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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: April 26, 2004
Latest Update: April 26, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Children, Answerability, and Play

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2004.
"Fair use" encouraged.

We tend to think of children as out of the loop when it comes to making decisions about them. Visual ethnography is moving past that perception with photo elicitation. Children are given cameras (instant kind, no doubt) and asked to, well, actually I don't know exactly what they're asked to do. That's the whole point of photo elicitation with children, learning what to ask them to do with those cameras, and learning how to interpret what they come up with.

The point is though that in this process children are being enabled to answer about their feelings about their lives and surroundings. As we learn to use the visual tools of communication more effectively, we are enabling the Other, whomever that may be, to answer. And, along with Bakhtin, I wonder what I shall say, when I know the Other can answer.

More later. But for now, please study the: Play in Focus Web Site. I think this is the kind of work that some of you would like to do in the future. You'll need to study where it's being done and who's doing it. If this interests you, read Play in Focus by Dr Catherine Burke, School of Education, The University of Leeds. Email: c.burke@education.leeds.ac.uk,

Discussion Questions:

1. Would photo elicitation along the lines we have discussed it here, enable the incarcerated to answer?

   Consider that "demands" are usually confrontational, and made within the hierarchical pattern of traditional incarceration. Photos are signifiers that do not have the same connotations attached. Consider whether a hierarchical structural framework would learn and/or could attend with good faith a horizontal pattern of communication. Notice that I'm assuming here that photo elicitation will follow the feminist pattern of horizontal, rather than vertical theory and praxis.