Value in the Visual: On Public Injecting, Visual Methods and Their Potential for Informing Policy (and Change)

Abstract

This paper concerns the application of visual methods within qualitative research and the ways in which they can be developed and applied to a range of settings for applied health (and other policy) purposes. Traditionally visual methods have been used as adjunct means to record data and representations of individuals, groups and cultures. Having emerged from a research tradition deeply rooted within the field of social/cultural anthropology they have been largely understated in more policy-orientated research or that with more practical benefits. Visual research however has potential to be utilised in this way, particularly in behavioural and other health areas, in which 'added-value' to 'traditional' text-based research findings can be provided. This paper seeks to demonstrate this potential and provide examples of 'added-value' with specific reference to a study of public environments appropriated by injecting drug users in an urban location.

Generalizing Applied Qualitative Research on Harm Reduction: The Example of a Public Injecting Typology

“…Others were taken to demonstrate evidence of DRL and that such places were used as PIS. These images were integral to shaping the interview schedule with IDU (Parkin & Coomber, 2009c).…”

“…In an attempt to illustrate this triangulation of completeness, Parkin and Coomber (2009c) provide an account of the issue of drug-related litter in community settings and simultaneously attempt to demystify certain stereotypes associated with IDU irresponsible discarding practices. In summary, they contend that an amalgam of qualitative datasets, when subject to a layered analysis (Dowdall & Golden, 1989), provides interpretations that may consolidate some claims and refute others obtained during interviews and/or observation.…”

“…Due to the variation and number of PIS visited throughout fieldwork, it was possible to identify a number of environmental constants within these various settings. Furthermore, in classifying these environments from a harm-reduction perspective, it was possible to construct a typology of descending safety (Parkin, 2009a;Parkin & Coomber, 2009c) based initially upon the variation of environmental control, or more specifically, the degree to which each setting had been manufactured, shaped, and constructed by human intervention for human application (i.e. designed, built, and constructed for legitimate social function).…”

A Literature Review to Evaluate the Choice and Use of Visual Methods

“…Occasionally a participant could take the researcher to places they would not normally expect to access; for example, Parkin and Coomber (2009) toured and videoed injection sites with drug addicts. In other papers, participant photography was cited as a means to access aspects of participants' lives to which the researcher would not be privy.…”

Re-enactment methodologies for everyday life research: art therapy insights for video ethnography

“…For example, re-enactment is part of the practice and subject matter of historical studies and popular culture around historical reconstructions (McCalman and Pickering 2010) and is used in crime scene reconstructions (Sherwin, Feigenson, and Spiesel 2007). Re-enactment of activities (Pink 2004a), retracing routes (Irving 2010) and revisiting localities (Parkin and Coomber 2009), is increasingly a part of visual ethnography practice as are broader engagements with arts practice (Lammer 2012) and feminist art therapy (Hogan and Pink 2012). Video re-enactments provide routes through which to research and collaboratively apprehend, with research participants, areas of everyday life that are 'hidden', never usually spoken about and therefore underacknowledged and under-researched.…”