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WASH intersects with all SDGs – this publication is part of a Sanitation Learning Hub and IDS Working Paper series that looks at the intersection of sanitation and other fields.

This is part of a series of chapter summaries of the Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. 

This summary will outline the life and practice of Augusto Boal and his Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) and how it relates and contributes to participatory research.  Boal (1931 – 2009) was a Brazilian theatre practitioner, theorist and political activist who developed TO, a collection of tools and techniques used across the world in participatory and transformative theatre work.  Through workshops and performances he continually re-invented his methods of using theatre as a tool to look critically at reality, and then to challenge and transform oppression together with communities.

Boal’s Philosophy and Image Theatre, Forum Theatre and Legislative Theatre

Boal was interested in ‘the possibilities of a workable Marxist theatre aesthetic in the Brechtian tradition’ (Campbell, 2019: 6) alongside the influence of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  This resulted in an approach to popular theatre in which spectators are reimagined as ‘spect-actors’ who create and contribute to the aesthetic processes in which they take part.  This can be demonstrated through three of TO’s most well-known tools: Image Theatre, Forum Theatre and Legislative Theatre.  Image theatre involves participants using their bodies to create images exploring oppression which are then reflected upon together (Santiago-Jirau and Thompson, 2019: 156).  Forum theatre mobilises the ‘spect-actors’ of a performance to move onto the stage and perform proposed solutions to an oppression portrayed in the play.  This process is curated by a ‘Joker’, who is a conduit between the audience and those onstage, who must facilitate, provoke and manage the proceedings.  Forum Theatre is a place not ‘to show the correct path, but only to offer the means by which all possible paths may be examined’ (Boal, 1979: 141).  Legislative Theatre builds on this by taking the solutions proposed onstage by the ‘spect-actors’ and bringing them together with law-makers in the same event.  Through these three brief examples we can chart the progress from the passive spectators of traditional theatre into ‘spect-actors’ who can embody and understand their own oppression, propose and trial solutions to it and then translate these solutions into legislation.

Applications to Research

TO as created by Boal is a transformatory artistic practice, not a fully formed research methodology and therefore in most research applications TO methods are used alongside other more traditional research methods.  Catherine Etmanski describes the possibilities TO offers action-oriented research by charting resonances, both are interested not just in understanding reality, but changing or transforming it (2014: 775).  Boal himself saw theatre as a form of knowledge, and alongside this ran his commitment to the use of this knowledge ‘as a means of transforming society’ (Boal, 1992: xxxi).  Key features of TO which are particularly relevant to research are the dialogic properties of the aesthetic space, the ‘spect-actor’ and theatre as a form of knowledge.  

The aesthetic space is the space which is created when participants show an Image in a workshop, or give a performance.  Boal writes at length about the properties of the aesthetic space which allows us to see ourselves, but also the memory of the past and the imagination of the future (Boal, 1994: 19).  This unique perspective is exciting for research as we are able to both see and analyse but crucially as ‘spect-actors’ we are also able to interact with and change what we see.  Participants in the research process are able to combine analysis with the creation of new knowledge and dialogue with what is presented in the aesthetic space, in a cycle of action and reflection.  

Boal believed everyone was an actor (Jackson, 1992) and should be able to access the means of production of theatre but also everyone is an actor in the world, with the power to change it.  Likewise, in participatory research everyone has access to the means of production of knowledge through participation in the research process as co-researchers.  This breaking down of traditional barriers in the hierarchy between the objective researcher and those being researched are challenged even further by the physical and fun activities of creating theatre – ‘spect-actors’ are creators of knowledge alongside the researcher in an embodied process.

Boal’s notion of theatre as knowledge resonates with some participatory research methodologies which allow for an expansion of our understanding of knowledge.  For example cooperative inquiry uses an ‘extended epistemology’ that allows for ‘tacit and pre-verbal’ learning to emerge from a community of co-inquirers (Heron and Reason, 2014: 2 – 3).  The techniques of TO lend themselves to exploring these other knowledges, as we have seen with Image Theatre which uses our embodied instincts to provoke various interpretations.  The focus is not on the original intention or ‘truth’ of the image, but rather the emergence of a collective set of truths or understandings, which are allowed to co-exist. 

Dilemmas and Implications

Recording and Presenting Knowledge – a key consideration is the translation of the particular kinds of knowledges produced by the method into that which is academically acceptable, without reducing them to the verbal and the elite.  This is similar to the dilemmas faced in other participatory methods which also use creative methods and may analyse images, use personal reflections or the discussions surrounding images and stimuli.

Role of the Facilitator – A researcher using TO must consider the additional role as the facilitator of a creative process and how this will impact their positionality and the research.  The facilitator, or  ‘Joker’ can be a powerful figure who is there to ask questions, to provoke and perhaps inspire.  How does this role work alongside the role of the researcher? Ali Campbell reflects on this and employs a deep and unflinching self-reflection alongside an awareness of this tension (2019), through this awareness practitioners can be mindful of their own presence. 

