"Just because they aren't human doesn't mean they aren't alive": The methodological potential of photovoice to examine human-nature relations as a source of resilience and health among urban Indigenous youth. (January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Morton, Darrien; Bird-Naytowhow, Kelley; Pearl, Tamara; Hatala, Andrew R.
• Is Part Of: Health & place. Volume 61(2020:Jan.)
• Publication Date: 2020-01
• Subjects: Health -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Health services accessibility -- Periodicals; Public health -- Periodicals; Political planning -- Periodicals; Social medicine -- Periodicals; Epidemiology -- Periodicals; Health Policy -- Periodicals; Health Services Accessibility -- Periodicals; Public Health -- Periodicals; Public Policy -- Periodicals; Sociology, Medical -- Periodicals; Épidémiologie -- Périodiques; Politique sanitaire -- Périodiques; Santé, Services de -- Accessibilité -- Périodiques; Health services accessibility; Health -- Social aspects; Political planning; Public health; Social medicine; Periodicals; 613
• DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.102268
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1353-8292

Abstract

Abstract: Photovoice has been widely used as a participatory visual research methodology within the social sciences and health research. Given photovoice's critical and pedagogical potential, its advancement within Indigenous resilience and health research has been particularly prevalent. However, it has largely failed to problematize the concept of 'voice' to the extent of theorizing and engaging with the 'voices' of other kinds of life with consequences for theory and method. In this paper we re-examine the methodological potential and utility of photovoice methods to include other-than-human 'voices' during the empirical study of place-making, human-nature relations, and resilience and health. We analyze photo-narratives from a community-based, participatory research project involving Indigenous youth in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in order to revisit 1) what we did to produce those images and 2) what we saw and heard in images. Our results suggest that when photovoice methods consider a relational and affective understanding of subjective reality during research practice, they have the capacity to capture and handle other-than-human 'voices'. Accordingly, we discuss future directions when adapting photovoice methods for the study of environmental repossession and dispossession within contested contexts of and encounters with methodological complexity, uncertainty, and emergence. Highlights: Photovoice offers useful methods to understand relational processes of environmental repossession and dispossession. Indigenous health research has not critically recognized the agency, sentience, and 'voices' of other kinds of life. The visual capabilities of photovoice can sensitively capture the agential capacities of humans-nature relations. Photovoice should remain flexible to accommodate uncertain outcomes for methods, such as auteurship.