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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.

Today, people worldwide can expect to live into their 60s and beyond.

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. 

Paulo Freire is celebrated worldwide for having developed literacy methods based on learners’ thematic universe and cultivating ways to promote social justice. Along his life, Freire contributed to shifting the paradigm of what counts as literacy – from basic reading and writing words to the development of sociocritical understandings of one’s lived experiences. There are numerous parallels between adult literacy and Participatory Action Research (PAR) initiatives, to which Freirean roots are central.

Together, both PAR and Freirean Literacy movements aim to create local autonomy and capacity for collective democratic participation, by providing to working-class participants knowledge and organizing skills. While participatory and action research traditions existed before Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1968, Freire’s work articulated the epistemological grounding for PAR as a liberatory praxis.

In Freirean inspired PAR, the academic research model is challenged at almost every point. The dualisms of macro/micro, theory/practice, subject/object, research/ teaching, are collapsed. Freire’s views on the transformative power of this form of inquiry are powerfully stated when he writes that “the silenced are not just incidental to the curiosity of the researcher but are the masters of inquiry into the underlying causes of the events in their world” (Freire, 1982. P. 30). A Freirean approach, which is grounded in popular education and adult literacy, insists on the ability to read the word and the world. 

Many of Freire’s ideas were developed during his literacy work with poor Brazilian workers, but they are relevant to his approach to PAR. A summary of how Freire's principles translate into participatory action research practices can be found in Table 1: 

Table 1: Freire’s key concepts and their influence on PAR methodologies.

Source: Author's elaboration

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

The chapter argues that all action research is participative. Not all participative research, however, qualifies as action research. The author unpacks conceptual assumptions regarding the self in support of the action research orientation to knowledge co-creation and offers a rich case study.

The focus of the paper is on re-conceptualizing the actors within action research.  Understanding ourselves and others as relational, and therefore as participative rather than excessively individualistic selves, creates a meeting place between action research and participative inquiry. The chapter ends with a call to action among those who practice participative inquiry at this time of social-ecological crisis.

A general, often-cited definition of action research: 

Action research is a democratic and participative orientation to knowledge creation. It brings together action and reflection, theory and practice, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern, with, not on, people. (Bradbury, 2015: 1). There is, however, no simple “how to.” Moreover, today there is a growing concern for more action researchers to grapple with our increasing eco-social challenges and to work in support of the larger social transformation from an industrial growth society to a life enhancing civilization.  

External change and internal transformations combine

The chapter argues it is necessary to link the work of change and transformation, therefore of external and internal focus. Action research at this time of needed transformation describes a human-centered approach to complexity, updated with a perspective that foregrounds the emergent ‘space between’ and within individuals. This relational approach offers a transformative space in which new possibility emerges among stakeholders. The implication is to pay attention to how to cultivate capacity for emerging creative relationships among people, taking steps to not assume and reinforce treating ourselves and others as overly individualistic. This is developmental work.

We can say that action researchers work with, not on, those with a stake in the issues at hand. This means paying attention to practicing reflexivity by acknowledging and owning the impact of our partial blind spots and facilitating the same among others within the community of stakeholders. This turn to the self is not about being overly self-centered, but deepening the naturally occurring (if easily overlooked) sense of self as already a process in participation. 

Exemplar case: Swedish healthcare centering patients (not clinicians’) needs

A small group of healthcare workers started to include patients directly in their efforts to redesign healthcare delivery. They moved away from a clinic-based system using a social learning process. In this stakeholder process, knowledge creation page6image45891968among all stakeholders was key to realizing the improved outcomes. The key point of leverage seems to have been the sharing of experience and inquiry made possible in regular learning platforms. These were spaces in which different kinds of data (e.g., from interviews and photovoice) could be discussed as in a focus group.

The conversational space was facilitated with keen attention to relationships, so trust dynamics built, fractured and regenerated over time. Framed as transformative knowledge creation these healthcare redesign efforts continue and spread to measurably (1) improve patient experiences and health, (2) reduce healthcare costs, (3) improve the work life of those who deliver care, and (4) bring healthcare providers into circum- stances that allow for continuous learning together with patients (Bradbury and Lifvergren, 2016 )

Key indicators of success include an 80% reduction in emergency visits; a 90% reduction in office visits as well as a reduction in hospital days by around 90%. These reductions pay for the mobile units. Other assessments have shown significantly improved quality of life as well as relief of troublesome symptoms among the patients. 

Lars, the patient whose request for different care of his physician instigated the proverbial butterfly effect, was able to experience this transformation before he died. He summarized the change and transformation he experienced:

‘I went in and out of the hospital for three years – it was really dreadful. But now the mobile team comes to me and supports me at home – it is deluxe care.’ 

