I thought it would be apt to write my last post (certainly for a few weeks!) drawing on the concluding reflections of Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury in the latest Sage Handbook on Action Research Participatory Inquiry and Practice.  Their conclusions are wide ranging and so I will continue, as I have in the last few posts, to summarize and comment on how these ideas might influence participatory approaches in general, also seeking, where appropriate, to connect ideas specifically to PAR.

Concentrating on the Big Issues

Reason and Bradbury invited contributors to the handbook to point to key issues facing researchers engaged in participatory research.  An important theme they identify involves encouraging researchers to connect to the “big issues” of our time – research with a “global ambition” – on issues such as poverty, ecological catastrophes, water distribution and HIV/AIDS.   And yet there is also a recognition that the track record of participatory research in facilitating large-scale change is not that impressive.  Where it is used in managing change, there are concerns that it is viewed as an “instrumental tool” thereby losing its radical edge and silent on questions on the reasons for change and on identifying the winners and losers of a change process.  Mary Brydon-Miller writes

“action research seems to have gained a popularity of late, and it’s this very popularity and potential watering down of our vision for social changes that will accompany it that are of greatest concern for me.”

In fact increasing the legitimacy of participatory methods seems a double edge sword – on the one hand it provides researchers with more opportunities to study participatory approaches but on the other hand it potentially waters down its liberatory and emancipatory philosophy.  Brinton Lykes puts it the challenge in no uncertain terms…

“As we labor for quality and validity – which are, are they not, legitimacy and recognition – and celebrate the recognition of AR within the panoply of legitimate research methodologies in universities, NGOs, the World Bank and the UN, can we simultaneously press for the revolutionary change needed to ensure life on earth and justice for the human community….What is the meaning of earning wages including research dollars that situate us within the top quartile of the world’s income distribution when those who we collaborate frequently live on less than $2 a day or lack healthcare or housing?”

Some Thoughts

In the last few weeks I have read a fraction of the literature on participatory methods but I am leaning towards some tentative conclusions.  Not only is the act of participatory research incredibly difficult with complex ethical and practical dilemmas but also the outcome of the research, despite good intent, is often very limited in terms of social change.  In addition, the role of a participatory researcher seems particularly challenging –  to be part bricoleur, innovatively using the resources at hand, part connector, weaving together ideas, relationships and networks to enable creative conversations, and part politician, negotiating interests and adapting to changing environments – to name but a few roles.  To add a participatory element to research is relatively easy but those who seek to fully embrace the participatory mindset probably require a unique combination of skills, a sense of injustice and opportunities to collaborate on projects where their input can assist collective action. It makes structural equation modeling look like a walk in the park and fleetingly attractive – but if you want to change the world then who said it would be easy?!

Note: Over the next few weeks I am working on paper exploring how a PAR approach might inform research into institutional work – any comments/thoughts always appreciated either through the blog or direct – gdover@sfu.ca.  Cheers!

Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. Concluding reflections: Wither Action Research? In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE.

Having made a commitment to a participatory approach it is often assumed that the methods will neatly slot into place. The reality, however, is that different methods have different effects to both foster and limit participation as Sonia Ospina and her colleagues found.  They were investigating the Leadership for a Changing World program that is sponsored by the Ford Foundation.  The program from 2001-2005 encompassed 165 individuals from 92 social change organizations involved in a diverse range of activities from community building to advocacy on a range of issues from health care to the environment.  The researcher’s commitment to a participatory approach led them to develop a “hybrid design” that would use three established qualitative methods in order to balance the interests of the funder, academic colleagues as well as engage program participants. It was successful but “demanding” throwing up thorny issues around “positionality”.

Mixing Methods and Participation: Shifting Positions

The researchers were interested in exploring leadership as a collective achievement rather than focusing on individual characteristics and behaviors and developed the following research question- “in what ways do communities trying to make social change engage in the work of leadership”.  To seek answers they employed three methods:

• narrative inquiry – involving site visits and extended interviews to develop a “leadership story” for each organization;
• ethnographic inquiry – working with individuals over 3 months to paint a portrait of particular leadership issues and practices;
• cooperative inquiry – group work engaged in cycles of action and reflection to explore a “burning question” of their practice.

