Sense of Community: A definition and Theory.

For those that feel like they might need to
take a different theoretical angle or are simply
finding that the readings don’t quite fit the
particular focus of their doco, I suggest you
read McMillan’s highly informative paper.

Just click on the link below, You can also download
a pdf from the same website.

“Sense of Community: A definition and Theory”

Relax with a good book.

Hiya, I just thought it might be a good idea
to list down a few texts that may be of interest.

A copy of Bill Nichols “Introduction to Documentary”
can be found online. Just go to the link below and
type the title in the search field.

http://www.netlibrary.com/

For those of you who are interested in art, narrative and
new media, you may want to check out the texts below:

Frieling, R (ed) 2008, The art of participation:1950 to now,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Thames and Huson, U.K.

D’Alleva, A. (2005) Methods and theories of art history,
Lawrence King Publishing, U.K.

Leishman, D 2001, Does Point and Click interactivity
Destroy the Story? The convergence of interactivity with
narrative, viewed July 30, 2005,
http://www.6amhoover.com/destroystory.htm#section1

Lunenfeld, P (ed) 1999, The Digital Dialectic: New Essays
on New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass)

Manovich, L 2001, The Language of New Media,
The MIT Press, Massachusetts London, England.

Rieser, M & Zapp, A (Eds) 2002, New screen
media: cinema/art narrative, British Film
Institute, London.

Ryan, M (ed) 2004, Narrative Across Media:
The Languages of Storytelling, University of
Nebraska Press, U.S.

Integrating Theory.

There have been lot of questions about the
integration of theory within your projects.
There are many ways that you can approach
this, and in many ways it’ s a decision that
is based upon the type of project you wish to
make. The theoretical component shouldn’t
be tacked on at the end to explain your work,
more so it is something that should help define
the type of questions you want to answer and
even the kind of communities you wish to
document.

Theory is almost impossible to escape, so better
that you work with it and integrate it into your
research. You don’t need to frame every interview
question with Toennies says….so what do you
think? But you can use theory to set a direction
for your investigation. Eg; set out to explore or
challenge Toennies’ theories of Germeinschaft
and Gesellschaft. Think of theory as the backbone
which supports your argument, or the framework
on which you can devise your questions and
overall approach to making your doco. Theory
can just sit quietly in the background, but it offers
another level of complexity for the reader.

Jenny offers some great insight into the integration
of theory on her blog. So why not check out her post
how to add theory.