Giving voice to children

In this paper we have presented a poststructuralist-inspired method of working with empowerment and children as co-researchers. We have highlighted the importance of avoiding hierarcalization and essentialization, by opting for symmetrical relations and providing a research school. We have tried not to regard children as less important than adults, and have positioned ourselves as their ‘supplicants’ or ‘tutors’. A few points that we regard as important to consider when working with children as co-researchers and aiming to contribute to their empowerment are: 1) the extent to which children should be invited to be involved, which differs depending on the purpose of the project; 2) the co-researchers have to gain an insight into how a research process is conducted that is conducive both to enabling them to pursue their own research more independently and to being critical of other research; 3) the importance of place, where school, home and various recreational venues have their pros and cons for the individual; 4) and diffusion of research results, where it is important that the results reach beyond the school walls, that the risk of being confused with other school activities is avoided, and that the children receive feedback on their research from recipients outside the school.

Giving voice to children gave us new knowledge, such as on children's sensual approach to the foodscape, their perception of what research is, and their strategies for navigating in a value-loaded foodscape. Each person’s unique knowledge-building process enriched all the participants' perspectives, regardless of age. The children were interviewed on the radio and in the local newspaper and reported how the project had had an impact on their everyday life, and had given them new knowledge, leading to new practices, even empowerment, we might argue, in the form of a better control of their lives and eating. The research questions that emerged indicated problems that the children had experienced in practice in their daily lives. Opting for social change was not far away. In Phase Two, co-design, the children, encouraged to question their foodscapes, began to propose new solutions, new artefacts, to replace the existing ones. They could, for example, see the possibility of having the school canteen serve two different dishes rather than one. They could envisage new colours on the walls and other materials in the furniture, the school canteen transformed into a jungle landscape (Karlsson & Engelbrektsson 2011).

Through BAMM we have gained new knowledge about how children's food environments can become healthier, by working with them as co-researchers. We believe that measures are needed at the individual, school and municipal levels.

The premise is that children are treated as individuals with resources to contribute to health promotion work. It means seizing the child's experience and knowledge and giving children opportunities, both in and outside school, to find out more about what they are interested in. We believe that co-research can be a way for children to exercise and strengthen their empowerment. BAMM focused on children and food, but we firmly believe that the method is useful in all research that involves children and children’s perspectives.

Our way of regarding children as co-researchers working in pairs with adult tutors proves that it is possible to do emancipatory consumer research without the pitfalls of repeating modernist assumptions of the relation between children and adults as hierarchical and essential, and to work with an empowering agenda without beforehand deciding what is in the best interest of the child, leaving this instead to the child. This also offers children a real opportunity to launch and influence societal change.

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