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The Power of Talk: Transformative

Possibilities in Researching Violence

with Children in South AfricaJenny Parkes

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Int. J. Social Research MethodologyVol. 11, No. 4, October 2008, 293306

ISSN 13645579 (print)/ISSN 14645300 (online) 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13645570701401321

The Power of Talk: TransformativePossibilities in Researching Violencewith Children in South Africa

Jenny Parkes

TaylorandFrancis LtdTSRM_A_240018.sgm

Received 3 May 2006; Accepted 26 March 2007

10.1080/13645570701401321InternationalJournalof SocialResearchMethodology1364-5579 (print)/1464-5300 (online)OriginalArticle2007Taylor&Francis0000000002007JennyParkesj.parkes@ioe.ac.uk

This article considers the possibilities for change through participation in research.

Reflecting on findings from a study of South African young peoples perspectives about

violence, it explores how research may have consequencesboth planned and unin-

tendedfor its participants. For example, in the course of this study, verbal problem solv-

ing and collaboration increasingly replaced systems of punishment as childrens preferred

solutions to problems of violence. The article considers how elements of the research processand, in particular, the subtle interplay of power and pleasure, generated shifts in perspec-

tives. It reflects on the ethical implications for participatory research with children, includ-

ing the tension between empowerment within and marginalisation outside the research

space, and discusses the implications for researchers in general and for interventions which

seek to work with young people to contest violence.

Introduction: Childrens Participation in Research

I dont think anywhere is safe to play because like for instance in parks then the people thatdrink, they sit there and then they like watch you the whole time what you do or where you

walk, places you walk, and then they follow you and then they can do all sorts of things.

So I dont think anywhere is safe to play. (Shandre, age 13)

And like, one night I heard gun shots going off right there And I just sat and I locked

my door because everyone was sleeping and then I was I just locked the door and I

sat there. (David, age 13)

Jenny Parkes completed her Ph.D. at the University of London, Institute of Education, in June 2005. She has

recently completed an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship at the Institutes Thomas Coram Research Unit, focusing on

childrens engagements with violence, and is a Lecturer in Education, Gender and International Development at

the Institute of Education. Correspondence to: Jenny Parkes, Institute of Education, University of London, 20Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AA, UK. Tel: (020) 7612 6557; Email: j.parkes@ioe.ac.uk

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294 J. Parkes

The above extracts, drawn from a recent study of young peoples perspectives about

violence in South Africa (Parkes, 2005, pp. 80, 96), illustrate ways in which violence

disempowers children, restricting their freedoms in the neighbourhood. Listening to

children talking about these experiences evokes a range of emotions in the researcher

anger, distress, a fierce desire to protect or to rescue. As a researcher in such a context,there is a clear imperative to conduct research which will help to create a safer social

world for children. But could it be that this desire, well intentioned as it may be, is not

always in childrens best interests? Perhaps it too quickly casts children into the role of

victim, divesting them of agency, and foreclosing the possibility that they may be able

to contribute to transforming the social world (Boyden, 2003, p. 16). Alternatively,

there is the possibility that this desire to strive for change can generate research which

engages children directly, in reflecting on and beginning to transform the violence of

their social worlds.

The study discussed in this article was not designed with these transformatory goals,and yet in the course of the research children appeared increasingly to believe that

through discussion and collaboration they could solve problems of violence, together

with others in the neighbourhood. The proposition discussed in this article is that

participation in research may change perspectives, often without the researcher being

aware of or intending for this to happen. The article considers in particular the agentic

power of talk, within the constraints of a violent and disempowering social context, and

raises questions about the relationship between talk and action. It traces elements in the

research which may have produced the changes, focusing in particular on the dynamics

of power and pleasure. This identification of a powerpleasure dimension has implica-

tions for current theories of agency in social research. The article concludes by consid-ering how research can be seen as empowering, or as a false promise, and discusses the

implications of these interpretations for future research and for violence prevention

programmes and interventions with young people.

Theorising Agency and Change in Social Research

Approaches to research with children have in recent years increasingly acknowledged

the importance of listening to children and understanding young people as active

agents in their own development (Alderson, 2000; Christensen & James, 2000; Greene& Hogan, 2005; Mayall, 2002; Woodhead & Faulkner, 2000). Concerns that adult data

gathering techniques will block or distort the perspectives of children have led

researchers to seek creative methods of actively engaging children in the research proc-

ess (Boyden & Ennew, 1997; Greene & Hogan, 2005). Recently, these participatory

approaches have also begun to filter through to studies which seek childrens views

about the violence they experience (Barter & Renold, 2003; Burman, Brown, &

Batchelor, 2003; Irwin, 2004; Mullender et al., 2002). There has been a growing empha-

sis on listening to children, in order to influence change at a policy and practice level.

