ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we will take account of the camera’s colonial history and bring this into conversation with current (digital) developments in qualitative research. Specifically, we wish to address the question of research relationships when these relationships are mediated through digital methodologies that carry the weighty legacy of history and the always fraught politics of representation. Using our case of an ethnographic study in four urban high schools, in which we used digital video methods, we attempt here to rethink established
aesthetics and politics assigned to the camera’s eye in order to respond to some of the methodological and epistemological dilemmas encountered in such forms of research. Raising questions of method and ethics, we turn, at the end of the chapter, towards some practical considerations for the possibilities of collaborative, multi-perspectival digital video in post-positivist qualitative research.
