit ies engaged in the exercise are mirrored in the framin

of w ha t is learned. Lea rning in un ive rsity is in m an y instances experienced as a

withdrawal from larger issues of l i fe, an isolating and inward-focussed practice

Time compression and the stresses of productivity also contribute to students

sense of is ola tion :

Everybody is busy ... you go to seminar, you go home, you read a lot, you

go to the seminar... the routine is like this. This course in visual anthropol-

ogy left a different impression 'cause it was a different feeling , really differ-

ent. It helped open the doors to the larger community ... before I didn't

have a chance, the assignment made me do this first step. (Amanda)

W ork ing w it h visual assignments produces a new form of evidence that one is

do ing so m ething pro ductive i n un iversity. The f inal versions of the digital stor ies

were show n to a m uc h wider audience tha n a con ven t ional assignment w ou ld

receive. There was a pu blic screening (as discussed in the op en ing of this article

and several other showings that again brought the students' work out of the uni

versity and in to the co m m un ity . In some cases, the stories produce d thr ou gh

Community Service-Learning partnerships were conceived for a non-academic

audience. Thus one digital story was shown at an annual fundraising event held

at the premiere performing arts venue in Edmonton; others have been used in

community mobil izat ion and awareness-raising events. A number were featured

o n the stud en t p oi nt of vie w section of the Faculty of Arts website. Students

conc eptua lized this qu ality of dig ital stories, a qu ality enabled by the ir visuality, as

sh re ility

betwee n themselves a nd broader non-academic co m m un ity. To share

knowledge and perspective is a requirement of implicat ion, and sharing br ings

personal rewards for the students and benefi ts the community with which they

wo rk. Perhaps the m ost signif icant evidence to support this n o t io n is the fact tha

several students discussed how the y ha d shared the ir d igita l stories w it h mem bers

of their famil ies, something they had never done with other assignments. Fam

ily is the first order of social circle for most people, and this is especially true o

relat ively young university students. In reaching beyond the inter ior process o

learning to engage with others through their work, students are reposit ioned as

contr ibutors to the environments they inhabit . The use of imagery and words



lou rna i o f Canadian Studies • Revue d étude s canadiennes

choices in med ium of instruction are also abo ut social, political, and econo m ic

participation, social equality, and human rights. They determine who has access

to resources, power, and control, and who does not. They are vehicles for political

subjugation of m inority groups by do m ina nt groups and th e masses by the elites

(2004, 17). This view provides a rationale to create opportunities for students to

experience the extent t o wh ich w e are all already im plicated.

These examp les speak to the wid ening of the social sphere of coursework tha t

digital story produ ction fosters. The experience of produ cing s om ething w ith util-

ity beyond the students' immediate concerns with coursework was a rewarding

and perhaps unnerving experience for some. During a focus group, one former

stud ent told ano ther th at she had seen her story show n at a public forum on peace

an d conflict. V isibly surprised, the s tud en t was taken aback by th e use of her work

in such a conte xt. The stories thu s take on the qu alities of objects with a social life

beyon d th e original context of their produ ction and point to a contingen t quality

of implicated scholarship. They move from their point of origin into a broader

social field wh ere they are viewed and serve various purpo ses, often un an ticip ate d

and quite different from what the students had imagined. The stories reach out

beyond the immediate confines of the university to position students as creators

w ithin the city an d society. Some stude nts conceptualized this as applied aca-

demic work, a designation that appears rewarding to them:

Based on wbat am interested in, bistory, and antbropology and looking at

different sources, but more open minded tban wbat h istorians are doing, I

tbink the visual learning was important, but the ... unique learning experi-

ence ... came m ore from the applied learning and hands on, so I do n't

know if those are the same thing, if it would have been the same.... am

just thinking how much it was on that visual creative process, it was a very

open class and I learned from applying som ething, not just writing about

it. (Paula)

In one case, a stud ent conceptualized working on th e assignm ent as experim ent-

ing with myself, recalling Mauss's no tion s of techn iques du corps (1934) and

a form of learning grounded in testing one's capacities to act as a social being

through the physical presence of the self as learner and agent in a social context.

Observations in the classroom and students' statements confirmed that the




creativity in thinking through and discussing the ideas behind the storj^elling

process

itself

It follows that the form of the pedagogical tool shapes the ways in

which learning takes place. This process is transformative and pedagogical, very

different from the typ ical educational experience

where, s

the students said, the

are mostly required to remember. The medium of the digital story encourages

students to play [a] role in determ ining what problems are worth studying o

what procedures of inq uiry ought to be used (Postman and Weingartner 1969

19). It recalls Mart in Heidegger's much-quoted lines on teaching: What teachin

calls for is this: to let learn—If the relationship between the teacher and the learn

ers is genuine, there is never a place in it for the authority of the know-it-all o

the authoritative sway of the officia l (1977, 356). Thus, in the classroom, shared

authority speaks to the essence of the pedagogical relation such that the learne

comes to embody the process of discovery. In the focus group sessions, some stu

dents observed that their stories were more narrative-driven than those of others

which were more

image-based.