Some researchers have drawn on participative traditions of enquiry to conduct studies

which involve children actively in planning and implementing interventions, for exam-ple, to improve the local environment (Clark, 2004; Dallape & Gilbert, 1993; Driskell,

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International Journal of Social Research Methodology 295

2002; Hart, 1997; Johnson et al., 1998; OKane, 2000). Transformation, in the sense of

enhancing the agency of children to contribute to decision making that concerns them,

is a central and explicit goal of much of this work.

Developed as a way of empowering people in impoverished and marginalised neigh-

bourhoods, the shared goals of these approaches are described in the editorial of thejournal, Participatory Learning and Action, as: the full participation of people in the

processes of learning about their needs and opportunities, and in the action required

to address them. Influenced by humanist and liberationist ideologies, participatory

approaches: hold strongly the vision that people can learn to be self-reflexive about

their world and their action within it (Reason, 1998, p. 280). Through their participa-

tion in research, it is reasoned that people will become more aware of, and reflexive

about, their own marginal social position and therefore better able collectively to begin

to challenge this position. In other words, participation in research will increase their

reflexive agency.But the assumptions, first, that the voicing of perspectives will universally and inev-

itably make people more reflexive about their own social position, and, second, that

increasing reflexivity generates change, merit interrogation. While the expression of

and sharing of views could conceivably generate insights into ones own social posi-

tion in some circumstances, this cannot be assumed. Alternatively, it might be

predicted that voicing perspectives, particularly if shared without challenge or

discordance, will be more likely to reinforce existing viewpoints, leading therefore to

continuity rather than to change. Such a perspective is consistent with the notion of

habitus, developed by Pierre Bourdieu to explore how social relations within a field

(educational, cultural, social, economic and so on) are incorporated within emotions,beliefs and actions, or habitus: embodied history, internalised as second nature and so

forgotten as historyis the active presence of the whole past of which it is the prod-

uct (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 56).

However, while participatory enquiry may sometimes overstate the possibilities for

research generating agency and social change, it may be possible to use Bourdieus

concepts to understand how, in some circumstances, participation in research has

transformative potential. Feminist researchers have developed Bourdieus ideas to

explore how gender norms are at the same time durable but not immutable, and how

change may be possible (Adkins, 2002; McLeod, 2005; McNay, 2000). Lois McNayargues that the concept of habitus denotes not just the passive process of sedimentation

of norms on the body, but also the moment of praxis, or the living through of those

norms. This living through is an active, dynamic and open-ended process, in which

individuals, operating at the same time in multiple fields, negotiate complex relations

of power as they move within and between fields of social action. Agency, in McNays

analysis, lies in the capacity to manage actively the often discontinuous, overlapping

or conflicting relations of power (McNay, 2000, p. 16). Drawing on the work of Paul

Ricoeur, she argues that people negotiate these conflicts through a narrative process;

they make sense of disparate events through constructing narratives, which are organ-

ised temporally with sequences of events culminating into a coherent and meaningfulstructure (what Ricoeur terms emplotment) (Lawler, 2002; Ricoeur, 1983). For

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296 J. Parkes

McNay this process of actively managing discordance and conflict through narrative

has the potential to increase reflexive agency.

McNays (2000) analysis locates human agency firmly within social relations, but

offers possibilities for transformation. The extracts of childrens talk with which this

article opened illustrate how neighbourhood violence constrains the agency of chil-dren. With a long history of racial discrimination and continuing socio-economic

disparities, as well as the lesser status of childhood, children may have few opportuni-

ties to contribute to contesting and changing violent social relations, and may be more

likely to reproduce these relations in their own beliefs and practices. Yet, McNays anal-

ysis opens up the possibility that, as children narrate and try to make sense of their

experiences of violence, they may become more reflexive about their own social posi-

tions, and they may begin to challenge these positions. Drawing on these ideas, this

article asks whether it is possible that engagement in research might provide opportu-

nities for children to construct narratives which contest as well as reproduce violence.It asks whether such narratives may have any significance for childrens lives beyond

the limited setting of the research relationship, or whether the material constraints of

the social setting far exceed and undermine the power of talk to produce change. In

order to address these questions, I begin by describing the context of the research and

then consider the changes in childrens perspectives observed in the course of the study.

