Navigating sensitivity in urban research: methodological reflections from using photovoice with street traders

Elmond Bandauko and Godwin Arku

Chapter 10 in Handbook of Sensitive Research in the Social Sciences, 2025, pp 147-158 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Conducting primary research with street traders in Global South cities remains one of the most sensitive endeavours in urban studies. Street traders’ livelihood practices are always criminalised, penalised, and stigmatised as pathological, out of place, and undesirable. Therefore, street traders are the primary target of displacements and evictions from urban authorities who are preoccupied with upholding modernistic visions of cities. This chapter presents the following methodological insights from the deployment of photovoice with street traders in Harare, Zimbabwe: (i) balancing between obtaining data and exposing street traders’ spatial strategies, (ii) handling sensitive gendered experiences from female street traders, (iii) dealing with participants’ personal life stories, (iv) managing contentious relations between street traders and urban authorities, and (v) tackling power dynamics between the researcher and participants. Although photovoice presents opportunities for participants to amplify their voices, it can also create complex ethical and methodological dilemmas which require researchers to be sensitive, reflective, and empathetic.

Keywords: Harare; Marginalised; Photovoice; Sensitive; Street traders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035315222
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