The morning mist in the eyes of an Oroqen hunter expresses humanity’s enduring longing for connection. Photo: TUCHONG

In today’s world, where digital and intelligent technologies are reshaping social relations, the concept of “community” is undergoing a profound transformation from geographic boundaries to virtual spaces. The defining feature of the digital-intelligence age is the deep integration of digitalization and intelligence, which generates new quality productive forces and drives comprehensive transformations in the social and economic structure. As an interdisciplinary field that employs images as its method and cultural interpretation as its goal, visual anthropology offers a unique perspective for understanding how communities are constructed. Current research in visual anthropology seeks to uncover the formation and transformation of communities from multiple dimensions, yet it also faces challenges. Future progress requires breakthroughs in the critique of technology, attention to diverse groups, and methodological innovation to advance the discipline while contributing to intercultural understanding and social governance.

Roy Wagner’s concept of the “reciprocity of perspectives” provides important theoretical inspiration for exploring human cognition and culture, and it resonates with community studies in visual anthropology. Reciprocity of perspectives is an inherent attribute of human perception, manifested in the interchange between subject and object, or between means and ends. It can broadly be understood as the universal application of dual proportional contrast and presupposes the inherent tensions between both the innate and the artificial and the natural and the cultural, thereby overcoming traditional binary oppositional thinking. In practice, the perspective shift between the local and the tourist, and between animals and humans, is a manifestation of this reciprocity. This enables deeper understanding of the diversity and complexity of human culture, as well as anthropology’s academic perspective of “viewing from the local lens.”

Folk images and technological empowerment: reconstructing the narrative of the community

Constructing a “community narrative” necessitates that Chinese visual anthropology engage in a critical reflection on its historical mission, undertake a renewal of its narrative paradigms, and advance theoretical and methodological innovation. It is an important means of sustaining the collective memory of the nation through time, and maintains a progressive logical relationship with social memory and commemorative rituals. Social memory may be preserved through orally transmitted songs, myths, and legends, or through ritual practice. People of all ethnic groups reproduce historical memory and community traditions through habitual practices and embodied experiences. Attention to these practices and experiences provides valuable approaches to describing the diverse ritual life of the community of the Chinese nation.

Alongside the continuation of the classic ethnographic tradition, community research in Chinese visual anthropology is marked by the parallel development of “technology-driven” inquiry and “cultural self-awareness.” In the digital age, visual anthropology examines the evolutionary logic and internal tensions of different groups through multiple perspectives—body practice, memory reconstruction, and technological contestation. This work reveals both the collisions between tradition and modernity and the interweaving of the virtual and the real within digital-era communities. Images can disclose the cultural logic of communities, reconstruct traumatic memories, build social memory, and forge the community. From an anthropological perspective, the body serves as an important vehicle of cultural expression. In short videos of the Dai ethnic group’s peacock dance, for example, young dancers modify the traditional “three bends” posture into a 15-degree forward-leaning “TikTok version” to suit vertical-screen viewing. Such bodily adaptations reflect the collision of traditional culture with the economy of online traffic. Through the study of movement and posture, both cultural connotations and changes can be deeply understood.

In the reconstruction of traumatic memories and the building of memory communities, the intergenerational dissemination of Nanjing Massacre documentaries provides a telling example. Survivor testimonies, aerial images of historical sites, and virtual reality (VR) recreations together form a layered structure of memory. When “post-90s” viewers “enter” the Ginling College of 1937 through VR, historical trauma is transformed from abstract narrative into embodied experience. However, the spectacle of technology may also lead to the consumerist alienation of memory.

The popularity of short-video platforms has enabled rural “internet celebrities” to redefine local identity online. The reciprocity of perspectives has broken barriers to cultural dissemination, forging new ties between locals and tourists. For instance, young people of the Lisu ethnic group in western Yunnan Province have showcased the Knifeladder Climbing Festival on Douyin, not only attracting outside tourists but also strengthening the online cohesion of their dispersed community. These “digital rituals” have expanded the basis of community from ties of blood and geography to bonds of shared interests.

The rural revitalization strategy has also given rise to practices of community intervention through image-making. Zhejiang University’s “Chinese Villages” project, for example, equips villagers to film their daily labor. The restoration of ancestral halls and the continuation of genealogies captured by the camera have become catalysts for reactivating collective memory. When Aunt Lan, a She ethnic singer, improvised songs before the camera about the changes brought by demolition, individual narratives and collective history achieved an intertextual dialogue. This participatory image-making disrupts the “othering” mode of representation, enabling communities to reconstruct subjectivity through self-representation and offering a model for the new Zhejiang documentary school.