The Research

The research took place in South Africa, seven years after the first elections in 1994

heralded the advent of democracy and ended the brutal and repressive apartheidregime. Apartheid and colonialism have left a legacy of continuing disparities, and rates

of violent crime are amongst the highest in the world, particularly in poorer commu-

nities, in which people are 80 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than in

affluent neighbourhoods (Hamber, 2000). The study was located in a primary school

in a working class neighbourhood of Cape Town, created under apartheid to provide

segregated housing for people designated coloured. Families faced multiple social

stresses, with high rates of unemployment, substance abuse, extensive gangsterism and

criminal and domestic violence (Jones Peterson & Carolissen, 2000).

Employing a social constructionist epistemology, the study explored how childrenmade sense of the multiple forms of violence they experienced in their daily lives, trac-

ing how violence could be perpetuated and contested in the beliefs and practices of

children (Parkes, 2007; Parkes, in publication). The methodology drew on ethno-

graphic and participatory research approaches, but, unlike participatory action

research, it was not designed to generate transformation. Methods were selected to

interest and engage children, and to facilitate talk about sensitive realms of experience.

As a white woman from UK, I was also concerned to reduce the power imbalance

arising from my position as researcher, adult and foreigner (Mayall, 2002; Mohanty,

1991). I worked in the school for eight months in 2001, initially emphasising familiar-

isation and trust building, through my work as a classroom assistant and time observ-ing and interacting with children in the playground, and with parents and teachers.

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International Journal of Social Research Methodology 297

Thirty-six children, in three age cohorts (average age 8, 10 and 13 years) were invited

to participate in individual interviews and a series of group sessions. The groups were

selected by friendship, so that trusting relationships were established both with the

researcher and with co-participants, and by sex, on the basis that children might find it

easier to discuss sensitive issues in single sex groups.Individual interviews were semi-structured, with open-ended questions on the

themes of social relationships, conflict and violence in the school, neighbourhood and

home, and use of active listening, empathy, reflecting back and interpreting to facilitate

the expression of ideas (Kvale, 1996). Following an initial interview, I met weekly with

groups of six children over a two-month period, using a participatory circle time

approach (Mosley, 1996), in which warm up games were followed by structured discus-

sions, and these were facilitated by use of art, music and role play. Groups began by

devising ground rules, including agreements that they would listen to each other with-

out interrupting, and that they were free to leave the group at any time. There was somenegotiation around the choice of methods, with older children often opting for more

verbal and younger children more visual methods (Hill, 2006). There was a small

action-oriented component, where for example, groups made suggestions for play-

ground improvement, which were shared with the school principal, and they compiled

lists of messages about safety, which were fed back to other children, to school staff and

to a local violence prevention programme.

The research experience differed markedly from the routine life of the children at

school. Class sizes were large, with for example, 47 thirteen-year-old children in the

class, resources sorely limited and adultchild relationships hierarchical with few

opportunities for reciprocity and negotiation in childrens contacts with their teachers.Most of their talk about teachers alluded to disciplinary practices, with teachers

expected to keep order through skelling (reprimanding), often with corporal punish-

ment. Discussions in small groups facilitated by an adult were rare, and none had

encountered circle time.

The scheduling of the interviews and groups over several months fostered the devel-

opment of collaborative relationships, and meant that, to a limited extent, changes over

time could be explored. Post-group interviews were designed to de-brief, marking the

ending of the research and enabling children to raise outstanding issues. But, in addi-

tion, a few of the questions repeated those from the initial interview, and the analysisof responses to these revealed changes in childrens views about violence over the

course of the research.

In analysing how childrens talk about violence was both rooted in past and present

social relationships, and was at the same time generative, I drew on analytical frame-

works from both sociology and critical discursive psychology (Edley, 2001; Wetherell,

1998; Willig, 2001). Since Bourdieus concepts of habitus and field, and the feminist

interpretations of this work, provide a way of considering questions of agency within a

highly constraining social context (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; McLeod, 2005;

McNay, 2000), I engaged increasingly with these ideas in the course of the analysis, for

example, in both explaining and in questioning the changes of perspective thatappeared to take place in the course of the research.

