CRITIcAL AND CREATIVE RESEARcH METHODOLOGIES IN SOcIAL WORK I love this book It is just what I and my PhD students have been waiting for Engaging and scholarly, this book challenges social workers to move beyond conventional models of research to explore critical and creative research methodologies to promote social justice The practicalities of writing ethnography, the importance of situating oneself and the value of reflexivity are all emphasized, alongside innovative ways of using artsbased methods, including photography, stories, film, sculpture and drawing, to empower research participants It is a wonderful anthology Bob Pease, Deakin University, Australia Interest in the development of creative practices in research has grown apace in recent years This stunning book engages with a range of innovative techniques grounding them in the strong methodological orientation of social work’s social justice principles A scholarly collection that significantly advances the field of social work research and is a must buy Charlotte Williams, RMIT University, Australia This unique book presents new approaches to social work research which in their creativity challenge the very way in which we think of research methodology The authors share their experiences in their multifaceted studies in and about social work The insights of this book go far beyond individual topics as the creative and critical methods challenge the present rationales of academia The well-argued and wise views of this book should not be ignored by anyone interested in knowledge in social work Tarja Pösö, University of Tampere, Finland For Katerina Bryant Critical and Creative Research Methodologies in Social Work Edited by LIA BRYANT The University of South Australia, Australia First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Lia Bryant 2015 Lia Bryant has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Critical and creative research methodologies in social work / [edited by] Lia Bryant pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978-1-4724-2582-9 (hardback : alk paper) Social service Research Methodology I Bryant, Lia, editor HV11.C7924 2015 361.0072 dc23 2015002209 ISBN: 9781472425829 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315574905 (ebk) Contents List of Figures and Tables vii List of Contributors ix Acknowledgementsxiii Introduction: Taking up the Call for Critical and Creative Methods in Social Work Research Lia Bryant PART I NARRATiVE AnD ACTiOn: TRAnSFORMinG SOCiAL WORK RESEARCH AnD PRACTiCE Storytelling as a Research Method: Iraqi Women Narrating Their Life Stories Fatin Shabbar Investigating the Impact of Sexual Violence through Ethnographic Longitudinal Reflection: A Qualitative Interviewing Technique for Survivors of Trauma 41 Andrea Nikischer Communicative Methodology of Research and Romaní Migrant Women in Spain: A Process of Social Change Aitor Gómez and Ariadna Munté 61 Ngapartji Ngapartji – Narratives of Reciprocity in ‘Yarning Up’ Participatory Research Deirdre Tedmanson 75 Reflexivity as Autoethnography in Indigenous Research Amy Parkes 27 93 CRITIcAL AND CREATIVE RESEARcH METHODOLOGIES IN SOcIAL WORK PART II CREATinG CRiTiCAL EXCHAnGES in SOCiAL WORK USinG ViSuAL AnD TEXTuAL METHODS Opening the Lens to See, Feel and Hear: Using Autoethnographic Textual and Visual Methods to Examine Gender and Telephony 109 Lia Bryant and Mona Livholts Imagine Transfigurement: The Chapter Exhibition as a Critical and Creative Space for Knowledge in Social Work and Media Studies 131 Mona Livholts Digital Ethnography: Research Methods for the Study of Online Communities Danielle May Creative Endeavours in Eating Disorder Research Lisa Hodge 10 Touching on Emotions: Using Clay Work in a Context of Relational Empowerment to Investigate Sensitive Issues Fiona Buchanan 189 11 Arts Based Methods in Social Work Education and Research as Critical Method Ephrat Huss, Dorit Segal-Engelchin and Roni Kaufman 207 Conclusion: Social Creativity and Social Change Lia Bryant 159 173 219 Index233 vi List of Figures and Tables Figures 6.1 Photograph of a Swedish landscape 120 7.1 7.2 Exhibition: Imagine Transfigurement Exhibition: Imagine Transfigurement 147 149 8.1 Aunty Bersih – The lady of liberty, Facebook This image of a grandmother wiping tear gas from her eyes during the Bersih rally became a symbol of police brutality Aunty Bersih – The lady of liberty, Facebook, 16 July 2011 Heavily armed police prepare to dispel Bersih protesters Aunty Bersih – The lady of liberty, Facebook, 16 July 2011 Police pin protesters to the ground and place them under arrest Bersih 2.0 UK, Facebook, 14 July 2011 Protesters in London call for free and fair elections in Malaysia. 