Ultimately, this books is nothing more than rhetoric about "white male dominated racist Western culture".

The authors clearly had this notion in mind when they wrote this book, and it taints virtually the entire book to the point where their conclusions aren't even remotely believable as being the result of objective research.

There three methodological steps are to look at the process of producing the images (a social endeavor over which no individuals have total say throughout the process), examine the structure and content of the images, and identify how readers view the photographs.

"We chart the tendency of the magazine to idealize and render exotic third-world peoples, with an accompanying tendency to downplay or erase evidence of poverty and violence. The photographs show these people as either cut off from the flow of world events or involved in a singular story of progress from tradition to modernity [ahem, two very different things unless you're not thinking hard about "modernity"], a story that changes with decolonization."

Their goal is make NG and other mass media "understand and historicize the differences that separate interconnected human beings," to heighten empathy without fostering stereotyping or paternalism.

Criticism: I can't deny that the writers made such a negative impression on me with their dogma and attacking hyperbole (and dripping class resentment) that their useful ideas are weakened in my view. I wouldn't assign this to students I hope will write well.

That however is probably the only thing that you really need to know about NG. I certainly didn't need to know - and now knowing, don't believe, - as the authors believe that in depicting the naked breasts of native women: "the magazine and its readers are caught between the desire to play out the cultural fantasy of the oversexed native woman and the social controls of sexual morality..." This fixation which makes up an entire chapter "Women and Their Breasts" only highlights the real difficulty with the book's analysis. It is shallow and leans heavily towards a feministic cultural critique; it's also narrow in that it mostly looks at how NG depicts cultures. What about the other subjects the magazine looks at?

Boring writing aside my continued enjoyment of National Geographic comes from its explorations of wild places and its emphasis on nature. I much prefer this to what READING NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC would have me do - ponder whether the magazine is a pernicious contributor to the spread of Western supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, and the homogenizing influences of a white middle class world view.