Participant Observation With Santhal Adolescents: Understanding Space and Place

Theoretical Understanding of Space and Place

In contemporary geography curricula, the concepts of ‘space’ and ‘place’ are considered crucial for shaping our understanding of the relationship between humans and the environment. While these concepts are often presented structurally in classrooms, they become even more complex, particularly in the ways children experience, make sense of, and interpret space and place in their everyday lives (Cele, 2006; Harju, 2013). In school geography, space is often described as a measurable, rational system (Skordoulis & Arvanitis, 2008), while place is presented in terms of regional, physical, and human features, often reflecting a structuralist, global view. Ansell (2009) argues that discourses often frame space and place in static terms, undervaluing perspectives centred on children’s experiences of space and place. In response to this gap, childhood studies call for a rethinking of these concepts by deconstructing hegemonic spatial paradigms (Allen, 1997) while remaining critically aware of the deep entanglement of space, place, and culture and its influence on children’s lived experiences (Aucoin, 2017).

To address this, I refer to postmodern theorists such as Lefebvre (1991) and Soja (2008), who argue that space is not merely static but is continually produced and reproduced through social interactions and practices. Allen (1997) argues that children, as individuals, are not just influenced socially but conditioned through the interconnected dimensions of space, time, and society, highlighting the importance of where they are, when they are and with whom they are. So, understanding the context in which children live and how histories, cultural relationships and everyday experiences shape their understanding towards the surrounding entities becomes crucial. Therefore, spatial relationships should be conceptualised as socially produced relations that are continually constructed and reconstructed through everyday interactions and negotiated relationships.

In contrast, a place is ‘a framed space’ that a community constructs over time (Thornton, 2011), imbued with social meanings shaped by culture and history (Aucoin, 2017). Transforming space into a place involves several layers, including the integration of human experiences, cultural narratives, social bonds, and the emotional significance of material objects. So, children naturally develop a sense of place not just knowing through spatial features, but also through social cues acquired through socialisation (Lentini & Decortis, 2010). Within this perspective, the sense of place is not just about knowing and understanding the properties of places, but also about awareness of the social meanings associated with them.

Within Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad, there is also an idealised, abstract space called the lived space. Children, in the contexts where they live (Raittila, 2012), also engage with space through their embodied practices that shape their understanding of place in its own ways. The physical and material features of these spaces influence how they navigate, adapt to, and utilize their environments, thereby making the place meaningful (Haarni et al., 1997; Tuan, 1975). The perception of the material environment (First Space), the actions taken within it, and its interpretation (Second Space) form an interconnected process (Soja, 2008), enabling each individual to create their own environment through personal experience. In this process of place-making, attachments to place gradually develop, reflecting what Raymond Williams (1977) describes as structures of feeling, in which both affective and lived experiences influence how environments are understood and organized.

Thus, the relationship between space and place is key to understanding how children view their environment, shaped by their sensory interactions, experiences, imagination, and interpretations (Aucoin, 2017). Tuan (1975), therefore, describes place as a source of security and familiarity, whereas space represents openness and freedom. This difference marks how our perception of space is shaped by our personal and cultural stories, influencing a place through a sense of identity and belonging.

However, within this spatial framework, the perspectives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous children differ, and various meanings are attributed to places shaped by their unique cultural practices and relationships with their environments. Cajete (1994) and Tuhiwai Smith (2012) suggest that indigenous children view landscapes not merely as physical sites but as vibrant, living entities. Conversely, non-Indigenous children often approach place from a functional perspective, as noted by Gruenewald (2003). Supporting this, I cite Margaret Somerville’s (2010) study of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in rural Australia, where the same landscape was interpreted differently. She argued that children’s understanding of space and place is not universal but culturally situated. Therefore, the concepts of place and space are socially and culturally constructed through various lived experiences and knowledge systems that influence children’s perceptions.

In light of this view, I seek to explore how the Santhal adolescents (an Indigenous community in India) engage with different spaces in their local environment and make meaning of place through shared experiences and their cultural practices. To this end, participant observation has been used to systematically document how these adolescents interact with their environment, forge relationships with environmental entities, and construct meanings within their local space, thereby transforming it into a meaningful place through everyday experiences and lived memories. Framed within a relational constructionist view, I regard the perspectives and expressive possibilities of these adolescents as diverse and context-dependent. Instead of trying to capture the ‘authentic’ voices (Warming, 2005) of Santhal adolescents, I here emphasised how meanings and expressions of different spaces within the local context were co-produced through ongoing interactions, sustained relationships, and reflexivity.

