Participatory Methods: The Violence of Adult Centricity

Abstract

Youth research is an adult-centric process despite attempts to make it participant-led. In the current risk-averse climate research ethics processes can produce unethical and violating results for participants. In this chapter, I argue that young people’s participation in qualitative research might be more helpfully understood as a parallel project. Reconceptualising the dynamic between researcher and participant in this way, and valuing young people’s reasons for participation, uncovers the potential for symbolic violence and cultural violence in adult-centric risk-averse ethics processes. Moreover, in contrast to the assumptions that often shape ethics applications and methods design, young people might be ‘keen as fuck’ (participant quote) to participate in research.