In daily practice, folk video-making has become an important form of self-expression, community maintenance, and the building of social governance communities. In urban factories, the “Kuaishou factory dramas” created by female workers in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province document factory life, interpersonal relationships, living conditions, and urban development. Through role-playing, they build temporary emotional communities, convey social values and historical significance, and promote policy improvements and social support. This non-institutionalized video practice is giving rise to new expressions of labor culture. In pastoral villages, the “Eyes of the Countryside” initiative, which supports farmers and herdsmen in western regions, has established women’s video groups. Using community memory and a female perspective, they capture the natural environment and cultural traditions of their hometowns with video. Video-making has thus become a vital medium for connecting people and place and for spurring community action. The future vitality of a discipline may depend on its ability to uphold humanistic values amid technological fervor, and on its wisdom in building connections across differences.

Current research gaps and possible breakthroughs center on demystifying technological myths and experimenting with cross-disciplinary methodologies. Today, generative AI can already create convincing footage of shamanic rituals, yet such simulations risk cultural distortion. Though they may draw online traffic, they sever the authentic links between “humanity, divinity, and nature.” Finding a balance between technological innovation and cultural authenticity requires the creation of assessment frameworks that ensure technology serves cultural inheritance and research rather than being misused or distorted. Meanwhile, breakthroughs in brain-computer interface technology also signal revolutionary change. When eye-tracking devices were used to trace viewers’ gaze paths while watching a documentary on Miao silversmiths, researchers found that close-ups of the artisans’ hands powerfully activated the prefrontal cortex, injecting new vitality into image-based research.

Theoretical dialogue: from visual representation to ethical reflection

Looking internationally, research on community in visual anthropology has always resonated with shifts in theoretical paradigms. The theory of “imagined communities” has been doubly tested in the digital age. Arjun Appadurai’s “mediascapes” theory points out that TikTok videos created by Burmese refugees have built a transnational identity network, though instant connections may also dissolve the deeper structures of traditional culture. French scholar Marc-Henri Piault, applying field theory to African film and television production, found that power struggles between international film festival juries (holders of cultural capital) and local filmmakers (agents of practical capital) profoundly influences the discourse of community images. In the wake of the new methodological revolution sparked by postcolonial critique, some scholars in rural Bangladesh equipped women with GoPro cameras to record their daily lives, discovering that they deliberately avoided scenes with men present. This “selective gaze” breaks from the conventional family conflict narrative typical of Western documentaries, exposing the complex power negotiations within the gender communities in South Asia.

The reciprocity of perspective is also reflected in the methodological innovations of sensory ethnographic film. Sensory ethnography critiques the dominance of visual and textual centrism. International anthropological practice in this field employs simulation, digital media, installations, and performance. It not only expands anthropology’s research boundaries but also fosters a “cognitive community” linking researchers and research participants, and between research participants and the natural/non-natural worlds at the methodological level. This allows the experiences of beings and entities often difficult to express to receive attention. The Australian Aboriginal Film Project, for instance, puts the idea of “collaborative film” into practice: In the central desert, Aboriginal tribes produce bilingual documentaries through community media, preserving their language while transmitting cultural meaning to the outside world. Editing authority is given to tribal elders, and the finished works employ circular narrative structures that convey dream legends and challenge the linear concept of time in regulating community memory.

The strength of visual anthropology lies in its capacity to link perceptions with the physical senses through images, presenting a holistic ecological vision of all things and enabling interaction between mind and matter. Through reciprocal perspectives, it probes deeply into the meanings and extensions of community, encouraging dialogue, understanding, and integration among diverse groups. To preserve social memory, Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, Sichuan Province, employs augmented reality technology that allows visitors to experience the culture of the Qiang ethnic group firsthand. Such “embodied participation” transforms images from simple records into a medium for community reproduction. As researchers have noted, when locals reflect on their daily life through both two-dimensional and VR images, the shift from being present to being absent enables critical reflection on the life-world, advancing anthropological knowledge production.

Human beings are part of the greater whole. On the path of innovative coexistence of all phenomena, we must foster interconnection among all things and mutual understanding among all hearts. Meaning and value are created in the process of interaction, aligning with a new ecological vision that integrates both form and spirit. Visual anthropology’s exploration of community in the new era continues to seek balance in the tensions between documentation and intervention, technology and humanity, global and local. When the camera lens of an Oroqen hunter cuts through the morning mist of the Greater Xing’an Range, or when a girl in the slums of Mumbai shoots her first short film with a mobile phone, these reciprocal perspectives and pixelated moments not only sustain hopes of cultural survival but also reveal humanity’s enduring longing for connection. As American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” In this spirit, the mission of visual anthropology has only just begun.

Lu Fangfang is an associate research fellow from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.