(2010) Moral Economies of Storytelling at Stake: Alternative Narratives from a Social Housing...

For citation: Truchon, K., 2010, “Moral Economies of Storytelling at Stake: Alternative Narratives from a Social Housing Complex in Canada?”,

paper presented at the American Anthropological Association (AAA), New Orleans.

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Moral Economies of Storytelling at Stake: Alternative Narratives from a Social Housing Complex in Canada?

Karoline Truchon

Dept. of Anthropology-CELAT, Université Laval

It takes two conditions to create a trauma: its realities and its representation. – Dori Laub

Initially proposed by historian Edward P. Thompson (1971), the concept of moral economy was

taken up by political scientist James Scott (1976) to analyze rebellious popular movements.

Forty years later, the concept of moral economy is still used frequently to describe various social

realities, but as Didier Fassin (2009: 1240) observes, although at first the debates surrounding the

definition and application of the concept showed its heuristic value, the banality of its current

usage detracts considerably from its potential analytical acuity. As Fassin (ibid: 1265) aptly

suggests, it is time we critically re-‐engaged with the concept in its capacity to produce new

ways of understanding the world.

In an invigorating article, written in French and unfortunately not translated yet, in which

he revisits moral economies from their initial conceptualization to today, Fassin (2009: 1257, my

translation) proposes to define the concept of moral economy as the intricate and complex

interplay of “the production, distribution, circulation and use of moral feelings, of emotions and

values, of norms and obligations [of various groups of people] in the social sphere” (ibid: 1264-

65). According to Fassin (1261), the confrontation—local and global, spatial and relational—of

these embodied moral economies enables better understanding of what is “resisting” our analysis.



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Fassin (2009: 1266) invites more researchers to critically reflect on the concept of

contemporary moral economy to further define its scope as he pleads for a “concept in progress.”

I do not have the pretension with this paper to contribute to delimiting the concept as I begin to

write my dissertation and investigate its potentialities, but instead propose to put moral

economies to work in my discussion about a collaborative “infrastructure of visibilization” that

was implemented within a social housing complex in Montréal, Canada, where digital

storytelling projects were produced, disseminated, and received not only by residents of the

housing complex but by outsiders typically perceived as having power over the residents’ lives. I

would like to begin by briefly returning to the notion of narrativity, with regard to which I

contend that testimony and storytelling, as two of the most employed (if not exploited) forms of

narrativity, are contemporary moral economies.

1. Storytelling as a contemporary moral economy

Decried by some (Salmon 2007; Strawson 2004), hailed by others (Clandinin 2007), the

use of narrativity leaves few indifferent. Whether narrativity in the form of testimony and

storytelling is perceived as an instrument of empowerment and control, a communication tool or

a means of emancipation, we must acknowledge that this ancient practice, which dates back to

prehistoric cave paintings and beyond, has in recent years undergone a phenomenal (and some

say worrying) surge in every social, cultural and professional domain.1 Coinciding with the

explosion of Internet use and the advent of new information and communication technologies, 1 It is widely accepted that Barack Obama was elected principally for his ability to craft stories that resonated with a variety of groups of people. However it is also stated now that his inability to deliver what he promised during the election campaign backfired and that people do not want to believe his rhetoric anymore. We can also think of some of the populations with whom anthropologists work and which use storytelling for intergenerational teachings, or how anthropological monographs and articles are expected to be punctuated with compelling stories or “vignettes.”



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both of which democratize access to public discourse through the creation (and rapid distribution)

of first-person narratives, the storytelling/testimonial revival accounts for the proliferation of

digital storytelling (Salmon 2007; Lundby 2008), through which it is believed that the use of

digital tools enables socially, economically or spatially marginalized individuals to express

themselves in their own words after years of being represented by others, often specialists who

exercise a certain power over their lives.

Narrativity as a means for self-expression and self-validation

The notion of the “narrative turn”—which some label as the “narrative imperative”

(McKinney 2007) or the “psychological Narrativity thesis” (Strawson 2004)—has been in

circulation for over two decades (Davis 2002; Schawbenland 2006; Clandinin 2007; Salmon

2007).2 In the social sciences and anthropology, narrativity is often a source of contention and

tension. On one side, its critics linger on such perceived negative impacts as the commodification

of reality (Arendt 1958 in Jackson 2006), the instrumentalization of the narrative (Salmon 2007)

or the depolitization of suffering when stories are an end in themselves and do not consider the

structural forces within which they occur (Fassin 2004). On the other side, narrativity is also seen

as enabling group reflection and collaboration in specific situations, allowing participants to

consider their positions in the “general scheme of life” (Ochs and Capps 2001: 2) as well as

assisting them in understanding themselves more fully (Ricoeur 2004). It is seen as a vital source

2 Four decisive moments comprise this narrative turn: 1) a change in the relationship between the researcher and the participant—from an objective and transactional to a subjective and relational research relationship; 2) a move from the use of numbers to words; 3) the transition from the general and universal to the local and specific; 4) a widening in acceptance of alternative epistemologies or ways of knowing. Anthropology, it should be noted, with such pioneers as Clifford Geertz, Mary Louise Pratt and Arthur Kleinman, among others, has recognized these precepts since the 1980s.



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of agency in disempowering circumstances (Jackson 2006: 14-15), in which it becomes a strong

argument for advancing social causes (Schaffer and Smith 2004: 1). The production, distribution,

reception and management of the emotions generated by narrativity are today part of the

activities of every NGO that promotes full and active citizenship.

