Questions asked by audiences

The following questions were asked by members of audiences to whom we presented this research.
Isn't it the case that, by never focusing the camera specifically on the woman, and by always showing her surrounded by various other people, you end up objectifying her?

Using a wide-angle focus for the camera work, and keeping the angle mostly stable, is a methodological choice grounded in our interest in the total social process that encompasses all participants. In this sense all participants are "objectified" by a research that is less concerned with the personal experiences of any of the participants than by the way they mutually construct the scene and, by implications, each other. To the extent that any one might be interested in personal experience, this person must still understand fully the properties of that which was constructed. These are the properties that our own research is intended to illuminate. In the long run, we would argue that, by no focusing on the person, one is in a better position to reveal that which is most powerful at the moment for that person, whether she knows about it or not.
March 13, 1999