TO in Research? To what ends? – TO was developed as a radical act in direct opposition to oppression as a tool for revolution.  Today as the methods have been adopted, reproduced and reimagined in many contexts across the world, critiques have emerged that TO has become far removed from its original political intent (Howe et al, 2019: 1, Boal, J., 2019: 292).  These are important questions to consider.  For Boal, TO was about using people’s knowledge through theatre in order to act, to make a change.  This is the crucial impetus at the heart of TO – the ‘spect-actor’ who is co-creator of knowledge, and action.  

Concl​usion

Augusto Boal’s TO has proved a rich resource for a global community of practitioners who have used and extended his methods for a huge range of purposes.  There are elements of TO which offer us the opportunity to access new or underexplored sources of knowledge, generated in collaboration and dialogue with participants.  This approach faces us with questions as practitioners and researchers.  These include queries about the intentions and impact of our work, and its relationship to Boal’s revolutionary philosophy.

Recommended reading

Boal, A. (1979). Theatre of the Oppressed.  New York: Theatre Communications Group.

Boal, A. (1992). Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Trans. A. Jackson.  London and New York: Routledge.

Boal, A. (1994). The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy, 1st edn. London and New York: Routledge.

Boal, J. (2019). Theatre of the Oppressed in neoliberal times: From Che Guevara to the Uber driver. in K. Howe, J. Boal and J. Soeiro, (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Routledge. pp.288 – 301.

Campbell, A. (2019).  The Theatre of the Oppressed in Practice Today: An Introduction to the Work and Principles of Augusto Boal. London and New York: Methuen Drama. 

Etmanski, C. (2014). Theatre of the Oppressed. in D. Coghlan, and M. Brydon-Miller (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. pp. 773 – 776.

Heron, J. and Reason, P. (2014). Co-operative inquiry. in D. Coghlan, and M. Brydon-Miller (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. pp. 188 – 192. 

Howe, K., Boal, J. and Soeiro, J. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Routledge. 

Jackson, A. (1992). Translator’s Introduction. In A. Boal, Games for Actors and Non-Actors.  London and New York: Routledge.

Santiago-Jirau, A.  and Leigh Thompson, S. (2019) Image theatre: A liberatory practice for ‘making thought visible’. In K. Howe, J. Boal and J. Soeiro, (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Routledge. pp. 156 – 161.

Soeiro, J. (2019). Legislative Theatre: Can theatre reinvent politics? In K. Howe, J. Boal and J. Soeiro, (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Routledge. 

This is part of a series of chapter summaries of the Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. 

In the early 1970s Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda developed a participatory research methodology rooted in support for social movements. After two decades at the National University of Colombia based on the social science of the global North and in his work on agrarian reform, Fals began to argue that these approaches did not recognize the particularities of Latin American societies. He began instead to promote research that harnessed the transformational powers of the working classes to effect social change through a revolution from below. Together with economist Augusto Libreros, sociologist Gonzalo Castillo, and journalist Víctor Daniel Bonilla, he founded La Rosca de Investigación y Acción Social (Circle of Research and Social Action), funded by the US Presbyterian Church (Castillo, Fals Borda, and Libreros were all practicing Presbyterians with links to progressive currents in the World Council of Churches).

La Rosca proposed to ally itself as a collective of researcher-activists with peasant and Indigenous organizations, as well as working-class sectors. Their accompaniment in the political activities of grassroots organizations prodded them to adopt Marxism as their central theoretical support, as well as toward the construction of a participatory methodology. Like Paulo Freire (2005 [1970]), they understood education to be a vital tool for the acquisition of self-consciousness and the recognition of the place of individuals in the social fabric. Alternative forms of popular education would, they argued, open the way to heightened class consciousness and effective political action by placing in question the foundations of a system based on oppression and inequality. 

Using his relationship with the National Association of Peasant Users (ANUC) on the Caribbean coast of Colombia as a laboratory for developing his methodology, the efforts of Fals and the Fundación del Caribe—the research team he established in the city of Montería—centered on the revitalization of peasant historical memory of past struggles in order to propel ANUC's radical program of mass mobilization and direct action, in particular, the occupation of large landholdings by peasant activists (Zamosc 1986). Fals and his colleagues conceptualized what they called "action research" as a methodology predicated on the insertion of external researchers into social movements.

These were not scholars confined to their university desks, nor did they conceive of their insertion into communities as purely for observational purposes. Instead, they saw themselves as politically committed investigators allied with and participating in the activities of rank-and-file organizations, with the goal of raising class consciousness and generating processes of change. In the course of this collaboration, what Fals Borda called ‘people’s knowledge’ would come into dialogue with scientific knowledge, potentially transforming research as we know it. 

Fals's approach to social scientific methods involved a reconceptualization of the meaning of research, as well as the coining of a set of underlying concepts: participation, critical recovery, and systematic devolution. The Fundación del Caribe’s participatory research process deferred to peasants (campesinos) in the generation of the research agenda and fostered their active involvement in the interpretation of data and the insertion of what was learned into political practice.

