Description

Authentic representation? Using video as counter-hegemony in participatory research with poor working-class women

VICTORIA FOSTER ESRC

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Health and Social Sciences, University of Bolton, Bolton UK

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the processes and outcomes of employing video in a feminist participatory research project at a Sure Start programme in the United Kingdom. Sure Start is a government initiative targeting young children and their families in order to ameliorate health, social and educational disadvantages. The project worked with a group of poor working-class mothers who went on to produce their own visual accounts of their experiences of raising children in poverty. The paper looks at the hegemonic representations of poor working-class women in the popular media and discusses how the use of participatory video can challenge these taken-for-granted images, thus providing an ‘authentic’ alternative to commonly held assumptions.

Keywords: Participatory research methodology; feminist epistemology; hegemony; participant-made video; resistance