Guest editor’s introduction: Participatory research, Part II

Abstract

This second special issue of The American Sociologist on participatory re search expands the scope of topics discussed in Volume 23, Number 4. In that earlier issue we presented papers that discussed the history, theory, and models of participatory research (PR), and provided some examples of PR in practice. In this issue we survey the controversies surrounding PR, looking at how it might fail, conditions under which it becomes more problematic, the risks borne by those who try it, and the shortcomings of our attempts to implement PR in social change projects. The opportunity to explore such a range of issues in such depth occurs at a decisive moment in the practice of social research. A new generation of students disillusioned by the exploitive selfishness of the 1980s has come of age on the college campuses, and is finding itself increasingly drawn to PR study groups and courses at Cornell University, Loyola University, the University of Michigan, and other places. Academics who had risked their very careers for doing participatory rather than "scientific" research and survived have risen to levels of influence in universities across the country. Journals are opening up for those who do PR, not the least of which is The American Sociologist whose editor, Dick Hall, was willing to expand his commitment from a partial issue to two full issues as more and more good papers came in, and has made a continuing commitment to include PR as one of the issues TAS is willing to cover. And the first "Research for Social Action" conference, organized by the Applied Research Center in Oakland?which brought together for the first time activists doing research with researchers, doing activism?wrapped up just days before this writing. This turn toward research models of engagement and purpose such as PR is also at the forefront of the continuing push toward interdisciplinary research. For even in the collection of articles displayed in the pages of this and the previous issue of TAS, are included authors whose formal academic training is not in sociology. The field of PR has become so interdisciplinary and diverse that academic boundaries cannot contain it. But we believe that even those who come to PR outside of sociology should be welcomed into this most interdisciplinary of disciplines. For it is the interdisciplinary nature of sociology, its refusal to