Setting the Scene

Having outlined the conceptual foundation of space and place, it is now important to situate the study within its broader field context. I began my fieldwork in February 2024 in Beldanga, a small village in Kanksa Block of Paschim Bardhaman district, West Bengal, India. The Santhal community here makes up a significant portion of the local population, according to the Census of India, 2011. Since the village is located far from major urban centres and bordered by forests, it remains quite isolated, with limited transportation and communication networks and an irregular electricity supply. Access to healthcare and formal education remains limited, affecting daily routines and opportunities to live within the community. Despite these challenges, the social life of this village persists through systems of mutual responsibility and relational governance, where community institutions play a central role. The Manjhi (village headman), for instance, holds an important position in guiding collective decision-making and maintaining the village’s social order.

Living in proximity to forests and natural surroundings, the Santhals here depend more on the local environment for their subsistence and everyday needs, fostering a deep and enduring connection with it. In this context, space for them is not just a physical setting; it is lived and experienced, and has been transformed into a meaningful place through their everyday practices, interactions, and engagement with their local environment. For my participants, i.e., Santhal adolescents, such engagements at the natural site played a crucial role in shaping their perception of the space they inhabit. So, understanding their contextual and experiential dimensions of space and place requires a methodological approach that captures the meanings that emerge in their everyday life.

Methodological Approach

Therefore, in my study, I adopted a qualitative research design using an ethnographic approach to explore how Santhal adolescents understand and assign meaning to space and place in their daily lives. Since my focus was on relational and context-specific understandings of these concepts, I found the ethnographic approach suitable because it allowed me to observe their subtle social cues, routines, and interactions that might have gone unnoticed, thus enriching the authenticity and depth of my ethnographic narrative (Bernard, 2017; Spradley, 2016).

Choosing Participant Observation as My Method

However, the point I want to highlight here is: why choose participant observation over other qualitative methods, such as interviews? This decision was partly based on my understanding of the nature of these indigenous adolescents, who favour informal interactions over formal ones, and partly on theories from Bourdieu (1999), Foucault et al. (1988), and Goffman (2023), who argue that realities are not fixed or intrinsic but develop through specific, context-dependent interactions. From this perspective, there is no single authentic voice; instead, multiple voices coexist within a setting and continually evolve. So, relying solely on qualitative interviews seemed insufficient to me, as this method may not fully capture the nuanced expressions and experiences of these adolescents. To me, participant observation was rather a suitable approach, as it allowed me to be close enough to them in their everyday settings to observe their cultural practices, interactions, and expressions each day, and to understand how the meanings of space and place are continuously produced and negotiated in the lives of these adolescents.

Use of Visuals

To better represent how these adolescents make sense of their place, certain expressions had been difficult to articulate verbally, so photography was used alongside participant observation. Scholars like Roche Cárcel (2026) and Bericat (2016) suggest that images increasingly shape and reflect social life, making photography a useful tool for understanding social realities. Here, I agree with them and believe that images do more than illustrate—it actively creates social knowledge by capturing meanings, relationships, and contexts that might otherwise remain unspoken.

Initial Role and Position Within the Research Context

The use of any qualitative data becomes meaningful only when the researcher is reflexively aware of their positionality within the research context. What I seek to emphasize here is that the knowledge and experiences generated through the research are not neutral; rather, it is situated and shaped within existing power relations. As a researcher, my presence, interactions, and interpretive lens inevitably influenced both the production of data and the meanings that emerged from it.

As a non-Indigenous researcher educated within a Western academic system, I initially approached the field with certain epistemological biases and assumptions that shaped my perception of the Santhal adolescents and influenced my interactions with them during the study. Initially, when I engaged with these adolescents, they often withdrew upon seeing me, and their brief replies and hesitations did not indicate a lack of knowledge; instead, it reflected a mismatch between my communication style and theirs. As Eades (2014) notes, indigenous communication styles often differ from those of non-Indigenous groups, leading to misunderstandings in cross-cultural encounters. To bridge this invisible gap, I tried to familiarise myself with these adolescents by engaging in conversations that aligned with their intonations, using a few Santhali words, even though they were fluent in Bengali, the region’s primary language. I was somewhat aware of their specific intonations, having spent the past few months understanding the culture and viewpoint of the village residents. Even though they initially giggled and made fun of me, over time, the adolescents saw this adjustment as my becoming part of their community, fostering greater comfort and familiarity and allowing for more meaningful engagement and collaborative knowledge creation in the research process.

