The unexpected in ethnography with the participation of children and young people

Abstract

In this article we present a brief overview of an extensive and diversified literature review conducted on ethnographic research in collaboration with children and youth in Brazil during the years of 2016 and 2017. From the broad and valuable repertoire of themes, problems, approaches and contexts uncovered in the analysis of the different research studies, we focus on two collaborative strategies whose particularity is to have occurred in the same context where the participation of children reflexively influenced the participation of the researchers. We show that the peculiarity of the research relationship between children and researchers triggers issues of ethical, epistemological and theoretical-methodological nature that are important for the knowledge-building process. We argue that collaborative strategies with the participation of children create a particular relational configuration inseparable from the researcher’s active reflexivity in the field. We contend that collaborative ethnographic research with children represents an exciting challenge to academic studies, and that the different conceptions of children and adolescents reflected in these studies also permeate recent national public and political discussions.