The conversation turned to the content of the sto

ries, and how in some cases the com munity groups depicted needed more expla

nation, while in other cases the stories more than amply conveyed the multiple

messages demanded by the situation. The tensions between the visual and the

narrative are intrins ic to the d igital story product, and these are zones of produc

tive encounter. In the end, the technical decisions around the com bina tion of th

imagery and the narrative come down to

re ognition

of the entanglement of t

storyteller-anthropologist-teacher-student-human-being, and the

re ognition

th

people w ill share their experiences. For students, the d igital sto ryte lling exercise i

not about hierarchies, categories, or abstracted prioritizations. Rather, it is abou

recognizing and re-viewing themselves no t just as learners but as receivers of the

generosity of

those

whose lives they

seek

to illuminate,

nd

whose lives illum ina

us in turn.

Like s toryte lling generally, the dig ital story calls on the intersubjective proc

ess of collective meaning making. Digital stories are a form of invitation open

to considering possibilities of mutual endeavour. They are easily understood and

responded to; thus they are immediately relational and have an implicit peda

gogical significance. A ll of our lives take storied

forms,

forms establishing relation

between ourselves and our worlds. Like pockets, they take the shape of whatever i

is we put in them. Multip le factors ensure they are not constructed in exactly the



jou rna l of Canadian S tudies • Revue d étude s canadiennes

m p l i c a t e d S c h o la r s h ip

The overview of student experiences of learning points to the difference between

inscribed (textual) and incorporated (embodied) forms of knowledge (StoUer

1997).

While the former is valued and rewarded in academic circles, the latter

remains vital to the everyday lives of all people. Clearly, the anthropological tra-

dition has prioritized th e textual inscription of culture over the emb odied experi-

ence of the sam e and in so do ing has con tributed to th e shifting of lived culture to

the external, disembodied written form. The lived experience has been accorded

less authority than its textual representation, even though anthropologists go to

lengths to clarify that what we are dealing with is the lived world and not an

abstracted one of probabilities. This is one of the gifts of ethnography. This situ-

ation is in part due to the shaping of forms of knowledge that textual literacy

imposes and a more fundamental reworking of knowledge as external to experi-

ence that is a hallmark of Western E nligh tenm ent epistemology. In prod ucing the

text, the bodily knowledge of culture is sublimated. In challenging authorities,

new ones are always manifested.

The experience of moving between the university and the community, of

experimentation with the self and the dialectic between the textual and corpo-

real are all qualities of an implicated form of learning and scholarship. In this

final section of the essay, we expand on and historicize the idea of implication

as an academic mode of engagement that is particularly amenable to, and real-

ized through, the use of visual and narrative methods and representation. While

the focus here is on anthropology, an implicated scholarship is not the exclusive

property of the discipline. Indeed, m an y disciplines have traditions of p hiloso phy

and practice along these lines.

In the work of French visual ethnographer Jean Rouch (1917-2004), we see

the subversion of the academic posture towards its subject and the emergence of

a form of collaborative-dialogic representation between the ethnographer and the

people w ith w ho m he w orks. A maverick figure in French intellectual life, Rouch

was a filmmaker whose work addressed social constraints, responses to colonial

power, and the significance of daily life for ordinary people in West Africa, France,

and elsewhere. The somewhat cryptic Rouch called for the opening of imagina-

tion and dreams into the world of academic work. He considered his films as




of ñeldwork before filming so th at th e ethnographe r-filmm aker wo uld kn ow firs

hand something of people's daily lives, customs, and society. He insisted tha

members of his sound crew be fluent speakers of the local language and, in th

process, provoked the ire of his formalist colleagues in France.' In one of his writ

ten pieces, he made the startling statement that he preferred to work alone in

th e field because two whites in an African village already form a com m un ity

a foreign bod y whic h is solid and th us risks rejection (88). Exquisitely at tun e

to the politics of representation, yet prone to making highly controversial films

Rouch was no t interested in sharing or brokering academic auth ority h e trusted i

th e stories people had to tell. He envisaged h is app roach to visual ethn og rap hy a

an anthropolog ie impliquée. ^ He sought a deeply hum anistic engagement w it

people, grounded in a mutual respect, openness, and listening across the divide

of language, history, and culture.

