Too Close to Home: Photoelicitation with African Diasporic Communities, Ethical (Un)preparedness and the Importance of Critical Reflexivity in International Development Research

Abstract

Photoelicitation is a creative and multidimensional visual methodology used to stimulate participant subjectivities and situated knowledges. International development research documenting this method often amounts to methodological ‘how-to’ discussions around procedural ethical considerations (e.g. of consent, confidentiality, anonymity and dissemination). Notwithstanding their instructions and recommendations, scholarship is almost exclusively concerned with ethics with respect to participant produced photographs. Less considered are elaborations around unanticipated ‘ethically important moments’ that occur unexpectedly in the here and now dynamic of researcher-supplied photoelicitation. Appropriately, this article presents a methodological reflection of the author’s unpreparedness for participant confessional stories and emotional responses about identity and racism evoked by INGO fundraising photographs of Black African poverty in a qualitative study with British African diasporic communities. It concludes with a two-pronged recommendation of critical reflexivity as an ethical safeguard whereby researchers 1) interrogate their positionalities, and 2) assess the ethical appropriateness of using photos with audience groups who share racialised identities and relationships with those featured in the fundraising imagery. Here, critical reflexivity is defined as the process through which researchers examine who they are and their role within the research context. While ethical safeguard refers to a certain ethical discernment and responsiveness that guards against some of the potentially harmful implications of ethical unpreparedness.