Commentary: Reflections on Co-operative Inquiry in this Historic Moment

Abstract

My reading of the six accounts of co-operative inquiry in this volume comes during a historic moment for action research in which the tensions of celebration and caution pull in opposite directions. On the one hand, the recent successes of legitimizing action research as an approach to knowledge creation gives those of us committed to participatory, experiential, action-oriented research much to celebrate. We have pried open the former strangle hold of positivist research, never to turn back. Action research is used in settings ranging from social justice organizations to multinational corporations, from formal schools to community-based literacy efforts, from human services to for-profit businesses, from international development agencies to social services, and from hospitals to prisons. On the other hand, the question nags, is action research being co-opted into a depoliticized tool for “improving practice” devoid of critical understanding of power relations and structures. Improving our practice for whose purposes, whose benefit? The danger of delinking action research from its transformational potential and emancipatory intentions is worrisome. Gaventa and Cornwall (2001, p. 77) analyze the dangers as large-scale international development organizations “scale-up” field-based participatory approaches, while the development organizations themselves are hierarchical, nonparticipatory, and inflexible. Greenwood and Levin raise similar concerns about the teaching of and promotion of action research in institutions of higher education, which are undemocratic, hierarchical, and rigid (1998).