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298 J. Parkes

Changes over Time in Childrens Talk about Violence

In both pre- and post-group interviews, I asked children what might stop problems of

violence in the playground and in the neighbourhood, and their responses to these

questions changed markedly. Asked in the initial interviews how to stop problems of

fighting in the playground, for example, 22 children talked about forms of punishment

by an adult, whereas only seven children suggested this in the post-group interview. In

contrast, talking it out was mentioned by four children at the initial interview

compared with 26 at the post-group interview. At the earlier interviews, children typi-

cally proposed verbal or physical punishment by the teacher or the principal (based in

the office), or sometimes by parents, as in these responses to my question about what

might stop problems of fighting in the playground:

Peter (aged 8): The teacher.

Jenny: Mm mm. How could she stop the fighting?

Peter: Send them to the office.

Natalie (8): By hitting them. []

Jenny: And who must hit them?

Natalie: His teacher.

Jenny: Aaahhh.

Natalie: Or his Mommy.

Ramona (13): The principal keeps on telling them but they just go on.

Children of all ages proposed intervention by adults, but the older children, like

Ramona, seemed to have little expectation of the efficacy of these punishments inpreventing violence in the future. In group discussions, support for retaliatory violence

was widespread, with children justifying hitting when someone lift a hand to them.

They did not, however, expect these actions to resolve conflict, and much more often

relied on adults to sort out problems.

In the post-group interviews, however, the responses were markedly different, with

most children proposing problem solving through children talking it out, apologising,

making friends, telling another to stop and sometimes with friends helping in this

process:

Cassiem (10): They must just talk to one another, talk about and then they can befriends again.

Shandre (13): Sit down if they have a problem with each other they must work it out

not fight. Cause fighting doesnt solve everything.

Tariq (13): Friends take you away and tell you not to fight.

There was a shift in the locus of responsibility for change, with children rather than

adults viewed as able to solve problems of violence in the playground and with verbal

problem solving rather than physical or verbal punishment.

A similarly marked shift was evident in talk about how to solve problems of gang

violence in the neighbourhood, with none of the children suggesting talk or verbalpersuasion in the initial interviews, compared with 18 in the post-group interviews. In

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International Journal of Social Research Methodology 299

the initial interviews, as with playground violence, the most common responses

involved punishment by adult authority figures, in this case police or prison:

Ayesha (8): Mm Lock them up in jail.

Jenny: Yeah. You could lock them up in jail. And what would happen to them

then do you think?Ayesha: Then they must stay for twenty years in prison.

Jenny: Okay. And then what would they be like at the end of twenty years, do

you think?

Ayesha: Old.

Ryan (10): Only the police can stop them. They can catch the skollies [gangsters] and

then they can put them in jail. Maybe they can change therein jail.

Jenny: How would they change?

Ryan: When they give them a hiding with that thick pole, something like that

Jenny: So you think they should give them a hiding with a thick pole? And then

what would happen, do you think?Ryan: Then they will listen, then they can let them go free, but if they do some-

thing wrong again then they can stay in prison for ever.

Children expressed similar views in group sessions, with some children, particularly

in the older groups, proposing the reintroduction of the death penalty (not used in

South Africa since 1994): because the people are scared to die so there can be

fewer crime in the country (Fatima, aged 13). Children at all ages talked of police and

prison, but, as in their cynicism about adult authority in the playground, the older

children were similarly doubtful about the likely success of punitive approaches in the

neighbourhood:

Jenny: And what could stop that kind of problem from happening?

Shandre (13): I dont know, cause some people they can go to jail for it and then when

they come out then they just do it again.

Tariq: I dont know, when the police come then they, and then they arrest the

person and somebody else just do, does it again.

In contrast, in the post-group interviews, as in the playground context, children talked

of solving problems through discussion and verbal persuasion:

Jenny: And what could stop that kind of problem?

Jacqueline: Maybe if they should tell someone older who can handle the problemand then (Jenny: Yeah.) maybe they can help and they dont need

to go out and getdo (Jenny: Yeah.) mischief.

Jenny: So when you say someone older, do you mean another grownup or it

could be ?

Jacqueline: It can be your friend also but that can handle it.

Jenny: Yeah. Or maybe a friend who is a little bit older?

Jacqueline: Yes. (Jenny: Yeah.) Cause most children dont always want to talk to

grownups.

Louise (8): Telling people its dangerous to shoot around and people go quick dead

and they will go to jail for that.

Jenny: Who will tell them?

Louise: Children, parents, people.

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300 J. Parkes

There were therefore clear similarities in the shifts that took place over time in chil-

drens talk about solving problems of violence in the two different contexts. In both, a

reliance on punishment by adult authority figures was replaced by an emphasis on talk-

ing and reasoning. In the playground context, the shift in agency from adult to child

was marked, with children seeing themselves as able to solve problems without adultintervention, but this did not seem to be the case in the neighbourhood, where children

continued to refer to police or jail (14 in the pre-group and 16 in the post-group inter-

views). Similar numbers also expressed doubt that there was any solution to these

problems (seven and six). What seemed to change was that the taken-for-granted

discourse of adult punishment was supplemented by a more reflexive and dialogic

layer, in which the perpetrator of violence might choose to change through talking with

others. Who those others might be varied considerably, with some, like Jacqueline,

proposing friends, while others continued to view adults, like the Government, parents

or the headmaster, as having more persuasive authority:Clinton (14): Uh, if-if-ifhow can I sayif the police will or the headmaster or the

Government can just get all the gangsters into one group and maybe they can talk them out

of it. (Jenny: Mm.) Talk some sense into them. I reckon its like that. If you can make it so.

Clinton does not claim that change is easy, but, like many of the children talking at the

end of the research period about violence in the neighbourhood and in the playground,

he expresses the view that these problems might be solved through the persuasive poten-

tial of talk and through reflexive agency, that, enabled to gain insight into his own social

position, the gangster or the child fighting in the playground may choose to change.

Transformative Processes in the Research: The Interplay of Power and Pleasure

Since there were no obvious factors external to the research that could account for these

shifts in perspective, it seems likely that they were somehow generated by the research

process itself. The most obvious explanation is that new solutions to problems of

violence were proposed during the research. For example, in an activity in which chil-

dren imagined the life story of a gangster, culminating in his punishment or death, they

were invited to reflect on different possible endings to the life narrative; in a role play

of playground aggression, culminating in fighting and punishment by the teacher, theywere invited to act out different possible solutions. Both of these could have had a

direct impact on their future reflections on solutions to problems of violence.

More often, however, the invitation to change the narrative sequence was indirect,

arising from children adapting the verbal problem-solving and collaboration practiced

within the group work to solving problems of conflict and violence outside the research

setting. Some of this more subtle suggestion was invisible to the researcher as well as

the children, and revealed only at a later stage as I tried to make sense retrospectively

of the processes that were occurring. A clear example was the change in eight-year-old

Odettes talk about solving problems of playground violence. When we first spoke

about this, she proposed that the headteacher or parent must sort out disputes, but atthe post-group interview she suggested that the child should take action herself: of

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International Journal of Social Research Methodology 301

saying please dont do it because I dont like that and I want you to stop doing it. There

was a clear echo here of an unplanned discussion that had taken place in a group

session, when girls had arrived at the session unhappy because of a playground dispute

between Odette and several of the other girls in the group. Because of their distress,

I chose to intervene by asking each child to explain what had happened and what theywanted to see happen, and Odettes statement: I would like you to stop calling me

names please led to mutual apologies. The close resemblance of her later response

about how to solve problems of violence in the playground suggests that three weeks

later she remembered and applied this form of conflict resolution. Her solution to

problems of neighbourhood violence was less assertive, but equally shifted the respon-

sibility from authority figures to the perpetrators themselves: I think that they must

think about that and leave that alone and stop being like that. While the source of this

viewpoint cannot easily be traced to a single conversation or activity within the

research, it may be more loosely connected with the emphasis on reflection andempowerment within the research relationship. In her solutions to problems of

violence in both contexts, there was therefore a marked shift towards reflexive agency.

While small shifts in the perspectives of a few children produced by the research

relationship might be expected, the marked shifts in the talk of so many of the young

people seem surprising. A possible explanation lies in the dynamics of power in the

research relationship, first through the exercise of power by the researcher, and second

through the pleasure gained by the increasing perception of childrens own exercise of

power, or self-efficacy. The theorisation discussed earlier in this article, using the ideas

of Bourdieu and McNay, offers a partial but incomplete account of these processes. The

research relationship can be seen as a temporary social field, with its own rules andregularities (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Some of the rules contrasted with those of

more familiar social fields of classroom or neighbourhood, in particular, the emphasis

on children as problem solvers, which sited them in more agentic positions than their

relatively powerless locations within the neighbourhood or classroom. The contradic-

tions between the rules of the different settings, following McNays analysis, could

create conflict and dissonance, leading children to reflect critically on their own social

positions and to increase their reflexive agency (McNay, 2000).

But this emphasis on the contrasts between the different social fields may be

misleading. While I attempted to erode the power differential between researcher andresearched, it inevitably persisted. My white skin, my foreignness and in particular my

adulthood, meant that I exercised power within the research setting, and it is highly

likely that children modified and adapted their talk in response to what they perceived

I might want to hear. Odettes words could be interpreted therefore as reproducing a

viewpoint to please me that I had engineered in an earlier session. Although I had made

a deliberate effort not to impose my own viewpoints, perhaps my non-verbal prompts

and frequent uses of yeah and mm-mm may have conveyed subtle and unintended

messages. While I may have refrained from voicing disagreement when children

proposed corporal punishment or the reintroduction of the death penalty, my silences

could have been interpreted as disagreement or disapproval. As well as considering thepower of talk, it is also important to reflect on the power of the unspoken.

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302 J. Parkes

Power within the group was also exercised differentially, with those with more social

status, who tended also to be more vocal, appearing to influence the viewpoints of the

quieter group members. Several of the 13-year-old boys in the post-group interviews,

for example, alluded to remarks made in the group sessions by Clinton and Luke, who

were considered popular and streetwise, and embodied the valued attributes ofstrength, bravery and fighting skill (Parkes, 2007).

These reflections on power differentials within the research suggest that the research

field, rather than generating dissonance, in some ways reiterated the relationships of the

more familiar social fields. Yet, while it is important to recognise the persistence of

power differentials, it was also clear that children felt that their opinions were valued

and respected. As 13-year-old Jacqueline put it, reflecting on what she had enjoyed in

the group: We never argue, like say if you used to work in the class then somebody

always trying to be bossy but nobody wanted to be bossy, all of us was just. The percep-

tion of self-efficacy was, I suggest, immensely pleasurable, and it is this pleasure that mayexplain the extent to which children shifted their perspectives. The personal satisfaction

Odette gained from discussing and resolving her own conflict in the group may well have

been sufficient in itself to account for her future application of the approach to problem

solving to other social contexts. But in Odettes comments and in Jacquelines use of

the word just, the pleasure appears to derive not just from perceived self-efficacy, but

from a sense of collective agency, or social justice.

Even the telling of very distressing personal stories, while clearly not pleasurable,

may have helped children to feel they had some sort of control, or at least may

have helped to render these experiences more manageable (Das & Kleinman, 2000).

Eight-year-old Richard, for example, talked with me four times in the course of theresearch about how his 12-year-old sister was gang raped. On the first occasion he told

me they did already rob, rob my sister they cut open her pantyhose. In subsequent

discussions, the narrative became increasingly clear and coherent, and Richard told me

how a group of men had approached and attacked her here in the corner, here by the

school, how they did rape my sister, how a woman had heard her screams and gone

to help, and the support she had received afterwards from a priest and her mother. His

use of the word rape at the second telling may well have stemmed from a group

discussion when one of the boys had already talked about the problem of rape, giving

him the vocabulary and perhaps the permission to draw on this language. His repeatedtelling of the story may have illustrated both how he was haunted by the incident, and

how there was some perceived benefit for him in talking with a trusted adult, perhaps

in helping to come to terms with events, for, as Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman

explain: one of the struggles of survivors is to find the means of re-establishing author-

ship over their stories (Das & Kleinman, 2000, p. 12).

Conclusion: Research as Empowerment or a False Promise?

At the heart of the changes observed in childrens talk about violence in the course of

this research was the complex interplay of power and pleasure. The experience of talk-ing and listening within a small group, facilitated by an adult who attempted to be

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International Journal of Social Research Methodology 303

non-judgemental, enabled children to gain a pleasurable sense of self-efficacy and

social justice. In the sense that this created dissonance from more familiar modes of

communication, it may have encouraged children to question and to challenge, possi-

bly leading to increases in reflexive agency (McNay, 2000). But the persisting power

differentials between adult and child, and between children, suggest that the perceivedshifts in self-efficacy may have been somewhat illusory. And the changes, rather than

creating the dissonance and discomfort generative of reflexive agency, seemed to

generate instead comfort and composure, which made these alternative perspectives

so pleasurable and enticing. This has some discomforting implications for myself as

researcher.

The everyday lives of children outside the research space were neither comfortable

nor composed, and this raises questions about the ethics of research which offers false

promises. Perhaps the research generated in children a sense of agency that was not

matched to the everyday reality of childrens marginalisation. In the final meeting ofthe 13-year-old girls group, for example, they asked me whether I would convey their

ideas to the Government, expressing both doubts and hopes that their voices will be

listened to outside the research space:

Stacey: Are you going to report this to them because they wont listen because

were only children.

Shandre: Ja, but we also got rights.

Fatima: They never listen to us.

Stacey: To children []

Ramona: You must maar[just] give this all to the President.

Despite their scepticism about the prospects of being listened to, this could be inter-preted as generating unrealisable imaginings of their own agency. Might the research

offer only illusions of agency, in the end reinforcing childrens awareness of their own

marginalisation and leading inevitably to disappointment? This may have been the case

in another South African study, which used participatory approaches to involve chil-

dren actively in documenting and improving their urban environments, and found

that, although children talked afterwards about having a greater awareness of their envi-

ronment and ability to express views, there were no gains in measures of self-efficacy,

self-esteem or internal locus of control following the intervention (Griesel, Swart-

Kruger & Chawla, 2002). Indeed, there was a slightly lower degree of self-efficacy at theend of the research, possibly reflecting childrens frustration that their perspectives

about problems and solutions did not make a real difference to their neighbourhoods.

Awareness of a childs own social position may be more likely to generate dissatisfaction

and frustration than agency and change.

Attempting to anticipate transformative possibilities is crucial in the ethical conduct

of research in order to reduce the potential for harm. As well as potentially producing

disappointment, there is a possibility that increasing the perception of reflexive agency

might lead a child to challenge existing social relations in ways that increase risks to their

safety. For example, questioning taken-for-granted systems of punishment, or even

raising for discussion topics previously held private or sacred, might be seen as a threatto existing social relationships, and lead to further punishment (Stanko & Lee, 2003).

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304 J. Parkes

And yet, while there is a danger of false promises, or of potential harm, there may

be spaces for research to meld into intervention in ways that could create possibilities

for change, albeit within the constraints of the social setting. The kinds of discussions

with children described in this article could feed into a schools behaviour plan or

personalsocial curriculum; their ideas about addressing violence in the neighbour-hood could contribute to neighbourhood discussions on community policing. For

such projects to succeed, research needs to attend to the everyday social relationships

of children, and to entail careful analysis of the complex dynamics of power. The goal

is not to give voice to children, which after all could merely strengthen beliefs in

rather than contest violent practices. It is about opening up dialogue and debate,

acknowledging the power of the researcher and also the awareness that, in construct-

ing research which increases the reflexive agency of participants, the researcher loses

some control over the consequences. At the same time, striving towards a more equi-

table, reciprocal relationship permits the researcher, no longer feigning impartiality,to confront and challenge participants, as Bronwyn Davies (2003) did in a study with

young children, which aimed to transform gender norms through challenging chil-

dren to re-name, re-write and re-position themselves in relation to these norms.

In conclusion, a reflexive research relationship entails constant reflection on the

positions of the researcher and of the participants, within the layers of social relation-

ships in which they are embedded, and of the possibilities for and constraints upon

change within these relationships. If, as the opening paragraph of this article suggested,

there is an imperative in the research for transformation, then this analysis suggests

that researchers may need to find ways both to illuminate and to challenge perspectives.

This will entail developing the research relationship over a period of time and movingbeyond the safety of the formal research space to childrens everyday social networks.

In these ways, the changes generated within the research may be more likely to extend

to the more significant and durable relationships of childrens lives.

Transcription Notation

[] text omitted.

[gangsters] translation of Afrikaans word which has entered local non-standard variety

of English.

short pause.

Acknowledgements

For their valuable and perceptive comments on drafts of this article, I would like to

thank Marjorie Smith, Peter Aggleton, Claudia Lapping, Alison Clark and Ian

Warwick. I am also grateful to Ingrid Lunt, Elaine Unterhalter and the Children and

Violence Programme, a project of the Trauma Centre for the Survivors of Violence and

Torture, for their support throughout the study, and to the Economic and SocialResearch Council for providing a fellowship to support the writing of the article.

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International Journal of Social Research Methodology 305

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