In other words, Fals envisioned a dialogue punctuated by activism, with information garnered through research providing the basis for collective decision-making about political action (Fals Borda, 1979). Both external and internal researchers would enjoy the same level of responsibility in a project, while, at the same time, they would all participate in the social movement as activists (Brandão, 2005), for example, at land occupations. Continuous flows of reciprocity in both research and political action would transform the very meaning of ‘objectivity’ into a bi- or multi-directional process. 

Central to this approach was an objective called ‘critical recovery,’ which paid ‘special attention to those elements or institutions that have been useful in the past to confront the enemies of the exploited classes. Once those elements are determined, they are reactivated with the aim of using them in a similar manner in current class struggles’ (Bonilla et al., 1972: 51–52). The fruits of critical recovery was made comprehensible to peasants through the production of a series of graphic narratives that grew out of a dialogue between campesinos and researchers through which they identified concepts crystallizing both the major tropes contained in the narratives of peasant eyewitnesses and providing avenues for making their stories relevant to the present. The graphic narratives merged past and present through vivid images in which peasant readers could identify not only their forebears, but themselves, and could learn about organizing tools used in the past that could be imported into the present. 

The fruits of critical recovery were disseminated through what Fals called ‘systematic devolution,’ whereby research results were returned to the organizational leadership and its rank-and-file in a range of media and activities—workshops, graphic narratives, radio programs, accessible prose narratives—geared to the level of schooling and the political awareness of the diverse audiences to which they were presented. However, these materials were never meant to be final products, as occurs in academic research, but, instead, they provided a stimulus for further discussion and, ultimately, for new political projects. In this way, Fals conceptualized research as a continuous activity that evolves out of the sedimentation of progressive stages of memory retrieval and interpretation, enabling information-sharing and analysis at all stages in the process.  

Fals never published a manual documenting how PAR functioned in its early years; instead, he insisted that PAR drew upon local experience to cultivate a philosophy, methodology, and set of techniques for conducting research premised on the establishment of horizontal relationships between external researchers and communities in the service of the organizational objectives of the latter. Fals's notion of action research did not follow a recipe, but instead, was a kind of an intersubjective and empathetic dialogue between researchers and the subject group, one that would be adjusted to the particular circumstances of the research relationship. One could say that Fals conceived PAR as a method based on lived experience and for this reason, it was renewed each time it was put into practice.  

The Fundación del Caribe and La Rosca closed their doors by 1975 as a result of conflicts within the left and with ANUC. Since then, participatory action research has undergone numerous transformations, best encapsulated by Alfredo Molano, one of Fals Borda’s early students and a chronicler of the Colombian conflict: 

In Colombia, we have passed from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to the struggle for full respect for human rights, or in other words, we have stopped fighting against the State, and are now fighting for it. Before we were concerned with militancy; now, our eyes are on participation. It is as if Action Research had made us more modest. Today we are prepared to accept equality; we are undergoing a far-reaching redefinition of our own relevance. The idea that the people need to be led has fortunately been replaced by the excitement of being among the people and the wonder of its creative ability. Subjectivity has gained ground, and allowed the heart to win some points against the head. (Molano, 1998: 8)

Molano’s observations reflect the changing nature of social protest across the globe, with the advent of neoliberal policies that bound popular movements to non-governmental organizations, and, in the wake of the 1991 Colombian Constitution, fostered electoral participation in new political parties as an alternative to direct action and dreams of overthrowing the current social order.

How have La Rosca’s interlinked objectives of participation, critical recovery, and systematic devolution fared in this changing environment? In the summer of 2018, one of us (Joanne Rappaport) took this question to a series of grassroots organizations, research institutes, and institutions of higher education in different regions of Colombia, facilitating a series of workshops with Indigenous activists, community organizers, health workers, student activists, high-school students, and university faculty, in which the three concepts anchoring the work of La Rosca and the Fundación del Caribe were presented and evaluated in light of the objectives of the diverse publics who participated in the events (Rappaport, 2020: Ch. 7). 

The audiences of the workshops were heterogeneous. Some participants had extensive experience with PAR, while others were only beginning to appreciate the methodological options available to them. Despite these differences, participants voiced similar appreciations of what constituted PAR, describing it as a combination of research methodology, pedagogy, and politics, a ‘methodological-political horizon.’

More than a set of research techniques, they called it ‘a philosophy of life, an emancipatory stand to confront the world,’ and a collectively constructed ethic, echoing one of Fals Borda’s last writings (Fals Borda, 2008: 162). Channeling Fals’ notion of the ‘sentipensante’ or ‘thinking-feeling person’ (Fals Borda, 2001: 30), a concept that anchors his methodology to grassroots life-worlds, they observed that PAR is a process of coming to know something, combining sentiment and analysis to construct a relationship among the participants and with the broader social reality in which they live. However, only the most experienced PAR practitioners at the workshops appear to have used critical recovery and systematic devolution as guiding concepts in their work; the less-experienced participants envisioned PAR as following an established formula, and were surprised at the extent to which Fals Borda's research methods emerged from the social context in which he and his collaborators were working.

