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- Convenors:
-
Najam Us Saqib
(O.P. Jindal Global University)
Hima Trisha Mohan (Leiden University)
Deepanshu Mohan (O.P.Jindal Global University)
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- Chair:
-
Deepanshu Mohan
(O.P.Jindal Global University)
- Discussant:
-
Ishfaq Wani
(Senior Research Analyst, CNES O.P. Jindal University India)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Methods - research, participation and practice
Short Abstract:
This panel presents Visual Storyboards as a transformative tool in development studies, uniting visual narratives and ethnographic insights to explore crises. By amplifying marginalized voices and fostering co-produced knowledge, it reimagines how crises are studied, taught, and addressed.
Description:
This panel explores Visual Storyboards as an innovative methodological tool that transforms how developmental crises are studied and taught. It examines the potential of visual narratives to go beyond text and data by capturing the complex, intersectional realities of marginalized communities affected by crises. The panel highlights how visuals foster deeper connections to lived experiences and challenge traditional paradigms in development research and pedagogy.
We believe that in an era defined by polycrisis, dominant methods in development studies often reduce diverse experiences to aggregate metrics or linear narratives. These approaches risk excluding marginalized perspectives and perpetuating systemic inequalities. Visual storytelling addresses these limitations by offering a multi-layered, co-produced lens to engage with crises, focusing on reflexivity, agency, and inclusivity. This discussion underscores the urgency of rethinking how knowledge is generated, represented, and taught in development studies.
We propose Visual Storyboards as a methodological pivot to reshape development pedagogy. This approach combines visual ethnography, feminist principles, and participatory methods to emphasize polyvocality, contextual depth, and ethical representation. By integrating these tools into research and teaching, we aim to inspire a new generation of scholars and practitioners to move beyond conventional binaries and engage with development crises in a more nuanced and empathetic way. This methodology embodies the spirit of navigating the danger/opportunity dialectic by creating space for marginalized voices and fostering actionable change.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This study explores how Participatory Visual Ethnography, using Photovoice and Participatory Video, empowers Kerala’s tribal communities, amplifies voices, fosters resilience, and challenges extractive research. It promotes methodological pluralism for inclusive disaster governance.
Paper long abstract:
Marginalized tribal communities often face crises through misrepresentation or exclusion from mainstream discourse. This study examines how Participatory Visual Ethnography, specifically PhotoVoice and Participatory Video, documents crisis experiences, amplifies indigenous voices, and advocates for policy change. Focusing on Kerala’s tribal communities, disproportionately affected by floods and landslides, this research explores how participatory visual methods facilitate self-representation, resilience-building, and co-produced crisis knowledge while challenging extractive research paradigms.Grounded in participatory and decolonial methodologies, PhotoVoice enables participants to document disaster vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms through photography. Participatory Video engages tribal members in collaborative filmmaking, allowing them to document cultural heritage, environmental concerns, and disaster responses. These methods reposition tribal communities as co-authors of crisis narratives rather than passive subjects.While crisis research often prioritizes quantitative metrics, this study highlights visual ethnography as a multi-dimensional, ethical approach to understanding affected communities. However, integrating participatory visual data into disaster governance presents challenges, including ethical concerns and institutional biases favoring quantitative indicators. This study advocates for methodological pluralism, arguing that PhotoVoice and Participatory Video democratize knowledge production, challenge top-down crisis narratives, and enable community-driven interventions, contributing to decolonizing research and integrating marginalized voices into disaster governance.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the role of housing in household welfare, focusing on low-income households in Delhi’s unauthorised colonies. It employs ethnographic analysis, combining a survey of 200 households with case studies, to explore how houses are used as collateral in informal credit markets.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the pivotal role of housing in household welfare, particularly in the context of low-income households in metropolitan areas facing challenges in homeownership. It highlights the emergence of new urban housing capital in Delhi's unauthorised colonies, formed from converted agricultural fields, and its impact on the city's geography. The study explores the ongoing process of capital accumulation and investigates informal mechanisms for accumulating capital, focusing on houses with semi-legal titles used as collateral in the informal credit market. To comprehensively understand this complex landscape, the study undertakes a survey, which offers a broad understanding with a robust sample size of two hundred households. A notable finding of the study is the role of social capital in creating informal financial spaces where credit is extended based on community networks and trust. This underscores the importance of social connections in shaping financial access. Thorough background checks on borrowers within these networks are essential to maintaining the integrity of interest-free lending. The rates charged if any are comparable to formal institutions. The paper also presents case studies illustrating how social capital operates within informal credit markets and its influence on the financial well-being of households in these colonies.
