‘A camera is a big responsibility’: a lens for analysing children's visual voices

Abstract This article is based on longitudinal image-based research conducted with working-class immigrant boys and girls in a US public school context. Picture taking is one part of a larger ethnographic exploration of how the children perceive and navigate linguistic, cultural, race/ethnic and economic differences, family-school relationships, and self and identity changes over time. The article discusses a mode of visual research and analysis the author has adopted which is dynamic and relational; it resists any single orientation to children's photography – whether as an aesthetic experience, a socio-cultural activity or a cognitive-developmental process, to name three common perspectives. Instead, her goal is to create a 'need-to-know-more' stance towards children as knowing subjects and to appreciate the limits of what we can see, know and understand about their childhood contexts, individual subjectivities and exercise of multiple voices. Notes 1 See Wagner (1999 Wagner, J. 1999. Seeing kids' worlds. Visual Sociology, 14: 1–5. Google Scholar) for his introduction to a special issue dedicated to how childhood is seen by children that set the stage for much of the research in this field. 2 See Arnot and Reay (2007 Arnot, M. and Reay, D. 2007. A sociology of pedagogic voice: Power, inequality and pupil consultation. Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 28 (3): 311–25. Taylor her work focuses on the objectification and control of the sexuality of Black men and women. Her theory about controlling images can be extended to any number of intersecting systems of oppression that objectify individuals (in this case children) and rob them of their dignity and humanity. [6 In 2006 and 2007 I helped organise two conferences, funded by Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, entitled Visible Rights: Photography By and For Children, to build links between youth civic engagement, social activism and the visual arts. These conferences brought together artists, educators, child rights advocates and scholars from North and South America to explore the role that photography can play in facilitating children's agency and promoting their rights. My participation in these conferences opened up myriad questions about the role of photography in fostering children's rights, participation and control over representing themselves. http: //www. culturalagents. org/int/visible. html; http: //www. drclas. harvard. edu/brazil/events/visibleᵣights; http: //www. drclas. harvard. edu/brazil/events/visibleᵣights07. 7 See Pat Thomson (2008, 4–6) for her discussion/critique of 'voice' research and its tendency to universalise the experience of children and youth. She reviews five different kinds of voice to which researchers have paid attention – authoritative, critical, therapeutic, consumer and pedagogic – and suggests there may be more. She also breaks down two different types of approach to visual research – those in which researchers use visual methods on children (where children are framed as the subjects of inquiry), and those that use visual methods with children/youth as partners in inquiry. 8 See Brown (1998 Brown, L. M. 1998. Raising our voices: The politics of girls' anger, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar) for an exemplary account that conceptualises voice in social and psychological ways. 9 See Daiute and Nelson (1997 Daiute, C. and Nelson, K. 1997. Making sense of the sense-making function of narrative evaluation. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7: 207–15. Crossref, Web of Science ®, Google Scholar) for discussion of children's narratives as insight into self, identity and social consciousness. 10 See Briggs 1986 Briggs, C. L. 1986. Learning how to ask: A socio-linguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science research, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crossref, Google Scholar; Bruner 1986 Bruner, J. 1986. Actual minds, possible worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Crossref, Google Scholar; Mishler 1986 Mishler, E. G. 1986. Research interviewing: Context and narrative, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar; Chase 2003 Chase, S. E. 2003. "Learning to listen: Narrative principles in a qualitative research methods course". In Up close and personal: The teaching and learning of narrative research, Edited by: Josselson, R. , Lieblich, A. and McAdams, D. P. 79–99. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Crossref, Google Scholar; Riessman 2008 Riessman, C. K. 2008. Narrative methods for the human sciences, London and Los Angeles: Sage. Google Scholar for discussion of narrative as a meaning-making process. 11 These are the labels and percentages provided by the school; they do not publish records of immigrant status of the children. Students are eligible for free and reduced lunch in schools if their family income is at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty line. In the United States the percentage of students in a school receiving free and reduced lunch is an indicator of the socio-economic status of a school. 12 I am currently following up with participants in their senior year of high school, inviting them to look back on their images. 13 A discussion about ethics and the dilemmas of consent in school-based projects is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is a topic well worth mentioning. See Morrow and Richards 1996 Morrow, V. and Richards, M. 1996. The ethics of social research with children: An overview. Children and Society, 10 (2): 90–105. Crossref, Google Scholar; Thomas and O'Kane 1998 Thomas, N. and O'Kane, C. 1998. The ethics of participatory research with children. Children Valentine 1999 Valentine, G. 1999. Being seen and heard? The ethical complexities of working with children and young people at home and at school. Ethics, Place and Environment, 2 (2): 141–55. Taylor David, Edwards, and Alldred 2001 David, M. , Edwards, R. and Alldred, P. 2001. Children and school-based research: 'Informed consent' or 'educated consent'. British Educational Research Journal, 27 (3): 347–65. [Taylor White et al. 2010 White, A. , Bushin, N. , Carpena-Méndez, F. and Ní Laoire, C. 2010. Using visual methodologies to explore contemporary Irish childhoods. Qualitative Research, 10 (2): 1–16. [Crossref, Google Scholar. 14 Here I shift to the pronoun we to include the many doctoral research assistants who participated in this process, including J. Poser (Poser 2007 Poser, J. 2007. Frames of meaning: Children's representational practices and images-in-use, Unpublished diss. , Harvard Graduate School of Education. Google Scholar) ; interviewers E. Mishkin, M. Tieken, and C. Shalaby; and data analysts J. Broussard, S. Deckman, J. Dorsey and J. Hayden. 