Rebraiding Photovoice: Methodological Métissage at the Cultural Interface

Photovoice, the most prevalent participatory visual research methodology utilised within social science research, has begun making its way into Indigenous contexts in light of its critical and pedagogical potential. However, this potential is not always actualised as the assumptions that undergird photovoice are often the same ones that (re)produce inequalities. Working from the notion that methodologies are the space in between theory, methods, and ethics, this manuscript works with/in the cultural interface between the Western theories that shape photovoice (i.e., standpoint theory, praxis) and Indigenous analogues (i.e., Nakata's [2007a, 2007b] Indigenous standpoint theory, Grande's [2004, 2008] Red pedagogy) in order to differentially (re)braid photovoice. Following a thumbnail description of these four bodies of scholarship, a concept key to photovoice (i.e., voice) is differentially configured with, in, and for the cultural interface to provide research considerations for various stages of participatory visual research projects (i.e., fieldwork, analysis, dissemination).