Abstract
This chapter maps the issues and tensions, theoretical and methodological, to which this book responds. The author describes her own experiences as a visual art pedagogue in a notoriously violent and impoverished South Bronx Junior High School. Through this ethnographic tale, she begins to contextualise the need for educational research in the area of youth identities and visual material culture (VMC). In particular, Eglinton underlines a disconnection between youth cultural experiences, theory, pedagogy, and empirical studies that examine young people’s use of VMC. Drawing on Hall’s (The local and the global: globalization and ethnicity. In McClintock A, Mufti A, Shohat E (eds) Dangerous liaisons: gender, nation, and post-colonial perspectives. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 173–187, 1997a) global postmodern, and place or locality as a key conceptual tool, the author argues for a more relational understanding of youth engagement with VMC: one involving youth experiences, VMC, and the social and physical geographies young people live with/in and through. In the second part of this chapter, the focus turns to methodology: the author refers to ‘new’ ethnographies (e.g. in Lather PA, Postmodernism, post-structuralism and post (critical) ethnography: of ruins, aporias and angels. In Atkinson P, Coffey A, Delamont S, Lofland J, Lofland L (eds) Handbook of ethnography. Sage, London, pp 477–492, 2001) and describes the ‘multi-sited’ (Marcus G, Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998), participatory, visual-based ethnography used in this study; particular attention is paid to visual-based methods as well as to issues around authority and representation. The author concludes with the aims and outline of the book.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
A portion of this chapter has been previously published in Eglinton (2008).
- 2.
Junior high schools in the United States serve students between elementary and high school. Grades included vary between 6th and 9th grade.
- 3.
Though this number might seem high, I was only one of three art teachers in a school with 5,000 students. One art educator worked with 1,000 or so special needs students, and two of us worked with 4,000 remaining pupils. I taught 6 classes per day with approximately 33 young people in a class. I saw each class once a week for a term (approximately, 990 young people in a term). There were two terms in the school year, bringing the number of young people who walked through my door to around 1,980.
- 4.
- 5.
For clarity and brevity, I use the terms self/selves and identity/identities interchangeably. I do not, however, do this unreflectively and recognise there are literature and debates focusing on the relationship between self and identity (e.g. Fraser, 1999).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Names of all participants, community members, staff, and sites (except New York City and Yukon Territory more generally) have been changed.
- 10.
See also Hastrup and Olwig (1997) and Pink (2001). I contrast modernist and postmodern perspectives not because a sharp divide exists between them, nor to demonstrate a temporal picture, but rather to highlight differences in the kinds of ethnography. Fontana (1994, p. 220) writes: ‘What makes… ethnographies postmodern is often a matter of degree and interpretation’. Though this research finds its home in interdisciplinarity, the approach used in this study focuses heavily, though not exclusively, on social and cultural anthropology. This does not mean that ethnography is exclusive to anthropology; Lather (2001, p. 477), for instance, describes ethnography as ‘transdisciplinary’.
- 11.
Overall, in this framework, I do not reject the idea that there dominant discourses which ‘take on a hard objectified character’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, in Filmer, Jenks, Seale, Thoburn, & Walsh, 2004), but I do use sociocultural theories to offer the idea that these discourses are constantly in flux as they are constituted of, and serve to constitute, the actions of people.
- 12.
See ‘Watching Myself, Watching Myself’ (http://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/index.php?id=457).
- 13.
I have also included a glossary of terms for slang used by young people and myself.
- 14.
For the PhD dissertation, I had approval to include some images from the Hope and did include some images featuring the youth. In order to conceal the young people’s identities, I blocked out faces and other identifying characteristics using various editing techniques. However, while I am able to show images in conferences and other live events, for wider print publication, I am unable to include these images. In addition, I did feel that the practice of blocking out the youths’ faces took away from the participants’ intentions and ownership of their cultural productions.
- 15.
Though youth selected pseudonyms used in the videos, by the end of the study, everyone knew each other’s names and I have changed the names again to strengthen confidentiality in the final text.
References
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7, 295–310.
Appadurai, A. (1991). Global ethnoscapes: Notes and queries for a transnational anthropology. In R. G. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present(pp. 191–210). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Archer, L. (2003). Race, masculinity and schooling: Muslim boys and education. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
Banks, M. (2001). Visual methods in social research. London: Sage.
Bennett, A. (1999). Hip hop am Main: The localization of rap music and hip hop culture. Media, Culture & Society, 21, 77–91.
Bennett, A. (2000). Popular music and youth culture: Music, identity, and place. London: Macmillan Press.