8.2 8.3 8.4 166 166 167 169 9.1 Analiese 183 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Data collection Angela’s clay model Kate’s clay model Coongah’s clay model 195 197 198 199 Tables 3.1 Example of chart analysis: Analysis of the Romà migrant women’s role in social rights access 69 This page has been left blank intentionally List of Contributors Lia Bryant is Associate Professor of Social Work and Sociology at the University of South Australia She is also Director of the Centre for Social Change; Associate Head for Research and Research Education; and Discipline Head of Social Work and Human Services at the University of South Australia, Australia Associate Professor Bryant teaches research and research methods to undergraduate social workers, honours and master’s students She also runs the doctoral programme in the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy She has published widely on gender, emotions, sexuality and embodiment in the rural Bryant has co-authored Gender and Rurality (2011, Routledge) with Barbara Pini and edited Sexuality, Rurality and Geography (2013, Lexington Books) with Andrew Gorman-Murray and Barbara Pini She has published in a variety of academic journals including Gender, Place and Culture, Journal of Rural Studies, Feminist Review, Sociologia Ruralis, Gender, Work and Organisation, Ageing and Society and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods She has a forthcoming book with Katrina Jaworski, Walking on the Grass: Women Supervising and Writing Doctoral Theses (Lexington Books) Fiona Buchanan is a lecturer in Social Work with the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy at the University of South Australia Her research interests include domestic violence, gender issues, childhood trauma, mothering, innovation in teaching and learning, knowledge in emotions and incorporating arts as research methods Roni Kaufman is Chair of the Masters of Social Work at the Spitzer Department of Social Work, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel He is the founder and chair of the Community Organisation and Social Change track in the Master of Social Work programme and the founder and chair of the Food Security Information and Advocacy Project Aitor Gómez is Professor of Research Methods at the Rovira i Virgili University, Spain Professor Gómez is a member of the research project ‘PERARES The Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society’, funded by the European Framework Programme of Research He coordinated a special issue for Qualitative Inquiry on communicative methodology CONcLUsION produced and the ‘quality’ of these, which are measured through ongoing audits (Lorenz 2012; Travers, 2009) As Hahner aptly states: In order to understand regimes of time, we must not only interrogate the public circulation of temporal discourse … the means through which subjects are disciplined into the enactment of particular temporal modes, and the potential for subjects to resist or subvert the order of time (2009, p 290) Doing research differently therefore constitutes a subversion of the neoliberal academy Methodological tools that allow for time provide an awareness and space for reflexivity of the research process, self-reflexivity for the researcher and research collaborators but also opportunities to work toward social change that defy the audit culture and technologies of control The varied and multiple dimensions of social change that may accompany research processes and outcomes are rarely presented in published work This may be a result of academic conventions that normalise the linear presentation of research – depicting a journey from established literature to methodology and subsequently findings Since research is rarely experienced or conducted in a linear fashion there is likely to be a mismatch between the scholarly practice of recording research and the doing of research In order to capture elements of social changes that were not presented in the chapters, I invited some of the contributing authors to write memories and stories of research experiences and encounters that illuminate social change In this chapter I will introduce and examine these stories about social change to bring forth the complex and embodied experience of social work research I begin this concluding chapter, however, with an analysis of the diverse and specific meanings of social change, which reverberate across the chapters In this collection of critical and creative social work research social change is that which: transforms individuals, groups or researchers as they engage in research, transforms knowledges and practices, documents social change, and challenges social norms and social policy Each of these dimensions intersects in some way I have chosen specific intersections to demonstrate how social change occurs at multiple levels, noting the presence of other intersections So for instance, these are intersections between social norms and emotions as well as empowerment and emotions I have privileged transformation of individuals, groups and societies and transformation of ways of knowing as these reveal empowerment in practice as well as how alternative knowledges come into being and challenge the authority of hegemonic knowledge 221 CRITIcAL AND CREATIVE REsEARcH METHODOLOGIEs IN SOcIAL WORK Transforming Individuals, Groups and Societies For Hodge (Chapter 9), Buchanan (Chapter 10) and Huss (Chapter 11) social change occurred through participants’ feelings of empowerment as they understood aspects