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Created: October 12, 2003
Latest Update: October 12, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

More on Empowering Storytelling

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, October 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This lecture continues with Chapter 8 in Shirley A. White's Participatory Video. pp. 195 -214.

The experimental approach with Indian village women suggested to the researchers that video represents a tool that does not require traditional literacy. Because so few people world-wide have received the benefit of literacy in poverty-stricken areas, this tool permits us to move directly to visual literacy:

"We were convinced that video could be used by villagers who were visually and orally literate, enabling them not only to have access to information, but to 'tell their own story' and 'have a voice.' The research, which began in 1985, was committed to the use of participatory approaches which widened the scope for incorporating indigenous knowledge, not only in local problem-solving but also in development decision-making and policy."

* * * * *

Discussion Questions

1. How does the attitude of the researchers toward empowering the villagers compare to the attitude of "experts" in agency work?

   Consider p. 57 of Peter Schuck on "experts."

2. Is literacy a form of denial?

   Consider how many people in the US need to read how much to work effectively at their jobs? Is that literacy?

3. What is functional illiteracy?

4. If literacy is a form of denial, why is it given such play in our political world?

   Consider tradition.

   Consider the ability to access information and to reason with that information. Is that what is normally meant by literacy?