Paper short abstract:
Generally speaking, crisis is assumed to be a one-time thing that shall pass. It is not seen as something that gets ingrained in the everyday life of people. In my study, however, the opposite holds true which leads me to the question the nature of crisis: is it sudden and unplanned or manufactured?
Paper long abstract:
Water is a quintessential resource necessary for human survival and well being. The state entitled with the duty and responsibility to take care of its citizen, must as part of this responsibility, ensure that clean water is made available to all its citizens. The present Delhi government came to power on the mandate that it will provide free water to all its residents and flaunts that it has been successful in doing so to a large extent. However this officially accepted dictum comes into abeyance when one looks at the urban informal settlements of Delhi. Careful field observations and semi-structured interviews with long term residents of these clusters (my case study is of Rangpuri Pahadi, Delhi) makes one wonder at the constancy of the water crisis in these areas. This is because, infrastructurally speaking, no pipelines have been laid down and Rangpuri Pahadi is served with either tankers or borewell water. The people confront water crisis as an everyday reality that only gets exacerbated in the summer months. Visual storyboards as a methodological tool offers great insights to capture this crisis as is experienced by different social groups and the adaptation and mitigation strategies adopted by them to deal with the same. An immersion into the field enables one with the contextual understanding and sensitivity to make sense of these actions or inactions and thereby juxtapose them against discourses of development.
Paper short abstract:
Elections in Delhi reveal a development dilemma, with voters being swayed by "freebies" and abrupt upgrades. This essay urges a change to sustainable development by highlighting the discrepancy between the promises and realities for underserved communities through the use of visual storyboards.
Paper long abstract:
With an emphasis on "freebie politics" and spontaneous, performative development projects during election seasons, this paper analyses Delhi's elections through a lens of a development crisis. These acts cause a crisis of sustainability, governance, and inclusivity even though they are frequently presented as welfare measures. Promises and their long-term effects on underprivileged populations diverge, exposing serious shortcomings in tackling structural developmental issues such urban housing, pollution, and education.
The lived experiences of Delhi's voters, especially those from underrepresented communities, are documented in this paper using Visual Storyboards as a methodological tool. It depicts the nuanced ways in which they deal with the disparities that are maintained by these temporary fixes while navigating the promises of election-driven progress. The banality of election-season progress can be effectively critiqued using visual narratives, which highlight the importance of reflexivity, agency, and ethical governance in developmental research.
This study places Delhi's election politics in the larger context of sustainable development, emphasizing the power of visual storytelling to challenge long-standing stereotypes and elevate underrepresented perspectives. This study advances a more nuanced view of governance, accountability, and equity by redefining elections as a development crisis. It also shows how collaborative, co-produced visual approaches may spur meaningful change in the field of development studies.