15 See Gross, Katz, and Ruby (1988 Gross, L. and Katz, J. S. 1988. Image ethics: The moral rights of subjects in photographs, film and television, Edited by: Ruby, J. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar) for a discussion of visual ethics. We encouraged the children to practise (through role-playing) asking people for permission to photograph, and discussed with them why a person might want to say no, and how this also related to their own participation in the project. We also talked about photographs that they might decide they did not want to show, discuss or select for public viewing. 16 We also brainstormed with the children and generated more specific prompts, including: 'Take pictures of what learning is like at school'; 'What makes you feel proud (of your school, family community)? '; 'What is something that concerns you about your community? '; 'Who or what do you admire? '; 'Take pictures of places inside and outside of school where you feel comfortable'; 'Take pictures of places inside and outside of school where you feel respect'; 'Take pictures of places inside and outside of school where you feel like you belong'; 'What do you do after school and on the weekends? ' 17 A full discussion of this pattern (and the one exception) are beyond the scope of this article. 18 There are multiple ways to read the children's consumer culture pictures and dialogues (Cook 2004 Cook, D. 2004. The commodification of childhood: The children's clothing industry and the rise of the child consumer, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Crossref, Google Scholar; Pugh 2009 Pugh, A. 2009. Longing and belonging: Parents, children and consumer culture, Berkeley: University of California Press. Crossref, Google Scholar). White et al. (2010 White, A. , Bushin, N. , Carpena-Méndez, F. and Ní Laoire, C. 2010. Using visual methodologies to explore contemporary Irish childhoods. Qualitative Research, 10 (2): 1–16. Crossref, Google Scholar) found a similar finding in a photography project with immigrant children in Ireland. 19 See Sharples et al. (2003 Sharples, M. , Davison, L. , Thomas, G. V. and Rudman, P. D. 2003. Children as photographers: An analysis of children's photographic behaviour and intentions at three age levels. Visual communication, 2 (3): 303–30. Crossref, Google Scholar) for a study of what children at different ages do with cameras in which they developed independent coding schemes for content and intention. 20 These idioms include relative size; the feminine touch; function ranking; the (nuclear) family; and rituals of subordination (Goffman 1979 Goffman, E. 1979. Gender advertisements, New York: Harper and Row. Google Scholar). 21 Thanks to this team, including J. Dorsey, J. Hayden, B. Malik, D. Saintil Previna, C. Shalaby, R. Rao, and E. Bright. 22 See Thorne (2001 Thorne, B. 2001. "Pick up time at Oakdale Elementary School: Work and family from the vantage points of children". In Working families: The transformation of the American home, Edited by: Hertz, R. and Marshall, N. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar) for her discussion of reading signs of care – across lines of social class, race and gender, and across cultural divides and child-rearing philosophies. 23 Clark-Ibanez (2004 Clark-Ibanez, M. 2004. Framing the social world with photo-elicitation interviews. American Behavioral Scientist, 47 (12): 1507–27. Crossref, Web of Science ®, Google Scholar) reports that it was common for the children in her study to take photographs of 'big-ticket items', and that the most common theme for why they photographed such items was so they would 'have a memory of it in case it gets stolen or taken away' (1521). The children in this study were more likely to explain how they or their family had come to acquire such items – in this case, computers, large-screen televisions, new sofas and 'bedroom sets' (e. g. 'my grandmother got a new sofa so she gave us hers'; 'I got this computer for Christmas'). 24 Lareau (2003 Lareau, A. 2003. Unequal childhoods, Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar) argues that the middle-class 'concerted cultivation' approach to childrearing advantages children in school settings. 25 See Hochschild (2003 Hochschild, A. R. 2003. The commercialization of intimate life: Notes from home and work, Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar) about children as eavesdroppers and what they learn from parental negotiations about their care; and Romero (2001 Romero, Mary. 2001. Unraveling privilege: Workers' children and the hidden costs of paid childcare. Chicago-Kent Law Review, 76: 1651–72. Google Scholar) about what children learn from being taken by their mothers to their jobs. 26 See Riessman (2008 Riessman, C. K. 2008. Narrative methods for the human sciences, London and Los Angeles: Sage. Google Scholar, 12–13) for her discussion of the value of combining categorical and case-based analysis whenstudying individual agency and intention. I am indebted to her and to Elliott Mishler for helping me think through the arc of the analytic process in this study. 27 This is Lutz and Collins' (1993) phrase for talking about the production, circulation and interpretation of images in National Geographic that serve to both reflect and create western views of cultural difference and hierarchies in the service of imperial power and oppression. 28 Miriam Hirsch (1997 Hirsch, M. 1997. Family frames: Photography, narrative and postmemory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar) discusses the ideological effects of family photographs: '… because the photograph gives the illusion of being a simple transcription of the real. A trace touched directly by the event it records, it has the effect of naturalising cultural practices and of disguising their stereotyped and coded characteristics. As photography immobilises the flow of family life into a series of snapshots, it perpetuates familial myths while seeming merely to record actual moments in family history' (7). 29 Discussion of these overlapping concerns in visual research is beyond the scope of the article, but see Prosser (2000 Prosser, J. 2000. "The moral maze of visual ethics". In Situated ethics in educational research, Edited by: Simons, H. and Usher, R. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Google Scholar) about the 'moral maze' of concerns in visual research (Gold 1989 Gold, S. J. 1989. "Ethical issues in visual field work". In New Technology in sociology: Practical applications in research and work, Edited by: Blank, G. , McCarthy, J. and Brent, E. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Google Scholar).