“Everywhere You Ain’t:” Visual Ethnographic Approaches to Place-based Cultural Practice in Los Angeles

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: “Seeing” Social Contexts through Innovative Methodologies

Abstract

Recent literature in the learning sciences has considered how learning is necessarily implicated with, and through, place (Vossoughi, Marin, & Bang, 2024). Accordingly, how learning is studied methodologically has also been taken up by observing how racialized groups are both participants in and producers of ongoing forms of cultural practice. This approach makes central the position that racialized people and their neighborhoods produce conditions ripe for learning. Using this foundation, the purpose of this paper is to consider how a critical visual and autoethnographic observational approach was used to explore the place-based cultural practices of neighborhood-based photographers in the West LA section of Los Angeles County. I conclude with vignettes that reflect on my own changing participant role alongside NBPs.

Author

• Brian Zamora, University of California - Los Angeles