For this supervision I had not managed to finish the paper I was writing on participation: called Different Ways of Engaging with Children in Research but I brought some notes, so we discussied these, and elaborated on Kellett’s (2014) distinction of participation as status and roles or relationships (and how they intersect), to linking participation to methods, agency, democracy and other related aspects. The link between participation and democracy is an interesting one that Tony commented on saying that democracy is not about equal power but the recognition of the right of expression or voice within a system that recognises inequality, something very relevant when researching children and the power relations between the researcher and the participants. I had in fact just removed a comment in my paper about democracy and participation as I was questioning the tenuous link I was making and if it was in the right context. I will get back to it and the multifaceted nature of participation, as each of the aspects we discussed are part of the bigger picture. I mentioned coming across an author talking about participatory capital and how I see this concept as very relevant to the participatory discourse. Chris mentioned habitus but at the moment I feel a stronger link to capital although I can see how I probably will be returning to habitus down the line, as Chris mentioned that habitus determines how much capital you have.
