Sharing space: an interdisciplinary approach to the spatial dimension of social relations

Rennes, France - April 9th - 11th, 2014

Acronym:

POWERSP

Colin MacDougall,

Discipline of Public Health and Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity, Flinders University and

Brockhoff Child Health & Wellbeing Program, The McCaughey Centre, University of Melbourne

colin.macdougall @flinders.edu.au

Authors:

Colin MacDougall, Lisa Gibbs, Karen Block, Naomi Priest.

Key words:

children, interviews, spatiality, power / empowerment imbalance, research, qualitative

Principal thematic issue

Ways in which space is constituted and reconstituted involving adult power being inscribed on research spaces, even when those adults in power are not present. The principal question is how to analyse the changes in relationships between researchers and children when the research is being conducted in a space which, from the perspective of the child, inhibits the expression of ideas because of the inscription of power within the space.

Disciplines of authors:

Public health, psychology, sociology.

Title: Can researchers using participatory methods with children overcome problems arising from adult power becoming inscribed in the research space?

Abstract

Researchers informed by participatory methods, or the new social studies of childhood,have argued for children to be included in research, policy and practice. Striving to be true to participatory ideals, researchers have carefully developed methodologies that have attempted to account for power relationships between adults and children. These include modified interviews, draw and write, variations of photovoice, mobile methods and child-led methods. However, there is an argument that these methods are conceptually aspatial and have yet to account fully for how geographers have focused on the characteristics of place. Geographers argue that the debates about childhood as a social construction have tended to pay more attention to the historical than the spatial and recommend that we focus on ‘those everyday spaces in and through which children’s identities are made and remade’.

In this paper we start from the theoretical argument about how power can be exercised by adults and imbued in the spaces used in research, thereby reducing the quality of the data. Classic examples are schools, whose architecture, history, rules and practices privilege the control of children by adults to maintain order and maximise adult led teaching. Schools are important for this research debate because of their popularity as venues for research. Then we present conclusions from a formal group critical reflection to analyze some of our unsuccessful research with children in interview spaces. We demonstrate that although space imbued with adult power works against child-centred research, there are strong forces acting for researchers to accept the status quo and maintain the research – despite problems. We counter this option by drawing on literature based on a children’s rights perspective that confers on researchers responsibilities as duty bearers to ensure that research only proceeds if the interview space minimizes avoidable power imbalances.

Finally, we stimulate a workshop discussion to explore ways to avoid researching in inappropriate places, and suggest how to renegotiate the time and place of research to advance the rights of the child. Our intention in the workshop is to contribute to the Conference’s aim of providing hands on workshops to unpack the “black box” of a research initiative (in this case power inscribed in space) and reconstruct solutions that are theoretically and methodologically cognisant of spatiality.