It may be that in being critically and reflectively implicated, anthropolog

and anthropologists can make their case for particular forms of change or stabilit

in th e face of social, eco nom ic, and p olitical forces tha t often em ploy ideas of cul

ture an d identity. The exam ple here is how purity, identity, roots, terroir and oth

ideological elements of constructed pasts coalesce into the justification of struc

tural and physical violence against specific groups of people and of oppressiv

movements generally. Implication may involve scholars becoming advocates for

or with, the people, places, and ideas among which we work. Implication of thi

sort begins with th e position t ha t we are all— academics, researchers, and com m u

nity members—enveloped in a broader, shared social and political circumstance

and that it is an underlying, intensely local humanism in perspective, grounded

in the shared spaces of fieidwork, from which implication emerges. Rouch's biog

rapher and prolific ethnographer Paul Stoller eloquently continues the develop

ment of implicated anthropology as a humanistic and narrative-driven exercis

of m utual co mp rehension . Thus implication is an interpersonal e thic of know in

and relating to people wh ile rem aining aware tha t the talk of culture is no

anthropology's alone. It has repercussions, and we should be aware of and speak

to tho se. This is perh aps a rather idealistic framew ork, bu t it is on e that m ay serv

as a useful m ap of the terrain th at is presented to stu den ts.

The threads of Rouch's method and ideas echo in the approaches develope

by practitioners of applied anthropology in Canada. Applied anthropology i



Journal of Canadian Studies • Revue d'études canadiennes

less-than-serious academic pursuit. The second is directed towards the historical

inter twin ing of appl ied work wi th the colonia l pro ject . Emerging f rom colonia l

administrat ive preoccupations, the appl icat ion of culture-specif ic knowledge to

direct change has been soundly crit iqued (Escobar 1995; Hobart 1993). As in the

broad scale cr i t ique of de velopm ent, the c onc lusion is ofte n tha t one step fo rwa rd

produces two steps back. The genealogy of appl ied anthropology branches out

to embrace act ion research, advocacy, part icipatory methods, publ ic anthropol-

ogy, pract icing anthropology, corporate and cl inical anthropologies, and so on.

Canada has an interest ing place in this inte l lectua l lineage as w ork w it h A bo rigi-

nal peoples has long been an accepted applied focus and is well integrated into

the university system. A major focus since the 1970s has been northern social

and econom ic developm ent an d the pol i t ica l representat ion of Ab origina l peoples

in the face of policy and projects that are seen to undermine their aspirations,

heal th,

and l ivel ihoods. General izing, we could say that the Canadian perspec-

t ive in appl ied anthropology has long engaged with the idea of sharing authori ty

in order to chal lenge pol icy and development that are manifest ly destruct ive to

people. This is another fo rm of im plic at io n, one th at recognizes a shared dest iny

among peoples who occupy the same national space and points to a broadening

of the conc ept of society as co ns tituted b y a pl ur al ity o f peoples— original, settler,

and newcomer.

Université Laval professor Paul Charest is best known professionally for his

work wi th communit ies of the At ikamekw and Montagnais/ Innu First Nat ions of

Quebec. When he was awarded the Weaver-Tremblay prize^ in 1995, he invoked

Rouch's term inolo gy an d said that he had practised an im plica ted an thr op ol-

ogy, one that is imb ricated w it h a people and their aspirations for the future .

Im plic ate d in th is sense suggests tha t dist inct ion s between people studied an d

people studying are artif icial constructs that serve to heighten difference at the

expense of common dest iny:

What must be emphasized is that in the context of personal implication

the anthropologist-researcher is an integral part of reality. Like the Aborigi-

nal leadership, he takes part in the socio-political changes put in motion

by global territorial assertions in the perspective of encouraging Aborigi-

nal power in tbe face of governments emanating from the colonial society.

(Charest 1995, 26-27)



Christopher Fletcher and Caroi ina Cambre

from th e society in wh ich h e or she lives bu t is rather an active citizen. Rouch als

suggests this potential w hen he advocates for studen ts to receive training in sou n

and camera techniques so that they may function independently (without othe

foreigners ) in the field: Even if their films are techn ically inferior to th e work o

professionals, they will have had the irreplaceable quality of real contact betwee

the person filming an d those being filmed (1975, 88). Interestingly, Rouch's ph i

losophy and te chn iqu e of filmm aking were influenced b y Quebec cinéaste Miche

Brault. Brault collaborated with Rouch and Edgar Morin on the pivotal hroniq

d un été (1961), introducing the hand-held, mobile, and spontaneous camera tec

niques of cinema vérité to France. Rouch offers unqualified praise for Brault an

Pierre P errault's Pour la suite du monde (1963), a landmark in Canadian docu me

tary/eth no grap hic film (White 2003). This total success, according to Rouc

(1963, 21), set the bar for filmmaking with and about people and their lives i

changing social contexts.

