This paper aims to critically examine key features of children’s rights that seemingly promote the ideal of participatory research with infants in the current era. The central quest to participatory research with infants, it will be argued, is how we can seek to equalise an inevitable asymmetrical relationship between researchers and researched. With growing interest in participatory ideology, researchers not only have been investigating how to recognise and respect the voice(s) of the children by avoiding categorising them as developmentally immature, but also how children and researchers can use a whole range of methods as partners in the research.  Participatory research in its current ideological form challenges the notion of otherness in research where children are represented by adults as dissimilar, thus separate from the process or/and remain unfamiliar and different in research.

The concept of “other” has been examined by several disciplines such as sociology (Bauman 1993), philosophy (Lavinas 1985, 1991, Wittgenstein 2001) and psychology (Lacan 1936/2000, Benjamin, 1998).  Sociologists mainly examine the concept as how we construct social identities, whilst philosophers focus on the place the other and the ‘I’ are having in human relationships and their interactions. Psychology and mainly the psychoanalytical school examines the ‘other’ in relation to self when relating to others, and the recognition of the other as Benjamin (1998) describes:

… in the intersubjective conception of recognition, two active subjects may exchange, may alternate in expressing and receiving, co-creating a mutuality that allows for and presumes separateness. (p.29)

The concept of ‘other’ has been debated in research ethics (Whiteman, 2018), in research with children (Christensen and Prout 2002, Lahman, 2008) and with infants and toddlers (Elwick,et al 2014a, Salamon and Palaiologou 2019).  In all approaches the concept has been examined mainly from sociological or philosophical lenses and associated with equality and justice. Despite the different approaches from each school of thought, however, the espoused common parameters of otherness are differentiations, recognition and respect of similarity/differentiation, the [im]balance-[a]symmetry between self and other and how relationships are established and maintained. In this paper, there is no intention to enter the discourse of the varied approaches of ‘otherness’, but instead to investigate the key parameters of being different (to others) in relation to research about infants and to explore the implications.  As will discussed, however, these elements can become potentialities in research with infants by embracing the parameters of otherness as a value added component in the ethics of research with infants.

In reflecting on these issues, the paper will examine theoretical and methodological issues of participatory principles in research with infants and will explore the consequent challenges of investigating infants’ spaces and lives.  The central argument is that infants will always be different in research (others). However, it is proposed that recognising the concept of otherness in research with infants is not necessarily marginalisation as might be viewed so long as their distinctiveness is recongised and respected. In that sense it will be argued that participatory research cannot be achieved with infants as the asymmetries between researchers and infants cannot be equalised.  Accommodating the concept of otherness when undertaking research with infants offers potential benefits, therefore, and should seek for ethical praxis and relationships between researcher and infants though developing sympathetic proximity to their spaces and lives.

This paper is a conceptual one based on critical reflection on two research projects with infants that employed qualitative methods to research: The first project aimed to investigate how adults can understand infants’ (birth to two years) playful moments and the ways they respond to and encourage them. Through the use of naturalistic observations fifteen infants were observed in their homes for a period of six months. The researcher was visiting the homes twice a week for a period of about two hours. The second project aimed to investigate object recognition of infants (from five months to three years). The key aims were to identify whether, how and when infants recognise objects when showing them in photographs rather than showing them in miniature toys (like toy animals or household objects). The project used a set miniature toys of animals and household toys that were the same in photographs in laminated cards. There were twenty-five infants involved and the researcher visited them in the day care centre they were attending. In the first couple of visits the researcher played with the infants with the miniature toys. In the next visits the researcher showed the infants the photo cards. Both projects were conducted in an English urban city and the infants involved came from diverse sociodemographic backgrounds as they were selected randomly. In both projects’ the institutional ethical protocols were considered and all ethical requirements were fulfilled.

Throughout this paper it will be argued that participatory research with infants is very difficult, if not impossible, to be achieved. Equally it will be argued, however, that the recognition of otherness in research with infants does not constitute marginalisation as long as their distinctiveness is recongised, valued and attention is paid to including the parameters of otherness in the ethical praxis that underpins the research. Recognising the otherness and its asymmetrical relationships such as the physical, cognate and self-identity of infants, offers the capacity to develop and sustain ethical relationships where researchers and infants exist in an ethical proximity with each other instead of trying to equalise these asymmetries. In the ideology offered by the UNCRC declaration of children’s rights we need to open the debate that participation should not be limited to what as adults can provide or reciprocate to balance adult-infants relationships. It is proposed instead that we must accept the otherness of infants and recognise that their developmental and agentic nature are interconnected and impact on each other. Instead of concerned how not to comprise participatory ideology in research with infants, we should accept that “relationships with the other is not symmetrical […]in the relation to the face, it is asymmetry that is affirmed […] [the other] is above all the one I am responsible for” (Lavinas. 1991 pp. 104-105) and seek to conceptualise as participatory these asymmetrical relationships when seeking ways of sustaining ethical relationships in research with infants. Such relationships might not be reciprocal, but should become an ethical imperative when seeking to exemplify the participatory ideology when researching very young children.

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