Paper short abstract:
I will bring the ethnographic narratives of the marginalised 'African' communities in India
Paper long abstract:
Somalia is witnessing its worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). According to the Human Rights Law Network Report (2007), 400000 Somali refugees have fled from their homeland to avoid violence and instability. A massive displacement, exodus and forced migration has been taking place from Somalia rendering migrants homeless, stateless, and into a crisis of asylum-seekers and refugees in India and South Asia. It is on this context that this paper, first, focusses on the lived experiences, oral narratives, and family histories of the Somali community living in India to map. Second, highlights the development issue relating to India's non-signatory status to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951). Third, this paper aims to contribute to the development of visual methodology as an important tool for the study of ‘crisis’ experienced by communities with a traumatic past. In its methodology to study crisis, it analyses the involvement of various agencies, institutions (formal- informal), and humanitarian groups contributing to the settlement of Somali migrants. This paper argues that visual ethnography can be a powerful tool for the study of the conflict. This papers also outlines the circumstances under which Somali’s migrates and maps it through intersectionality of race, class, gender, and religion.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the use of visual storytelling in immersive pedagogy to examine socio-cultural dynamics in rural Uttarakhand.Through fieldwork-based visual narratives,it highlights how this method fosters critical thinking, reflexivity, and inclusivity in understanding marginalized perspectives.
Paper long abstract:
This study examines the role of visual storytelling as an innovative tool for understanding and teaching socio-cultural dynamics in development studies. Conducted as part of the Deep Immersion Program by the School of Liberal Arts, IMS Unison University, Uttarakhand, the research spanned four months and combined classroom-based learning with fieldwork. The program culminated in a week-long immersion in Lambgaon, a village in Uttarakhand, where students engaged with local communities under faculty mentorship.
During the immersion, students conducted observational studies and applied visual storytelling techniques to document societal structures such as gender-based divisions of labour, education disparities, clothing restrictions, and household decision-making. These visual narratives enabled students to explore the intersectional realities of the community while fostering a deeper understanding of the systemic inequalities embedded in everyday life.
The preliminary findings demonstrate that visual storytelling serves as an effective pedagogical tool, enhancing critical thinking, reflexivity, and collaboration. Students were able to move beyond preconceptions and develop nuanced perspectives on gender roles and socio-cultural norms. By engaging with the lived experiences of marginalized communities, students cultivated empathy and gained a deeper appreciation of socio-cultural complexities.
This study highlights the limitations of conventional development methods, which often reduce diverse experiences to aggregate metrics or linear narratives. Visual storytelling, by contrast, emphasizes inclusivity, reflexivity, and ethical representation. We propose Visual Storyboards as a transformative methodological tool in development pedagogy, combining visual ethnography, participatory approaches, and feminist principles to foster meaningful engagement and amplify marginalized voices.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines visual ethnography as a participatory methodology for engaging marginalized communities in Kashmir. Incorporating photography, film, and participatory video challenges dominant narratives, amplifies subaltern voices, and promotes inclusive representation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the transformative potential of visual ethnography as a participatory method for engaging marginalized communities in Indian Administered Kashmir. In a region where socio-political complexities intersect with structural exclusion, visual ethnography offers an alternative to conventional textual approaches by incorporating media such as photography, film, and participatory video. This methodology enables nuanced understandings of resilience, identity, and socio-economic challenges while challenging dominant narratives that are often securitized or politicized.
Focusing on underrepresented groups such as nomadic herders, fishing communities, caste minorities, and linguistic groups, the study demonstrates how visual storytelling facilitates participatory action. Collaborative initiatives, including mapping projects and photo essays, have been employed to document multidimensional vulnerabilities, particularly among women and youth, while foregrounding their agency in navigating structural constraints.
The participatory ethos of visual ethnography transforms research subjects into co-creators of their narratives, fostering ownership and disrupting traditional hierarchies in ethnographic research. This approach not only empowers marginalized communities but also redefines the politics of representation, offering an inclusive and transformative framework for understanding marginalization and resilience in Kashmir.
Through fieldwork and case studies, this paper highlights the capacity of visual ethnography to amplify subaltern voices, promote inclusivity, and provide critical insights into the lived realities of marginalized populations, underscoring its value in contemporary ethnographic and development practices.
Paper short abstract:
We would like to bring a hands-on exploration of how visual storyboards can transform research on marginalized communities specially in Mumbai and Delhi in development studies.
