Participatory video drama research in transitional Vietnam: post-production narratives on marriage, parenting and social evils

Abstract

Based on two years of participatory video drama (PVD) research with men and women in the city of Huế, this article explores perspectives on, and experiences of, socioeconomic transition and its influence on domestic life in Vietnam. Through a combination of output analysis, group screening sessions and individual interviews, it concentrates on the themes of marriage, parenting and 'social evils' which emerged in the PVD. It demonstrates how familial tensions collectively identified in the workshop and told in a single video-narrative are complicated by the more nuanced discourses that emerge from co-produced analysis in the post-production period. These illuminate a greater plurality of voices towards the liberalisation of the Vietnamese economy and the new life choices that this brings.

Feminist geographies and participatory action research: co-producing narratives with people and place

“…Indeed, PAR scholars struggle with how analysis highlights researchers' views over participants', reiterating centre-periphery binaries and privileges. Kathryn Brickell (2015) addresses this explicitly, by writing the different analyses of research (by herself, and by local people) separately, and reflecting on these. Thus a plurality of voices are presented, situating herself, as white western academic, simultaneously through diverse readings of research themes among variously positioned participants.…”

Rethinking Whiteness and Masculinity in Geography: Drinking Alcohol in the Field in Vietnam

“…Rates of divorce are rising in Vietnam and women are increasingly becoming more confident in their choice to raise children by themselves (or alongside family members) rather than in challenging “nuclear family” arrangements (Brickell ). Showing off in a street space intoxicated by alcohol is not a throwaway type of fieldwork space but reveals some men's coping strategies in a country that is undergoing significant social transformations, and in particular in the area of women's equality issues (more on this below; see also Brickell ; Drummond and Rydstrom ; Leshkowich ; Rydstrom , ).…”

“…The production of these geographies in Vietnam is documented below through a discussion of an ethically troublesome consumer good: the alcoholic beverage. Through three representative vignettes from the field I demonstrate that whiteness and masculinity are not only polarizing ideas affecting research in geography in North America and Europe but are threaded deeply in the research ethics fabric among geographers conducting fieldwork in countries in the global South like Vietnam (see Brickell , ; Scott and Chuyen ; Scott et al ). I offer a sympathetic critique of work that renders problematic the “ways that we as critical geographers (re)produce white supremacy” (Berg :509) and a discipline that produces “geographical research [that] has in effect been passively, often inadvertently, sexist” (Monk and Hanson :11) by writing a feminist inspired paper that reconfigures the white, male geographer as a character that moves beyond the subaltern‐hegemonic binary in the conduct of fieldwork.…”

Building agency through participatory video: insights from the experiences of young women participants in India

“…When they produce a story, they are the ones 'directing' rather than men, thus altering gender roles. Some researchers have sought to understand how producing participatory video drama enables women to explore power relations and express themselves (Brickell, 2014;Waite & Conn, 2011). Some studies on PV with women have shown how by the end of the PV projects, women had gained more voice and confidence, and raised social issues (Bery & Stuart, 1996; Khamis, Plush, & Sepulveda Zelaya, 2009).…”