of themselves in new or different ways; ways in which they were able to acknowledge their strength These emotions and thoughts came into being as they engaged with creative processes and tactile products like clay and pencils for drawing In Buchanan’s study (Chapter 10), each woman created a sculpture from clay, representing the relationship she had formed with her baby whilst enduring domestic violence The women experienced emotional catharsis as they worked with clay and challenged discourses of blame and shame regarding their parenting and ‘lack’ of attachment to their children Alternatively they created a discourse that acknowledged their strength and protectiveness Huss (Chapter 11) demonstrated that social work students were able to move from abstract knowledge about the lives of their clients to emotional and social understandings using arts-based methods Through drawing students were able to reflect on their field experiences in working with materially impoverished clients in different ways For Hodge (Chapter 9) a layered methodology of poems and drawings provided resources for the representation of powerful emotions, the multiplicity and complexity of which are not always available in everyday speech Poems and drawings about enduring child sexual abuse enabled the expression of experiences and emotions and provided insight into how women saw and understood their bodies Through these mediums the interconnections between experiencing child sexual abuse and eating disorders in later life came to the fore For me, looking at the drawings of Analiese, one of the participants in Hodge’s research, I see an angular body, edges rough and jutting, representing a body in pain and hardened, mouth sown closed and therefore unable to speak the ‘unspeakable’, eyes dark and hollowed – worn down, legs crossed for protection and arms held high either in surrender to physical and emotional pain or reaching upwards for solace Analiese explains that in this image she sees and represents feelings of shame, powerlessness and anger By including Analiese’s interpretation of the drawing Hodge allows the reader to reach Analiese’s emotions and experience that might differ from the reader’s understanding of the image In both Buchanan’s and Hodge’s research it is evident that self-interpretation of the constructed art is not only a release of emotions and therefore therapeutic but tells a narrative, a lived experience not available to others In this way these women are also constructing new knowledge about what it is to be a woman who has survived violence that contests biomedical knowledge and particular dominant social constructions of womanhood and in Buchanan’s case motherhood The oral and textual approaches to research in this book provided research collaborators time to speak and reflect, to create space for emotions to 222 CONcLUsION be revealed, narratives to be reconstituted and movements made toward a reworking of the self Nikischer (Chapter 2) employed ethnographic longitudinal reflection (ELR), a process requiring a construction of a longitudinal story via a four- to six-hour interview or potentially several interviews Much like a life history interview, ELR interviews are allocated into sections following the pattern of women’s lives In the context of rape survivors, the series of interviews begins with a discussion of life before the rape, a discussion of the violence, and then focus on life after and into the present Nikischer shows from these extensive interviews that temporal data provides a rich source of empowerment to women, allowing them to recognise the long-term impacts of sexual violence on their lives ELR interviews enabled women to reconstruct their experiences from an understanding of ‘personal failure’ to the impact of personal and systemic male violence The poetry written by Natalia in Hodge’s study equally demonstrates how reflection and reflexivity may be captured in free-flowing words where symbolism can be used to unearth emotions and life experiences Natalie’s poem entitled ‘The winter of youth’ alerts the writer and readers that her youth was dark and cold, while immediately drawing our attention to the fact that winter and autumn are socially connected with ageing and the end of life The juxtaposition of youth and endings is powerful As Natalie describes her poem the reader is engaged in sensing her empowerment as she understands her youth was taken from her and how this has long-term impacts on her life though an ongoing eating disorder May (Chapter 8), Gómez and Munte (Chapter 3) and Tedmanson (Chapter 4) demonstrated how groups became empowered, mobilised and, in Gómez and Munte’s case, were able to change social structures In the time leading up to the recent elections in Malaysia, May used digital ethnography to capture observations of social interactions, meaning making, political citizenship and how communities of like-minded people come together across geographical spaces May analysed social networking sites like Facebook for key participants in the Malaya opposition movement to identify how political narratives evolved over