While it is true that Fals and the Fundación del Caribe were only partially successful in establishing horizontal relationships and in impacting the future of ANUC, their experience points to an approach to activist research that continues to be relevant today, particularly in Colombia, where social movements confront a stalled peace process. Fals's departure from conventional research models generated a creative tension that still bears profound implications for the type of knowledge that today's PAR generates and the ways in which such knowledge can be used. Its objectives were and continue to be clearly emancipatory, both in their foregrounding the hitherto-ignored point of view of the oppressed and in their radical rewriting of research methods. 
 

Recommended reading

Bonilla, V.D., Castillo, G., Fals Borda, O. and Libreros, A. (1972). Causa popular, ciencia popular: Una metodología del conocimiento científico a través de la acción. Bogotá: La Rosca de Investigación y Acción Social.  

Brandão, C.R. (2005). Participatory research and participation in research: A look between times and spaces from Latin America. International Journal of Action Research, 1(1): 43–68. 

Fals Borda, O. (1979). Investigating reality in order to transform it: The Colombian experience. Dialectical Anthropology, 4(1): 33–55. 

Fals Borda, O. (2001). Participatory (action) research in social theory: Origins and challenges. In P. Reason and H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London: Sage. pp. 27–37.

Fals Borda, O. (2008). Action research in the convergence of disciplines. International Journal of Action Research, 9(2): 155–167.

Freire, P. (2005 [1970]). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. M. Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum. 

Molano, A. (1998).  Cartagena revisited: Twenty years on. In O. Fals Borda (Ed.), People’s Participation: Challenges Ahead. Bogotá: Colciencias/IEPRI/TM Editores. pp. 3–10.

Pereira, A. and Rappaport, J. (2021). Tropical Empathy: Orlando Fals Borda and Participatory Action Research. In D. Burns, J. Howard and S.M. Ospina (Eds.), Sage Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. Thousand Oaks: Sage, vol. 1, pp. 55-67.

Rappaport, J. (2020).  Cowards Don’t Make History: Orlando Fals Borda and the Origins of Participatory Action Research. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Zamosc, L. (1986). The Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Colombia: Struggles of the National Peasant Association 1967–1981. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

This is part of a series of chapter summaries of the Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. 

As two long-standing action researchers we both maintain a curiosity about the traditions and emergent ideas that surround and underpin our practice here in the UK. In our chapter 'Becoming Participatory: some contributions to Action Research in the UK' (ref) we offer a set of reflections on where - in the pursuit of becoming participatory - we have come from, and where we're heading, and in this further contribution we take our reflections a little further.

We acknowledge our chapter is a partial account from two practitioners and participants, who believe AR is fundamentally an ethical endeavour overtly committed to social justice, that creating knowledge is a process of co-production, rooted in experience, rather than as a means to generate decontextualised and generalisable 'truths'.  As we looked back, we viewed some of the work we cite as not particularly participatory, and that we have experienced the participatory impulse as an aspiration that inevitably has to navigate the possibilities, contradictions, and tensions of the dominant hierarchical non-participatory world.  

When we encountered action research, both of us strongly felt the weight of the positivist tradition in our educational upbringing. We were eager to shake off our assumptions with a fresh approach to knowledge as being provisional, contested, and contingent, where instead of the presumption of an external abstract ‘knower’, we position knower/s within a system oriented towards producing knowledge for worthwhile action. Yet the questions we had to face in so doing were many and indeed, they continue to inspire our curiosity.

As Richard Winter and colleagues point out, all writing is in itself a research act (Winter et al 1999), and the invitation to collaborate on this chapter offered us each an opportunity to examine the development of action research thinking and practice that had shaped our engagement with such questions. What we present here draws on our reflections about the process of writing the chapter together and how we now view the importance of the content we chose to highlight.

I (Ruth) approached my contribution from two decades of co-ordinating the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) initially as a Co-ordinating Group member and later as Lead Co-ordinator. In the course of writing the chapter, Cathy drew my attention to the government sponsored Community Development Projects (CDPs) in the 1970s which had enthused her early interest in urban studies, and this prompted me to recall my glancing encounters with the CDP, and with action research and the participatory turn at this time.  My engagement with the field had, I realised, actually begun with an intuitive grasp of action research and its thinking in the radical community development and protest movements of the 1970s. In turn this led me to question what had obstructed my subsequent ability to incorporate these early experiences into my 'official' biography as an action researcher. It seemed to me that there was a significant gap in the documentation of these events, and that this 'absent literature' might account for how little they figured in our discipline’s traditions. I myself had been viewing my own biography through the narrow lens of academia and its publications.

Cathy's experiences derive from working in research, teaching and policy roles across government, practice settings and academia.  Her first real immersion in action research came about alongside other mid-career professionals seeking to reappraise their practices and impacts to foster social change by studying at the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice (CARPP) at the University of Bath. CARPP was co-founded in 1993 by Judi Marshall, Peter Reason, David Sims, and Jack Whitehead to develop the theory and practice of AR, underpinned by an internationally informed participative worldview and an extended epistemology. CARPP specifically aimed to enable postgraduate research that would meet established quality criteria and bring about radical developments in both ideas and practices.