As this large scale change came about, the work of transformation among healthcare workers included redefining relationships of power between healthcare decision makers and others. In this relationships of trust had to be made and remade, neither too fast not too slow. (see Livergren and Zandee 2019 for a rich case study). 

Conceptual tool: The self as already a participative system.

Participation implies attention to how we work with others, i.e., taking on the second-person exercise of inhabiting another’s mindset, for which empathy is required. For this, one must also become better acquainted with the one who is doing the inquiring, namely ourselves. Thus, the practice of relational, inter- subjective work becomes a critical anchor for ensuring quality of work with stakeholders, in a way that integrates personal transformation with the external work of tangible change (Chandler and Torbert, 2003).

The practice of relational action inquiry (Bradbury and Torbert, 2016) describes and supports this development of self with community. It continues (e.g., Bradbury and Catone, 2021) as an effort between colleagues in looking together at their different socialization, attempting to create more mutuality. It points to the way in which deeply personal and interpersonal work, can acknowledge inherited power dynamics, and give life to new forms of relational learning and transforming power. This work, while deeply personal anchors self and communities of transformational change. It is deeply pragmatic. 

Constructivist developmental pragmatism

William James (1983 [1912]) in his ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’ places concrete personal experience at the center of philosophical and psychological efforts to find that ‘immediate experience is the instant field of the present which arises prior to the division of subject and object and anterior to all reflective judgment.’ In his essay ‘The Continuity of Experience’ James explicitly articulates his field model of the self in a way that curiously evokes action researcher Kurt Lewin’s (1943) foundational contribution to action research. These are important philosophical moments in which a more pragmatist approach to knowledge began to examine and dispense with the inherited foundational philosophical dictates of European origin that over emphasize the work of conceptualization and reflection.  

This pragmatic anchor is shared with a number of similarly persuaded pragmatist-educator luminaries since, including George Herbert Mead, Jane Addams, Mary Parker Follet to John Dewey. Today we see it in the work of Jürgen Habermas, acknowledged for grounding in pragmatism, with rich pragmatic implications. We may also discern clear echoes of Buddhist teachings that emphasize attention to experience are which are becoming mainstream in the mindfulness movement of the 21st Century.  

Experience includes but is more than what is conceptualized. Experience shows us that are already participating, already capable of linking inquiry and action. Conceptualization, when excised from more wholistic personal experience, on the other hand, makes ever finer distinctions, treating subjects as objects. This is useful, to a degree. Though reinforced by mechanistic era educational and research practices, being overly individualistic and privileging passive thought is not after all a “natural” or desired state. Attention to our personal experience shows us that we are already participating.

Implications for action at a time of escalating crisis

Action research is practiced by those scholar-practitioners who are interested in linking change and transformation within human systems. Where change concerns tangible change in the external world, transformation contributes change within those involved, such as a change in how they view and relate, experientially, to themselves and their stakeholders. Action research for transformations thus involves actors who are both subjects of change, as well as agents of change.  The work is therefore developmental for all involved. As subjects of change, we necessarily develop capacity for reflection that manifests also in tangible action. 

It’s timely and important to acknowledge the global sustainability crisis in which social and ecological dynamics now intertwine. The action researching participative spirit is an increasingly popular and essential way for conducting action-oriented transformation research. It is proving itself capable of transforming vestigial power relationships that maintain the current status quo. It signals a different kind of knowledge creation and calls us to develop our inherent capacities:   

A more experiential conception of self leads to a more relational and participative understanding of the self. 

We are already seamlessly embedded in the natural and social systems that surround us. 

We are a species graced with capacity for partnership and collaboration (along with easily awakened tendencies to fear, control, and dominate).

The external work of change linked to the internal work of transformation among communities of stakeholders is already resulting in scalable, tangible benefit to those involved.

Key References

Bradbury, H., Editor. 2015. The Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. 3rd Edition. London & Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing.

Bradbury, H. and Lara Catone. 2021. Cultivating Developmental Responsiveness: Methodology, Reflexivity, and Transformation.  Integral Review. Dec 2021 (17) 1-20.

Bradbury, H., and Lifvergren, S. 2016.  Action Research Healthcare: Focus on Patients, Improve Quality, Drive Down Costs. Healthcare Management Forum.

Bradbury, H. and W. Torbert. 2016. Eros/Power: Love in the Spirit of Inquiry. Transforming how women and men relate.  Tucson, AZ: Integral Publishers.

Lifvergren, S. and D. Zandee, 2019. In Bradbury, H. and Associates. 2019. Cooking with Action Research: Stories and resources. Spanish/English. Volume 3. AR+ Foundation.  www.ActionResearchPlus.com