time She found this forum enabled her to capture the voices of participants who may have remained inactive prior to the election She documented how organisers used photographs to show violence by the state against protestors She watched political momentum gaining force as increasing numbers of the public used social media to voice what they understood as a lack of democracy Gómez and Munte (Chapter 3) fostered the political mobilisation of Romaní women in Spain by working in collaboration with women to challenge the largely white Spanish feminist movement These women fought to tell their feminist story and advocate for change to social structures that impeded the education of young Romaní women Communicative methodology required intersubjective dialogue among all participants, including the researchers, whose role was to observe and participate in the same way as others in the group 223 CRITIcAL AND CREATIVE REsEARcH METHODOLOGIEs IN SOcIAL WORK Participants recognised that Romaní women were the connection between their communities and social services Thus, by drawing social workers together with Romaní women the research group was collectively able to generate strategies to increase access to health and education resources Similarly, Tedmanson’s (Chapter 4) use of participatory action research methods with Indigenous peoples shows an enduring collaborative relationship which recognises Indigenous ways of knowing Social transformation was a two-way interaction transforming academic researchers as well as community collaborators through reciprocity and cultural exchange The use of participatory action research in Tedmanson’s case enabled the development of social outcomes and in particular, social enterprises in the Australian APY Lands, occurring as a consequence of the mutually constituted research journey Transforming Ways of Knowing The power of narrative to construct knowledge and reconstruct knowledge has been evident throughout the chapters Shabbar (Chapter 1) deploys oral storytelling, understood as a linguistic and political performance to enable marginalised voices to gain authority in producing knowledge Shabbar shows how Iraqi women use ‘I’ in their stories to frame their action and authority as strong women, which is in contrast to their portrayal as ‘victims’ in hegemonic western discourses Hence, Iraqi women use storytelling to challenge western representations rendering them apolitical and as victims of their religion and culture Storytelling is a resituating of the self and, by rewriting stories that others have written about them, Iraqi women produce knowledge new to the West about their social citizenship that reveals agency in producing social change Shabbar demonstrated that storytelling gave women the right to speak about their lives, thereby decolonising knowledge production about the subject position of Iraqi woman In Chapter Parkes also examines colonising knowledges Parkes uses autoethnography to connect her personal experiences and emotions to contemporary (post)colonial Australia As a white researcher working with Indigenous peoples she employed self-reflexivity to examine her situatedness and experiences, past and present, in relation to working with Indigenous people She provides a frank discussion of western hegemonic understandings that ‘other’ Indigenous people become part of white Australia’s consciousness and actions, even for researchers who consider themselves respectful of Indigenous peoples For Parkes, self-reflexivity was a tool for exploring dominant cultural systems and how they impact on aims for collaborative research relationships She argued that to give power to Indigenous ways of knowing it is essential to examine our ways of thinking and being in relation to (post)colonial society 224 CONcLUsION and Indigenous peoples Parkes demonstrated that self-reflexivity assisted her to hear Indigenous ways of knowing and negotiate her whiteness in ways that mediated her authority as a researcher Chapter and Chapter also used self-reflexivity by employing memory work to connect personal lives and political contexts Bryant and Livholts (Chapter 6) in their study of gender and telephony drew on autoethnography using diaries, photographs and memories to examine how a material cultural artefact like the telephone is implicated in shaping and gendering work and home life for women Livholts in Chapter examined media texts and photographs in addition to using memory work to capture her situatedness, emotions and challenges that arose during the course of her study of serial rapes occurring in her home town in Sweden In each study, memory work demonstrated that researchers are not separated from the discourses they study For Bryant and Livholts (Chapter 6) discursive constructions of the private sphere shaped by the public was evident in the way they understood domestic work However, the extent to which the public sphere for women in paid work intersected or melded with the private on a daily basis was less understood Livholts (Chapter 7) acknowledged that hegemonic and media discourses about masculinity and rape, shaping the