In the late 1980s I (Ruth) re-entered the academic world into action research practice in health settings at London University Institute of Education to undertake commissioned research, and this provided me with an opportunity to explore some of the origins of action research. I found that London's Tavistock Institute was the main champion of action research in the UK post-war years, where clinicians and HR specialists radically re-envisioned both individual and institutional 'frozenness'- or the inability to encounter problems as available for inquiry - as socially constructed.

But, in trying to present an account in our chapter of its key influences in the UK setting, I re-discovered how slippery the UK's geographical boundary proved to be. Kurt Lewin – a German Jewish refugee from Nazism – practised AR in the USA, yet the Tavistock Institute counts his work as foundational. Similarly, the origins of CARN in England arose from an American funded curriculum development project and drew from the outset on international networks. Ideas were crossing international boundaries fast.

On the other hand, we also realised that while this cross-fertilisation was apparent across the growing body of participatory work in the UK, there has always been a certain insularity between distinct centres of inquiry based in the UK academy itself, including the ones we report on here. Looking back, I wonder to what extent this productive international exchange of thinking was stimulated by a fascination with unfamiliar – ‘exotic’ - contexts and an ease of imaginative connection that may have seemed less straightforward between the directly connected world of neighbours.

The democratic impulse was one of CARN's core values and was practiced through inquiry and discovery approaches to learning.  Initially it was school-based – it was the Classroom Action Research Network – and grounded research acts in the processes of teaching and learning. Carr and Kemmis thought of action research as 'an embodiment of democratic principles in research'. This radical re-orientation of focus towards practice as knowledge production challenged the hegemony of academic educational research by 'making teachers' investigations of classroom practice its central component' (Somekh 2010: 109).

This approach emerged in other disciplines, particularly the caring professions, and postgraduate study which bridged higher education and practice settings began to develop. It was at this point that the term 'classroom' was exchanged for 'collaborative' in CARN's title, though there is a continuing sense within the network of the inquiring classroom as omni-present, potentially in every setting if we care to think of it that way.

I (Cathy) found that CARPP was strongly committed to the exploration of the ontological and epistemological groundings of AR, rooted in pragmatist philosophy and a participatory world view where ‘truth is something we do together’. As a student, this was an exhilarating experience that positioned AR as a life-long endeavour and commitment to dialogue, collaboration, exploring purposes, living values, and taking worthwhile action.

The joy of writing the chapter was in part, an opportunity to revisit and reflect on the experience of being part of the CARPP ‘community of inquiry’.  The work of the founders is internationally known and there is a substantial rich, thematically coherent, and values-based body of work that thankfully, is still accessible. There are journal articles and PhD theses that include experimental, creative, and innovative forms of writing and representation and more expansive expositions of ways of knowing.

Being part of this community also exposed me (Cathy) to the different perspectives and space occupied by a parallel, yet distinct approach to inquiry as a critically reflexive, relational, and improvisational approach, through the work of SOLAR (Social and Organisational Learning as Action Research). 

SOLAR was established by Susan Weil, initially based at University College Northampton in 1996, and then at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol 2002-9. Despite shared epistemological roots with CARPP, SOLAR wanted to be more systemic, seeking powerful patterns in stories, recurring themes and tensions that reproduce themselves in complex systems and tended to avoid the terms first-, second- and third-person inquiry used by CARPP.

At a CARPP workshop in 2002, I (Cathy) was excited and challenged by the invitation from Susan to engage more explicitly with power relations and system dynamics; to find ways to conduct inquiry amidst the ‘minefields of silence’, designing for emergence, and having the courage to learn from the mess, naming contradictions as an act of power, making it legitimate to notice frozenness, the issues that are not discussed, and how people respond.

Twenty years later, this challenge is highly resonant. In revisiting this work for our chapter, we saw some of the Tavistock's ideas, for example, organisational frozenness, silences, and denial, but transformed through an epistemological framework where expertise is no longer positioned via the ‘expert’ clinical gaze and framed instead as egalitarian.

We were also struck by the prescience of Susan Weil’s work from the 1990s that was developing creative ways to work with stories and acknowledge the realities of complex systems, those ‘not capable of being understood or controlled, in which we must approach learning and change as relational and improvisational processes’ (Weil, 1997: 378). 

At times highly experimental, SOLAR continued to develop the thinking and practice of Systemic Action Research (SAR) in stark contrast to traditional research or consultation. Their work was a clear call to ‘build cultures that support new forms of collaborative inquiry and action research’ that strongly reverberates throughout our experience and, to this day, warrants a wider audience.

As in the case of the early decades of AR in the community development movement, documentation in the initial period of education-based AR was also limited, with publication taking place in single sustained works such as Carr and Kemmis's Becoming Critical (1986), collections such as the Handbooks of Winter (1999) and Winter and Munn-Giddings (2001) and Reason & Bradbury (2001), and guides to practice.