During my fieldwork, I tried to build rapport by offering chocolates and snacks, a common way in our society to connect with young people. However, the adolescents refused to accept them, and instead of bridging the gap, the distance between us persisted. This response from them signifies my outsider status and my limited knowledge of their daily habits. Later, through discussions with the community members, I learned that such items were not part of their usual diet. Subsequently, when I revisited the field, I adapted my approach to locally familiar items such as wood apple and tamarind. This small change of mine helped to bridge the initial divide, aligning more with their preferences. This marked a step toward culturally responsive engagement and led to greater familiarity with their choices and preferences over time.

So, these subtle behaviours and responses of the adolescents, however, made me feel like an outsider, yet compelled me to critically engage with how power asymmetries are negotiated in everyday interactions, a process that requires continuous reflexivity and unlearning. Throughout this process, I wasn’t just an observer of them; for me, simultaneously noting my own experiences and feelings was my way of participating in the research.

Organization of the Research

Interpretation

In all of these snapshots, I positioned myself at a careful distance—neither too close nor too far—remaining a passive observer able to witness interactions without direct intervention. My fieldnotes captured not only observed behaviours but also my own experiential engagement and reflexive understanding of participation within these contexts. Although I was not explicitly at risk of exerting power over them, my role as an adult and outsider still influenced the dynamics of the interaction, often in subtle ways. They looked at me curiously, at times hesitantly, as my presence introduced unease into their daily routines.

Reflecting on their daily routines, I was astonished by how gendered norms structured the domestic responsibilities undertaken at a young age alongside their educational engagements. It is very common within Indigenous communities, and Battiste (2019) describes it as a set of lifelong responsibilities transmitted not through formal channels but through daily routines and experiential learning. These spaces serve as sites of learning for them, where they acquire skills and adopt social roles through embodied engagement within their socio-spatial environment. In this sense, space for them is not just a physical setting. However, it is actively produced through their everyday engagement, reflecting embodied dispositions shaped by social contexts, in line with Bourdieu’s (2020) concept of habitus.

Interpretation

Although I was observing them, my role here as a participant was minimal. Across both snapshots, my presence was gradually becoming more familiar, yet it did not fully dissolve the subtle boundaries between insider and outsider. In Snapshot 4, my interaction with Gopa and his father positioned me as a learner; I was being introduced to the indigenous ecological practices that initially lay outside my own assumptions about water conservation. My attempt to interpret this through a ‘two-eyed seeing’ was an effort to bridge epistemological differences while remaining attuned to the integration of local knowledge and practices.

However, in Snapshot 5, my position shifted slightly from that of a learner to that of a friend, as I was drawn into the adolescents’ interactional space through humour, invitation, and a shift across settings. My involvement in their social space was not always a conscious effort; rather, ongoing relationships and everyday interactions brought a certain degree of flexibility to my position in the field. At that moment, I realised that participation in the field is fluid and that power relations are not fixed, yet moments of distance and familiarity certainly coexist.

Upon reflecting on snapshots 4 and 5, these adolescents' sense of place shows that it isn't always socially constructed; instead, they also develop an ecological understanding of their environment through informal means. They learn to associate meanings with various spaces, sometimes through fun and play, and at other times by helping elders with their daily ecological tasks. Thus, a sense of space also involves preserving their indigenous knowledge and values, which have gradually evolved across generations.

Interpretation

Here, I tried to adopt the ‘least adult role’ (Corsaro, 1985; Mandell, 1988; Mayall, 2008; Thorne, 2024). My participation as a researcher was not limited to observing how they play; rather, I attempted, as far as possible, to submit to Pronoti’s authority and refrain from exercising my adult privilege. However, temporarily setting aside this adult privilege should not be mistaken for dissolving the power relations inherent in the research process. Instead, it is an effort to understand how asymmetries between adult and child positions can sometimes create barriers to understanding their world.

In doing so, I realised how this seemingly empty space under the tamarind tree became relational, as it was actively co-produced through my interactions with the girls- by accepting Pronti’s authority, abiding by the group norms, and sharing joys- thus transforming it into a meaningful social space.

Interpretation

Here, my role as a researcher oscillated between participating and empathising with their lived realities. While I was momentarily engaged in the boys’ playful interactions, I had to remain equally responsive to Lalita’s distress. In this dual positioning, I faced a certain degree of complexity as I navigated between being part of a joyous moment and critically reflecting on the contrasting experiences unfolding within the same space.

Upon reflection, I understood how the same space held sharply contrasting experiences—joy and laughter for the boys, and distress for Lalita and her sister—revealing how multiple realities coexist within the same context. It is noteworthy that individuals' varying purposes and expectations- joy and uncertainty in their eyes made me realize how their everyday experiences shape their engagement with, and understanding of, the same space in profoundly different ways.