All the same, if telling a story is a way to say “I exist” (Bissondath 2007), it does not

constitute power in and of itself; stories must be received by others who are ready to engage with

the narrator and confer legitimacy upon the narrative (Schawabenland 2006: 183). The act of

speaking only has meaning when addressed to someone else; its impact becomes one of the

vectors of power in a relationship in which the “I” only comes after the “you” (Butler 2007: 3-40)

since the autobiographical discourse by its nature entails a need for recognition (Lejeune 2007 by

Delon 2007: 10; Shaffer and Smith 2004: 5). Recognition as a member of society (le sujet-citoyen

in French) must consequently be processed through visibility within which self-affirmation is

sanctioned by society and as such creates an assisted identity (Mehl 1996 in Wievorka 2002:

178). As Axel Honneth (2006: 231, my translation from French) suggests, “the act of recognition

combines two elements: the cognitive identification of the other person and its expression.”

When these conditions are absent, the resulting social invisibility is considered a “moral

contempt (mépris moral)” (Honneth 2006: 240, my translation from French). In the words of

Olivier Voirol (2005 : 7, my translation from French), “One of the most fundamental

expectations of any individual when engaging with others is to be seen, to be met by their eyes, to

be acknowledged by visible signs of feelings, to perceive his or her own existence through

others’ eyes. Being denied these manifestations is felt as if one did not exist, a social invisibility

which leads to self-destabilization.”



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Storytelling and testimony as narrative tools of (em)power(ment)

Testimony remains one the most prevalent and prevailing contemporary illustrations of

narrativity in action. Analysis of testimonial strategies are usually discussed in light of the

testimony and commemorative practices stemming from the Shoah’s recollections, as Jewish

Holocaust survivors were the first to testify publicly against atrocities in order to remember, to

honour the memory of those who did not escape from concentration camps. Accepting the

Shoah’s testimony and commemorative practices as the dominant models leads to intertwined

assumptions, which in many cases are not representative of the underlying motives for actual

recourse to testimony as a productive means by NGOs and marginalized people. The idea that

“survivors not only need to survive to tell their stories but to tell their stories to survive” implies

that it is liberating and essential to envision testimony as therapeutic and to engage in this

activity. As Lambeck and Antze (1996 quoted by McKinney 2007: 271) suggest, “there is

nothing liberating in narrative per se” as the context within which it is performed greatly

influences its effectiveness (Agger 1993 paraphrased by McKinney 2007: 282). It also entraps

testimony solely in discourses of “trauma” in which narrativity acts as the only tool to heal and

rescue those Zigmunt Bauman calls “the individuals under siege” (2005). Finally, it automatically

links narrativity to a politics of emancipation and social justice; narrativity then becomes a (false)

responsibility and not a possibility.

However, since the 1990s, the act of testifying has undergone a democratization. Almost

every speech act could potentially be acknowledged as a testimony since its social acceptance has

been extended to anyone expressing his or her self, opinions or fragments of life in the public

sphere. This novel way of apprehending testimony is at the core of the recent practice of

storytelling. Not the usual, or even naive, conception of telling stories for its own sake but rather



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as a tool to demarcate, to publicize, to brand a product, but also a person. Storytelling is a

technique of communication but also of control and power (Salmon 2007: 12). It is not only a

tool for corporations and NGOs but also for common people. In fact, everybody is now expected

to master and apply the rules of marketing him- or herself with carefully crafted stories that will

press the right buttons in our search for recognition as a member of a group, of a society or of

perceived humanities. Influencing perception to gain access is the role of contemporary

storytelling. Yet, storytelling acts at times not as a propaganda instrument or as alienating

entertainment but as a mobilisation apparatus as well as a device that captures the spirit of the

time (Salmon 2009: 9).

Digital storytelling as a citizen presence?

As a result of this “narrative age” (Salmon 2007: 9), during the last decade, those

perceived as marginalized have increasingly been given tools to speak about and publicly show

their realities. Digital storytelling projects have been proliferating in which giving cameras to

people that are socially defined as marginalized, for example, for being addicted to drugs, for

being a refugee, for being a person with mental health issues or—as is the case here—for being

considered poor, are common and popular activities to sponsor and organize. But are

marginalized people listened to? Are they taken seriously? Or are they mainly used as a backdrop

against which people in power or people who do not share their so-called marginal traits judge

their own abilities to live a good life and, by providing “them” with a space to speak rather than

listening and acting upon and with these people, feel they have done their job or have contributed

to society under the pretence of “helping”? Can we reconcile speaking and acting? For NGOs, the

danger is to construct people living under conditions of marginality as “bare citizens” and



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maintain them in this position. But are NGOs exclusively responsible for the current

commodification of marginalized people who, through the strategy of social inclusion as

marginal people, are nonetheless being socially excluded? Neoliberal forces as well as corporate

and individual interactions with the state are also playing a role in the complex articulation of

citizenship (Ong 2007[2004]). For “[c]itizenship is a dual process of self-making and being-made

within the webs of power linked to the nation-state and civil society” (ibid: 156). Saskia Sassen

(2004) summarizes the issue pertaining to power and marginalized people:

There is something to be captured here— a distinction between powerlessness and the conditions of being an actor even though lacking power. I use the term presence to name this condition. In the context of a strategic space such as the global city, the types of disadvantaged people described here are not simply marginal; they acquire presence in a broader political process that escapes the boundaries of the formal polity. This presence signals the possibility of a politics. What this politics might be will depend on the specific projects and practices of various communities (Sassen 2004: 207, original emphasis).