On setting out the dates of origin of the two foremost UK based international AR journals we were surprised to see how long it had taken for them to emerge: Educational Action Research in 1993 and Action Research Journal ten years later.  Whilst SOLAR’s continuing influence manifests in Barry Percy-Smith’s work at the University of Huddersfield and Danny Burns at IDS, University of Sussex, the closure of the SOLAR archive at UWE creates a significant loss of documented activity for the action research community.

In registering silences, we concluded by finding hope for the flourishing of action research  and the contribution it can make to a more just and sustainable world often manifesting in marginal, off the radar spaces.  We propose that any revitalised vision of a deeply participatory AR will need to adopt a more holistic, affective, and relational approach to learning and knowledge creation that demands that we recognise the part emotion – including fear, anger, sadness, excitement, passion, and courage – plays in creating cultures, and the necessity to better integrate acknowledgement of our feelings into our practice.

Silence about important participatory work has much to do with the ‘enclosure of knowledge’ (Hall & Tandon 2017) within universities. We are encouraged by the emergence of new publication opportunities outside the conventional peer-review system – eg via The Social Publishers Foundation, CARN Praxis – in a cycle of return to the days before the establishment of peer-reviewed journal in our discipline, but in this iteration, embracing diversity.

The UK-based initiatives we highlight always drew on significant worldwide connections and interchange. Acknowledging that global exchanges and meetings of AR scholars from different networks and with differing interests are now taking place more often, the chapter that we originally wrote in 2019 issues a challenge for action researchers to be more collaborative, to share our practices within and across disciplines and sectors in the UK and embrace the technologies that can reduce our airmiles.

Our experience of the subsequent Covid 19 pandemic has at least demonstrated to us just how possible and valuable this really is, both internationally and more locally.  Our individual and mutual immersion in online meetings and networks across a wide variety of contexts and localities, has been sudden and hugely beneficial.  We have seen conference participation transformed by the inclusion of students, researchers, teachers, and practitioners of action research who would never attend a face-to-face event, not least because of the barriers of costs and time to travel.

We have taken part in and witnessed encounters as equals between eminent writers and figures from the action research world and novice researchers, practitioners and mid-career researchers in small breakout rooms and other configurations.  Such a fresh shape to our networking has created a significant and welcome disruption to the power dynamics and cliques that can prevail. We hope this will continue to re-orient our relationships in ever more productive ways.

Open access resources

https://www.socialpublishersfoundation.org/ 

https://www.carn.org.uk/resources/carn-praxis/

Open Access title: Democratising Participatory Research: Pathways to Social Justice from the South by Carmen Martinez-Vargas. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1511

https://www.carn.org.uk/

https://arnawebsite.org/

https://www.alarassociation.org/

https://knowledgedemocracyorg.wordpress.com/

https://stephenkemmis.com/

https://research-for-real.co.uk/

References

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming Critical: Education Knowledge and Action Research. London:  Routledge.

Hall, B. L. and Tandon, R. (2017). Decolonization of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory research and higher education, Research for All 1 (1) 6-19

Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (2001). Introduction: Inquiry and participation in search of a world worthy of human aspiration. In P. Reason and H. Bradbury (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage

Somekh, B. (2010). The collaborative action research network: 30 years of agency in developing educational action research. Educational Action Research, 18(1): 103–121.

Sharp, C. & Balogh, R. (2021). Becoming Participatory: Some Contributions to Action Research in the UK. In D. Burns, J. Howard, S.M. Ospina (eds)  The Sage Handbook of Participatory Research & Inquiry pp 154 - 168 Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage Publications

Weil, S. (1997) ‘Social and organisational learning in a different key: an introduction to the principles of critical learning theatre and dialectical inquiry’, in Stowell, F.,  Ison, R. and Armsonet, R (eds) Systems for sustainability: People, organisations and environments, New York, NY: Plenum. 378

Winter, R., Buck, A. and Sobiechowska, P. (1999). Professional Experience and the Investigative Imagination: The Art of Reflective Writing. London: Routledge.

Winter, R. and Munn-Giddings, C. (2001). A Handbook of Action Research in Health and Social Care. London: Routledge.

This is part of a series of chapter summaries of the Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. 

Feminism is a multifaceted approach to facilitating research that cannot be defined by a single theoretical framework. Third- wave feminism (1980s–present), also known as Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Theory/Feminism, and/or Intersectionality, is the feminist space we currently reside(Coghlan and Brydon-Miller, 2014). Feminist  research ‘put(s) the social construction of gender at the center of one’s inquiry’ (Lather, 1988: 570), arguing that gender is central in shaping our consciousness, knowledge, and institutions, as well as determining who holds power and privilege. At its core, feminist research  aims to ensure the voices of all, particularly in the context of gender, are heard in order to create a more just world. As such, the links to participatory research (PR) are clear; PR allows for us to see a future where the diverse voices of humanity are welcomed.  