rapist as ‘monster’, were part of her consciousness Through an ongoing analysis of media text and photographs, for Livholts memory work brought forth new knowledge about masculinity, rape and alcohol She came to know that men who rape are ‘ordinary’ men, that is, men with wives, children, jobs, friends and neighbours – an emotional revelation that men who live ordinary lives are at the same time capable of ongoing horrific acts of violence toward women Each of these chapters also gave rise to alternative knowledges about gender Bryant and Livholts found that the telephone was a hybrid meeting place of intersecting relations of gender, family, friendship, caring and work that transgressed movement between spaces and places In other words, while the telephone as a medium had been conceptualised as an unconnected space with the location of the user being seen as unimportant (Castells, 1996), by tracking telephone use over time it became apparent that telephone use both bounded and dislocated women to place in gendered ways For example, in the workplace women were driven to respond to domestic and family needs, revealing a dissonance between the workplace construction of a worker and workers as parents The telephone as an instrument allowed emotional closeness but physical distance when caring for others and in this way provided agency and resistance, enabling women to use their time to care in ways that suited them Moreover, autoethnography allowed an awareness of daily experiences and their relation to the shaping of emotions, responsibilities, multiplicity of tasks and emotional labour that were not visible for these women as researchers and the researched prior to the study This new personal knowledge also gave 225 CRITIcAL AND CREATIVE REsEARcH METHODOLOGIEs IN SOcIAL WORK rise to new academic knowledge about emotions and technology and the increasingly blurred public and private spheres for women In Livholts’s chapter new knowledge about gender emerged that challenged discourses about nationhood, which renders Sweden a country of gender equality Using the media texts alongside photographs, Livholts showed a discursive formation of rape in a Swedish town which privileged alcohol, as opposed to gendered violence, for explaining rape Alcohol was portrayed as a transforming agent that changes a man from a family man to a serial rapist and monster This narrative worked to protect and reproduce Sweden as a country to be envied for its erosion of gender hierarchies and inequalities In summary, the collective message of these chapters is that the transformation of individuals, groups and societies and the transformation of knowledge speak to how critical and creative research brings forth the personal as political and shows social change as a journey occurring to oneself and/or alongside research collaborators Social change in this context means to challenge established ways of knowing and to bring to light new understandings and knowledges that come from lived experience rather than meta-theories of the social world In the section to follow social change occurring through critical and creative research is examined through memories to identify aspects of social change that may be left unexamined in the course of academic publication practices Capturing the ‘Doing’ of Social Change To capture varying and often undocumented practices of social change, which may occur whilst doing critical and creative research, I asked some of the authors who contributed to this text to reflect on and write memories about social change that occurred as a consequence of their research I chose memory and self-stories to bring forth social change for their ‘capacity … to create social, political and intellectual change … as part of the politics of valuing the local, the situated, and the specific’ (Cameron, 2012, p 580) As Parr and Stevenson suggest, stories provide a ‘hopeful politics’ in terms of engagement and their potential ‘moving force to generate social change’ (2014, p 567) I asked the authors to consider memories that related to aspects of social change that occurred or surprised them in the context of doing research I also asked them to write a memory about their experience or engagement in social change that was excluded from the chapter they presented in this book I asked the authors to write their memory in the first or third person, with limited editing and to an approximate word limit of 100 words I analysed the memories by searching for meaning as well as the possibility of emergent themes and patterns and divergences across the data in relation to the questions set for the task (Bryant and Livholts, 2007) 226 CONcLUsION A major theme recurring across the memories was of social action that occurred after oral presentations of the research to non-academic audiences On the one hand, one might argue that this is expected in that academics commonly share their findings However, what is reflected in the memories is that change is most often visible outside of academic settings where social research is shared and this is commonly where resistance and systemic change to social