On the Compositional Relationship of Text and Image in Graphic Anthropology

The Promise of “Sequential” and “Unrestrained” Perspectives for Unsettling Representation

Bibliographic Data

ID7471824
AuthorsD Theodossopoulos (0000-0001-8453-3450, Division of Social Sciences University of Kent Canterbury UK, corresponding author), Letizia Bonanno (0000-0001-7910-802X, School of Anthropology and Conservation University of Kent Canterbury UK)
Year2026
Volume128
Issue1
Pages130-147
Publication date2026-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.70054
OpenAlexW7117690989
LanguageEN
References cited47

Graphic anthropology has grown to become a distinctive subfield at the intersection of anthropology of drawing, visual anthropology, and multimodal approaches to social research. We assess this development and identify two emerging styles of graphic anthropological practice. While some anthropologists follow the representational language of comic books and graphic novels—known as sequential art—others evade sequential framing, arranging images and text in a variety of nonsequential combinations. We compare and evaluate the two styles and outline their common analytical aspiration to unsettle static textual representation. Such a representational unsettling, we argue, can be realized productively—not by accentuating the text‐image dichotomy or by treating the emerging styles as mutually exclusive—but through benefiting from the hybrid (pictorial and textual) qualities of graphic anthropology, which shape each other in a coproductive relationship that defies typological boundaries

Comics · Image (mathematics · Intersection (aeronautics · Representation (politics · Variety (cybernetics · Visual language · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Digital Games and Media · Public Spaces through Art