The tenets of PR cannot be achieved if we do not welcome a feminist lens in our work. How can we advocate for   a world that is more equitable, through PR, without listening to the voices of women and  marginalized genders? How can we advocate   for social change if we aren’t willing to think  deeply about how power and privilege impact our worldview? How can we speak about justice if we first aren’t   willing to look at the ways we contribute to gendered bias? 

Key contributions:

The history of feminism in PR markedly begins with the seminal work of Patricia Maguire (1987), one of the first to recognize   the androcentric (focused on the experiences of men) nature of PR and ‘critique … male chauvinism in participatory research’ (Maguire, 1987: ix). Maguire’s piece, Doing   Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach, created a new paradigm by bridging feminist thought with participatory action research, and paved the way for the integration of feminism into PR. Maguire raised the question, where are the women? Stating that at the time, ‘gender was rendered invisible by supposedly inclusive terms such as people, the oppressed, the campesinos, or simply the community’ (Maguire, 1996: 111).  

In the late 1980s, feminist researchers sought a way to combat traditional, positivistic research by implementing approaches that celebrated relationships and iterative processes, giving way to PR (McIntyre et al., 2004). Before this time, ‘rarely have feminist and participatory action researchers acknowledged each other as collaborators with mutually important contributions to the journey’ (McIntyre et al., 2004: ix). Unfortunately, even at this point, feminism and PR continued to diverge, with feminism still rooted in more positivistic research paradigms, and PR remaining predominantly androcentric (McIntyre et al., 2004).  

Scholars such as Patricia Maguire, Yolanda Wadsworth, Andrea Cornwall, Mary Brydon-Miller, and Alice McIntyre continued to fight for a feminist space in PR in order to make way for the two frameworks to converge. Cornwall’s (2001) book Making a Difference? Gender and Participatory Development highlights the exclusion of women’s voices in participatory discourse and community engagement, and argues for a deeper consideration of power dynamics and more inclusive spaces for all genders.

In 2004, McIntyre, Brydon-Miller, and Maguire published their text Traveling Companions: Feminism, Teaching, and Action Research, which compiles perspectives from feminist participatory researchers as they explore and reflect upon power, practice, and positionality within their own scholarly action-oriented practice. Concurrently with the introduction of feminist thought into PR came the notion of race and power through the lens of critical race theory (CRT). Much like feminist scholars determined a stark gap in PR as women were left out of conversations surrounding privilege and power, Bell (2006) pointed out  that race and racial issues too are left out of PR discourse. 

Tenets: 

The tenets of feminist PR include: (1) Rejection of value-free research, (2) Inclusivity, (3) Power, voice, and empowerment, (4) Positionality, and (5) Relationships and collaboration. 

Rejection of value-free research:

Feminist scholars reject a positivistic  approach that suggests research must be objective and value-free, acknowledging this paradigm creates ‘dehumanizing assumptions, methods, and implicit messages’ (Maguire, 1996: 113). Instead, feminist scholars acknowledge that knowledge is socially constructed and research exists within a system of values. Feminist PR researchers commit themselves to conduct research that challenges political systems of power and practices that continue to marginalize populations (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003). 

Inclusivity:

Participatory research as a whole has historically failed to be inclusive of marginalized communities, which led to inclusivity becoming a core concept within feminist PR (Reid and Frisby, 2008). In order for PR to be authentic and transformative it must be inclusive and couched within a feminist lens that appreciates the depth and intersectionality of human experience (Frisby et al., 2009: 24). Cornwall (2001) argues that in order for  women to be fully engaged, they must feel comfortable and welcomed in spaces where participatory work is being done. Frisby et al. (2009: 23) notes that ‘this is where action research contributes back to  feminist theory-building, because the goal is to engage in participatory processes that are inclusive of those usually marginalized from  more formal processes of theory production,’ suggesting that the overall processes are more intentional about inclusivity. 

Power, voice, and empowerment:

As feminist researchers we are called to  explore how power comes into play in the  world around us, but also within our research. Facilitating participatory methods from a feminist perspective requires that we give up  control of conducting research, and rather welcome collaboration with others. Participatory approaches are designed to expose the role of power in the construction of knowledge, recognizing that it is feminist research that ‘calls attention to the centrality of male power in that social construction of knowledge’ (Maguire, 1996: 111).  

Positionality:

Within a single feminist PR project, the researcher takes on multiple roles that can be impacted by their own positionality and personal bias, both of which are necessary to address. An action researcher may hold several roles, which is further confounded by whether the researcher is an insider in the community they are studying, an outsider, or some combination of the two. Feminist participatory researchers have an obligation to acknowledge and delve into the ‘interlocking nature of oppression and privilege’ (Brydon-Miller and Maguire, 2009: 85). Despite power differentials that may exist, or the multiple roles that a researcher may carry, the participants, or co-researchers, are the leaders of decision-making (McIntyre, 2008), to stay true to the PR process. 

