ABSTRACT
In psychology and social science, visual research methods (VRM; visual storytelling, photo-elicitation method, photo-walking, visual auto-ethnography) have been used as an innovative exploratory approach for evaluating visual-identities, life histories, and other collective features of local cultures. In many cases, visual and image-based methods offer great potential in developing bottom-up, participatory, and innovative research designs with vulnerable or disadvantaged communities. However, mainly for methodological reasons, VRM remained with a limited status within the “orthodox” word-based oriented landscape of qualitative paradigms. Informed by a review of recent literature, the terrain covered by the present chapter includes some examples of innovative applications of VRM with vulnerable communities (e.g., communities in rural South Africa, children living in low-warfare contexts, South Asian women). Based on our empirical work, we argue that the adoption of VRM offers four distinct benefits: a) it helps in gathering richer research materials, b) the methods favor the inclusion of a third layer (e.g., visual) of raw data in addition to other traditional sources (e.g., lexical and numerical), c) it addresses the topic of power relations between researcher and participant, and d) it promotes bottom-up participatory approaches with specific communities. Implications from this methodological design’s practical use will also be discussed, particularly in terms of the decolonization of research practices and ethical aspects to guide practitioners’ research in challenging contexts working with vulnerable populations.
