Participatory Action Research

Abstract

There are many threads of participatory research and action research, and a variety of ethical and philosophical stances that fall under the heading of participatory action research. in this special issue we test the grounds of Par traditions, put them in conversations with a variety of disciplines and invent new forms and protocols for their implementation. as we shared our developing work, we offered up a bounty of exciting ideas, visualized each others research landscapes, and ventured out onto our own with tools and perspectives. specifically, we have nourished each others’ ideas regarding the insider-outsider positionality of researchers; issues of participation, process and power relations; the concept of scale and human geography; what it means to negotiate conceptions of damage in communities and in research; knowledge production, the right to knowledge, and the right to research; negotiating our deep beliefs in and contentious relationships with Par. as a group we brainstormed the ideas and works that have been important as we have each formulated a Participatory action research methodology and we set out in this brief introduction to clarify our place in that research tradition. We thought about our work in the categories that appear below as subheadings in this text: critical Par and critiquing Participation; critical consciousness in Par; action; and responsibility to the subject/subject object relations in Par. While conducting the literature search for all the readings mentioned, orlando Fals Borda’s chapter in reason and Bradbury’s 2001 Handbook of Action Research came to our attention. in this chapter, Fals Borda describes the emergence of Par within the subheadings on science, Knowledge and reason; on Theory and Practice; and on subject and object. These categories closely mirror the concerns that our group described as central to our thinking about Par, and we acknowledge the lineage of scholarship that shapes our priorities, ethical concerns and philosophical stances about epistemology and the relationship between knowledge and power. We have been influenced by the work of activist scholars from the late 1960s and 1970s — an era when activists challenged oppressive and exclusive structures that maintained social inequalities and academics sought ways to make their research relevant to the social issues demanding attention and social change.