In this section, I have tried to demonstrate how narrativity as an act is also a philosophical

foundation of our society in which self-expression and self-validation are socially and

individually expected from narrative endeavours. Within this context, storytelling and its use of a

democratized testimony mechanisms are perceived as an apparatus that both gives power and

empowers, and the prevalent abundant digital storytelling projects hope awaken and bring to

the fore citizens’ presence and importance in democratic societies. I posit that storytelling

constitutes a contemporary moral economy.

I would now like to discuss what kinds of storytelling surround public housing complexes

in Montréal, Canada.



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2. Narratives of/on poverty: the case of a social housing complex in Montréal

I conducted my doctoral research in a social housing complex in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve

(HM), a so-called disadvantaged neighbourhood in Montréal.3 The first narrative that emerges

from this place is silent yet obvious: the physical space of the housing complex. START CLIP 1

At any hour of the day, a row of taxi drivers waits for customers. People are greeted in 16

languages. Garbage cans sit there most of the week. The architecture says it all: This is

subsidized housing. Even from the top of the Olympic tower, you notice the difference of this

series of apartments: the Boyce-Viau complex stands apart from the others, although they

themselves show signs of being humble constructions. END CLIP 1 Yet, if you stay outside the

social housing complex, and therefore construct this site as a territorial stigmatization4 reflecting

your perceptions of what poverty is, you will miss the vibrant social life that also shapes this

place. You won’t be able to see this: START/END CLIP 2. You will miss this: START/END

CLIP 3. Or will never suspect that there are many activities taking place inside the housing

complex. START/END CLIP 4. Therefore, although “physical space” matters in understanding

an environment, the “spatiality of social life” does too (Soja 2001), especially in environments

that are constructed as “marginalized.”

Other organizational, academic, media and general public narratives frame the

representations of realities lived by residents of this social housing complex. I will concentrate on

two interlaced narratives in this paper.5 First, although my research shows that in the last two

3 Most of the people I interviewed for my dissertation disliked this appellation. They found it condescending. 4 I borrowed this term from Sean Purdy (2005) who explains how Toronto’s Regent Park, Canada’s first and largest public housing project, has been framed as “outcast spaces” by the media since its inauguration in 1949. 5 Due to lack of space and time, I will not integrate the narratives of the housing authority, Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM); of the local police station; of the youth center with which I work; of the youth center’s funders; of other academics; of myself as a researcher, although my moral economy will emerged in the



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years, media representations of residents of social housing complexes have generally been

portrayed in a favourable light (e.g. entrepreneurship projects, activities held on the premises of

the housing complex, integration of people recently arrived in Canada, etc.), an idea largely

accepted by the general public is that housing complexes in general are “dangerous”.6 My

interviews with some people living outside the housing complex and/or outside the

neighbourhood where the complex is located and not working at the youth centre of this housing

complex suggest that some experts working in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (HM) and the general

public have a perception of the neighbourhood as being “dangerous” and “poor,” implying that

residents of HM are automatically under suspicion of being “dangerous” and “poor,” with the

social prejudices and practices that come with this social representation. In this particular

instance, it is not only the images attached to the housing complex that generate the stereotypes,

but also those circulated about the neighbourhood.

Another public and popular figure of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (HM) is “Dr. Julien,” who

has been mediatized and idolized by the business community as a hero and a saviour for more

than a decade. Dr. Julien first advocated social pediatrics fervently, but recently, his testimonies

to the media have become more about him and the good he does for people than about the people

he serves. He seems to have become, to have embodied the storytelling that was created by his

PR persons to get funding through mass mediatization of his clinics. Though this hero/saviour

following section; of the social housing residents; or of other specialists working (or not) on the premises of the housing complex, among others. 6 To explain this perception gap, a more detailed analysis might point in the direction of sensationalist media coverage of such events as riots in another neighborhood of Montréal in August 2008, as well as those in France in suburbs of Paris and other major cities since November 2005. Clichés about the U.S. ghettos in rap and hip hop music videos might also contribute to this.



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representation of Dr. Julien is sought-after, admired and rewarded by the business community,7

the funders and the three layers of government in the province of Quebec, as well as a number of

workers in local organizations working in HM do not appreciate the fact that he works alone,

without their collaboration (in French: concertation). This position against Dr. Julien is not well

publicized because of fear of retribution and of being accused of jealousy. Nonetheless, lately

some people decided to voice their opinions when they commented online on an article in a

national French daily newspaper concerning Dr. Julien’s mass appeal for funding.8 “Brunette,”

who signed one of the comments, acknowledged Dr. Julien’s work but criticized the fact that he

is the only one to gather media attention when many others also do excellent work in the

neighbourhood. Dr. Julien has come to be “the” iconic figure of the fighter against poverty in HM

and as such his values and norms form the benchmarks against which others will be measured.

This position is the new moral imperative expected of other social organizations. But, as will be

further discussed in the section on mediatization of other perspectives regarding housing complex

residents, this position contradicts the ethical positioning in which the youth center I work with

believes.

In brief, the interplay of narratives about poverty in organizational spaces mostly

constructs victims since this position enables funding. This commodification of poverty is at

times a strategy to ensure that people living within this space receive services. The people

working at the youth centre that I am working with in the frame of my dissertation research are

aware of this and they reflect on the impacts that such a commodification can have on the

residents they serve. I would now like to explain what we, the youth centre, other people from 7 Dr. Julien was nominated among the 2010 “25 Transformational Canadians” by The Globe and Mail. Consult: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/25/the-nominees/gilles-julien-pediatrician/article1724037/ 8 Read the last comment from Brunette at: http://www.ledevoir.com/societe/sante/293355/le-modele-du-dr-julien-mine-par-un-manque-de-fonds



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outside, residents, and I myself have created to propose alternative narratives of residents of a

housing complex and their significant people.

