Freedman, Ethan Professor Amy Werman Columbia University School for Social Work, New York
Submitted in partial fulfillment as a Participatory Research Project within the requirements for Columbia's School for Social Work program and Prof. Amy Werman's Social Work Research Class.
Acknowledgements
In introducing the following work, I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory on which we learn, work, and resource from at Columbia University School of Social Work is land of the Lenape and Wappinger indigenous peoples. Let us commit ourselves to the struggle against the forces that have dispossessed the Lenape, Wappinger, and other indigenous people of their lands.
I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Amy Werman and her class in Social Work Research (SOCWT6501) for introducing me to photovoice research. Moreover, my peers who I worked closely in discussion with including Niké, Leah, Rebecca, Claire, Sofia and others in the class were very influential in developing thoughts around this paper. I appreciate everyone in the class for the ideas they have assisted in generating. With these acknowledgements, I present the following work of my own.
Photovoice and Participatory Research Projects "Social Work Brightens My Day"
As I orient myself in the profession of Social Work through Columbia University School for Social Work (CSSW), Professor Amy Werman's course in Social Work Research provides a foundation for methodologies and epistemological approaches to knowledge acquisition. Social Work is dominated by systematized academia that often ignores marginalized voices and ways of knowing during the research, analysis, and implementation process. There are many paths to anti-oppressive research that are rendered invisible, but choosing to conduct investigations that liberate voices otherwise silenced has the capacity to change inquiry procedures dramatically.
One of the methodologies used to expose students to alternative paradigms is Photovoice Research (Wang et al., 2000). This method is capable of legitimizing voices and perspectives of the world with which people can "identify, represent, and enhance their community" via a "photographic technique" (Wang et al., 2000). While Wang et al. (2020) reveal what implementing photovoice research strategies could look like through a participatory action research (PAR) photo project with the homeless population in Michigan, Prof. Werman has mobilized researchers within her class and community at CSSW to capture how does the public perceive social work and social workers?
Pursuit of the Public's Perception of Social Work
I am a firm believer in the mission of photovoice and its untapped potential to answer how the public perceives social work and workers. Reasons for this lie within the discipline historically positioning itself as "highly institutionalized" and "part of political structures" that assume the researcher is an "outsider," and assist in rendering one or few understandings and forms of knowledge in the world as legitimate (Smith, 2012). Research in social work, like many other academic fields, chiefly pursues knowledge by individuals and groups infiltrating their way into the role of an "insider" in a community or population–often perpetuating cycles of harm through unethical practices of systematic positivist inquiry (Smith, 2012).
Presuming that the research question proposed for my photovoice project can be answered efficiently also asks me to consider how other methodologies for research in social work exist and are leaned on as ways of exposing alternative narratives of knowledge. With positivism and systematic research being at the root of Social Work as well as the problem, Indigenous and anti-oppressive methodologies sit on the other end of the spectrum and uncover understandings rendered invisible by historical narratives commonly drawn up over time. Having been a site of "shifting ground" Indigenous research "negotiates and transforms systemic practices and research frameworks" with an "agenda" that "challenges indigenous researchers to work across boundaries" (Smith, 2012).
Social work is a profession without borders and dates back to the Catholic Church's Missions, but to legitimize indigenous research in Social Work as a form of knowledge building assists in the challenging burden and responsibility of undoing preeminent sources for understanding the profession. While the idea that Social Work research is rooted in oppressive and tainted methodologies informs how social workers might be perceived as problematic, Indigenous approaches deviate from subjugating frameworks and help me to get a wider picture of how the public views us.
More explicitly, LeCroy and Kaplan's research on public perception of Social Work as a science helps to understand through survey analysis of 530 U.S. people over the age of 18 that "a good portion of the public doesn't see social work as a science" because the "requirements for a science are difficult for social work to meet" (2022). Not only is social work rooted in maladaptive and harmful practices, but those practices struggle to exist adjacent to present standards of scientific methods despite their efforts to be legitimately positivist as the public perceives them as detached.
LeCroy and Kaplan orient the social worker and "those conducting Social Work research" with "a healthy dose of skepticism" towards scientific methodologies utilized a majority in the past (2022). If Social Work is "absent from the public discussion of social issues," and the "impact research," "actionable ideas," and "interventions" needed to assist in the legitimization of public perceptions are not yet in place (LeCroy and Kaplan, 2022), views of Social Work captured through photovoice participatory research might portray social work and workers as laggard agents mobilized for change in areas where shifting efforts are already present.
Narrative of Photo: "Social Work Brightens My Day"
Wang et al. highlights that the goals of photovoice methodology are to "enable" agents to "record and reflect their community strengths and concerns," "promote critical dialogue and knowledge" on particular communities, and "reach policy makers and people who can mobilize for change" (2000). Photos become a "means of catalyzing personal community" as cameras document real life circumstances, while the results of what is captured generates "critical reflection" (Wang et al., 2000).
To mobilize is to become ready for pursuit, and equipped with the history of social work alongside Prof. Werman's critical approaches to knowledge acquisition–I set out in New York City curious about public perceptions knowing Social Work research lacks legitimacy and lags behind other scientific disciplines. After discussion with a small team in the class, I narrowed numerous photos into one that encompassed my answer to the project.
