The pathways and “voice as a value”

This section links the three voice pathways to Couldry’s (2010) “voice as value” principles. To revisit, the five principles are that voice is:

 An adaptable “material form” controlled by the speaker(s) that requires society to be open to influence by all voices (p. 9);

 “Socially grounded” where voice is understood as a social process whereby the speaker has the resources to sustain narrative exchange (p. 7);

 A “form of reflexive agency” where the expression of voice is an interactive, aware exchange between self and others (p. 8);

 An “embodied process” that recognises and respects the uniqueness of individual and multiple narratives (p. 9); and

 An act that is responsive to voice-denying rationalities, taking into account conditions that may be complicit in silencing voice, even inadvertently (p. 10-11).

By linking Couldry’s principles to the voice pathways, the research suggests that equitable voice offers the greatest possibility for valuing citizen voice. Table 5.1 provides a visual representation of how the voice pathways, and their characteristics, relate to Couldry’s principles. The shaded boxes indicate if a principle presents itself in a particular voice pathway, as defined through the study. For example, the study determined that the socially grounded principle is apparent in all voice pathways. However, the embodied process principle is only visible in engaged and equitable voice. The section describes the relationship between the voice pathways and Couldry’s principles in more detail after Table 5.1.

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Table 5.1: Voice pathways and Couldry’s “voice as a value” principles

Voice Pathways Amplified- Collected Visibility Communication Evidence Amplified- Collective Visibility Communication Evidence Engaged Participation Dialogue Capacity Equitable Agency Receptivity Relationships

Voice as Value Principles Material form Socially grounded Reflexive agency Embodied process Responsive to voice- denying rationalities

In the material form principle, Couldry (2010) argues that voice exists as interplay of emergence and form (p. 9). This is where an individual’s voice can be raised in isolation or as part of a wider, distributed collective (p. 9). With PV’s foundational emphasis on representing alternative viewpoints, PV activities by nature aim to translate unheard voice into a communicative form greater than the sum of its parts. PV used this way supports voice in attaining material form as a usable commodity for social and political change. This is why Table 5.1 shows, as represented by the shaded boxes, that this principle connects to all the pathways—though it does so with a caveat. Material form can be threatened when the form fails to fit with experience, as Couldry (2010) explains:

Voice can be undermined at the collective or social level… When collective voices or institutional decisions fail to register individual experience; when institutions ignore collective views; when distributed voice is not reflected in opportunities to redeem voice in specific encounters; or when societies become organised on the basis that individual, collective and distributed voice is not reflected in opportunities to redeem voice in specific encounters…because a higher value or rationality trumps them. (p. 10)

Couldy’s argument is of particular concern for amplified voice. That is, when PV activities solely collect underrepresented views on pre-determined topics without further civic engagement. This could happen when institutions request PV films for national or global meetings. It could happen when institutions post PV films on the Internet without concurrent “feedback loops” to address citizens’ concerns (Grandvoinnet et al., 2015,

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p. 95). In other words, even though PV might translate citizen voice into material form, a lack of response could render citizen voice worthless for influencing decisions that affect their lives.

Voice through the socially grounded principle operates in conditions that “enable and sustain practices of narrative,” including language and resources (p. 7). Narratives differ from stories. Arthur Frank (2010) describes narratives as the “resources from which people construct the stories they tell and in the intelligibility of the stories they hear” (p. 14). Narratives drive the social interplay between storytelling, reflexivity and dialogue central to PV practice (Low et al., 2012, p. 51). PV activities, however, cannot be assumed to always be socially grounded. For instance, the principle is noticeably absent when PV activities deny citizens opportunities for unprejudiced narrative creation, reflection or control. This could happen when institutions dictate PV films’ messaging, or when they only fund using video to conduct short interviews with community members. Accordingly, the research deemed the amplified-collected voice pathway as not being socially grounded, as Table 5.1 shows. The rationale relates to the voice-gathering approach in the amplified-collected voice pathway. The process does not allow citizens to engage in the action Couldry (2010) promotes for “ongoing narrative exchange with others” in ways under their control (p. 8). Rather, the amplified-collected voice PV process mainly collects multiple voices on pre-determined topics, with little opportunity for the citizens on camera to fully develop and share their authentic, narratable selves. Additionally, the process seemed to lack on-going exchanges between speakers and listeners that could meaningfully build recognition of voice as having value (p. 8).

