Poetic representation: working with dilemmas of involvement in participative social work research

Abstract

This article is based on a Danish research project with young people in vulnerable positions. Young people are involved throughout the research process, including the interpretation of material produced through interviews, and discussions on how reflections and conclusions from the research should be written up and disseminated. The article takes a methodological focus, considering general aims and methods of the research project, before turning to the elaboration on how poetic representations have been constructed and employed as a vehicle for certain kinds of participation, representation, and dialog, of situated participants. The article includes a lengthy example of a poetic representation of one participant's story, and the author comments on the potentials of ‘doing’ poetic representations as an example of writing in ways that challenges what sometimes goes unasked in participative social work research. The article moves to ‘trouble’ understandings of participative research as egalitarian and consensus-driven, and proposes a focus on the tensions and positioning of knowledge production.

Denne artikel er baseret på et dansk forskningsprojekt med sårbare unge. Unge har været involveret gennem hele forskningsprocessen, herunder i fortolkning af interviewmaterialet og i diskussioner vedrørende hvordan refleksioner og konklusioner fra forskningsarbejdet skrives frem og formidles. Artiklen har et metodologisk fokus og skitserer projektets overordnede mål og metoder, hvorefter den udfolder hvordan poetiske repræsentationer er blevet konstrueret og har fungeret som løftestang for særlige deltagelses- og repræsentationsformer og dialog mellem situerede deltagere. Artiklen omfatter et længere eksempel på en poetisk repræsentation af en deltagers historie. Forfatteren kommenterer på potentialerne i at ‘gøre’ sådanne poetiske repræsentationer og derved arbejde med skriveformer, der udfordrer det, der ofte ikke sættes spørgsmålstegn ved i participativ forskning i socialt arbejde. Artiklen sigter mod at ‘forstyrre’ forståelser af participativ forskning som drevet af egalitet og konsensus og foreslår et fokus på de spændingsforhold og positioneringer, der karakteriserer vidensproduktionen.

Keywords:

• Participative Research
• (Poetic) Representation
• Young People
• Life Stories

Nøgleord:

• participativ forskning
• (poetisk) repræsentation
• unge
• livshistorier

Notes

1. The project is part of The Detours and Shortcuts of Change, an interdisciplinary research project with the overall aim to improve and develop welfare services.

2. These group discussions were co-facilitated by Marianne Melau, the researcher conducting another subproject of Detours and Shortcuts.

3. The data material consists of (transcribed) life story interviews and follow-up interviews with the nine participants. Interviews lasted between 1 and 5 hours.

4. I have worked with different kinds of analysis and interpretation—among them collective, hermeneutic interpretation workshops involving my research assistants and different ways of creative writing, inspired by Richardson (1993).

5. Not all of them are included in the text above, since the format of this article did not allow for the full poetic representation.

6. The form of the poetic representation was much like the above representation of Laura's story.