Abstract
Children are the best informants on their own lives, and their abilities to interpret, express, and communicate their lived experiences should not be underestimated. This chapter reflects upon experiences with the method of using children’s drawing in ethnographic explorations. Ethnographic fieldwork has been acknowledged as particularly suitable in research with children as it allows the researcher to learn about children’s symbolic and social worlds from the children themselves. This chapter concerns research with bereaved children and shows how drawings, as part of ethnographic explorations, provided insight into children’s experiences of loss and bereavement. It discusses drawing as a meaning-making activity that helps children reflect upon and negotiate their memories of the past and those they have lost, their life in the present, and their prospects for the future.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abu-Lughod, L. (1986). Veiled sentiments. Honor and poetry in a Bedouin society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ansell, N., Robson, E., Hajdu, F., & van Blerk, L. (2012). Learning from young people about their lives: Using participatory methods to research the impacts of AIDS in southern Africa. Children’s Geographies, 10(2), 169–186.
Bahloul, J. (1996). The architecture of memory. A Jewish-Muslim household in colonial Algeria, 1937–1962. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Basso, K. H. (1970). “To Give up on Words”: Silence in western apache culture. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 26(3), 213–230.
Bowlby, J. (1973). Separation and loss: Vol. 2, anger and anxiety. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Boyden, J., & Ennew, J. (Eds.). (1997). Children in focus: A manual for experiential learning in participatory research with children. Stockholm: Rädda Barnen.
Boyd-Franklin, N., Drelich, E. W., & Schwolsky-Fitch, E. (1995). Death and dying/bereavement and mourning. In N. Boyd-Franklin, G. Steiner, & M. Boyland (Eds.), Children, families and HIV/AIDS: Psychosocial and therapeutic issues (pp. 179–195). New York: Guilford Press.
Briggs, J. L. (1970). Never in anger: Portrait of an Eskimo family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brooks, M. (2009). Drawing, visualisation and young children’s exploration of “big ideas”. International Journal of Science Education, 31(3), 319–341.
Cox, S. (2005). Intention and meaning in young children's drawing. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 24(2), 115–125.
Chirwa, W. C. (2002). Social exclusion and inclusion: Challenges to orphan care in Malawi. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 11(1), 93–113.
Connerton, P. (1989). How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Court, E. (1989). Drawing on culture: The influence of culture on children’s drawing performance in rural Kenya. Journal of Art and Design Education, 8, 65–88.
Cox, M. (1998). Drawings of people by Australian aboriginal children: The intermixing of cultural styles. Journal of Art and Design Education, 17(1), 71–79.
Cox, M., Perara, J., & Fan, X. (1999). Children’s drawing in the UK and China. Journal of Art and Design Education, 18(2), 173–181.
Dennis, W. (1966). Group values through children’s drawings. New York: Wiley.
Doka, K. J. (1989). Disenfranchised grief. In K. J. Doka (Ed.), Disenfranchised grief: Recognizing hidden sorrow (pp. 3–11). New York: Lexington Books.
Ennew, J. (2003). Difficult circumstances: Some reflections on “Street Children” in Africa. Children, Youth and Environments, 13(1), 128–146. Retrieved July 8 from http://www.crin.org.
Fragas-Mallet, M., McSherry, D., Larkin, E., & Robinson, C. (2010). Research with children: Methodological issues and innovative techniques. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 8(2), 175–192.
Freud, S. (2001 [1917]). Mourning and melancholia. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XIV (1914–1916): On the history of the psycho-analytic movement, papers on metapsychology and other works (pp. 237–258). London: Vintage Books.
Geis, S. B., Fuller, R. L., & Rush, J. (1986). Lovers of AIDS victims: Psychosocial stresses and counselling needs. Death Studies, 12(1), 43–53.
Golomb, C. (1999). Art and the young: The many faces of representation. Visual Arts Research, 25, 27–50.
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Hansen, K. T. (2005). Getting stuck in the compound: Some odds against social adulthood in Lusaka, Zambia. Africa Today, 51(4), 3–18.
Hart, R. (1997). Children’s participation: The theory and practice of involving young citizens in community development and environmental care. London: Earthscan.
Jackson, M. (2004). The prose of suffering and the practice of silence. Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, 4(1), 44–59.
