In 2005, Wesley Shrum founded the Video Ethnography Laboratory at Louisiana State University, one of few such centers in the U.S., devoted to teaching, producing, and disseminating video ethnographic materials by both faculty and students.
With his long-term collaborators in Kenya, Ghana, and Kerala (India), Dr. Shrum began to regularly incorporate video in presentations and movies for distribution. He has spent the last two decades arguing that the U.S. and Europe are not to be regarded as standards for comparison for Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The development of these locations owes far more to traditional practices, values, and rivalries than to the relatively brief colonial era. Most of Dr. Shrum’s over 100 published articles have involved collaborations with Africans and Asians. As he is often heard to say at Western conferences: “Please don’t just write about post-colonialism. Spend time in the places you write about. Spend money there. Make friends.” For the past thirty years, Dr. Shrum has lived every summer in Kenya, Ghana, and India where he has spent over a million dollars in research funds, mostly for payments to local people. Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005, the largest disaster in U.S. history. Dr. Shrum was a member of Team Louisiana, which investigated the failed levees that caused this disaster. In late 2007 Kenya exploded with ethnic violence, killing 1500 people. Dr. Shrum’s team was on the ground quickly, filming the aftermath of this electoral tragedy, even as they were still covering Hurricane Katrina. They interviewed people and filmed locations throughout Kenya to document the perspectives of multiple ethnic groups. The story of what were called “the clashes” was told in the feature length documentary Brother Time, an explicitly activist, peace-building effort. It depicts the episode through the friendship of Kukuyu and Kalenjin farmers who were separated during the violence, but later reunited. The movie was widely viewed during the following Presidential election campaigns, including screenings at many Kenyan universities. It continues to be shown internationally as an illustration of the broader anti-racist message that what seem to be small ethnic divisions can be as pernicious as any other kind of racism.
In the early 2010s, Dr. Shrum and Dr. Greg Scott established a collaboration with three primary objectives that would help to advance visual activism. The first was to establish the Journal of Video Ethnography, on which Dr. Scott would take the lead, becoming the first journal that would exclusively publish academic movies as content. The second was to co-write an introductory textbook on visual sociology, Video Ethnography in Practice: Planning, Shooting, and Editing for Social Analysis. The third objective was to establish a film festival, on which Dr. Shrum was to take the lead. This was to be named Ethnografilm and screen both academic and documentary movies annually, each April in Paris. Topics covered include race/ethnicity, colonialism and imperialism, migration, multiculturalism and interculturalism, gender and sexuality, communication, social movements, deviance, and virtually every other topic that is incorporated in sociological curricula.
Finally, Dr. Shrum’s recent movie, No Page for Dalits, documents the “untouchable” caste in India, gives active voice to its members. They argue that their condition is worse than slavery because it cannot be outlawed, given its religious connection to Vedic scriptures. The film has been screened at twenty festivals globally and won multiple awards, including best documentary and best director.