Biking through Harlem's Morningside Park on my way to school early one morning on September 25, 2024, I found myself amidst a scene of greenery illuminated by light from the rising sun. I was made curious by a broaching light source coming from a lit lamp at the top of a path that vanished ahead into the park. I wondered how the scene abstracts the public's perception of social work, and I call this photo "Social Work Brightens My Day".
I imagined the Columbia University social work student, just like the lamp, being placed into a context for research attempting to get oriented to a new day (or perhaps a new career) where people and resources are already awake and vitalized. Social workers who are new to the profession (like myself) must learn about the history of an entire epistemology, while also tapping into ways of being a part of change-making processes that avoid perpetuating harm or fail to be beneficial in the first place.
To leave a light on in broad daylight in a beautiful park brightened by late dawn metaphorically and abstractly represents how social workers can provide assistance in social issues that are already in the process of positive change–or becoming a new day. While each day brings a new night where the light might be more resourceful, daytime contrasts nighttime depending on the order of events that one imagines for the context of the photo. If nighttime represents the lamp being a positive addition to the environment, and the night came first in the sequences of events, a light source bleeding into daytime can be a safety net if it is not yet bright enough. If daytime came first and the lamp is representative of Social Work and workers brightened by an already radiant morning, social work as a laggard approach to systemic change because of wielded methodologies becomes evident. To provide light to the day seems redundant–especially when communities can change overnight.
This photo makes me feel grounded in my expectations of an education in the profession of Social Work because the social worker ego must portray more humility than the lamp in the park. When we originally began pursuing this project, Prof. Werman provided consent forms for researchers eager to take photos of the public, but I opted to refrain from using real people. As a white and passing cisgender performing individual with non-phenotypic marginalized identities pursuing participatory research, opting out of capturing images of real people helped me to avoid situations riddled with the stigma of social work highlighted by historical issues and public perceptions cited earlier.
While I call myself a social worker, this is preemptive practice for the day where I pass my licensing exam and settle down by mobilizing in my own community of choice. I currently wield one of the public's many possible perceptions of Social Work research because I am new to the field, and I am a light that has been turned on in broad daylight where natural strides for change already exist and must be sensitively recognized as legitimate efforts already present. Whether it is at the individual, organizational, or systemic level, social workers are equipped with the tools to illuminate paths to change, but must have humility and accountability when prior carved routes are obviously present.
Conclusion and Critique: Photography as a Powerful Tool of Capture
I am profoundly affected by the knowledge forms made legible through photovoice and participatory practice research methodologies that expose alternative pedagogical approaches to the world; however, a small critique of the process must be mentioned. Prins (2010) situates participatory research projects with cameras under the lens of Foucault's theories of power to argue that there is a "contradictory potential for social control and surveillance" as well as opportunities for recovery of subjected forms of knowledge.
The captured image method poses "considerable risks" being a technology of "surveillance" that instills public fears of control and being monitored, but within the framework of photovoice there is potential to "reframe how individuals view themselves and their surroundings, to foster written and oral literacy, and to privilege the perspectives of groups who are often dismissed or ignored" (Prins, 2010).
This requires me to return to the notion that I could have captured an image of a real person with their consent. Instead, I opted not as a "culturally embedded technology of power" like photography alongside historical stigma and shortcomings of social work, workers, and researchers posed measurable risks to a novice in the profession trying to conduct ethical, safe, and mobilized change research (Prins, 2010). To remind participatory practice researchers that the pursuit of alternative knowledge sources should avoid generating "suspicion or embarrassment" for the research community, the individual agent, and the overarching discipline–feels beyond necessary (Prins, 2010).
As mobilized Social Work students, we are bound up in the all-encompassing historical narrative of the discipline. This includes the accounts cited as foundational epistemologies and methodologies of research utilized to generate theories about Social Work, research, and society. While there are many ways to separate Social Work research from its oppressive foundations including utilizing indigenous methods (Smith, 2012), the methodology of Photovoice participatory practice is a pivotal approach to uncovering the extent research is capable of yielding alternative ways of knowing (Wang et al., 2000). Although a photographic researcher posits challenges in gathering data, as it is rooted in power dynamics of capturer and captured (Prins, 2010), placing one's eyes behind a lens is one way to uncovering the public perception of Social Work and better equips me with the understanding that there are countless perspectives to consider when organizing research.
Bibliography
LeCroy, C. W., & Kaplan, T. (2022). The science of social work: Public perceptions. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 13(1), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1086/712897
Prins, E. (2010). Participatory photography: A tool for empowerment or surveillance? Action Research, 8(4): 426-443.
Rogers, J. (2012). Anti-oppressive social work research: Reflection on power in the creation of knowledge. Social Work Education, 31(7): 866-879. Rogers
Smith, L.T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). ZED Books
Wang, C.C., Cash, J.L., & Powers, L.S. (2000). Who knows the streets as well as the homeless? Promoting personal and community action through photovoice. Health Promotion Practice, 1(1): 81-89