3. Our response to these narratives: An infrastructure of visibilization

Our response to this social construction of poverty was to design and continuously refine

an infrastructure of visibilization, which shows the “normalcy” of people living in the social

housing complex as well as people who are important to the residents. We wanted to add to the

public interplay of narratives by offering residents of this housing complex personal and social

recognition through a mechanism addressing either their stereotyping or invisibility within the

public space. Anticipating that most people outside our infrastructure of visibilization would want

to see figures of victims, we wanted to offer another kind of presence than the one preconceived

Beyond giving a voice: experimenting visibilization to shift knowledge and power dynamics

Designed to enable self-expression, to generate recognition and to further relationships

among participants—be they social housing residents or advocacy people or politicians and

sponsors—our infrastructure of visibilization was established in a context that lacked a forum to

exchange personal viewpoints and create long-lasting relationships between people from inside

and outside the social housing complex.

Yet, as I contended previously, for not-for-profit organizations and people working

alongside these not-for-profit organizations, such as anthropologists, the danger is therefore to

construct people living under conditions of marginality as “bare citizens” and maintain them in

such a position because they benefit from this commodification of socially constructed

marginalized people through a strategy of social inclusion as marginal people, which ultimately



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still excludes them socially. Although rationally most would reject such thinking, the realities of

making things happen in the field are subtle and complex. This is why the “infrastructure of

visibilization” we have developed with a youth centre working on the premises of a social

housing project in Montréal, although making people become visible, also tries to create

empathic connections; projects are evanescent by nature and do not necessarily alter attitudes

toward marginalized people’s realities, but relationships have the potential to alter preconceived

ideas. As such, what we are working on is not only the technical visibility of marginalized people

but the relational processes of “visibilizing” them and those around them. One of the productive

tensions in my research is the possible intersection of visibility as a product and visibilization as a

process.

Keeping in mind the type of presence socially expected from residents of a social housing

complex (“poor victims”) versus the type of presence we want to also offer (“normalcy” of

residents and their significant people), with management and staff at the Centre des jeunes

Boyce-Viau (CJBV)— an organization that has worked within the premises of this social-housing

complex for more than fifteen years— we decided that digital storytelling and an art festival were

the most pertinent and affordable means of giving the residents and significant people around

them a chance to express and recognize themselves. We also acknowledged during the making of

the digital stories and the art festival that we additionally need to have people from inside and

outside the social housing complex through special projects to connect more deeply. Finally, we

also worked on trying to add perspectives in the mediatization of people living in a social housing

complex. Here is a brief overview of how we attempted to achieve this fourfold goal.



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A) Digital storytelling as a means of self-expression

Briefly, digital storytelling is a technique enabling those unfamiliar with multimedia technology

to make short videos (one to two minutes in length) incorporating music, texts, voice and

images.9 In doing so, they construct a narrative about any topic they wish to talk about. There is a

definite bias when engaging in digital storytelling; it is a tool to make the participants shine, to be

represented at their best.

Digital storytelling has been strategically appropriated by all those involved in our

project: for the anthropologist, it is a research methodology; for youth and adult participants, it

stands as a leisure activity; for the youth and family counsellors, it works as an intervention tool;

and for the youth centre and its sponsors, it offers an effective PR tool. Four types of projects

were accomplished: personal projects (e.g. on friendship, pets, idols, hobbies as well as

reflections on successes and influences in one’s life, or statements about one’s life), formal and

informal group projects (e.g. the 9-to-11-year-old committee and friends coming together to

discuss a topic of their choice), intervention projects (e.g. mother and daughter reflecting on an

activity they like to share, what’s left of an art therapy project with women) and “cause” projects

(e.g. what impacts resulted from a workshop called My Africa).

More than eighty digital stories were produced and more than sixty people participated in

the production of these stories.10 Participants were mostly residents of the housing complex

(many youths, some teenagers the first two years and 16 the third year, and some adults), but

9 Well implemented in NGOs since the beginning of 2000, this research method has been particularly used in education (Burgess 2006; Davis 2004; Drotner 2008; Hayes and Matusov 2005; Meadows 2003; Erstad and Silseth 2008) and our research, to our knowledge, is the only one using digital storytelling as an anthropological research methodology in Montréal and the province of Quebec. Theorization of digital storytelling is recent (Lundby 2008; Hartley and McWilliam 2009) and for the first time the 2010 AAA conference proposes a panel exclusively devoted to the methodology, and at least two other papers than mine discuss the practices of digital storytelling. 10 Some people participated twice and others, three to five times.



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management, youth counsellors and people from outside the housing complex participated as

well. The third year we reached a larger pool of people: some of our participants were diagnosed

with developmental disabilities, some were autistic and one was born deaf and mute. Having

them on board taught other participants that anybody can do a “DST” (the local jargon for the

autobiographical films, a contraction of Digital StoryTelling). The short autobiographic films

produced during the course of the three years show anything but victims. Although they show the

normalcy of the lives of the housing complex residents and their significant people, this normalcy

is not what is generally expected by outsiders. Within this perceptual and representational gap

lies a paradox: the narratives produced by the residents and their key people constitutes

alternative images to the usual disseminated in the public sphere but precisely because they are

different from what is expected they destabilize most outsiders at first.

