SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Visual representation is vital to the study of craft. Craftwork takes place in dynamic social contexts in which a multitude of often interdependent activities occur simultaneously between actors, materials, tools and other objects. This article traces and critically engages with my own efforts to represent visually the masons of Djenné. As recording technologies become more user-friendly and the means to disseminate images and sound become more widely available, the individuals and communities we study have growing agency to engage critically with, and to co-produce, their own discourses about them. There is a need therefore to make a shift from the “study of” to “studies with” our ethnographic subjects.