“They Take Away What We Are”: Contributions of a Participatory Process with Photovoice to the Capabilities for Epistemic Liberation of Young People

ABSTRACT

Young people have historically been marginalised and excluded from decision-making related to city life and territorial planning. Relegated to exercising a passive role until the reach of the legal age, young people suffer oppressions that can occur from a banking education perspective at secondary education. Using the Freirian approach to liberating education, we identify four oppressions that can occur at a structural level and in the communicative interactions between students and teachers: ontological, epistemic – expressive and interpretive – and epistemological oppressions. In this article, we analyse a photovoice experience “They take away what we are” developed with 27 young high school students’ at the city of Valencia, Spain. This participatory process has strengthened the four capabilities for the epistemic liberation of the students: the capability to be and recognise oneself as a producer of valid knowledge; the capability to do from teamwork, in the neighbourhood and with the people who inhabit it; the capability to learn from different local and global knowledge; and the capability to transform space through collective action. This photovoice experience has raised the voices of youth about what they want to be, the life they want to live and the territories they dream of inhabiting.

KEYWORDS:

• Oppressions
• photovoice
• liberating education
• capabilities
• epistemic liberation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monique Leivas Vargas

Monique Leivas Vargas is a PhD student at the Doctoral Program in Local Development and International Cooperation and researcher at INGENIO CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). Sociologist and facilitator of knowledge co-production processes between university and society based on participatory methodologies such as participatory video, social mapping and photovoice.

Marta Maicas-Pérez

Marta Maicas-Pérez is a PhD student at the Doctoral Program in Local Development and International Cooperation at INGENIO CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). Her main research topic is Feminist Organizational Change. Its fields of interest are feminisms, participatory research methodologies, social and alternative economics and transformative education.

Carmen Monge Hernández

Carmen Monge Hernández, associate professor at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (UNA), with experience as an advisor for university extension projects at the UNA Vice-Rector's Office for Extension. PhD in the Local Development and International Cooperation at the Universitat Politècnica València (UPV), Spain. Economist, with a Master's Degree in Trade Management from the International Center for Economic Policy for Sustainable Development (CINPE, UNA) and in Development Cooperation from the UPV, Spain.

Álvaro Fernández-Baldor

Álvaro Fernández-Baldor is associate professor and researcher at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). PhD in technology and human development. His research focuses on the social impacts of technology, transformative education and empowerment through participatory processes.