In our aspiration to “give a voice” to the participants of this project, we were also

preoccupied with what kind of voice would emerge from the project. We shared other

researchers’ concerns about whose agenda would predominate as well as the impact of holding

this activity within the perimeter of an organizational setting (Lowenthal 2009; Taub-Pervizpour

2009; Watkins 2009). We did not want to reproduce what we felt is often the outcome of other

programs in the United States (and elsewhere now)—either asking participants to write stories in

a formalized and expected therapeutic manner or like a “learned lesson” or as a story that would

focus on the organization that organized the activity. We chose to try different ways of bringing

the stories alive based upon the personalities and the wishes of the participants as well as

available opportunities. As facilitators of the project, we try to act as “translators” for each story

(Hartley 2008) in the hope that each will bring a unique feel respecting the wishes of the

participants. Yet, we are aware that each of our personalities, as well as what is expected at the



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CJBV from the participants in terms of attitudes, thoughts and images, i.e. the organization’s

cultural codes, are embodied within each story produced (ibid). Most digital storytelling

experiences are “framed” by the context within which they occur, even those produced outside

organizational settings, which are influenced by the norms of popular culture (Nyboe and Drotner

2008).11

B) The Boyce-Viau Arts Festival as an attempt at social recognition

While the films created through the several digital storytelling projects that have emerged

since the democratization of access to technologies are mainly presented on the Internet, we

opted to screen the films publicly at two outdoor festivals. Accordingly, we staged a premiere,

where thirty participants in the first year, and fifty the second and the third, were treated much

like stars at regular film festivals. In the first year, approximately 100 residents attended the mid-

August screening, which presented the twenty films produced since March 2008. In the festival’s

second year, 150 people attended to watch another twenty films, plus additional artistic

productions such as hip-hop dance, drums and music. As for the third and last year of the festival,

a little less than 150 people attended as we had to move the activity a day later because of rain.

The show lasted an hour and a half the first year, two and a half hours the second, and more than

three hours the third.12 The activity served to mobilize the talents of residents and non-residents

alike. Some of the local politicians, media members and directors of the housing authority who

were invited attended the event.

11 Due to lack of space, I do not problematize how we edited these stories but this aspect is nevertheless crucial. 12 The first year we presented more than 20 DSTs with sketches in between and the subsequent years we presented DSTs (more than 20 the second year and 40 the third) with sketches and art numbers prepared during the summer by adults and young residents of the housing complex as well as the counsellors of the youth centre.



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The first year, I acted as organizer of the event and as co-director of the digital stories

with the participants. The event was funded by the Centre des jeunes Boyce-Viau (CJBV) and I

was also paid by the centre to organize the festival. The second year, my role changed as the

youth centre took the festival fully under its wing since its employees, their motivations and,

most importantly, funding, were there; a shift occurred. Instead of talking about digital stories

(“DST” project in the local jargon) presented during a film festival, we were talking about “the

festival” in which DSTs were presented alongside other artistic performances. The festival was

no longer an adjunct to the youth centre’s summer programming but was now a formal activity

because its spirit was in line with the centre’s mission.13 One of the centre’s youth counsellors

became the organizer and she decided to have two co-organizers, a colleague with extensive

experience in running show and great technical abilities, and me as the co-ordinator of the DSTs

and coach of media relations and organizational aspects. The third and final year we had the same

structure, with the addition of a former employee who joined us to accompany people producing

stories and to organize the logistical aspects of the show.

This first part of our “infrastructure of visibilization”— digital storytelling/art-based

activities and a festival to present them— definitely answered certain needs of the participants. It

also fostered an appreciation of what it takes to make things happen, as some participants

reflected afterward: “I know it takes a lot of time to organize the festival but I felt that three hours

13 When we announced that the third year was the last edition of the festival, the news was received with consternation by the participants, funders and local partners. We explained early in the preparation stage of the festival that this was the last chance for people to participate. We also managed the disappointment of participants and their key individuals. Organizing such an event at such a high level of quality takes time, funding and people who are dedicated and have the skills needed to organize the festival—artistic as well as managerial aspects. We also had to manage the branding of the festival, as for some of the funders the festival was perceived as the only activity of the youth center whereas for the management of the youth center this activity was part of a group of activities and services the centre offered. We made sure that all communications during the last edition always profile the youth centre before the festival to correct this view.



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[of show] was not enough,” said Joseph, 10 years old (2010: personal communication). “I’m

proud to have completed many DSTs. It takes time. And I’m proud of you, Karoline [because you

were there all the time to help me with every aspect of the process],” said Mélina, eight years old

(2010: personal communication). It also showed the participants and the residents that we cared

about them. One resident told us, after she realized we were sleeping on the premises of the

housing complex two days prior to the festival, “We are lucky to have you here” (2009: personal

communication). After the festivals, participants and residents came in large numbers to thank

with emotion the Centre des jeunes Boyce-Viau (CJBV)’s youth counsellors and me. “It’s the

first time that the residents come embrace us in their arms at the end of our summer activities and

that we feel that level of emotion, said Olivier, a youth counsellor and member of the organizing

committee the second and third years (2008: personal communication). Once in a while, youths

tell us out of the blue what theme their next digital story will cover (called and appropriated as

“DST” by all) and they want to know when they will produce a (new) film. Some responses to

the stories are almost at the “cult level,” as youth and adults refer to them in informal

conversations.

