Whose side are you on? Advocacy ethnography: some methodological aspects of narrative portraits of disadvantaged young people, in socially critical research

Abstract

This paper is primarily interested in opening up a strategy to counter the increasing silencing of perspectives resulting from the press towards “evidence-based” forms of research. We argue that all researchers have interests, declared or otherwise. What we advance in the paper is an approach to ethnography that is inclusive of the lives, perspective, experiences, and viewpoints of the least powerful. Methodologically we demonstrate something of how we have explored the intellectual craft and possibilities of portraiture as a way of advancing the notion of advocacy ethnography.