Participant-Produced Visual Media and Researcher Positionality in Research Incorporating Participatory Visual Methodologies

• In Event: 61.079 - Who Are We Here? Interrogating Positionality in Participatory Arts-Based Research

Abstract

“How do you not cry every time you talk to your participants?” A conference participant asked me this after my presentation about my participatory visual research with South African girls about transactional sex and sexual violence in and around rural schools in KwaZulu Natal province. The question made my shoulders slump. A dedicated group of teenage Zulu girls (ages 16-21) had worked together over the course of 3 workshops to make cellphilms (Mitchell & de Lange, 2013) -participatory videos made with cellphones- about their nuanced understandings of sexuality, risk, and desire in a context of poverty, high rates of HIV and AIDS and gender-based violence. I had hoped to translate some of this nuance into my presentation. The conference participant’s question made me realise that what some people took away from my description of the girls’ work was (yet another) image of “the poor African girl.” I was reminded of Shefer and Strebel (2012) who writes: “Researchers and practitioners need to interrogate their own gendered constructions and how we may be reiterating the gender binarisms we supposedly challenge in the way in which we go about our research, what we choose to research, the questions we ask, how we interpret our data, and the conclusions and recommendations we make” (p. 61).

The introduction of participatory visual methodologies into research with marginalized communities has offered opportunities to address power imbalances between researcher and research participant (Mitchell, 2011). Ethical concerns of incorporating these visual methods into research practice and the risks to research participants have received considerable attention (e.g. Nutbrown; 2010, Mitchell, 2011; Kindon, Hume-Cook, & Woods, 2012). However, appreciating the dialogical processes of qualitative research and how participants and researchers co-construct knowledge (England, 1994) suggests when using visual methods a need to consider the representation of participant produced visual media in relation to the positionality of the researcher. If visual representations of the participants are incorporated into academic presentations, for example, how is this work understood alongside the researchers’ representation of self and/or embodied self? What other texts (visual/written) might be included to add to the researcher representation that might disrupt power within the research? When is it appropriate to include participant-produced images and how might these construct participants in contrast to or in collaboration with the researcher?

During my doctoral research I have incorporated cellphilm-making, photovoice, and digital storytelling. This paper considers how I, alongside research participants and their visual texts, position myself in this work. Using interpretive description (Thorne, Reimer Kirkham & MacDonald-Emes, 1997; Thorne, Reimer Kirkham & O’Flynn-Magee, 2004) I reflect on the visual texts, my fieldnotes and on instances when I have chosen to show/not include participant-produced visual media during conferences and in academic publications. Incorporating participant-produced images provides insight and offers a certain ‘legitimacy’ to research findings and can draw attention to overlooked or underrepresented phenomena. It also raises questions about how participant-produced images might promote the ‘outsourcing of patriarchy’ (Grewal, 2013) and reinforce power imbalances involved in doing participatory research across difference.

Author

• Katie MacEntee, McGill University