A future to voice? Continuing debates in feminist research with youth

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of voice in relation to a research project, now in its developing stages, in which I examine how rural youth imagine their futures in the context of a career‐based learning programme called The Real Game. The paper enters into conversation with feminist post‐structural scholars of education in order to situate the problematic of voice within broader epistemological and ethical questions regarding representation and responsibility in research. Exploring the limits and possibilities of the proposed study, and of critical feminist ethnographies more broadly, the paper is divided into three sections: speech, representation, and ethics. Questions of voice serve as an entry point into a larger interrogation of the interrelations of theory, epistemology, and ethics in research practice. The study's specific focus on imagined futures provokes questions about how relations of time shape the production of youth subjectivities and feminist scholarship.

Keywords:

• voice
• youth subjectivity
• feminist post‐structuralism
• ethics
• ethnography
• education

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank James Cairns, Kari Dehli, and Aparna Mishra Tarc for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer who raised this important question.