Good Food, Bad Food, and White Rice: Understanding Child Feeding Using Visual-Narrative Elicitation

ABSTRACT

Visual-narrative elicitation, a process combining photo elicitation and pile sorting in applied medical anthropology, sheds light on food consumption patterns in urban areas of Vanuatu where childhood malnutrition is a persistent problem. Groups of participants took photographs of the foods they feed their children, and the resources and barriers they encounter in accessing foodstuffs. This revealed how imported and local foods are assigned value as “good” or “bad” foods when contributing to dietary diversity and creating appropriate meals for children, particularly in the context of consuming white rice. The process of gathering and working with photographs illuminated the complex negotiations in which caregivers engaged when making food and nutritional choices for their children. At the nexus of visual and medical anthropology, the visual-narrative elicitation process yielded nuanced, comprehensive understandings of how caregivers value the various foods they feed their children.

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KEYWORDS:

• Pacific islands
• child feeding
• food security
• food values
• photographic methods
• visual-narrative elicitation

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jerome W. Crowder and Elizabeth Cartwright for numerous rounds of editorial feedback and to two anonymous reviewers. Thanks to members of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, where a portion of an earlier version of this article was presented. Finally, I offer profound thanks to the ni-Vanuatu women who opened their homes and engaged in this process with me.

Funding

This research was funded by the IIE Fulbright Foundation, the University of Pittsburgh, the Hewlett Foundation, and High Point University.

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

^1. Ni-Vanuatu is the term chosen at independence (1980) to refer to the indigenous people of Vanuatu.

^2. Any basic point-and-shoot digital camera is appropriate for this activity. I have used a variety of models including Kodak Easyshare Sport 12 megapixel, GE 12.1 megapixel W1233, and Fujifilm FinePix XP80. For my field site, in the tropical humidity of the south Pacific, I find that a waterproof and shockproof camera holds up well over time and through a variety of uses. Waterproof and shockproof cameras also do well when participants take their cameras to their gardens, kitchens, and around young children.

^3. Some researchers have gifted the cameras to research participants. This can be cost prohibitive when there are a large number of participants; in this research, cameras needed to be reused. Moreover, in Vanuatu, cameras are not a useful gift since printing is cost prohibitive, and most people do not have a means to store and view digital images.

^4. All captions of photos are mine. When quoting participants’ own captions (too lengthy to report here in full), I note that the “participant wrote” rather than the “participant said.”

^5. The visual-narrative elicitation participants took all the photographs presented in this article and are identified with pseudonyms to conceal identity. Photographs of individuals do not indicate that the child’s biological mother took part in this research, nor do they reveal any specific relationship between the photographer and the subject of the photograph unless explicitly stated by the participant. Per research agreements with University IRBs, the Vanuatu National Cultural Council, and critically by the participants themselves, verbal consent was obtained to engage in research activities. While participants fully consented to and were excited about the use of their images in my scholarly work and in my recommendations to Vanuatu government officials, they were not interested in leading that advocacy work. This arrangement for the use of photographs was made in conversation with women, following best practices of feminist research praxis to ensure they were comfortable with the use of identifiable images.

^6. The lingua franca of Vanuatu is Bislama. Interviews were conducted in Bislama, and participants also wrote captions for their photographs in Bislama.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the IIE Fulbright Foundation, the University of Pittsburgh, the Hewlett Foundation, and High Point University.

Notes on contributors

Chelsea Wentworth

Chelsea Wentworth, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at High Point University. Her research and teaching focus on the anthropology of food and nutrition, critical medical anthropology, gender studies, sustainability, natural resource management, feminist political ecology, and Pacific Island studies. Since 2010, she has worked in Port Vila and surrounds in Vanuatu, where she works with public health practitioners, agriculturalists, and families on issues of infant and young child feeding practice, urban gardening and land use change, sustainability, and childhood malnutrition.