institutions and policies occur In Deirdre’s memory below she explains her visit to the state parliamentary gallery with a group of Indigenous peoples to hear a discussion on Indigenous community issues in parliament She reflected on this day: The big group of remote area Aboriginal citizens arrived to take up their seats in the Parliamentary visitors’ gallery There, under the gaze of the portraits of colonial and contemporary white males (no woman’s portrait was there at that time), these men and women looked around at the overt displays of white privilege and power and smiled wisely as they made sense of how easy it was for people to talk ‘about’ others – rather than ‘with’ them A door opened and a very senior Parliamentarian, who had been making very negative public statements about the dysfunction and lack of capacity of the community, strode in – looked up at the faces staring back at him, gasped audibly and turned tail and left the chamber! … As the Parliamentarian returned a note was hand delivered to me by an orderly, bearing admonishing words about ‘what you think you are playing at’ and the like … All citizens have a right to witness the conduct of Parliament … – yet mere presence this day was viewed as radical In a different context, Andrea tells of how, when delivering her findings about sexual abuse to teachers in schools, she experienced teacher’s emotions and how feelings of shock, anger and pain transform their teaching practice Andrea explains that there was: total silence followed by passionate responses Some of my peers were crying, others angered by my participants’ critique of schools … These educators had never before heard the voices of survivors of child and adolescent sexual abuse Much of the literature about political participation and social transformation focuses on communities and their political dis/trust of governments (Putnam, 2000; Dalton, 2005) However, there is limited discussion about governments and organisations and their political trust of community Like Andrea and Deirdre, when I think about the moments I have been engaged in social change particularly with governments and organisations these have been stressful moments I have often received hostility and anger from those whom I have been asked to speak with and provide information for There has often been 227 CRITIcAL AND CREATIVE REsEARcH METHODOLOGIEs IN SOcIAL WORK hostility regardless of whether they have invited me or I have requested an invitation I have often thought about why anger more than any other emotion is present I think that the anger comes from being challenged to see the position of the community, being challenged to think that what they are doing in government or organisationally is not ‘enough’ or is not ‘right’ It challenges the identity of expert I think anger also emerges because privilege is being challenged As social researchers with our research collaborators, we are often asking policy makers for something to be done differently to meet community needs ‘Doing’ policy or programmes differently requires a relinquishment of some power and an acknowledgement of the position of the ‘other’ In contrast to the lack of literature about governments’ trust of community and emotions there is a substantial body of literature examining how emotions shape social movements (e.g Summers-Effler, 2002; 2010; Gould, 2001; Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta, 2001) and political identity (Berezin, 2001; Shayne, 2009), and promote individual and or group action (Yang, 2000; Lowe, 2006) Wide-ranging emotions like fear, joy and compassion are tied to a ‘moral vision or ideology which suggests the world should be different from the way it is’ (Jasper, 2011, p 291) This moral vision gives rise to emotions about what social change should look like and for social work researchers these are infused with social work values that strive for social justice that seeks equality in the practice of citizenship rights, access to resources and opportunities for wellbeing Researchers’ own moral vision and emotions give them courage to research differently and hence be different as academics Mona’s memory captures a moment of surprise during the research process when she was taken aback by what she saw in the newspaper photographs she was studying Mona explains: I am just about to leave my working space at the university, when I turn around one last time to check I brought all my belongings My desk is covered by newspaper articles from the case of serial rape that I study As I stand there I suddenly see details in the photographs, in the articles, that I did not notice before What I see indicate a different story than what I found in my analysis based on textual accounts – which talk about firm parties in public space I see a photo of a child, a home-like environment, a corner of a child’s drawing I remember the discomfort I felt at that moment, the impulse of wanting to look away This moment of unexpected insight challenged me to develop methodological tools to include the contradictory stories that my findings indicated in text and photography 228 