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. New York: Anchor.
Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education and the end of the critical consumer. Harvard Educational Review, 73(3), 309–327.
Burawoy, M. (2000a). Introduction: Reaching for the global. In M. Burawoy, J. A. Blum, S. George, Z. Gille, T. Gowan, L. Haney, M. Klawiter, S. H. Lopez, S. O. Riain, & M. Thayer (Eds.), Global ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world(pp. 1–40). Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Burawoy, M. (2000b). Grounding globalization. In M. Burawoy, J. A. Blum, S. George, Z. Gille, T. Gowan, L. Haney, M. Klawiter, S. H. Lopez, S. O. Riain, & M. Thayer (Eds.), Global ethnography: Forces, connections and imaginations in a postmodern world(pp. 337–350). Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Burawoy, M., Blum, J. A., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., Klawiter, M., Lopez, S. H., Riain, S. O., & Thayer, M. (Eds.). (2000). Global ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Clifford, J. (1986). Introduction: partial truths. In J. Clifford & G. E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography(pp. 1–26). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Coffey, A. J. (1999). The ethnographic self: Fieldwork and the representation of identity. London: Sage.
Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data analysis: Complementary strategies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cole, M., & Engestrom, Y. (1993). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognition(pp. 1–46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Connell, R. W. (2002). Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Davies, C. A. (1999). Reflexive ethnography: A guide to researching selves and others. London: Routledge.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research(2nd ed., pp. 1–45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research(3rd ed., pp. 1–32). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Desai, D. (2002). The ethnographic move in contemporary art: What does it mean for art education. Studies in Art Education, 43(4), 307–323.
Dillabough, J., & Kennelly, J. (2010). Lost youth in the global city. London: Routledge.
Dimitriadis, G. (2001). Performing identity/performing culture: Hip hop as text, pedagogy, and lived practice. New York: Peter Lang.
Dimitriadis, G., & Weis, L. (2007). Globalization and multisited ethnographic approaches. In C. McCarthy, A. Durham, L. Engel, A. Filmer, M. Giardina, & M. Malagreca (Eds.), Globalizing cultural studies: Ethnographic interventions in theory, method, and policy(pp. 323–342). New York: Peter Lang.
Dolby, N. (2001). Constructing race: Youth, identity, and popular culture in South Africa. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Dolby, N., & Rizvi, F. (2008a). Introduction: Youth, mobility, and identity. In N. Dolby & F. Rizvi (Eds.), Youth moves: Identities and education in global perspective(pp. 1–14). London: Routledge.
Dolby, N., & Rizvi, F. (Eds.). (2008b). Youth moves: Identities and education in global perspective. London: Routledge.
Duncum, P. (2001). Visual culture: Developments, definitions, and directions for art education. Studies in Art Education, 42(2), 101–112.
Duncum, P. (2002). Clarifying visual culture art education. Art Education, 55(3), 6–11.
Duncum, P. (2005). Visual culture art education: Why, what and how? In R. Hickman (Ed.), Critical studies in art and design education(pp. 151–162). Bristol, UK: Intellect.
Edwards, E. (1997). Beyond the boundary: A consideration of the expressive in photography and anthropology. In M. Banks & H. Morphy (Eds.), Rethinking visual anthropology(pp. 53–80). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Eglinton, K. (2008). Using participatory visual ethnography to explore young people’s use of visual material culture in place and space. In R. Hickman (Ed.), Research in art and design education: Issues and exemplars(pp. 51–65). Bristol, UK: Intellect.
Eisenhart, M. (2001). Educational ethnography past, present, and future: Ideas to think with. Educational Researcher, 30(8), 16–27.
Falzon, M. A. (2009). Introduction: Multi-sited ethnography: Theory, praxis and locality in contemporary research. In M. A. Falzon (Ed.), Multi-sited ethnography: Theory, praxis, and locality in contemporary research(pp. 1–23). London: Ashgate.
Faubion, J. (2001). Currents in cultural fieldwork. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland, & L. Lofland (Eds.), Handbook of ethnography(pp. 39–59). London: Sage.
Filmer, P., Jenks, C., Seale, C., Thoburn, N., & Walsh, D. (2004). Developments in social theory. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture(2nd ed., pp. 33–46). London: Sage.
Finney, J., Hickman, R., Morrison, M., Nicholl, B., & Rudduck, J. (2005). Rebuilding engagement through the arts. Cambridge, UK: Pearson Publications.
Fontana, A. (1994). Ethnographic trends in the postmodern era. In D. Dickens & A. Fontana (Eds.), Postmodernism and social inquiry(pp. 203–224). New York: Routledge.
