Sara Kindon

Participatory video in geographic research: a feminist practice of looking?

This paper explores how participatory video – a methodology increasingly used in community development and anthropological research – may enable a feminist practice of looking which does not perpetuate hierarchical power relations and create voyeuristic, distanced and disembodied claims to knowledge. I reflect on experiences from a participatory video project with members of a Maaori tribe in Aotearoa New Zealand in light of geographers’ uses of video to date. I argue that participatory video, if used within carefully negotiated relationships, has potential to destabilize hierarchical power relations and create spaces for transformation by providing a practice of looking ‘alongside’ rather than ‘at’ research subjects.

Tourists' Experiences of Film Locations: New Zealand as ‘Middle-Earth’

ABSTRACT Over a decade ago it was noted that there was a lack of academic research on film-induced tourism. A number of studies since have explored this phenomenon and the benefits, both during production and after cinematic release, for host destinations. As an example, The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) film trilogy has exposed New Zealand to a global audience of potential travellers. By packaging and promoting it as the ‘Home of Middle-Earth’, New Zealand – and destinations within it – have become the iconic landscapes of the trilogy. However, as with many other film tourism destinations, the screen locations are a mix of real places, film sets and digital enhancements; the tourists will not necessary be able to experience the landscapes of the films. This paper presents empirical research undertaken with three tourism operators offering LOTR-themed products: surveys were conducted with tour participants to explore their motivations, expectations and experiences of the cultural landscapes of LOTR films. The findings suggest that the more perfect the representation of hyper-reality in the tours, the higher the satisfaction and the more enhanced the tourist experience. In addition, some film tourists desire to step into the former backdrop of the film to be part of the film when re-enacting film scenes. By better understanding how tourists experience these cultural landscapes, tourism operators and destination marketers can provide the experience film tourists are seeking and thus expand the beneficial effects of film tourism on destinations.

Participatory Action Research

Participatory action research (PAR) is a rapidly growing approach in human geography. PAR has diverse origins in different parts of the world over the last 70 years and it takes many forms depending on the particular context and issues involved. Broadly speaking, it is research by, with, and for people affected by a particular problem, which takes places in collaboration with academic researchers. It seeks to democratize knowledge production and foster opportunities for empowerment by those involved. Within human geography, it offers a politically engaged means of exploring materialities, emotionalities, and aspects of nonrepresentational experience to inform progressive change. Participatory approaches are not without their critics who argue that these can verge on the tyrannical, reproducing the inequalities they seek to overcome. Yet, PAR has exciting synergies with feminist, post-structural, and postcolonial geographies. These enable engagements with both productive and negative effects of power through attention to language, representation, and subjectivity. The ongoing development and experimentation with a range of participatory methods and techniques continue to inspire new understandings and possibilities for action-oriented research within and beyond the academy.

Progress in participatory development: opening up the possibility of knowledge through progressive participation

This paper explores the cross-cultural production of knowledge within participatory development. Drawing on in-depth interviews, group discussions and participant observation with stakeholders in the first phase of the New Zealand Official Development Assistance (NZODA) participatory impact assessment pilot (PIAP), we explore how stakeholders participated and perceived their participation in the knowledge produced within the PIAP. This case study followed one stream of the stakeholders participating, which incorporated representatives from NZODA and their evaluation consultants, a New Zealand nongovernment organization (NGO) and their Indian partner NGO, the communities with which the Indian NGO works, and a facilitator of this pilot. The information generated illustrates how different frameworks and methodologies of participation enable and constrain the inclusion of culturally different expressions and constructions of power/knowledge, and how participatory development faces ongoing challenges to facilitate the inclusion of ‘alternative’ and ‘indigenous’ knowledges without their simultaneous subordination.

Far from Being “Home Alone”: The Dynamics of Accompanied Fieldwork

Despite persistent images to the contrary, most fieldworkers are accompanied. Yet, there has been limited discussion on the nature of accompanied fieldwork, particularly by geographers. Drawing on our experiences in three countries in the tropics, we discuss the dynamics of being accompanied in “the field” by our children and female co-researchers. Specifically, we focus on issues of access and rapport; the impacts of their presence on our positionality; and the implications these have for power relations and research outcomes. We demonstrate how being accompanied entangles our personal and professional selves and can result in more egalitarian power relations as we become “observers observed”. We argue that by paying attention to the dynamics of accompanied fieldwork, there is the potential to enhance the conceptual focus of our methodological concerns and to provide a more theoretically sophisticated mode of exploring the ways in which our multiple identities intersect while in “the field”.

Queering accounts of “MSM” practitioner agency: recognising collateral benefits

This article demonstrates how donor resources can enable MSM/TG practitioners to exercise agency in diverse ways, which produce collateral benefits for sexuality/gender-diverse communities. By focusing on what Thai MSM/TG practitioners actually do, we illustrate how their practices respond to their own aspirations, not only the demands of donor funding regimes. We position our project as queer in the sense that it interrupts the normative absence of practitioner agency within current “MSM” development literature. We argue that our reading might enable greater recognition and donor support for MSM/TG practitioners who produce collateral benefits through their work.