CONcLUsION I would say that the change that occurred at this moment was that I was reminded of my responsibilities as a researcher to seek a way to communicate my interpretations and analytical findings in the complexity they emerged Although I am aware that courage may be a strong word in this situation I find courage in social work research to be one of the most important aspects to promote social change Courage to remain open to the unexpected, to face the discomforts Such discomfort sometimes make visible the discursive power that reinforce silence It may be that I/the researcher is labeled as ‘different’ – that requires also negotiating one’s own place in academia and sometimes in regard to disciplinary boundaries Working with the exhibition is an attempt to promote social change by mediating discomforting realities that transgress boundaries of ‘monster’, ‘father’, ‘serial rapist’ and ‘partner’ The second theme to emerge from the authors’ memories encapsulates the doing of social change and illustrates how researchers link and work with organisations and grassroots movements to achieve change Amy explains how agencies and organisations worked collaboratively with her: Community, agencies and participants wanted to be involved, they wanted to contribute and were passionate about seeing conditions in their community improve … On the frontline there was positivity and passion in spite of challenging and often depressing circumstances What I was privileged to see was daily life changing, social change and it was incredibly inspiring Despite the enormous pressures and constraints in terms of policy and funding cuts, and the closure of critical services to youth, social workers were not giving up There was an incredible resilience and strength that not only extended from the participants themselves, but from the individuals working within organisations who extended a hand and supported me on my journey Sacrifices in terms of time, emotional strain and a genuine wear and tear were ever present; however this was overridden by an unquestionable collective power For me, this was social change in action Untold, unrewarded and unequivocally energising Similarly, Fiona explains how social work practitioners responded to her research outcomes as surprising but at the same time as self-evident knowledge making visible common sense understandings: Since completing this research I have had several opportunities to present the findings to groups of multidisciplinary practitioners and social policy makers I always show some photographs of the participants’ clay work and descriptions on PowerPoint slides These illustrations of many forms of protectiveness resonate deeply with audiences and the response is always ‘of course!’ In a way my research gives substance to what is intuitively known 229 CRITIcAL AND CREATIVE REsEARcH METHODOLOGIEs IN SOcIAL WORK These memories remind us that behind the neatly constructed argument that appears in research publication are emotions that have driven the research and have touched others to rethink their values and/or engage in social change I suggest that the collation of memories and narratives by researchers is a form of social action, action that transgresses traditional academic knowledge and also makes visible the embodied academic Stories are important as social action is ‘constituted by the stories people tell themselves and to one another’ (Kling, 1995, p 1) I would like to end the book with one of my own research memories, which shows that the power to challenge inequalities and create change can occur by the research questions we ask and our presence in the community This memory suggests that social change is as much about the everyday as it is about great acts of resistance She was escorted into the farm house by this affable man with his grey hair, glasses and knitted jumper They sat at the kitchen table and the dogs moved between them sniffing her feet and being patted simultaneously She was here to talk to his partner about gender roles and he commented that she would be with them shortly He looked at her closely and then said ‘you know I never thought to ask her if she is doing what she 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pp 161–79 Wilson, N., 2010 Social creativity: re-qualifying the creative economy International Journal of Cultural Policy, 16(3), pp 367–81 Yang, G., 2000 Achieving emotions in collective action: emotional processes and movement mobilization in the 1989 Chinese student movement The Sociological Quarterly, 41(4), pp 593–614 232 Index Aboriginal 76, 80, 84, 95–102 accountability 76–7, 81, 116 agency 2, 11, 34, 65, 76, 81, 85, 111, 118–19, 121, 124–5, 136–7, 175, 220, 225 Ahmed 16, 126 alcohol 84, 132–4, 136, 138–46, 226 anti-oppressive 9–10, 37, 77, 99 APY Lands 83–4, 224 arts-based methods 203, 207–209, 215, 222 clay 189–92, 197–202, 222 drawing 1, 13, 76, 181–2, 184, 210–11, 215, 222 photograph 7, 16, 115–16, 119–20, 135–7, 140, 196, 223, 225–6, 228 photography 3, 13, 111, 114–16, 120, 125, 136, 228 poetry 11, 13, 177–8 sculpture 222 writing 1, 3, 5–6, 8, 11, 13–15, 27, 103, 113–17, 125, 