Abstract
This chapter comes out of a two year study in Vietnam with a group of girls with disabilities. It focuses on the ways in which the use of the well-known visual tool of photovoice in a project where issues of embodiment are already critical, can contribute to re-framing the idea of a body politic in participatory visual research. For example, how can work with girls with disabilities inform such typical ethical issues in visual research as ‘a no faces approach’ in the context of anonymity? Why no ‘faces’ (vs no hands or no feet) and where does the anonymity of the body reside? At the same time, what are the ethical dimensions of the use of the visual in a study associated with a population that has typically been ‘hidden from view’? What are the rights of the ‘learning bodies’ of the girls with disabilities to be seen and heard? In drawing on work in the area of Critical Disability Studies, Girlhood Studies and Participatory Visual Research, the chapter has key implications for research ethics boards and raises critical issues of human rights. Critically it asks the question: what is the place of our own researcher reflexivity in relation to ‘learning bodies’, advocacy and research ethics?
… we recognized that a variety of tools alone is not sufficient to enable participation, and that successful participation is contingent on researchers questioning their methods, and that this is a continually reflexive process.
(Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2012, p. 225)
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Mitchell, C., de Lange, N., Nguyen, X.T. (2016). Visual Ethics with and Through the Body: The Participation of Girls with Disabilities in Vietnam in a Photovoice Project. In: Coffey, J., Budgeon, S., Cahill, H. (eds) Learning Bodies. Perspectives on Children and Young People, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0306-6_15
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