The advantage of three methods was that they could “weave the lessons” from each of the different streams into their research. Their goal was to combine these conventional methods with a commitment to participation and to adopt a “positionality” – their relationship as researcher’s vis-à-vis research participants – as one of “reciprocal collaboration” (drawing on the work of Herr and Anderson who propose 6 positions ranging from an insider studying their own practices to an outsider working with insiders).  They found, however, that maintaining such a stance proved to be difficult – influenced by three principle issues – “control over the research process, the action orientation of the research and the voice represented in the production of knowledge” – issues directly influenced by each research method.

For example, when using the cooperative inquiry and ethnography qualitative methods, the control of the research was quite clearly shared with participants in contrast to narrative inquiry and cross-site analysis where researchers managed the process entirely. The participants found narrative inquiry “too removed from their daily work and were less interested in participating in all its stages”.  The researchers did find real benefits of sharing control, arguing that the more democratic process enhanced the quality of knowledge generated but they also point to the energy involved in ongoing negotiations over who would do what and the heavy investments in building trust that were triggered anew each time a new participant joined the project.

In terms of the action orientation of the research, the cooperative inquiry and collaborative ethnographies enabled participants to propose questions of relevance to their work and facilitate a positionality of mutual collaboration.  Narrative inquiry, however, was more focused on producing knowledge for external practitioners and academic audiences having “no direct consequences for any given participant’s work”. While the three methods enabled the development of materials that could be tailored to different audiences the researchers were disappointed that not all “products were successful for participants” especially the narrative inquiry that “based on the participants feedback we decided that the stories contribution did not warrant the labor involved”.

Finally, in terms of voice – considering the knowledge that was created and whose voice was represented – the researchers observed the greatest impact on their positionality.

“While we designed a process to engage many voices at multiple points, each final product represents choices that inevitably excluded some representations.  Here our positionality became particularly acute…. Who has the power to make those final choices?”

Cooperative inquiry as a method enabled the voices of participants to be represented in final products in comparison to cross-site analysis where the researchers operated as outsiders working with insiders where the researchers “voice was dominant”.  This experience of trying to understand their relationship towards participants resulted in some significant challenges:

• The researchers had less autonomy to interpret data and draw conclusions than they were use to.

“Traditional qualitative researchers, like their quantitative counterparts, have more degrees of freedom to pursue their own understandings of the data than action researchers do”.

• The researchers experienced challenges associated with producing materials that described a single organization.  Securing participant approval meant that sometimes whole sections of a document were not included if participants perceived the material to be inaccurate, misleading or potentially harmful or that they simply disagreed with the researcher’s interpretation.
• The process favored positive assessments of the organizations involved.  For example, the narrative method tried to use appreciative inquiry to overcome suspicions of the participants but this in turn “determined the type of stories that we heard”.

Sometimes an appreciative inquiry was confused (by participants as well as by members of the research team) as an invitation to whitewash the messiness of real experience by downplaying its problematic dimensions.

• The researchers also spoke to the people that the participants suggested therefore missing an opportunity to explore the “work of leadership in contested contexts”.
• The diversity of voices made it hard to generate coherent content and integrate the knowledge into a single account.

Mixed Methods Thoughts

I enjoyed reading this article – it shows researchers grappling with their commitment to a participatory approach in order to meet the different needs of their stakeholders.  The hybrid design exposes how some methods may be more suited to increasing participants control, voice and practical outcomes, as well as the importance of researchers having the freedom to hold a critical stance and a position of “reciprocal collaboration”.  Finding the ‘right’ mix of methods and the necessary skills may, however, make these types of projects extremely challenging to design and implement.  The researchers also recognize that hybrid designs inevitably mean a loss of quality in the way each individual method is implemented but the value is in their combination.  The overall effect is a richer, fuller picture that is arguably worth all the effort.

*Ospina, S., Dodge, J., Foldy, E., & Hofmann-Pinilla, A. ( 2008 ). Taking the action turn: Lessons from bring participation to qualitative research. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE.

