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Abstract
Despite a contemporary socio-culture revolving around cultural consumption of imagery, metaphors, representations and “gaze”, photo-elicitation is a rarely used method for social scientists and planners to acquire knowledge. In this paper, we discuss participant-driven photo-elicitation, a process in which participant photos are paired with in-depth interviews. Based upon a review of the literature on photo-elicitation and our own transnational fieldwork experiences with it, we argue that this method has four primary advantages: photos can provide tangible stimuli for more effectively tapping into informants' tacit, and often unconscious, consumption of representations, images and metaphors; produces different and richer information than other techniques; and may also help to reduce differences in power, class and knowledge between researcher and researched. Finally, we argue that this method has unique potential to empower participants' involvement in activities related to local planning for sustainable community development and natural resource management efforts.
Acknowledgements
This research has benefited from funding and support from the USDA Forest Service North Central Research Station, the Rural Sociological Society, the Norwegian Centre for Rural Research, and many great people from Hitra and Bayfield County. The authors also wish to thank Dr. Roger Hammer and Dr. Johan Fredrik for their work in facilitating our collaboration and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Notes
Sociologist Gouldner Citation(1979) refers to this as the culture of critical discourse, which we would assert helps to create an important gulf between researchers and subjects, and planners and constituents in typical cases.