Participants' productive disruption of a community photo-elicitation project: improvised methodologies in practice. Issue 5 (3rd September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vigurs, Katy; Kara, Helen
• Is Part Of: International journal of social research methodology. Volume 20:Issue 5(2017)
• Page Start: 513
• Page End: 523
• Publication Date: 2017-09-03
• Subjects: Photo-elicitation -- participatory research -- community research -- place -- improvised methodologies; Sociology -- Research -- Periodicals; 300.72
• DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2016.1221259
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1364-5579

Abstract

Abstract: This article reports on an attempt to use photo-elicitation to explore contested intergenerational perceptions and experiences of 'place' in one English village. Participants actively disrupted the photo-elicitation project and ended up co-creating an enriched research design that allowed them to represent how they experienced 'place'. The spontaneous, mixed media-elicitation that resulted overturns some of the more straightforward notions that are aligned with photo-elicitation techniques. This article builds on a growing body of critical literature on photo-elicitation and shows how participants' disruption of a project's research methods can be both challenging and fruitful in practice. The researcher's flexibility and willingness to work with participants' alternative approaches proved extremely effective in allowing participants to communicate their 'imagined geographies' and to identify experiences of social inequality. This article explores how the initially problematic in participant involvement can be turned into the productive through the use of 'improvised methodologies'.