SnapLog – a performative research technology: a snapshot of the working environment and the well-being of teachers

Abstract

SnapLog is a combination of the words “snapshot” and “logbook”. SnapLog is a visual method of photo-elicitation which activates the empirical field by making participants take photographs at work and keep a log related to these photographs. The photos and the log form the basis of focus group interviews. The paper proposes that new challenges for thinking about quality of work today demand new research methods. Looking at the working environment through a model of an external environment in which the individual worker is exposed to certain kinds of risks may no longer be tenable in a field where self-management is becoming predominant. The paper suggests that the available individualized language for talking about well-being is reaching its expiry date /sell-by date, and that a new language, capable of grasping the intertwinement between well-being, self-management, affectivity and relationality is needed. Drawing on post-feminist critique of the visual metaphor, the paper proposes a need for research methods which take the performtive nature of the scientific gaze into consideration (Haraway 1991, Casper 1991, Franklin 1994). The normative dimension of a performative view is addressed through methodological discussions in ethnology and actor network theory, asking the researcher to maximize recalcitrance from the object of study, so that the empirical field is allowed status as an actor rather than a passive surface for inscription (Latour 2004, 2005 Haraway 1991, Despret 2005, Gomart 2004). Rather than examining well-being at work as an already established entity by way of an imagined view from nowhere (Haraway 1991), the paper proposes a performative view (Barad 2005, Latour 2005) studying the formation of well-being at work from the partial perspective of the photograph. Taking the partial, situated, and context dependent nature of the photograph as a point of departure, photo-elicitation (Harper 2002, Warren 2002) forms the main inspiration for developing SnapLog. By talking about pictures, the field and researcher enter into a collaboration in which well-being is articulated in ways other than those presently available (Warren 2002, 2008). The last part of the paper gives examples of how this collaboration has worked out in a study of Danish school teachers. The preliminary findings using SnapLog point to ways in which school teachers emphasize the affective and relational aspects of their work rather than questions of balancing demand and control at work.