Relationships & Collaboration:

Feminist PR involves ‘creating knowledge through participatory processes in the context of human relationships’ (Maguire, 1987: xvi). Within a single feminist PR framework, participants in a project are considered to be co-researchers who contribute fully to the research throughout the entire process (McIntyre, 2008), which is grounded in a deep commitment to a relational approach  as a philosophical underpinning. By developing strong relationships with co-researchers, participatory researchers are able to gain the trust of underserved communities and gather more rich, relevant data in order to work towards creating measurable, positive change  (Vaughn et al., 2017). 

Intersectionality:

Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Intersectionality lend themselves well to participatory research strategies (Houh and Kalsem, 2015), particularly in terms of collaboration and authentic relationships between researchers and par ticipants (Thomas, 2009). Intersectionality, a theory that highlights and values intersecting identities in relation to human experience (Crenshaw, 1989, 1990), is a concept originating in both CRT and Black Feminist Thought.

The primary tenet of intersectionality is the consideration of intersecting oppressions that are a result of being a part of more than one historically marginalized group (Crenshaw, 1989, 1990). According to Anderson et al. (2007: 7), PR ‘has the potential for empowerment and the inclusion for greater diversity of voices in educational policy and social change.’ The issue of power relations and balance of power is a key theme in PR (McIntyre, 2008), CRT, and third-wave feminism (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017; hooks, 2000). 

Feminist-Informed PR Methods:

Through its connection with feminist thought, PR has the ability to appreciate and highlight marginalized voices as well as view women as capable contributors to research and social justice (McIntyre, 2008). Just as there is no single theory that informs PAR, there is also no single method that PAR implements (Burns, 2007; McIntyre, 2008). 

Photovoice:

The development of Photovoice was rooted in utilizing a feminist theoretical lens to address the androcentric nature of participatory research (Wang and Burris, 1997). Photovoice involves providing people with cameras so that they can take photographs as a means to ‘identify, represent, and enhance their community’ (Wang and Burris, 1997: 369). It is used most often around the topic of   health, however it is beginning to gain popularity in other spaces.

Photovoice is rooted in a feminist inquiry; it is in opposition with positivist ways of knowing, instead focused on ‘listening to and learning from women’s own portrayal of their lives’ (Wang, 1999, p. 187). Photovoice confronts other forms of research that rely on the researcher to determine the needs of the community; rather, within this method communities are empowered to ‘collectively prioritize’ their needs (Wang and Burris, 1997). Photovoice empowers people to be catalysts of change within their own communities, by providing them an opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise (Wang and Burris, 1997). 

Group-Level Assessment:

Group-Level Assessment (GLA) is a qualitative, participatory methodology meant for large groups (Vaughn and Lohmueller, 2014). The process involves participants responding to prompts on large posters presented throughout the room, then a preliminary group analysis is conducted, followed by group discussion; reflection is also a key part of the GLA process (Vaughn and Lohmueller, 2014). GLA leads to data that are propelled by participants, not by researchers, and it leads to the creation of action plans that work toward program development and problem solving (Vaughn and Lohmueller, 2014). The nature of the participatory process makes GLA inclusive of multiple individuals and experiences, and responding to prompts anonymously allows for leveling the playing field between stakeholders.

Within the context of feminist PR, GLA has been used in several instances to amplify women’s voices and capture their unique, pluralistic experiences. Guy and Boards (2019) used intersectionality as a framework for their participatory research project investigating the perspectives and needs of under- represented minority (URM) women students enrolled in STEM degree programs. Their study implemented a GLA to develop an action plan to support them at the university. Arthur and Guy (2020) also utilized GLA within a feminist PR framework to better understand women engineering students’ experiences during their cooperative education (co-op) programs. Through the GLA process, Arthur and Guy (2020) worked with their participants to develop several action items that are being used to improve the experiences of women engineers on co-op. 

Conclusions

Feminism challenges PR to focus on power, gender, and collaboration as key tenets. Feminism has helped participatory researchers ensure that relational collaboration and genuine participation are central to their practice. Feminist participatory scholars urge participatory researchers to ensure that conversations around gender and power are discussed as central to our development of knowledge, in an attempt to combat the traditional, androcentric nature that has historically plagued PR.

Feminist PR promotes inclusivity of all genders in the PR process, while not simplifying individuals’ experiences as mono lithic. Furthermore, feminist PR demands that participatory researchers be intentional about who is offered a seat at the table, while also consistently revisiting who is left out. 

Recommended reading:

Arthur, B. and Guy, B. (2020). ‘No, I’m not the secretary’: Using participatory methods to explore women engineering students’ experiences on co-op. International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning, 21(3): 211–222. 

Crenshaw, K. (1990). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford law Review., 43 (6): 1241-1299. 

Frisby, W., Maguire, P. and Reid, C. (2009). The f’word has everything to do with it: How feminist theories inform action research. Action Research, 7(1): 13–29. 

Maguire, P. (1987). Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 

McIntyre, A., Brydon-Miller, M. and Maguire, P. (Eds.) (2004). Traveling Companions: Feminism, Teaching, and Action Research. West- port, CT: Greenwood.