One of the challenges for participatory research is how to involve large numbers of people.  More often than not, however,  participatory projects are focused on a single group because of resource constraints. This makes Geoff Mead’s* experience all the more important – a researcher responsible for setting up and coordinating a project with over 20 participatory groups.

Public Service Leaders & Action Inquiry Groups

Mead was involved in a program to assist in the development of public service leaders in the UK.  He launched his first eight groups after a presentation on the principles of action research and encouraged them to be guided by a simple question – “how can I/we improve my/our practice as public service leaders”.  Unfortunately, it didn’t go to plan…

“As I entered the room, the participants’ frustration was evident: “This all seems very woolly.  What exactly are you asking us to do? queried a spokesman.  There followed an hour of fairly unsatisfactory and heated discussion ending with my encouragement to them to ‘find their own way’”.

It got worse.  Some facilitators resigned, stakeholders became twitchy and commissioned an external evaluation of the scheme.  The initial reluctance by participants to “engage in formally constituted cooperative inquiries” was a complete surprise.  Mead argues, however, that after this initial turbulence the groups started to come together but for different reasons that those originally envisaged.  The funders (a statutory agency) had hoped for some very tangible results but for participants the benefits included increased self-confidence and awareness and the development of a consultative and partnership working approach.  Even then, it wasn’t plain sailing.  The process involved not only convincing the sponsors to agree to different evaluative criteria of the project but also dealing with “slumps” in participant energy and enthusiasm.

Large-scale project Take-aways

Mead lists 10 capacities and qualities for a leader managing a large-scale action research project that reflect the challenges of leading in a complex environment.  I suspect, however, that there might be other learnings here too.

1. The reluctance of the participants to engage in a formal process of cooperative inquiry might be worth reflecting on.  The voluntary aspect of participation, or lack of, may have a direct influence on outputs as well as motivation.
2. The make-up of each group may be important.  Here group members (8-10 people) were connected by geography so that they could more easily arrange meetings, but might this have ignored existing networks, communities of practice, that were not based on geographical lines?  How important is ‘chemistry’, that group members enjoy each others company?
3. The initial framing of each group’s agenda may have had some significant implications.  The intention was for it to be “broad” to open up the possibility of wide-ranging discussions.  However, it resulted in some considerable initial confusion and I wonder if it resulted in a missed opportunity.  The agenda was steered towards a focus on existing practices and their improvement rather than using the collective experience of all the groups to develop innovative approaches to public leadership or concentrate on a particular problem that they had collectively identified. It could be that this was impossible for political reasons but it might have been worth the risk as the reported group outcomes seem to show evidence of real individual and small group benefits but collectively the results could be interpreted as introverted and safe.  Put another way, should we expect more from a research process that after 2 years involving over 250 top public service leaders from the civil service, local government, National Health Service and other agencies, that points only to outcomes that begin with “increasing, encouraging, developing, broadening” rather than “organizing, changing, replacing, introducing”?

Mead’s account reveals the complexity of large-scale participatory projects and his openness to share the “muddling through” process enables the reader to not only see the tensions between the different stakeholders, participants and facilitators but also some practical difficulties in encouraging people to participate (countering the assumption that individuals brought together will somehow naturally engage in collective thought and action). If large scale projects are to fulfill their potential in generating significant social change then further exploration of the conditions that facilitate participation and then generate action in these settings will be essential.

Mead, G. (2008 ) Muddling through: Facing the challenges of managing a large-scale action research project. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice (628-642). Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE.

The issue of quality in participatory research is often difficult to nail.  Hilary Bradbury and Peter Reason* propose that the answer to the question – are we [researchers] doing good work? – is answered by considering quality in relation to five key issues:

• relationships;
• practical outcomes;
• extended ways of knowing;
• purpose;
• and enduring consequence.

