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Introduction By Sita Venkateswar
This research takes as its central focus an alternate methodology of
research, using photo novella as a tool and a participatory process. Here,
cameras are used to explore social reality, but the cameras are used by
the subjects of the research, i.e. children employed in the carpet
industry in Nepal, or employed as domestic workers within homes. The
cameras have been used to document, and recount their ongoing, quotidian
lives. By utilizing a research strategy that ensures the children’s own
narration and vision of their everyday lives, I have, to a large extent,
eliminated the errors and biases of an adult’s view of reality, as well as
an “outsider’s” view of their situation.
Photo novella or “picture stories” has been used by documentary
photographers (Ewald 1985, Hubbard 1991), and became an instrument in the
hands of sociologists for assessing the needs of rural Chinese women (Wang
and Burris 1994). This will be one of the few applications of such a
method in anthropological research, especially as it pertains to research
on children.
Central to Wang and Burris’(1994) use of photo novella, was its
contribution to changes in consciousness, as a mode of empowerment
education towards collective action by rural Chinese women. In their
version of photo novella, it was not just the use of photography that
brought about such an alteration, but in talking about the photographs as
a part of group discussions, allowed the women to discover commonalities
and differences in their views of the world. Known as the “photo
elicitation technique” (Krebs 1975, Caldorola 1985, Niessen 1991, Rudge
1992), such a procedure has been a significant component of this project.
It has been the basis for any discussion with the children, and is
perceived as crucial for arriving at an understanding of the world as seen
through the children’s eyes. If engaging in photo novella and the
associated process of knowledge construction that is integral to it, can
engender a more critical articulation of their world, this vision could be
recruited towards a more informed policy on child labor which integrates
within it a respect for children’s own agency within a larger workers’
rights and human rights agenda.
There is a wealth of information on child labor in Nepal, regularly
compiled and updated by ILO, UNICEF, UNESCO and a pro-active NGO based in
Kathmandu called Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Center (CWIN) (Sattaur
1993, ILO 1996a & b, CWIN1996,1998). They provide useful statistics,
document the extent of the problem, and the interventions in the form of
reform and rehabilitation efforts. Gailey (1999), offers a thoughtful
overview, enriched by the work of Bernat (1999) and Levine (1999), that
point to the incompatibility of most reform efforts with a more holistic
view of children’s welfare during an era of capitalist restructuring.
Gailey (ibid.) and Nieuwenhuys (1996) address the importance of a gendered
analysis, which also includes a consideration of children’s agency, an
insight largely missing in the volume of information churned out by
governmental and non-governmental agencies. Recent modifications in the
views on child labor, paralleled in the efforts of United Nations bodies,
recognize the dilemmas of enforcing prohibitions in many developing
countries when the alternatives are either begging on the streets or
prostitution (Boukhari 1999, Berlau 1997, Meiklejohn 1996).
A consideration of children’s own agency by enlisting their perspective
on their lives becomes significant when alongside of efforts to eradicate
child labor there are objections from the would-be beneficiaries across
the world, who claim they have a right to work in proper conditions. The
emergence and increasing strength of ‘Nats’ from Ninos y Adolescentes
Trabajadores, (Child and Teenage Workers), clamoring for their right to
work, protesting the imposition of a legal minimum age for starting work
and the boycott of goods made by them (Boukhari 1999), further underscores
the complexity of the issue. ‘Nats’ was a movement that began in Peru
during the 1970’s and spread to West Africa and India in the 1990’s, and
is currently gaining ground in the other Asian countries (Boukhari 1999).
These young workers want the UN “to make a distinction between
exploitation of children and other forms of work which help their
development” (ibid:37). This is an issue raised by Gailey (1999) as well,
when she searches for distinctions between apprenticeship and child labor.
She argues for a consideration of the outcome of a period of reduced pay,
in distinguishing between exploitation on the one hand, and on-the-job
education for the acquisition of greater skills and social authority.
Problems in the efforts to rehabilitate children taken out of carpet
factories, and the lack of adequate support for the “Rugmark” initiative
suggests another potential area where reform could be improved by input
from those “acted upon.” The “no child labor” or “Rugmark” initiative
reflects the public outcry in both the West and South Asia over child
labor, signifying that children under the age of 14 have not been employed
in weaving a hand-knotted carpet (Williamson 1995). But the reality of
coping with the situation is at a different remove from the theoretical
premise of social labeling, as pointed out by a small local NGO in
Kathmandu. The Centre for Child Studies and Development is involved in
adminstering one of the rehabilitation homes established by UNICEF to get
child laborers out of the carpet factories and re-integrate them into the
education system. The use of the “Rugmark” was problematic according to
this NGO, because it did not generate enough support for the program even
though it increased the price of carpets in the international market.
Inadequate attention was given to the question of reintegrating the
children into their families and too many new poor families were arriving,
raising the number of children requiring help, before anything was
complete for the old ones (Sherpa 1999).
Moreover, the truly international scale of the issue was exposed by a
survey of carpet importers in one United States city. If the price of
carpets from India rose by more than about 15%, the importers would simply
stop buying them from that country (ILO 1996). Hence, it was crucial to
take a regional view of the problem and include all the major producers in
the international market, since abolishing child labor in one country
could have the effect of simply transferring business to others that still
employ it (ibid.:20). In this context, Hilowitz (1997), also draws
attention to the requirement “for appropriate labor market legislation and
oversight, the availability of educational and other options for working
children, and awareness-raising about both the legislation and the problem
of child labor among parents, employers, trade unions, and the public in
the country or region involved” (pg.215). As an interesting but relevant
aside, that further reinforces the economic complexity or the
international crossovers of an issue like child labor, and one that has
specific resonance for me as a current resident in New Zealand, is the
fact that 95% of the wool arriving in Nepal and used in their carpet
factories is imported from New Zealand.
This research has, therefore, addressed the issue of child labor by
exploring the social reality of the children involved as workers. I have
employed a research methodology that enlists the children’s own narration
and vision of their quotidian lives. Thus, photo novella together with the
photo elicitation technique can become in this context, a truly
inter-subjective encounter that can generate an understanding of a world
that has been constructed communally, “creat[ing] the circumstances in
which new knowledge can take us by surprise” (MacDougall 1994, 1995).
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