Fraser, M. (1999). Identity without selfhood: Simone de Beauvoir and bisexuality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Freedman, K. (2003). Teaching visual culture. New York: Teachers College Press.
Funge, E. (1998). Rethinking representation: Media studies and the postmodern teenager. English and Media Magazine, 39, 33–36.
Gablik, S. (1991). The reenchantment of art. New York.: Thames and Hudson.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic Books.
Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
Grossberg, L. (1989). Pedagogy in the present: Politics, postmodernity, and the popular. In H. Giroux & R. Simon (Eds.), Popular culture, schooling, and everyday life(pp. 91–115). Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
Guba, E., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research(pp. 105–117). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hall, S. (1990). Cultural identity and diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, culture, difference(pp. 222–238). London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Hall, S. (1997a). The local and the global: Globalization and ethnicity. In A. McClintock, A. Mufti, & E. Shohat (Eds.), Dangerous liaisons: Gender, nation, and post-colonial perspectives(pp. 173–187). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hall, S. (1997b). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage.
Hastrup, K. (1992). Anthropological visions: Some notes on visual and textual authority. In P. I. Crawford & D. Turton (Eds.), Film as ethnography(pp. 8–25). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Hastrup, K., & Olwig, K. F. (1997). Introduction. In K. F. Olwig & K. Hastrup (Eds.), Siting culture: The shifting anthropological object(pp. 1–16). London: Routledge.
Hickman, R. (2005). Why we make art and why it is taught. Bristol, UK: Intellect.
Hickman, R., & Eglinton, K. (2010). Exploring the ways in which youth engage with visual material culture in their everyday lives: A framework for inquiry. Australian Art Education, 32(2), 4–16.
Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holloway, S. L., & Valentine, G. (Eds.). (2000). Children’s geographies: Playing, living, learning. London: Routledge.
Hörschelmann, K., & Schäfer, N. (2005). Performing the global through the local – Young people’s practices of identity formation in former East Germany. Children’s Geographies, 3, 219–242.
Ingold, T. (1994). Introduction to culture. In T. Ingold (Ed.), Companion encyclopaedia of anthropology: Humanity, culture and social life(pp. 329–349). London: Routledge.
Irwin, R. L. (2004). A/r/tography: A metonymic métissage. In R. Irwin & A. de Cosson (Eds.), A/r/tography as living inquiry: An introduction to arts-based research in education. Vancouver, Canada: Pacific Educational Press.
Jess, P., & Massey, D. (1995). The conceptualization of place. In D. Massey & P. Jess (Eds.), A Place in the world? Places, cultures and globalization(pp. 45–85). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press/The Open University.
Kehily, M. J., & Nayak, A. (2008). Global femininities: Consumption, culture and the significance of place. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 29(3), 325–342.
Keifer-Boyd, K., Amburgy, P., & Knight, W. (2007). Unpacking privilege: Memory, culture, gender, race and power in visual culture. Art Education, 60(3), 19–24.
Kennelly, J., Poyntz, S., & Ugor, P. (2009). Special issue introduction: Youth cultural politics, and new social spaces in an era of globalization. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 31(4), 255–269.
Kenway, J., Kraack, A., & Hickey-Moody, A. (2006). Masculinity beyond the metropolis. New York: Palgrave.
Kincheloe, J. L., & Tobin, K. (2006). Doing educational research in a complex world. In K. Tobin & J. L. Kincheloe (Eds.), Doing educational research: A handbook(pp. 3–13). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Kirsch, G. (1999). Ethical dilemmas in feminist research: The politics of location, interpretation, and publication. New York: State University of New York Press.
Lather, P. A. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. New York: Routledge.
Lather, P. A. (2001). Postmodernism, post-structuralism and post (critical) ethnography: Of ruins, aporias and angels. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland, & L. Lofland (Eds.), Handbook of ethnography(pp. 477–492). London: Sage.
Lincoln, Y. S. (2001). Engaging sympathies: Relationships between action research and social constructivism. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice(pp. 124–132). London: Sage.
Lusted, D. (1986). Why pedagogy? Screen, 27(5), 2–14.
Luttrell, W. (2003). Pregnant bodies, fertile minds. London: Routledge.
Macdonald, S. (2001). British social anthropology. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland, & L. Lofland (Eds.), Handbook of ethnography(pp. 60–79). London: Sage.