Getting to grips with Quality

Bradbury and Reason explore each of these central issues in participatory research to articulate ways to assess quality.

a) Quality as relational praxis – involves considering whether participation in the research process has been maximized.   A mark of quality…

people will get energized and empowered by being involved, through which they may develop newly useful, reflexive insights as a result of a growing critical consciousness.  They may ideally say that “this was our research and it helped us to see ourselves and our context anew and to act in sorts of new ways”. p344

b) Quality as reflexive-practical outcome – an assessment as to whether the research has generated alternative practices.  A mark of quality…

participants should say – “that was useful – I am using what I learned”

c) Quality as plurality of knowing – relates to: “conceptual-theoretical integrity” – the degree to which theory is anchored in people’s experience and whether theory has been used to “bring order to complex phenomena; extending ways of knowing – drawing not only on conversations and writing but also other forms of expression such as theatre, video, poetry, photography; and methodological appropriateness – choosing methods that fit a “relational world view”.

Does it promote further knowing by raising new questions or by allowing us to ’see through’ old conceptual frameworks so that they are newly experienced as more limiting than enabling? p 345

d) Quality as engaging in significant work – examining the reasons for the purpose of the research.

So why are we are doing this work and why this way?

e) Emergent inquiry towards enduring consequence - considering the long term impact of the inquiry.

The evolutionary, emergent form of inquiry – sustaining the work of action research is often the outcome of a logic of structurated action in which the dyadic or small group micro-engagement of people working on a project together convened around an area of mutual concern manifests in an ongoing patterning of behaviors at a more macro-level p348 -

Ideally people will say “This work continues to develop and help us”.

Choice-points & Quality

Bradbury and Reason argue that these 5 issues represent choice-points for researchers.  While they recognize that the issues overlap they believe that researchers are unlikely to be able to deal with all of these issues within a project and instead are likely to concentrate on one.  Some will give primacy to one issue, such as practical outcomes, whereas others such as a dissertation student will focus on conceptual-propositional integrity.  Once made, they should then focus on answering questions of quality related to that choice.

The strength of connecting quality to these five broad issues allows Bradbury and Reason to accommodate a broad range of perspectives and research situations. It reflects the context-bound nature of participatory research and its emergent nature unsuited to an overly prescriptive approach to quality that could be restrictive and detrimental to participation.

The weakness of such an approach, however, is that allowing researchers “choice-points” may allow them to “cop-out”.  A PhD student, for example, might point to the quality of the theoretical contribution but now feel that it is legitimate to ignore the relational and long-term impact of the research, especially if those components of the inquiry didn’t go to plan, while still labeling the research as “participatory”. This might be partially overcome if the researcher has to negotiate their “choice-points” up front with their participants.  One other area of concern is that some choice-points seem potentially easier to demonstrate than others.  Bradbury and Reason point out that few researchers spend time justifying the purpose of their research in contrast to those who demonstrate practical outcomes presumably because it easier to point to specific practices than expose complex and often self-interested motivations.

As participatory research continues to become more popular the issue of quality will become more pressing.  The choice-points approach offers a framework and some challenging open-ended questions but distinguishing the “good” from the “not so good” will need to become more sophisticated.  In the interim, I wonder if the choice-points should not be viewed as ‘choices’ but considered as essential ‘discussion-points’ in every project. This could open up the project to critical appraisal and ensure the researcher assesses and presents the strengths and weaknesses of their inquiry to multiple audiences.  This might make issues of quality more transparent (quality isn’t simply choosing an area that fits the results) to enable participants and others to judge the credibility of its process and results.

Bradbury, H., & Reason, P. (2006). Broadening the bandwith of validity: Issues and choice-points for improving the quality of action research. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.) Handbook of action research (343-351). London: SAGE.

Of all the articles I have read so far, an article by Orlando Fals Borda* is one that has probably impacted me the most.  Why?  Fals Borda articulates a motivation and vision behind PAR in such a way that a researcher considering PAR may find disconcerting.  A researcher that engages in PAR, in Fals Borda’s terms, is not simply engaging in a participatory method, they are joining a movement.

