Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods brings together visual studies and childhood studies to explore images of childhood in the study of rurality and rural life. The volume highlights how the voices of children themselves remain central to investigations of rural childhoods. Contributions look at representations and experiences of rural childhoods from both the Global North and Global South (including U.S., Canada, Haiti, India, Sweden, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, Timor-Leste, and Colombia) and consider visuals ranging from picture books to cell phone video to television.

Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods brings together visual studies and childhood studies to explore images of childhood in the study of rurality and rural life. The volume highlights how the voices of children themselves remain central to investigations of rural childhoods. Contributions look at representations and experiences of rural childhoods from both the Global North and Global South (including U.S., Canada, Haiti, India, Sweden, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, Timor-Leste, and Colombia) and consider visuals ranging from picture books to cell phone video to television.

Life in the countryside, often perceived as either idyllic or depleted, has long been misrepresented. Challenging the stereotypes and myths that surround the idea of rurality, Our Rural Selves interrogates and represents individual and collective memories of childhood in rural landscapes and small towns. Drawing on visual artifacts whose origins range from the early twentieth century to today, such as photographs, films, objects, picture books, and digital games, contributors offer readings of childhood that are geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse. They examine the memories of Indigenous children, the experiences of back-to-the-land youth, and boom-or-bust childhoods within the petroleum, farming, and fishing industries. Illustrating often neglected and overlooked aspects of adolescence, this collection suggests new ways of studying social connectedness and collective futures. Innovative and revealing in its use of visual studies, autoethnography, and memory-work, Our Rural Selves explores representation, imagination, and what it means to grow up rural in Canada.

Positionality and researcher reflexivity – how to account for one’s subject position – remain as challenges for new researchers. But they also remain as challenges for experienced researchers, who are often involved in multiple research projects simultaneously. Where Am I in the Picture? sheds light on the idea of researcher positionality through visual methodologies, particularly in the context of studying rurality in Canada, Sweden, and South Africa. The book is intended for new and experienced researchers seeking to decolonize their own perspectives in research in the social sciences and humanities. It incorporates photographs, drawings, and memory work to highlight the social constructedness of what counts as rural. Drawing together compelling narratives from researchers about their positionality in studying rurality, the book highlights a need for greater attention to “where we are in the picture” more broadly. It suggests that when it comes to the rural, researchers need to rethink the interplay of dominant images, insider and outsider perspectives, and what this interplay means in relation to interpretation. Where Am I in the Picture? presents a new vision of how to take into consideration positionality in research.

Girls and young women, particularly those from rural and indigenous communities around the world, face some of the most adverse social issues in the world despite the existence of protective laws and international treaties. Ethical Practice in Participatory Visual Research with Girls explores the potential of participatory visual method (PVM) for girls and young women in these communities, presenting and critiquing the everyday ethical dilemmas visual researchers face and the strategies they implement to address them, reflecting on principles of autonomy, social justice, and beneficence in transnational, indigenous and rural contexts.

The second, thoroughly revised and expanded, edition of The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods presents a wide-ranging exploration and overview of the field today. As in its first edition, the Handbook does not aim to present a consistent view or voice, but rather to exemplify diversity and contradictions in perspectives and techniques. The selection of chapters from the first edition have been fully updated to reflect current developments. New chapters to the second edition cover key topics including picture-sorting techniques, creative methods using artefacts, visual framing analysis, therapeutic uses of images, and various emerging digital technologies and online practices. At the core of all contributions are theoretical and methodological debates about the meanings and study of the visual, presented in vibrant accounts of research design, analytical techniques, fieldwork encounters and data presentation. This handbook presents a unique survey of the discipline that will be essential reading for scholars and students across the social and behavioural sciences, arts and humanities, and far beyond these disciplinary boundaries. The Handbook is organized into seven main sections: PART 1: FRAMING THE FIELD OF VISUAL RESEARCH PART 2: VISUAL AND SPATIAL DATA PRODUCTION METHODS AND TECHNOLOGIES PART 3: PARTICIPATORY AND SUBJECT-CENTERED APPROACHES PART 4: ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS AND PERSPECTIVES PART 5: MULTIMODAL AND MULTISENSORIAL RESEARCH PART 6: RESEARCHING ONLINE PRACTICES PART 7: COMMUNICATING THE VISUAL: FORMATS AND CONCERNS

The Routledge Handbook of Childhood Studies and Global Development explores how global development agendas and processes of economic development influence children’s lives. It demonstrates that children are not only the frequent targets or objects of development but that they also shape and influence processes of economic, political and sociocultural development. The handbook makes the case for the importance of placing children at the heart of development debates and demonstrates how researchers, policymakers and practitioners can engage children in development. Through reports on field research as well as a critical engagement with theories in development studies and childhood studies, contributors contest normative assumptions about childhood and global development. They tease out and tease apart the complex social, historical, cultural, economic, epidemiological, ecological, geopolitical, and institutional processes transforming what it means to be young in the world today. Showcasing research from both established scholars and early career researchers, and with particular prominence given to the work of authors from the global south, this book will be an essential reference for policymakers, practitioners, and for researchers and students across childhood studies, education, geography, sociology, and global development.