135, 144, 177–8 creative writing 3, 11, 13–14, 177 diary 114, 116, 119 122–3, 125 diary writing 114, 116, 125 audience 136–7, 181, 227 authority 14, 32, 101, 103, 165, 176, 225 autoethnography 16, 93, 109–11, 113, 116, 124–126, 224–5 ethnographic 41, 43, 52, 159–60, 164–5 ethnography 1, 44, 159–64, 168, 170–71, 223 Bakhtin 186–8 biographies 111, 113 Bryant and Livholts 4, 17, 21, 109, 116, 126, 128, 225, 230 Chambon 17 co-collaboration 101, 103 collaboration 2, 5, 45, 62, 82, 87, 102, 137, 181, 220 collage 137, 211 communicative rationality 65 community 15, 33, 46, 55, 62, 64, 68–9, 72, 76–7, 82–6, 99, 102, 139, 159, 162, 164–5, 171, 224, 229 community development 76, 83–4, 86 connectivity 119 interconnectivity 167 cultural aggression 61 curating 137 decolonising 78, 81 dialogic 66–8, 174–6, 185 dialogical 5, 116, 174–5, 177 dialogism 185, digital technologies 159, 161–3, 167 discourse 34–5, 132–6, 142, 145, 160–65, 167–8, 173–7, 180, 185, 192, 202, 220–21, 224–6 eating disorder 42, 173–4, 177, 185, 222–3 Ellis 2, 18, 104, 126, 203 Ellis and Bochner 2, 18, 104, 203 ELR 41, 44–9, 51–3, 223 CRiTicAL AND CREATiVE RESEARcH METHODOLOGiES iN SOciAL WORK embodied 3, 6, 79, 96, 110, 116, 118–20, 123–24, 126, 179, 185, 192, 219 empowerment 2, 29, 37, 109, 193–4, 201–203, 220–21, 223 ethical 66, 75, 115–16, 170–71 ethically 33, 44, exhibition 131–5, 137, 146 media 16, 84, 131, 133–4, 136, 139, 159–65, 167–8, 171, 194, 219, 225 memory 12, 36, 53, 115, 123, 226 motherhood 35, 98 narratives 7, 28, 32, 75, 109, 126, 135, 160–64, 168, 171, 173, 178, 223, 230 newspaper 132, 134, 137–8, 140, 142, 228 feminist theory 27 fragmented 9, 125 gender vi, 6, 15, 35, 63, 96, 109–11, 113, 115–20, 122, 124, 133, 136, 139, 174, 176–7, 185, 225–6 Guillemin 186 gypsy 67 objects 2, 11, 66, 76 Participatory Action Research 76, 87, 101, 209, 224 privilege 8, 43, 78, 93, 97, 99, 101, 113, 117, 121, 136, 141, 221, 226, 229 privileging 81, 193 white privilege 93, 95, 99, 113, 227 politics of location 7, poverty 208–9, 211, 213–15 power 2, 4–5, 7, 9–10, 13–15, 32, 37, 43, 47, 75–8, 82, 86–8, 93, 95, 101, 103, 111–13, 117–18, 123–4, 131–2, 135–6, 139, 142, 146, 162–5, 171, 176, 185, 215, 227, 229–30 powerlessness 93, 178, 182, 222 PTSD 42 Haraway 6–7, 19 Haug 127 heterosexual 139, 146 human rights 76, 87, 162 Huss 204, 207, 209–10, 217 imagery 35, 37 images 13, 27, 115, 125, 131, 136, 163, 167, 178, 180, 211, 214, 216 imagination 2, 12–13, 113, 124, 209 indigenous 10, 15, 75–9, 81, 83–4, 86–8, 93–6, 101, 224, 227 interviews 1, 31, 43, 47–9, 70, 109, 114, 174, 194–6, 203, 223 reflexivity 93 reflexive voice 8–9 resistance 10, 35, 78, 87, 118–19, 124, 185, 225, 227, 230, Romaní 61–4, 66, 68–72, 223–4, Rose 115, 134, 154, 172, 181, 188, justice 2, 10, 66, 76, 88, 98, 161 injustice 78, 82, 88 landscapes 116, 124–5, Leavy 20, 127, 135, 153, 187, locatedness 6, 110–11, longitudinal research 43–5, 49, 52, self 1, 5, 7–8, 14, 29, 31–6, 42, 45, 51–2, 56, 76–7, 81, 85–7, 93, 95, 102–3, 119–20, 181, 191, 219, 224 Malaysia 160–5, 167–9, 219, 223 marginalisation 113 234 INDEX self-mutilation 51 cutting 51 sensory ethnography sexual violence 15, 41–9, 51–3, 57, 134, 145–6, 194, 222–3 sexual abuse 42–5, 50–1, 53, 55, 173–4, 177–80, 185, 222, 227 situatedness 6–7, 9, 98, 113, 119, 124 social change 16, 29, 37, 61, 65, 72, 76, 101, 126, 219, 221, 226–7, 229–30 social creativity vi, 3, 219–20 social exchange 32 social media 16, 160–5, 167–8, 219 Spain 61–2, 64, 72, 219 storytelling 27–34, 36–7, 210, 224 story 6, 27–37, 42, 45, 48–9, 52, 60, 78, 103, 125, 131–2, 136, 138, 140, 142, 210, 223–4, 228 stories 16, 27–37, 52, 68, 70, 78, 80–81, 83, 116, 131–2, 135–7, 145–6, 159, 167, 171, 221, 224 subject 5, 7, 11, 28, 32, 34–5, 66–7, 93, 96, 113, 118–19, 135, 164, 220–21 subjectivity 2, intersubjectivity 5, 14, 66 subjectivities 8, 96 Sweden 119, 131, 146, 219, 226 telephony vi, 109–10, 113, 115–19, 124, 126, 225 textual 1, 5, 11, 15–16, 109, 111, 125, 135, 144, 220 textual methods vi, 11, 16, 109, 220 time 7, 43–7, 58, 79, 85, 87, 95, 103, 109–10, 112, 117, 120–22, 124–6, 138–9, 143, 219–21, 223, 229 transformative 11, 65, 69, 126, 164 transforming 25, 32, 72, 137, 224, 226 unconscious 190 validity 49, 53, 211 violence 15, 41–9, 52–3, 61, 75, 134, 141, 145–6, 182, 189, 192–4, 196–7, 200–203, 222–3, 226 virtual communities 162, 168, 171 vision 4, 7–9, 113–15, 164, 215, 228 visual methods vi, 11–13, 16, 109, 132, 181, 203, 220 yarning 75, 81, 88, Western 7, 27, 32, 34–5, 37, 62, 78, 81, 85, 101, 182, 208, 224, 235 ... ignored by anyone interested in knowledge in social work Tarja Pösö, University of Tampere, Finland For Katerina Bryant Critical and Creative Research Methodologies in Social Work Edited by LIA... Acknowledgementsxiii Introduction: Taking up the Call for Critical and Creative Methods in Social Work Research Lia Bryant PART I NARRATiVE AnD ACTiOn: TRAnSFORMinG SOCiAL WORK RESEARCH AnD PRACTiCE Storytelling... ethics of creative and critical inquiry Its importance lies in providing a critical and ongoing examination of the production of knowledge beginning with where research often begins, the researcher,