Fals Borda tracks the history of PAR from the early 1970s and the desire of its early proponents to engage in research with a “seriousness of purposes and cultivated discipline” comparable to traditional university research but with fundamentally different goals. Viewing science as socially constructed and therefore subject to re-interpretation, revision and enrichment, led researchers to ask a different set of questions about knowledge, the relationship between theory and practice and the research process. Emphasis was placed on previously unrecognized sources such as “the rebel, the heretical, the indigenous, and the common folk” and efforts focused on connecting popular thought with academic science.  Attention was placed on very practical problems in society as “science appeared in need of a moral conscience” and the accepted wisdom of researcher ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ was challenged as being more indicative of support for the status quo.

“Regular scientists may discover ways to travel to the moon, but their priorities and personal values may not permit them to solve messy problems for the poor woman who has to walk each day for water for her home.  The former is of primary interest for technical development as such; the latter is one of the persistent expressions of humanity.  We therefore declared that the common people deserved to know more about their life conditions in order to defend their interests, than do other social classes which monopolized knowledge, resources, techniques and power; in fact we should pay attention to knowledge production just as much as the usual insistence on material production, thus titling the scales towards justice for the underprivileged.

The early PAR researchers had to “decolonize themselves” from the dominant institutional logics in their University environment in order “to discover the reactionary traits and ideas in our minds”.   Once identified the PAR researcher would get directly involved in “processes of social action” demonstrating what Fals Borda describes as a “praxis-inspired commitment”, to use knowledge for the improvement of practice in contrast to the mass of redundant information produced by conventional science. The “researched” now became participants and involved from the very beginning of the research process and collective group research “became possible with the advantages of obtaining interesting, reliable and cross-referenced results”.  This approach is epitomized by an empathetic attitude which they termed vivencia, meaning life-experience.

Present Day PAR

Fals Borda still sees PAR researchers as part of a movement for change.

We feel there is still a need for active crusaders and heretics for the great adventure of peoples’ emancipation, in order to break the exploitative ethos that has permeated the world with poverty, oppression and violence for much too long.

Its multi-disciplinary approach and mixed methods are seen as critical for “investigating symptoms of social pathology like anomie, violence, conflict and drug addiction, so common in today’s world” and he poses as a challenge:

“Can we therefore be participative students and agents of change and work together in order to assist in this intellectual and political movement for people’s self-reliance and empowerment, for the defense of life and the pursuit of relevant, useful science?  Can we commit ourselves as scholars and citizens to this epoch-making task?

This question doesn’t always seem an obvious motivating factor for some of the research that associates itself with PAR.  The question is openly ideological, political and unhesitant in its call for research to be connected to social change – ideas that don’t neatly fit with an academic world that often values incremental inputs to established specialist conversations. Fals Borda’s view of PAR isn’t easy to manage as it inevitably raises controversial questions and complex challenges for all participants.  However, PAR projects become seen as part of a wider endeavor – in themselves small steps but cumulatively important – and the opportunity within PAR to make a tangible difference makes it incredibly compelling.

Fals Borda, O. (2006). Participatory (action) research in social theory: Origins and challenges. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.) Handbook of action research (27-37). London: SAGE.

At a recent conference on Qualitative Research methods I asked a speaker about whether PAR ultimately required a researcher to already be an accepted member of the community contemplating research. The response was that this is the ideal situation and in their experience participatory methods are most effective when the researcher has built strong relationships and trust and this can often take many years. Not having many years to work with (!) I decided to investigate further what some refer to as ‘insider action research’ – where researchers are complete members of the organization or community – to understand its particular advantages and its possible drawbacks.

According to David Coghlan* insider action researchers are “immersed experientially in the situation”.   The advantages are:

• the opportunity to acquire “understanding in use” rather than “reconstituted understanding”;
• knowledge of an organization or community’s everyday life – its rules and norms;
• researchers can use the appropriate “internal jargon” and draw on their own experience in asking questions and interviewing;
• they can participate in discussions or merely observe “what is going on without others necessarily being aware of their presence”.

“They [insider action researchers] can participate freely, without drawing attention to themselves and creating suspicion”.