The digital storytelling project combined with the art festival (and other distribution

outlets) were successful; the first two parts of the infrastructure of visibilization (producing,

showing and distributing testimonies of and from the social housing complex) involved and

mobilized many several people from the housing complex as well as from outside. The third part

of this infrastructure also involved and mobilized people from within and outside the housing

complex, but in a more direct and concrete way in terms of the depth of the relationships

developed.



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C) Special projects as an aim of/for empathic connections

Elsewhere I have explored how testimony in survival situations can be used as a ruse and

as a subversive means to an end (Truchon and Saillant 2009). In the context of my research,

testimony through DSTs presented during an arts festival, besides generating knowledge, can

produce empathic connections (Tamas 2008) that have the potential to destabilize power

dynamics.

By facilitating the transfer of digital testimonies from the private to the public spheres,

our intention was also to raise social awareness above the usual “poor children” discourse. We

wanted to prevent a “politics of pity” (Boltanski 1993; Revault d’Allonnes 2008). We tried to

involve various people from the housing complex and from outside in the production and

dissemination of digital stories.14 While the digital storytelling project responded fully to

participants’ needs to express and recognize themselves, the experience of the film festival (or

any other activity with the same goals) actively supports the possibility of social recognition

other than the usual stereotypes attached to residents of housing complexes; this constitutes the

sphere where the work of social recognition really begins. Co-directing digital narratives and

organizing a film festival are activities that are easy enough to implement, relatively non-

confrontational and generally well accepted. However, for the outsider who offers funding or

political or media or research support, giving a voice to “poor children who didn’t have the same

14 Besides the film festival, we have organized several presentations. Special screenings were organized by the CJBV and me for the local deputy and for the policeman who could not attend the film festival. The Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) has shown the digital stories at one of their board meetings. Some of the stories—those displaying the participation of the local police station in some events at the housing complex— have been used with success to get money for another special event involving the CJBV as a co-‐organizer of a local event for all the neighbourhood youth, the Défi-‐Soccer 2009. Lately, we also prepared a special screening to get youth to talk about a specific topic, i.e., What do you like or dislike about the social housing complex?



19

chances as we did” can sometimes amount to a new way of asserting superiority, albeit

unconsciously. This is especially true when the person offering the support maintains a certain

distance from the process. For example, the support-giver could refuse to become involved (in a

concrete sense) by turning down the chance to participate in the creation of a digital narrative

when invited to do so. Conversely, accepting the invitation to participate in the creation of

narratives—and in so doing, showing that he or she, too, has concerns—would put the support-

giver on the same level as the ”poor children.” In our project, the parity thus created helped

establish vital links between the LRH and the outside, a situation described as one of the most

important issues of social housing project in this neighbourhood (Germain and Leloup 2007). In

the course of our research, we experienced the situation described above; the person concerned,

after hearing these arguments, agreed to participate on par with the “poor children.”

Having experienced three runs of the “infrastructure of visibilization, I suggest that the

creation of digital narratives and the ensuing film festival constitutes a gateway to social

recognition, a means within which is embodied the possibility of creating links to the world

beyond the social housing project and the given frameworks. The development of a special

relationship between a participant named David and Pierre, a community police officer the first

year of the infrastructure, is interesting. David interviewed Pierre for one of his DSTs but Pierre

had been unable to attend the festival. We organized a private screening at the police station and

while there, David pointed to an office and said, “When I grow up, that will be my office, and

that one over there will be my little sister’s.” Seizing the opportunity, the officer responded, “If

you want to be a policeman, you have to work hard and finish high school.” One week later,

David was heard mentioning to his peers: “When I return to the police station…” The second

year, we organized a Police Academy. Six youths aged between 10 and 12 attended five



20

mornings of training and a DST was created to record the experience. The third year, after the

festival, six other youths attended a special half day of activities with Pierre at the police station.

One of the youths that attended the second edition has been recommended and accepted to a full-

week of training at the police institute of Montréal. After two years of devoting his DSTs to

soccer, Nayoud had changed his topic this year: he talked about his training at the Montréal

police academy. Another youth confided during our interview that he wanted to become a

policeman later. With the youth centre, we referred him to Pierre who will soon meet Faraz. The

relationship that has been developing between David and Pierre, and then Pierre and other

youths, is one example from our infrastructure of visibilization that attests how testimony can

potentially act as a relational device for empathic connectivity.15,16

D) Mediatization of residents of a social housing complex to generate other perspectives

Public relations and its particular approaches and methods are rarely investigated as

anthropological knowledge. Yet, developing and maintaining good relationships with what is

called in the PR jargon diversified “target publics” is crucial for all organizations. We developed

in our infrastructure of visibilization a communication plan in which we analysed the

environment in which we were working and had objectives, strategies and tools to achieve them.

Each year, we went through a media relations campaign and for the last two years, we produced

15 Another special relationship developed between Pierre, a professional photographer, and some young residents of the housing complex. With Isabelle Dauplaise, we met Pierre when he was commissioned to take her photograph for the Elle Québec magazine. After learning what we were doing, Pierre told us he wanted to contribute to our activities. He ran a photography workshop with ten children last July and in August, he invited three young girls to his studio for their first professional shoot. The girls integrated this experience in their DST titled “The Canadian Stars.” 16 These emphatic connections also developed between some experts and the researcher. Some connections similarly deepened between the youth centre management and other officials from different organizations as well as the housing authority officials, and helped to lobby for other projects.



21

and disseminated a pre-festival e-bulletin with the residents serving as broadcasters and reporters.

