<div>For its millions of readers, the <i>National Geographic</i> has long<br>been a window to the world of exotic peoples and places. In this<br>fascinating account of an American institution, Catherine A. Lutz<br>and Jane L. Collins explore the possibility that the magazine, in<br>purporting to teach us about distant cultures, actually tells us<br>much more about our own. <br><br>Lutz and Collins take us inside the National Geographic Society to <br>investigate how its photographers, editors, and designers select <br>images and text to produce representations of Third World cultures. <br>Through interviews with the editors, they describe the process as one <br>of negotiating standards of "balance" and "objectivity," informational <br>content and visual beauty. Then, in a close reading of some six <br>hundred photographs, they examine issues of race, gender, privilege, <br>progress, and modernity through an analysis of the way such things as <br>color,<br>pose, framing, and vantage point are used in representations of<br>non-Western peoples. Finally, through extensive interviews with<br>readers, the authors assess how the cultural narratives of the<br>magazine are received and interpreted, and identify a tension<br>between the desire to know about other peoples and their ways and<br>the wish to validate middle-class American values. <br><br>The result is a complex portrait of an institution and its role in <br>promoting a kind of conservative humanism that acknowledges universal <br>values and celebrates diversity while it allows readers to relegate <br>non-Western peoples to an earlier stage of progress. We see the <br>magazine and the Society as a key middlebrow arbiter of taste, wealth, <br>and power in America, and we get a telling glimpse into middle-class <br>American culture and all the wishes, assumptions, and fears it brings <br>to bear on our<br>armchair explorations of the world. <br><br></div>