MacDougall, D. (1997). The visual in anthropology. In M. Banks & H. Morphy (Eds.), Rethinking visual anthropology(pp. 276–295). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Maira, S. (2002). Desis in the house: Indian American youth culture in New York City. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Marcus, G. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117.
Marcus, G. (1998). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Marcus, G. (2009). Multi-sited ethnography: Notes and queries. In M. A. Falzon (Ed.), Multi-sited ethnography: Theory, praxis, and locality in contemporary research(pp. 181–196). London: Ashgate.
Massey, D. (1993). Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place. In J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson, & L. Tickner (Eds.), Mapping the futures: Local cultures, global change(pp. 59–69). London: Routledge.
Massey, D. (1998). The spatial construction of youth cultures. In T. Skelton & G. Valentine (Eds.), Cool places: Geographies of youth cultures(pp. 121–129). London: Routledge.
McLeod, J. (2009). Youth studies, comparative inquiry, and the local/global problematic. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 31(4), 270–292.
Mead, M. (1928/2001). Coming of age in Samoa. New York: Morrow.
Mirzoeff, N. (1998). What is visual culture? In N. Mirzoeff (Ed.), Visual culture reader(pp. 3–13). New York: Routledge.
Mirzoeff, N. (1999). An introduction to visual culture. New York: Routledge.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (1995). Interdisciplinarity and visual culture. Art Bulletin, 77(4), 540–544.
Morphy, H., & Banks, M. (1997). Introduction: Rethinking visual anthropology. In M. Banks & H. Morphy (Eds.), Rethinking visual anthropology(pp. 1–35). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Nayak, A. (2003). Race, place and globalization: Youth cultures in a changing world. Oxford, UK: Berg.
Nayak, A., & Kehily, M. J. (2008). Gender, youth and culture: Young masculinities and femininities. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Petchauer, E. (2009). Framing and reviewing hip-hop educational research. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 946–978.
Pilkington, H. (1994). Russia's youth and its culture: A nation's constructors and constructed. London: Routledge.
Pilkington, H. (2004). Youth strategies for glocal living: Space, power and communication in everyday cultural practice. In A. Bennett & K. Kahn-Harris (Eds.), After subculture: Critical studies in contemporary youth culture(pp. 119–134). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pilkington, H., & Johnson, R. (2003). Peripheral youth: Relations of identity and power in global/local context. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(3), 259–283.
Pink, S. (2001). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research. London: Sage.
Pink, S. (2006). The future of visual anthropology: Engaging the senses. London: Routledge.
Ramazanoglu, C., & Holland, J. (2002). Feminist methodology: Challenges and choices. London: Sage.
Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (Eds.). (2001). Introduction: Inquiry and participation in search of a world worthy of human aspiration. Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice(pp. 1–14). London: Sage.
Savage, M., Bagnall, G., & Longhurst, B. (2005). Globalization and belonging. London: Sage.
Schwandt, T. A. (2000). Three epistemological stances for qualitative inquiry: Interpretivism, hermeneutics, and social constructionism. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research(2nd ed., pp. 189–213). London: Sage.
Seale, C. (2004). Validity, reliability and the quality of research. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture(2nd ed., pp. 71–84). London: Sage.
Shields, R. (1991). Places on the margin: Alternative geographies of modernity. London: Routledge.
Skelton, T., & Valentine, G. (1998a). Cool places: An introduction to youth and youth cultures. In G. Valentine, T. Skelton, & D. Chamber (Eds.), Cool places: Geographies of youth cultures(pp. 1–32). London: Routledge.
Skelton, T., & Valentine, G. (Eds.). (1998b). Cool places: Geographies of youth cultures. London: Routledge.
Springgay, S., Irwin, R., & Wilson Kind, S. (2004). A/r/tography as living inquiry through art and text. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6), 897–912.
Steinberg, S. R. (2006). Why study youth culture? In S. Steinberg, P. Parmar, & B. Richard (Eds.), Contemporary youth culture: An international encyclopedia(Vol. 1, pp. xiii–xviii). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Sullivan, G. (2005). Art practice as research. London: Sage.
Tyler, S. A. (1986). Post-modern ethnography: From document of the occult to occult document. In J. Clifford & G. E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography(pp. 122–140). Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Wolcott, H. F. (1994). Transforming qualitative data: Description, analysis, and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wolcott, H. (2001). Writing up qualitative research(2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Youdell, D. (2006). Impossible bodies, impossible selves: Exclusions and student subjectivities. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Eglinton, K.A. (2013). Telling Stories, Forging Links, and Researching Lives. In: Youth Identities, Localities, and Visual Material Culture. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4857-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4857-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4856-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4857-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)