Paper long abstract:
Development studies have long relied on traditional methods that reduce complex crises to quantitative metrics, often overlooking the lived experiences of marginalized communities. This paper addresses the limitations of these dominant approaches by exploring participatory visual storyboards as a tool for amplifying the voices of urban informal workers in Mumbai and Delhi, displaced by climate-induced displacement. Using a blend of visual ethnography and feminist research principles, the study co-created storyboards with displaced workers, documenting their experiences of resilience, vulnerability, and agency.
This methodology challenges the conventional binaries of victimhood and agency, offering a more nuanced, polyvocal approach to representing crises. By foregrounding marginalized perspectives, the study reveals how visual storytelling can bridge the gap between academic research and grassroots realities, fostering more inclusive, reflexive, and ethical development practices. In doing so, the paper advocates for the integration of visual methodologies into development pedagogy, proposing a shift towards a more participatory and empathetic discipline. The findings suggest that visual storyboards can transform the way crises are studied, represented, and addressed in development studies, making space for marginalized voices and creating pathways for actionable change.
Paper short abstract:
Ethnography is commonly used as a participatory method in which researcher immerse into the field. Studies have shown that the recent human-wildlife conflicts in South India have not been examined as development crisis. This study explores participatory and co-producing method for more visuality.
Paper long abstract:
It has never been considered that human-wildlife conflicts are developmentally induced crisis in which Adivasis of Wayanad are immensely entrapped. It is observed that in recent times, the intense and incendiary conflicts are taking place in which Adivasis are facing new survival threats. They live in the borders of forests, and they depend upon foraging. While developmental crisis intensifies, these marginalised communities are affected by it. More than anything, the developmental crisis brought their life/livelihoods into peril.
Apart from the migration of people, a series of British colonial initiatives/decrees for enacting several forest laws and the Wildlife Act of 1972 have seen Adivasis losing their rights to use forest resources. This has led to the loss of their land, allowed the state to control the entire forest including the wildlife. Thereby, the community management of forest by the Advasis has ended (Gadgil and Guha 1995: 61).
Traditional ethnography prefers oral narrative as a strategy to portray development crisis like human-wildlife conflicts. This strategy has a limited scope of depicting reality in two ways : contextual deepness and polyvocality. As a result of which, marginal voices are being continuously suppressed. Despite this limitation, this study proposes ethnographic insights into the visual storyboard by using participatory and co-producing method with the help of enhancing the participation of Adivasis voices and visual storyboards (Bank and Morphy 1997; Pink 2006; Daehnhardt 2020). The study conceives to reimagine the dearth of such approach in anthropology of development.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores visual ethnography in law and development studies, highlighting its role in capturing lived realities. Using visual media, this participatory approach enriches socio-legal research, amplifies marginalized voices, and fosters inclusive, culturally sensitive legal frameworks.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines visual ethnography as a transformative methodology in law and development studies, emphasizing its ability to bridge abstract legal concepts with lived realities. Visual ethnography employs participatory methods, such as photography and film, to document and analyze the intersection of law, culture, and social change. By centering the voices of marginalized communities, this approach enables a deeper understanding of identity, power dynamics, and structural inequities that are often overlooked in traditional research.
Through visual representation, researchers can capture complex socio-legal narratives, making the law’s impact more accessible and tangible. Visual ethnography also fosters collaboration between researchers and participants, creating a platform for underrepresented groups to challenge dominant narratives and articulate their perspectives on justice and development. Its visual and participatory nature enhances cross-cultural understanding, making it particularly valuable in diverse contexts where language or textual limitations may hinder traditional methods.
The paper addresses ethical considerations, including issues of consent, representation, and the risk of reinforcing existing power imbalances. It argues that, when applied thoughtfully, visual ethnography not only enriches socio-legal research but also contributes to inclusive, culturally sensitive frameworks that reflect the lived realities of communities. By integrating visual ethnography into law and development studies, scholars can move beyond abstract legal discourse to foster more holistic and participatory approaches to legal and social transformation, ultimately advancing the goals of equity and justice.