James, A., & Prout, A. (1990). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems. In A. James & A. Prout (Eds.), Constructing and reconstructing childhood (pp. 7–33). London: The Falmer Press.
Jenks, C. (1982). Introduction: Constituting the child. In C. Jenks (Ed.), The sociology of childhood. Essential readings (pp. 9–24). London: Batsford Academic.
Kaspin, D. (1996). A Chewa cosmology of the body. American Ethnologist, 23(3), 561–578.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). La pensée sauvage (p. 26). Paris: Plon.
Levy, R. I. (1973). Tahitians: Mind and experience in the society islands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Liddell, C., Barrett, L., & Bydawell, M. (2005). Indigenous representations of illness and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. Social Science and Medicine, 60, 691–700.
Lindemann, E. (1944). Symptomatology and management of acute grief. American Journal of Psychiatry, 101, 141–148.
Lutz, C., & White, G. M. (1986). The anthropology of emotions. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15, 405–436.
Matthews, J. (2003). Drawing and painting: Children and visual representation. London: Sage.
Maimbolwa, M. C., Yamba, B., Diwan, V., & Ransjö‐Arvidson, A. B. (2003). Cultural childbirth practices and beliefs in Zambia. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 43(3), 263–274.
Malchiodi, C. A. (1998). Understanding children’s drawings. New York: Guilford Press.
Meintjes, H., Hall, K., Marera, D. H., & Boulle, A. (2010). Orphans of the AIDS epidemic? The extent, nature and circumstances of child-headed households in south Africa. AIDS Care, 22(1), 40–49.
Middleton, D. R. (1989). Emotional style: The cultural ordering of emotions. Ethos, 17(2), 187–201.
Mitchell, L. M. (2006). Child-centered? Thinking critically about children’s drawings as visual research method. Visual Anthropology Review, 22(1), 60–73.
Mohan, G. (1999). Not so distant, not so strange: The personal and the political in participatory research. Ethics, Place and Environment, 2(1), 41–54.
Nora, P. (1996). Between memory and history. In P. Nora (Ed.), Realms of memory: The construction of the French past (pp. 1–20). Columbia: Columbia University Press.
Prout, A., & James, A. (1997). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems, in James, A. and Prout, A. (eds) Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood, pp. 7–33. London: Routledge.
Peirce, C. S. (1955). Philosophical writings of Peirce. New York: Dover Publications.
Punch, S. (2002). Research with children: The same or different from research with adults? Childhood, 9(3), 321–341.
Robson, S., & Fumoto, H. (2009). Practitioners’ experiences of personal ownership and autonomy in their support for young children’s thinking. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 10(1), 43–54.
Rosaldo, R. (2004). Grief and a Headhunter’s range. In A. C. G. M. Robben (Ed.), Death, mourning and burial, a cross-cultural reader (pp. 167–178). Malden: Blackwell.
Saville-Troike, M. (1985). The place of silence in an integrated theory of communication. In D. Tannen & M. Saville-Troike (Eds.), Perspectives on silence (pp. 3–18). Norwood: Ablex.
Saville-Troike, M. (2003). The ethnography of communication: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Serpell, R. (1979). How specific are perceptual skills? A cross cultural study of pattern reproduction. British Journal of Psychology, 70(3), 365–380.
Shweder, R., & LeVine, R. A. (1984). Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Steward, M., Furuya, T., Steward, O., & Ikeda, A. (1982). Japanese and American children’s drawings of the outside and inside of their bodies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 13, 87–104.
Thomas, G. V., & Jolley, R. P. (1998). Drawing conclusions: A re-examination of empirical and conceptual bases for psychological evaluation of children from their drawings. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 37, 127–139.
Thomas, N., & O’kane, C. (1998). The ethics of participatory research with children. Children & Society, 12(5), 336–348.
Wellenkamp, J. C. (1988). Notions of grief and catharsis among the Toraja. American Ethnologist, 15(3), 486–500.
Wilson, I. D. (1995). Children’s experience of war as expressed through their drawings. Bachelor’s thesis. UK: University of Birmingham.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Smørholm, S., Simonsen, J.K. (2017). Children’s Drawings in Ethnographic Explorations: Analysis and Interpretations. In: Evans, R., Holt, L. (eds) Methodological Approaches. Geographies of Children and Young People, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-020-9_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-020-9_23
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-287-019-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-287-020-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences