Peer Research in Health and Social Development by Stephen Bell Peter Aggleton Ally Gibson

Author:Stephen Bell, Peter Aggleton, Ally Gibson [Stephen Bell, Peter Aggleton, Ally Gibson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367321390
Google: 4D4LzgEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Reflecting on participation and power

Peer recruitment can help reach those community members who are harder to reach (Roche et al. 2010). In this study, we reached diverse groups of women, many of whom had never participated in research. The participants, aged between 18 and 70, represented diverse social groups, positions and occupations, including teachers, farmers, journalists, business women, university students, labourers, mothers, civil society organisation employees, vocational students, nurses, municipal council officers and elders. This diversity created phenomenal opportunities for intergenerational and intersectoral discussion across social differences and in ways that created important space for new voices and perspectives to be valued and heard. Seeking diverse women’s perspectives transgressed traditional hierarchies of whose voice counts in formal fora such as research and community decision making. Exploring gender issues, asking for women’s input and expertise, and positioning women’s knowledge as important unsettled technocratic and top-down approaches to water governance.

Yet despite our efforts to do so, recruiting participants through the facilitators’ existing social networks also excluded lower status community members. Girls and domestic workers were not involved in the study, despite our intention to include them, and their critical role and experiences in daily water management was missed. Given the public nature of the workshops, working with these more vulnerable groups would have required a different study design, access and recruitment strategies, and higher levels of anonymity than could be assured with this study (Thompson 2020). While participatory visual and peer research often target marginalised groups, some participants had relatively privileged age and class status within the research context.

The term ‘peer’ assumes some sort of sameness, often in relation to age, culture, social position and perhaps (dis)ability. An intersectional perspective raises questions about insider status because of how gender, class, ethnicity and race intersect (Logie et al. 2012) and the effect of difference in position and power. One facilitator who ran a vocational school in her village recruited her students, who were young women who had left secondary school for various reasons. She also recruited her daughter and her daughter’s friends who were enrolled as graduate students at the university nearby. A young woman recruited her landlord, who she relied on for affordable housing. Another facilitator recruited her cousins, who she lived with. While peers may share some similarities within a particular community, communities are diverse and heterogeneous such that assumed sameness cannot overlook social hierarchies and the complexities of power in these research relationships.

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