We also produced and disseminated a post-festival DVD with all the DSTs created, the complete

footage of the festival as well as bonus features After receiving her professionally packaged and

designed copy last year, one adolescent, enthusiastic and surprised, exclaimed,“It’s a real DVD!”

Two elements of the second year media campaign spotlighted the Centre des jeunes

Boyce-Viau, the organizer of the festival: A news item broadcasted on the national radio network

and a prize won by the organizer-in-chief of the festival. A reporter from Radio-Canada

interviewed three participants of the festival and a dozen adult residents. She was trying to have

them say how awful their situation was as well as having the interviewees portray the counsellors

at the Centre des jeunes Boyce-Viau as their saviours. None of the interviewees, be they the

organizer-in-chief or young or adult participants, went in this direction, although the adults and

children were not told what to say or not to say to the media.17 Rather, they mentioned how much

they appreciated the collegiality of the housing complex. Fortunately, the reporter was able to

switch her mindset and appreciate what was offered by the residents instead of holding on to her

preconceived point to prove it. The news item was titled “Social housing complex, my love”

(HLM, mon Amour). A radical reversal of situation for which Isabelle, the organizer-in-chief and

I were grateful, as we did stick to our ethical position to respect the residents we work with by

not diminishing them as “poor people who need the Centre des jeunes’s help to survive” as

another health professional in the neighbourhood does every time he talks with the media. This

position made the festival less appealing for the media but in the end, what matters is the personal

recognition each participant experienced.

17 Usually, spokespersons are trained and coached. Isabelle, the organizer-in-chief, was but we did not have time to conduct a session with the adults and the children.



22

Each year, Elle Québec magazine holds a contest to find the Woman of the year. I

nominated Isabelle, the festival organizer-in-chief, and she won. Besides having her portraitdone

by a professional photographer and having a feature in the magazine, Isabelle, along with the

Centre des jeunes Boyce-Viau, received several letters of congratulation, among which one from

the member of provincial Parliament.

Conclusion

A moral economy, rather than exposing only the moral aspects and dilemmas of the

societies in which we live as facts “individualizing positions and formalizing oppositions,”

unveils its stakes, its conflicting views, which are historically and politically situated (Fassin

2009: 1265). A moral economy could eventually define a group (ibid: 1257). What our

infrastructure of visualization shows is that visibility as recognition is nowadays a macro moral

economy and two large groups are defined by this moral economy: the marginalized people who

have to be seen in the public sphere to be recognized as individuals worthy of attention, and the

people who expect them to behave that way, whose groups are constituted of individuals who

each display their own micro moral economy.

The narrative, or the imperative, turn, especially with the redefinition of a testimony in

this era of digital storytelling used extensively by NGOs and other organizations working in the

“social” sphere since the beginning of the 2000s, propagates what Fassin (2010) coins a

humanitarian discourse—testimony of redemption—and its government—the organizations using

them to ultimately further their own agendas. We have attempted to resist this moral economy by

creating our macro moral economy: we did not want to have our participants say what they

thought we would want to hear; we tried to give them the room needed to explore the topic they



23

wished, the way they wished, while accompanying them throughout the process; we did not want

to have a three-day workshop as is usually taught, but offered our participants four types of

digital storytelling (individual, groups, special projects, intervention projects); we wanted to go

beyond giving a voice by creating spaces for dissemination among various people; we wanted to

create bridges with spaces and peoples from outside the housing complex by having these people

come to our space, but also by going to theirs; yet, if you watch the 80 or so DSTs, the dozen

news items, the DVDs, or if you were attending the festivals, you would feel that although we

attempted to resist something, we also created our brand(ing). As such, we were not resisting the

capitalist society per se, but were rather interested in creating our space within it, with our own

rules. Accepting others and others accepting us; exploring and redefining together our common

space.

Within our macro moral economy (our infrastructure of visibilization), there were many

micro moral economies (several formal and informal micro groups— the organizing committee,

the management, the management interacting with the organizing committee, each member of the

organizing committee with his or her own subgroups, links with outside people, etc. and each

individual).18 Didier Fassin (2009) posits that an economy is first and foremost moral and that a

moral inclination is inevitably political. My experience encourages me to nuance this statement,

as some events during the three years of our infrastructure of visibilization have showed that the

structure can also influence the development of new moral aspects.19 However, what have forged

18 We also need to apprehend our macro and micro moral economies within a universe where they exist and compete for recognition with other macro and micro moral economies. 19 I will not detail those experiences here but I will recall briefly one particular moment. Last summer, the organizing committee was holding a meeting. One member (A) mentioned that he/she could not achieve what he/she wanted to achieve. This member asked another member (B) for help. B was, first, flattered, and second, tempted to accept, but did not. B did not accept to help A because B realized that A was now embodying a philosophical rationale that permeated all production of the item A said could not be achieved. B felt that A would achieve it without his/her help



24

and consolidated this infrastructure of visibilization are small gestures, ordinary interactions

(Emerson 2009). In the words of Kathleen Stewart (2007: 2) “Ordinary affects are public

feelings that begin and end in broad circulation, but they are also the stuff that seemingly

intimate lives are made of. […] Rooted not in fixed conditions of possibility but in the actual lines

of potential that a something coming together calls to mind and sets in motion […]. This quote

demonstrates, on the one hand, the extraordinary possibility of the daily interactions we have

with other living and organic life and, on the other, the fragility of our relationships. They are

never fixed or predictable and accordingly, nor are macro and micro moral economies, hence the

difficulty of capturing them and creating narratives that do justice to what lived and still lives at

another level than the physical one.

