Suchergebnisse

Photovoice is typically used in community and participatory research to allow people to document and interpret their everyday lived experiences. However, often photovoice is used as a research method without deep reflection on its underlying goals and epistemological commitments to critically empower its participants and spark reflective dialogue within a community. This article showcases selections from a photovoice exhibit and its accompanying survey of exhibit attendees to explore possible negative unintended consequences of this action-oriented approach to research if researchers are not appropriately reflexive in how photovoice is used. Drawing on a long-term participatory action research (PAR) project with a research collective consisting of this article's first author (a White, female university-based researcher), 25 Latino/a high school students and their White teacher, and through rigorous qualitative analysis of the stories that accompanied the photography as well as of the survey responses, the authors conclude that researchers and research collectives that use a photovoice approach to motivating social change and working for consciousness-raising must be careful to not unintentionally perpetuate status quo understandings of an issue or even unconsciously allow for a deeper entrenching of subtly oppressive treatment of historically marginalized populations.

This article presents intimate conversations among three colleagues around ethical considerations of ethnographic inter-racial qualitative inquiry. It draws on an ethnographic research project conducted at a high school in rural Idaho, USA. Focusing on the question, "Why are our teachers racist?" the collective worked together to challenge subtle inequity at this particular school. The authors come together in a dialogue to reflect on the role of the researcher within this specific project, but end up illustrating reflexivity, an often hidden aspect of the research process, opening an entangled, unresolved, and yet meaningful set of interpellations around practical methodological concepts.

Sir— Switzerland covers 0.03% of the world's land surface, and lacks marine or tropical ecosystems. Yet we have found an estimated 345,000 type specimens (used for taxonomic naming of species) in Swiss museums and other collections. According to some estimates, there are about 1.5 million known species in the world. If correct, this means that Switzerland contains type specimens of up to a quarter of all the world's known species. This exceptional number is surprising, as Switzerland has never been a colonial power, nor does it contain many large natural-history collections like those kept in prestigious institutions elsewhere. The work was done by taxonomists who built up enormous global collections — for example, Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle and his son Alphonse in the nineteenth century, and Auguste Forel, who died in 1931 — and by others who focused on the biological survey of particular areas, such as New Caledonia or Paraguay. Establishing the exact number of types in Swiss collections is part of an initiative by the Swiss Biodiversity Collections Online Consortium (www.biodiversity.ch/sbc-online.ch) — a consortium of Swiss systematists, curators of biological collections, the Systematics Task Force and the Swiss Biodiversity Forum. The consortium is lobbying the Swiss federal government to invest in this unique resource so it can be made available to the scientific community, with access to visual sources and databases, through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other Internet applications. The type collections are invaluable tools for use in international efforts to document our planet's biodiversity. Not only should they stimulate taxonomists to work on them, but they should surely be important enough for Switzerland to become a full member of GBIF so it can share its wealth with other scientists and conservationists. This activity may revitalize Swiss national systematics research, which has suffered several recent setbacks. Currently, there are no professors of systematic zoology ...