Abstract
By use of a case example of a project that was conducted in collaboration with South African high school students, this chapter attempts to demonstrate the rich community-engagement potential inherent to participant-led film-making. We endeavour to illustrate the liberatory character and capacity of this vastly underutilised methodological resource by arguing that it affords young people, who generally have a diminished degree of social power and agency, especially in impoverished contexts, a space in which they can work together to harness a multimodal language that speaks to various community concerns that are pertinent to their lives. In producing and later screening the film, participants and audience members are able to perform a critical and reflective form of community-engagement. It is hoped that this chapter encourages people to grapple with the ambiguities of participant-led film-making, as well as other innovative visual methods, within their community-engaged work.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This was found in their work, where an all-male group who produced a film entitled Rape was said to reproduce some of the hegemonic discourses around sexual violence that it aimed to challenge. Although we concede that films such as these can be useful both in exploring how certain young people think about particular issues and as an historical document of such thought, the reproduction of problematic discourses in participant-led film production cannot be received uncritically.
References
Banks, M. (2001). Visual methods in social research. London: SAGE.
Boog, B. W. M. (2003). The emancipatory character of action research, its history and present state of the art. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 13, 426–438.
Corneil, M. K. (2012). Citizenship and participatory video. In E. J. Milne, C. Mitchell, & N. de Lange (Eds.), Handbook of participatory video (pp. 19–34). Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Dant, T. (2003). Critical social theory: Culture, society and critique. London: SAGE.
de Lange, N., & Mitchell, C. (2012). Building sustainability into work with participatory video. In E. J. Milne, C. Mitchell, & N. de Lange (Eds.), Handbook of participatory video (pp. 318–330). Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Gubrium, A. C., Hill, A., & Flicker, S. (2014). A situated practice of ethics for participatory visual and digital methods in public health research and practice: A focus on digital storytelling. American Journal of Public Health, 104, 1606–1614.
Kagan, C., & Burton, M. (2001, March). Critical community psychology praxis for the 21st century. Paper presented at British Psychological Society Conference, Glasgow. Retrieved from http://www.compsy.org.uk/GLASGOX5.pdf
Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Lunch, N., & Lunch, C. (2006). Insights into participatory video: A handbook for the field. Oxford: Insight. Teitelbaum, 2010.
MacDougall, D. (2011). Anthropological filmmaking: An empirical art. In E. Margolis & L. Pauwels (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of visual research methods (pp. 99–113). London: SAGE.
Mak, M. (2012). Visual postproduction in participatory video-making processes. In E. J. Milne, C. Mitchell, & N. de Lange (Eds.), Handbook of participatory video (pp. 194–207). Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Malherbe, N. (2015). Interrogating the ‘crisis of fatherhood’: Discursive constructions of fathers amongst peri-urban Xhosa-speaking adolescents. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town.
Milne, E. J., Mitchell, C., & de Lange, N. (2012). Introduction. In E. J. Milne, C. Mitchell, & N. de Lange (Eds.), Handbook of participatory video (pp. 1–18). Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Mitchell, C., & de Lange, M. (2011). Community-based participatory video and social action in rural South Africa. In E. Margolis & L. Pauwels (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of visual research methods (pp. 171–185). London: SAGE.
Niesyto, H. (2000). Youth research on video self-productions: Reflections on a social—Aesthetic approach. Visual Sociology, 15, 135–153.
Niesyto, H., Buckingham, D., & Fisherkeller, J. (2003). VideoCulture: Crossing borders with young people’s video productions. Television & New Media, 4, 461–482.
Olivier, T., de Lange, N., Creswell, J. W., & Wood, L. (2012). Mixed methods research in participatory video. In E. J. Milne, C. Mitchell, & N. de Lange (Eds.), Handbook of participatory video (pp. 131–148). Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Pauwels, L. (2011). An integrated conceptual framework for visual social research. In E. Margolis & L. Pauwels (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of visual research methods (pp. 3–23). London: SAGE.
Rich, M., & Chalfen, R. (1999). Showing and telling asthma: Children teaching physicians with visual narrative. Visual Sociology, 14, 51–71.
Sanon, M., Evans-Agnew, R. A., & Boutain, D. M. (2014). An exploration of social justice intent in photovoice research studies from 2008 to 2013. Nursing Inquiry, 21, 212–226.
Teitelbaum, P. (2012). Online participatory communication: Re-seeing participatory video practices and research. In E. J. Milne, C. Mitchell, & N. de Lange (Eds.), Handbook of participatory video (pp. 412–425). Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Willig, C. (2001). Introducing qualitative research in psychology (1st ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.
Zaslow, E., & Butler, A. (2002). “That it was made by people our age is better”: Exploring the role of media literacy in transcultural communication. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 30, 31–40.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Malherbe, N., Everitt-Penhale, B. (2017). Exploring Participant-Led Film-Making as a Community-Engaged Method. In: Seedat, M., Suffla, S., Christie, D. (eds) Emancipatory and Participatory Methodologies in Peace, Critical, and Community Psychology. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63489-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63489-0_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-63488-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-63489-0
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)