More recently, when also receiving the Weaver-Tremblay Award, Richar

Preston evoked the importance of the personal encounter, of listening and shar

ing, as integral to the academic's position in the world. What stands out in Pres

ton's work with Cree narrative, and what came through in his speech, was th

idea that theory, though good and important, will not take us very far if we d

not approach each other as people first, see ourselves in all other people at al

times,

and feel com m ona lity: Theories, like othe r hum an processes, gain mea n

ing in their forms and , no less, in their relationsh ips (2006, 8). Preston's linkin

of theory to relationships reveals another kind of implication that speaks to th

need for a humanism underlying all of our work and all of our methods.

Conclusions

In this essay, we outlined the potentials of visual pedagogical tools for fosterin

student engagements with disciplinary knowledge and social awareness. Whil

there is variability in what each student takes away from the digital storytellin

exercise, in general, their experience has been one of self-discovery of their ow

intellectual and creative potential, a nuanced and theoretically grounded under

stand ing of fhemselves as socially embed ded individuals, and an increased aware

ness of the social complexity that surrounds them. Visual assignments engende



Journai of Canadian Studies • Revue d études canadiennes

States have recently reported on the adoption of Dig ital Storytelling techniques in

the teaching of several disciplines in the arts and hum anities (cf. Arts and H uman-

ities

(2) 2008). The immediacy of imagery

as a

m edium for inform ation, coupled

with narrative and its affective content, engenders a novel form of intellectual

discovery. The digital story presents a fruitful avenue for realizing the power of

narrative and imagery in attending to the significance of people's lives. Through

example and direct experience, we have attempted to foster a sense of im plicated

scholarship in the classroom.

The educator, like the anthropologist, is necessarily implicated and is ethi-

cally bound to respond to and recognize this position. Following the lessons

Jacques Rancière outlined in his famous The gnorant Schoolmaster (1991), the

idea of tran sm itting knowledge, where an educator explicates, expounds, and

examines students, presupposes and reproduces an unequal relationship. One

instructs and has know ledge, while the other receives and is educated.

Rancière explores the possibilities in presuming equality in the pedagogical rela-

t ion.

Because he holds that the pedagogical m yth divides the world in to tw o:

the knowing and the ignorant, the mature and the unformed, the capable and

the incapable ... never will the student catch up with the teacher; never will the

'developing' nations catch up w ith the enlightened nations (xx). The hypotheti-

cal teacher posited by Rancière must explore other avenues: Story telling then ...

emerges as one of the concrete acts or practices tha t verifies equality.... The very

act of storytelling, an act that presumes in its interlocutor an equality of intel-

ligence rather tha n an inequality of knowledge, posits equality, just as the act of

exp lication posits inequality (xx ii). What Rancière takes to be true of the student-

teacher relationship can also be seen to characterize the connections between the

university and the public at large. Storytelling in the way it has been employed

here serves to address those boundaries.

In fostering an implicated p osition, the significance of everyday life is moved

in to the realm of serious intellectua l consideration. As educators, we see the com-

plexity of the world and are responsible for protecting that complexity, which

increases as we become more connected, in the face of powerful forces that wou ld

like to reduce all things to a state of s imp licity. One way an implicated scholarship

contributes is by providing a lens and a position to work w ith in the complexity

tha t may otherwise frustrate and constrain the observer. This practice reminds us

and those we work with that we are all in this together, that there is no isolated




acknowledge the social setting that encompasses us in our research and learn

ing, wherever we are located and whatever the extent of the social we take as

referent; and that we—scholars, students, and public—see ourselves as entwined

embed ded, com mingled, an d enm eshed w ithin the social process.

Notes

The authors are grateful to Carol Berger for her help and judicious comments in editin

th e final version of this essay. Likewise, the though tful and constructive c om m ents of thre

an on ym ou s external reviewers are well appreciated.

e

gratefully acknowledge the Teachin

an d L earning Enhan cem ent Fund adm inistered by the office of th e vice-president (research

University of Alberta, in supporting this research program.

1.

Rouch's early works were considered controv ersial. W ith time , he has becom e a maj

figure in visual ethnography and is closely associated with the Musée de l'Homm

in Paris where a film festival and regular speaking events are organized in his nam

through the Comité du Film Ethnographique.

2. The word impliquée carries a different nu an ce in French th an it does in English. It su

gests less a crimina l conspiracy tha n to be imp licated m ight, and mo re of the sens

of to be interw ove n. Oth er variants in English drawing from t he applied tradition i

terms such as anth ropo logy include practising, public, and engaged.

3.

The W eaver-Tremblay Award is na m ed after Sally Weaver an d Marc-Adélard Trembla

two influential Canadian anthropologists. It is awarded annually by the Canadia

A nthro polo gy Society to a colleague w hose work ad dresses issues of social an d polit

cal concern.

4. Translation by Ch ristop her Fletcher.

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