REFLEXIVITY AS ENACTMENT OF CRITICAL COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGIES: DILEMMAS OF VOICE AND POSITIONALITY IN A MULTI-COUNTRY PHOTOVOICE STUDY

摘要

The performance of critical community psychologies is always contextual, intersubjective, embodied, and politicized in nature. In this article, we draw from the epistemological standpoint that researcher and participant subjectivities are fully implicated in the (co)-construction of knowledge and should therefore be documented and made retrievable. Through the lens of reflexivity, and drawing from an African-centered Photovoice project on youth representations of safety, we surface the tensions, contestations, instabilities, power variances, constraints and inventiveness in our research to expose voice and positionality dilemmas inherent in the enactment of critical community psychologies. We also seek to record context-sensitive practice to encapsulate how this particular innovative project operates in real-world settings. We argue that reflexivity is central to participatory forms of knowledge construction and consciousness raising directed at transformation, and rendered all the more significant in research contexts characterized by difference, inequality, and marginality. (C) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.