Interpretation

The narrative illustrates how practising a participant’s role sometimes raises ethical tension. Despite my efforts to situate myself within their world, somehow my behaviour led to an ambiguous position—neither fully aligning with the adult role they are accustomed to in their community nor being entirely accepted as a friend—and this thread of ambiguity is reflected in Bonni and Chitu’s remarks. Their curiosity about my presence and their demand for an explanation reveal that they do not fully know me, even though they allowed me to enter their lived space. At the same time, Boni’s act of catching my hand and widening her eyes suggests a fleeting moment of embodied trust, which then becomes blurred again; only the boundary between adult and child, or insider and outsider, remains.

Leaving aside the asymmetrical relationship, I could sense that their daily interactions with their environment attuned them to the rhythms, sounds, and behaviours of animals, allowing Bonni to pick up on subtle cues—such as a hen preparing to lay eggs—that I missed. Further, her response, ‘you don’t understand anything,’ suggests that such knowing is taken for granted within their world, underscoring, again, an epistemic gap between insider familiarity and outsider perception. This aligns, in part, with Haraway’s (2013) concept of situated knowledges, emphasising that knowledge is inherently partial and influenced by an individual’s position within a particular socio-cultural environment.

Research With versus On Adolescents

This distinction between research with and research on adolescents emerged during periods of field participation, when my role extended beyond that of a detached observer. Upon reflection, I understand that it is not just about the researcher’s position but also about how the adolescents were positioned in the research process. In this sense, research on adolescents often assumes their participation for granted, whereas research with adolescents is much more challenging; it requires recognising their agency, involving them as active participants in knowledge production, and being mindful of the ethical considerations that arise in such engagement (Alanen, 2002; Mayall, 2008).

Motivated to conduct my research with adolescents rather than on adolescents, Alderson (2012) argues that the risk remains in how far the researcher involves the research participants in the research process. To be honest, I don’t see their involvement at all stages as feasible in my context. My participation, as well as their involvement in my research, was a negotiated process shaped by situational dynamics and their willingness to engage. Although the adolescents did not determine the overall research purpose, I sought to involve them during the data production stage by inviting them to reflect on what I observed and experienced, and to indicate whether it resonated with their own feelings. For instance, when I photographed them, I asked how they felt upon seeing the images. While their responses reflected their perspectives, the selection of photographs remained my decision. At the same time, when they expressed an interest in taking photographs themselves, their choices were also given priority. So, after each photo shoot, they hurried to share their views, which were duly noted. This simple strategy allowed me to understand their perspectives, reflecting a modest yet meaningful form of participation in the research process.

Moreover, their free will to participate in my research process influenced the ethical considerations to some extent. I did not adhere to any fixed guidelines from western academic standards; instead, my approach was situational and grounded in ongoing interaction. For instance, when photographing their lived spaces, I asked whether they felt comfortable. Their responses were often nonverbal, such as a smile or a nod, which signalled either their consent or hesitation. Paying attention to these subtle cues became a key part of my ethical approach, prioritising their comfort over simply following my formal protocols.

Understanding Space and Place: In Theory and Practice

In this process of participation, I came to better understand how these Santhal adolescents sense space and place, and my empirical understanding supports the theorists Lefebvre (1991) and Soja (2008). Yet it raises a critical question: to what extent do our senses of place align? Rather, let’s be more specific: how similar is my experience of place to that of these adolescents? Herein lies the complexity: if observing and sensing were purely objective and mirror-like, then experiences of a place would have been rather identical. But in practice, however, it is often shaped by differing positionalities and modes of engagement. Let’s take, for instance, the adolescents differed from each other in their familiarity with me and in their temperament, so did their experiences of place vary accordingly as our interactions shifted across contexts. Likewise, my own experiences with them were also influenced by these shifting dynamics. Upon reflection, I realized that the sense of place is influenced not just by context, but also by positionality and shifting power dynamics. At times, the adolescents held sway over me, requiring me to adapt to their terms of engagement; at other times, the dynamic was reversed. Sense of place, therefore, is not uniform but uneven and constantly shifting through interactions, in which certain experiences are more probable than others. The different corners of space within the local landscape evoke a range of emotions—fear, joy, and expectation—that, in turn, shape the adolescent’s memory, contributing to the making of a place. As Walter (1988, 9) observes that sense of ‘place grows out of the drama of dwelling together.’ It is intimately connected to how people imagine and feel about their experiences, and to the relations they hold, which turn a space into a meaningful place. Therefore, space and place should be understood not in relational terms only, but also in terms of how different forms of space are felt, negotiated, and experienced, as it shapes the corners of the local space as a meaningful place for them.