Illuminating household plastic consumption and waste work via photovoice exercises : potentials and pitfalls /
Drawing from research on the gendered dimensions of plastic consumption and waste disposal among Singapore households, this case examines how photovoice exercises can be holistically designed and judiciously conducted in order to maximise its potential for meaningful data generation. These photovoic...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London :
SAGE Publications Ltd,
2024.
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| Series: | SAGE Research methods: diversifying and decolonizing research.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | Drawing from research on the gendered dimensions of plastic consumption and waste disposal among Singapore households, this case examines how photovoice exercises can be holistically designed and judiciously conducted in order to maximise its potential for meaningful data generation. These photovoice exercises, which required respondents to take photographs of their grocery shopping and plastic waste over the course of a week, were situated within a broader household ethnographic approach to empirical data generation. Preliminary interviews with household members were conducted before the photovoice exercise, with follow-up interviews later to discuss what the photographs captured. We observed that as snapshots in time taken in the course of everyday life, photographs were helpful in indexing and 'preserving' what would otherwise be disposed of quickly (i.e., soiled plastic waste). They can also be indicative of the different subject positions of our female respondents, for example, milk-expressing mothers, time-strapped working women, environmental educators in the family, and so forth. At the same time, however, the pictures of closely cropped plastic objects tended to present thin data that lacked a wider context. In order to expand the frame of the photographic subject in the exercise, we moved the site of our interviews into the homes of our respondents, which was helpful in recontextualising the plastic objects/waste in their 'natural' environment.The research is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 2 [MOE-T2EP40121-0005; PI: Brenda Yeoh]. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource : illustrations. |
| ISBN: | 9781529686951 1529686954 |