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Book Review
Mitchell, C., De Lange, N., & Moletsane, R. (2017). 
Participatory Visual Methodologies: Social change, 
community and policy. Sage. 

SILVIA GARCIA

Authors
SILVIA GARCIA 
Assistant Director for Re-
search, IUPUI Office of Com-
munity Engagement.  

Mitchell, De Lange and Moletsane 
(2017) discuss the use of participatory 
visual research (PVR) to give voice to 
those involved in research and partic-
ularly to create opportunities for social 
change. The authors intend to shift the 
conversation on PVR “towards out-
comes and the ever-present question 
‘What difference does it make?’” (p.3). 
Drawing on the principles of Rose’s 
(2001) critical visual methodology that 
provide an analytical framework for 
understanding how images become 
meaningful to audiences, and from the 
sociology of literature (Escarpit, 1958) 
–literature as a socio-cultural fact– the 
book presents the use of PVR to reach 
critical audiences and provide entry 
points to policy dialogues and eventu-
ally to social change. Social change is 
characterized in different ways “new 
conversations and dialogues, altered 
perspectives of participants to take 
action, policy debates, and actual policy 
development.” (p.16). 

The authors bring upfront the im-
portance of studying how audiences 
engage with the visual artifacts, and 
the importance of political listen-
ing, defined as the communicative 
interaction among political actors 

that enables democratic decisions 
about how to react to visual artifacts. 
Reflexivity is an important element 
of the authors’ framework. Reflexiv-
ity is key to ensuring participation, 
engaging participants, audiences 
and researchers in questioning the 
purpose, strategies, and takeaways 
of visual presentations. Reflexivity 
can be used as a tool to acknowledge 
unbalanced power relations between 
researchers, audiences –policy mak-
ers– and participants and may lead 
to co-construction of meaning. These 
ideas are used in the book to “theorize 
the ways in which participatory visual 
methodologies can be key to leverag-
ing change through community and 
policy change” (p.193). Both the ways 
social change is portrayed, and the 
positioning that researchers, research 
participants, the community and 
policy makers take as audiences that 
reflect on the visual productions, are 
crucial to understand how PVR can 
stimulate social transformations. 

Chapters 2 to 5 of the book focus 
on changes in the perspectives and 
dialogues of participants. By creating 
awareness among community mem-
bers and policy makers about what 

References
Shaw, J. (2015). Re-ground-
ing participatory video 
within community emer-
gence towards social ac-
countability. Community 
Development Journal, 
50(4), 624-643.

B O O K  R E V I E W



needs to change and how, visual methodologies are 
expected to increase community agency and the 
potential for social change.  The authors sustain that 
to facilitate building strategies that evoke responses 
towards change, it is crucial to start the research 
process with an idea of the expected change in 
mind.  Reflexivity is central to audiences’ engage-
ment. The authors introduce “speaking back,” a 
method that allows research participants to act as 
audiences of visual productions, reflect on them and 
engage in new productions that contest, contradict, 
or complement the content of previous visual work. 
The method allows for conversations and discus-
sions among participants, new knowledge creation 
and participant-driven critique in the context of 
policy dialogue.   

The mechanics of exhibiting the participatory 
visual product is also key for engaging external 
audiences and research participants. First, involv-
ing participants as co-curators of the exhibition 
-deciding what to show, to whom, and how- opens 
the doors for adapting exhibitions to the social 
context where they are displayed, providing op-
portunities for learning. Second, this engagement 
provides a space where participants can interact 
with audiences (community and policy makers). 
Third, research participants can actively engage 
in studying the reactions of the audiences and the 
factors that affect their response, exploring future 
courses of action for change based on audiences’ 
response to the participatory visual productions.   

The final three chapters (6 to 8) are dedicated to 
changes in the mechanics of policy making by 1) in-
cluding the voices of marginalized populations in the 
policy dialogue, and 2) engaging policy-makers in 
policy conversations and reflections on what should 
be done to address the issues raised.  Chapter 7 pres-
ents participant-led tools founded in the principles 
of transformative pedagogy for engaging policy-mak-
ers. One of the main takeaways of this chapter is that 
these practices do not necessarily change the power 
relations that produce the negative conditions in the 
first place.  The book ends with strategies to track 
change and demonstrate impact.  The authors agree 
that studying the ‘afterlife’ of a project –after enough 

time has passed for policy change to happen– is rel-
evant to understanding social change. An interesting 
approach is the use of reflexive revisiting. This im-
plies returning to the place where the initial research 
study was conducted to understand through conver-
sations, interviews and observations the long-term 
effects of the project and develop explanations of 
what changed –or not– and why.     

The main premise of the book is that “participa-
tory visual research holds potential to bring about 
change” (p.20). However, the main question “what 
difference does it make?” remains partially unan-
swered when the aspiration is policy change. Par-
ticipatory visual research seems effective to change 
participants’ perspectives and dialogues within 
their network of personal connections. However, 
its success in reconstructing policy discussions 
to include alternative voices and discourses and 
especially in translating dialogues into social action 
seems inconsistent. Questions should be raised 
about: Can community agency for social change be 
effectively created through PVR alone? How can 
PVR be used to elicit social action after policy-mak-
ers are confronted with the visual representations? 
More importantly, how can PVR contribute to 
build the relational context for dialogue and col-
laboration within the community and with policy 
makers that is important to energize social change?    

In general, the book uses a research perspective that 
helps understand the interpretive processes, reac-
tions, and meaningful interactions of the audiences 
(researchers, research participants, community and 
policy makers) with the visual artifacts during the 
production and exhibition of the visual pieces. Yet, 
the discussion of how participatory visual produc-
tions create opportunities for interactions and mu-
tual engagements of different groups in co-leading 
social change is inexistent. In this sense, the gap be-
tween research and practice that the book promises 
to address is still partially unsolved. Possibly, a way 
to address this gap is as Shawn (2015) has proposed 
to reframe the use of participatory visual research as 
a transformational process built not only to facilitate 
democratic participation, but also to grow the agen-
cy, relational capital and energy required to sustain 
community-driven change. 

G A R C I A

ENGAGE!  |  i u p u i  b i c e n t e n n i a l  e d i t i o n 82