Voice as a value, Couldry argues, also operates through the principle of reflexive agency. This is where the “act of voice involves taking responsibility for the stories one tells” through a process of deliberate democracy (p. 8). As Table 5.1 shows, the principle is also absent in the amplified-collected voice pathway. The reasoning is because the citizens, who provide their opinions on film, have little opportunity to reflect, discuss or redefine their views as part of the representational process. Here, in the amplified-collected voice pathway, PV serves to gather citizens’ perspectives quickly. It does so without developing any capacity for citizens’ wider civic engagement. As such, the citizens on camera often have little incentive to take responsibility for their voiced concerns, or to engage in further

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action. The PV process contrasts with how Couldry views agency. In Couldry’s reflexive agency principle, agency manifests through the “ongoing process of reflection, exchanging narratives back and forth between our past and present selves, and between us and others” (p. 8). As Table 5.1 shows, reflexive agency is present in the amplified-collective, engaged and equitable voice pathways. This is because PV practitioners described reflexive activities in collaborative group filmmaking processes in these pathways. Nevertheless, Couldry’s principle could be threatened if short timelines or institutional demands for communicative products diminish possibilities for authentic citizen voice to emerge in the reflexive process.

As Table 5.1 also shows, the study deemed the principle of embodied process as being absent from both sub-categories of the amplified voice pathway. An embodied process of voice implies being able to connect the uniqueness of one’s own experience to other experiences, within an environment respectful of its multiple dimensions (p. 9). In amplified voice, this seems unattainable due to typically short timeframes and a focus on fulfilling people’s right to speak, as described in Section 4.3.1. As a consequence, PV participants’ were rarely afforded the time or emphasis to sufficiently link the plural nature of personal stories to the collective PV output (p. 8). As Couldry argues:

To block someone’s capacity to bring one part of their lives to bear on another part—for example, by discounting the relevance of their work experience to their trajectory as a citizen—is, again, to deny a dimension of voice itself. (p. 9)

The emphasis of an embodied process thus requires strengthening an individual’s “power within” as a means for greater citizen engagement in collective action (VeneKlasen & Miller, 2007, p. 45). This internal, individual power is necessary to develop citizens’ collective power, called the “power with,” so they can sufficiently manifest their “power to” influence social and political change (p. 45). In the voice pathways, such actions appeared most visible through the characteristics of capacity in engaged voice, as described in Section 4.4.4; and agency in equitable voice, as described in Section 4.5.2.

The final principle Couldry (2010) offers is that of circumventing voice-denying

rationalities (p. 10). Here, “voice is undermined by rationalities that take no account of

voice and by practices that exclude voice or undermine forms for its expression” (p. 10). Couldry argues that most “models for organising life” are not scheming for voice denial,

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and may even celebrate its value (p. 10). However, their modalities of operation could make them complicit in diminishing voice (p. 11). Through this lens, the research identified the amplified and engaged voice pathways as lacking this voice-denying rationalities principle, as Figure 5.1 shows. The choice to do so was twofold. First, the two pathways tended to focus primarily on citizen representation and dialogical encounters to influence change. Such actions were more common than efforts aimed at shifting entrenched political power or marginalising conditions that might be keeping citizen voice silenced. Second, in the two pathways, PV practice tended to operate within the boundaries of the mainstream development sector. As Chapter 2 explained, the sector holds potential to diminish or deny voice through its organising structures.

Collaborating with mainstream development institutions in no way presumes voice denial in the absolute. However, the research showed that such alliances heavily influence how people describe, and potentially approach their PV practice, as detailed in Chapter 6. For instance, most practitioners closely aligned with the amplified and engaged voice pathways tended to limit their critique on how development institutions’ operational structures might constrain citizen voice. This contrasted with a prevalence of critical views in the equitable voice pathway about the interplay between institutions, voice and power. Illustratively, a practitioner explained how the development sector could undermine voice:

One of the problems about PV practitioners being very closely aligned to NGOs is that it can lead to the colonising of local voices in support of what are actually NGO agendas: programmes, policies and fundraising. It is the unspoken collusion, or maybe it is the unconscious collusion that takes hold of professional bodies and institutions as they struggle with their own internal management and financial matters. (Katulpa)

Related to this observation, in development studies scholarship Eyben and Guijt (2015) argue that influential power in the sector is multifaceted (p. 4). Here they mention informal power, such as ministers, staff, consultants and others; and formal power, such as donors, INGOs, NGOs, governments and CBOs (p. 4). The study in this thesis has looked at informal power, with a research focus on PV practitioners operating as consultants, staff and/or researchers. It has shown how PV practitioners and their conceptualisations of ideal PV practice play a significant role in citizens’ lives in international development contexts. When deploying PV in this environment, their views have direct consequences

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for both advancing citizen voice and social accountability. As such, PV practitioners’ epistemologies matter—especially in whether they perceive raising citizen voice with PV through an amplified, engaged or equitable voice pathway.

In exploring the three pathways, the study analyses concluded that equitable voice is the most viable pathway for enabling valued citizen voice. The study based the decision on the theoretical limitations identified in the amplified and engaged voice pathways, as Sections 5.1.2, 5.1.3 and 5.1.4 described. It also made the conclusion through the voice pathway’s linkages to Couldry’s (2010) “voice as value” principles (p. 10), which highlighted the equitable voice pathway as the most aligned in its offering. The next section elaborates on this knowledge by presenting equitable voice as foundational for a new conceptual framework for PV, as related to its identified characteristics of agency, receptivity and relationships.

5.3 The proposed conceptual framework