In retrospect, with the implementation of an infrastructure of visibilization resting on

testimonies of people living in what could be considered an urban grey zone, we wanted to

experience a shift from the statement “could the subaltern speak” (Spivak 1995) to “could the

subaltern be heard and recognized” by attempting to destabilize the representations of people

socially considered to live within poverty.20 We also tried to alter the meanings and actualization

of the “participation” of the “sponsors” and their “publics” and vice versa. Each participant,

whether a youth, a parent, a counselor, a policeman, a director, an anthropologist, went through

the same exhilarating yet at times doubtful process of bringing their voice from the private self to

the public forum. We worked within a structure that allowed any one of us to break free from his

or her original role should we want it and should the situation permit it. Most of us did so by

because he/she felt that this what was called for and therefore, it was a matter of time before A could achieve it. A not only achieved it but it was sensational. I still need to reflect on this situation but to this day, I still analyze it as a structural-moral effect rather than a divide between structure and moral. 20 My interview data show that not all residents believe themselves to be “poor.” According to many of my respondents, “poor people” are those who don’t have food, shelter or families and friends (Anonymous 2009, 2010: personal communications).



25

exploring other avenues: a counsellor became a digital storytelling participant, an anthropologist

acted as a coordinator and public relations trainer, a policeman served as a co-organizer for an

event, a director taught youth photography, a policeman was an interviewee while a child

morphed into an interviewer, a parent assumed the position of official photographer of the film

festival and another turned into the official technical assistant whereas one youth counsellor

became the public relations expert, another enrolled as the head technician and her colleague

enjoyed his new duties as host. The commonality of experiences (Jackson 1998) as well as the

extension of each person’s formal and expected role permitted living together moments that are

still today discussed among us as revealing (révélateurs) of profound aspirations that were there

but untapped at the time: we were all in this together as “normal” people, participants like any

other. One of the everyday manifestations of violence, I contend, is this refusal to join the other,

or to let the other join us, in what constitutes our realities. The infrastructure of visibilization

developed here promoted a cosmopolitan citizenship as it involved “the adoption of a self-

reflexive mode of being in the world, the cultivation of a heightened care or feeling for the world,

and the ability to adopt certain skills in the manner of our disclosures to the world” (Smith 2007:

37).

As was made clear throughout this paper, I believe it is no longer enough to “give a

voice” to the people we work with (Truchon 2007), especially socially marginalized populations.

With today’s proliferation of first-person narratives, confining ourselves to this one activity can

serve to push back the limits of a concept of humanness: the individual as not just responsible for

his own success through his own efforts, but also for his own representation—an ideology that

reproduces ambient liberalism. Confining ourselves to this position can even constitute a new

way of re-colonizing knowledge insomuch as certain individuals who can be said to be



26

“invisible” find themselves in situations of excessive visibility due to unusual circumstances

(Voirol 2005). The reversal from invisibility to excessive visibility in certain contexts could be a

manifestation not of attention, but rather of social disapproval (ibid: 6), and confirms an inversion

of the power differential of visibility. We then would no longer be dealing with a visible power

and anonymous, marginalized individuals, but rather a power that withdraws, the better to cast

light on the individual and obtain maximal information (adapted from Beaud, Confavreux,

Lindgaard 2006:14).

By attempting to create what Martin Buber (1970) calls “in-between” situations,

privileged moments when two people meet with who they are but accept to be challenged by the

other, each person involved in the “meetings” also accepts that his or her interactions on a

personal level, as personhood— not just as a funder, a researcher, or a “victim of…”— will most

probably influence not only the results, but also the fundamentals of their outlook of life. As

anthropologists, we wish to have our informers collaborate with us. Yet, for our endeavours to

make sense for the people we work with, we have to accept that we need to collaborate with their

agendas. Collaborative research needs to create in-between worlds that did not exist prior to

relationships and that will not exist afterwards. As such, when we accept to give power to people

we work with, this openness will necessarily influence our research questions and their results,

but also the fundamentals of anthropological research (Ash 1991 quoted by Chalfen 1997: 302).

Finally, a question underlying my research project is the possibility that in certain places

and in certain circumstances anthropologists should accept power bestowed on them because the

people working with them wish to entrust them with it.21 As ambiguous and as contested as the

21 I think, among other things, that the description/inscription (or is it the other way around) of power by Johannes Fabian (1983) is still reminiscent in some ethnographic work: power is in itself bad, people who have power are bad.



27

concept and the application of power is, this possibility should not be discarded because of the

historically ambivalent outlook and practice of our discipline. The same way we wish that people

in power would better acknowledge those living in conditions of marginality, anthropologists are

not outside the world of their informants and people in power; they share the same world. In a

discipline that is certainly one of the most cogent to criticize its epistemologies, methodologies

and ethics, power doesn’t always have to be oppressive, nor should we only talk about resisting

power. By erasing the visible proof of our power from our analyses, the finesse and the subtlety

of our arguments become diminished and a reversed position is created: the same way the

discipline is asking for the people we work with to be “empowered,” where is the

“empowerment” of anthropologists as human beings who share the same burdens as everybody

else? It is thus an urgent call to resist an observational, bottom-up empowerment (i.e., we stand

behind the thin glass and look at them being visible) of others and embrace an involved, lateral

empowerment of all of us (i.e., we are visible together in the same room). As anthropologists, we

are invited to participate in the re-creation of relationships between not only the people we work

with and the people in power over them, but all of us who share the same world.

If we are taught to contextualize and historicize the people we work with, we also need to contextualize and historicize the works we produce.



28

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