Photo-ethnography by People Living in Poverty Near the Northern Border of Mexico

Authors

  • Jesús René Luna Hernández Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-10.2.1310

Keywords:

photo-ethnography, poverty, northern border of Mexico, agency, contamination

Abstract

People living in poverty have had little opportunity to express their feelings about the precarious situation in which they live. Most studies on poverty have focused on describing its most prominent characteristics, more often in a quantitative manner. This paper aims to explore the way in which people living in poverty conceptualize what they consider important and/or interesting in their everyday lives. Disposable cameras were given to 30 participants. In this paper efforts of 10 different photographers are reported. After the photographs were developed the participants were asked to comment on any aspect or situation portrayed in one or more photographs that could be considered interesting or important to them. Three main topics emerged: family, environmental problems and dangers, and community actions. Most of the photographs and commentaries centered on physically and emotionally-related themes, with a clear tendency to denounce unjust situations and to portray the manner in which the poor cope with the vicissitudes of daily life. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0902353

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Author Biography

Jesús René Luna Hernández, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez

Jesús René LUNA HERNÁNDEZ is a full-time professor in the Psychology Program in the Management and Social Sciences Institute of the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, in Mexico, and he is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Psychology of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, in Spain. His research interests include the social psychological studies on poverty, the impact of globalization on the poor, the relationship between urban and migrant communities, and new information and communication technologies, and the socio-psychological analysis of scientific knowledge production in the academic context. He has published in the International Journal of Psychology on the area of scientific productivity in international psychology, as well as on various national and international publications on the social psychology of poverty.

Published

2009-05-30

How to Cite

Luna Hernández, J. R. (2009). Photo-ethnography by People Living in Poverty Near the Northern Border of Mexico. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-10.2.1310

Issue

Section

Research Practices: Visual Analysis