Trouble on the inside

Coghlan does, however, identify some drawbacks for “insiders” including:

• when interviewing they may assume too much and not probe as deeply as outsiders;
• they can find it difficult to gain access to relevant data because of their roles within internal hierarchies;
• they can suffer role conflict and find themselves caught between “loyalty tugs, behavioural claims and identification dilemmas”;
• the research project might be considered subversive and is political.  Coghlan cites cases of researchers that were misunderstood (staff perceived the researcher was using the project in order to be promoted) and unprepared for the problems of surfacing “undiscussables” (one “insider” resigned as they were unable to balance the roles of researcher and senior executive, and another insider “reports how he was accused of spying as his research notes were pilfered from his computer and circulated amongst his antagonists”.

Coghlan argues that these issues depend in part on the type of action research being conducted and proposes two types – mechanistic and organic.  Mechanistic-orientated action research is instrumental with research framed in terms of managing a specific change or a particular problem.  Coghlan argues that PAR is a mechanistic-orientated approach.  In contrast, organistic action research sees the inquiry process as having value in itself where the focus is less on the outcomes and more on “what is being learnt and how the process of inquiry challenges values and ways of working and enacts a transformation of being”.  Coghlan suggests that insider organistic research is potentially more difficult in political terms than mechanistic action research.

“As mechanistic action research is directed toward a pragmatic outcome, the benefit for the organization may be clear and more acceptable, whereas organistic action research is potentially more subversive as it addresses underlying assumptions and defensive routines that members of an organization may feel uncomfortable about being exposed and then may oppose and subvert”.

Some thoughts

It seems that being an insider may have some distinct advantages in terms of initiating a PAR project but over time it may become increasingly difficult to occupy multiple roles especially if the project generates controversial findings. It may prove impossible to convince other participants that the researcher’s motives are “pure” – to secure collective rather than personal benefits. In addition, there are obvious ethical issues for insiders – when, for example, do they need consent to observe their colleagues? In this light the “friendly outsider” researcher has some advantages. Their identity and motivations to participate may be simpler for participants to understand – eg to assist in solving a community problem and generate theory for an academic audience. So there may be hope for those outsiders who are considering PAR!

In terms of mechanistic and organistic orientations and the impact on insider effectiveness, I suspect that it might also depend on how an action research project is initially framed and the skills of the participants to manage change without provoking sanctions.  I’m not sure if I see PAR as solely mechanistic – perhaps because the term ‘mechanistic’ suggests a stability and organizational order (eg Burns and Stalker, 1961) that need not be associated with having a clear goal.  I also suspect that PAR within an organization may require a mix of both organic and mechanistic action research to both generate new ways of thinking and find concrete ways to express them.

Coghlan, D. (2003). Practitioner Research for Organizational Knowledge: Mechanistic- and Organistic-oriented Approaches to Insider Action Research. Management Learning. 34, 451-464.

The issue of control – the way a PAR project is run and managed – seems to be a practical dilemma for many PAR researchers.  Andrew Sense* gives an insight into the difficulties he faced in a PAR process involved in help employees in an Australian mine participate with an organizational change programme.  His work with a small project team exposed him to the challenge of wanting to participate in the context but also to control the process to meet his research needs. The problem of too much control, he argues, is that the project can lose the benefits of participatory “insights”, but an over-emphasis on participation can lead the process to “meander aimlessly”, wasting time and resources. Balancing the needs of the researcher and the importance of participation so that participants can actively engage in an evolving research process is a complex challenge. Sense describes some important decision points in his project where participation or control needs were sometimes emphasized and sometimes downplayed to ensure project momentum.

Weight on control or participation?

Sense gives examples of how placing weight on control or participation impacted his project.  He describes how at the start of the project, when the roles and expectation of the participants were being discussed, he placed the emphasis on participation even though he had considerable industry and leadership experience in managing organizational change.  He explains how this participatory approach enabled him to better appraise the participants’ “biases for action”, their social, political and personal motivations to achieve research and organizational outcomes, by having the time to build relationships. However, as time went on Sense was confronted with external pressures to be more controlling.  The project team was expanded to 16, the Factory manager “directly and decisively intervened in the operation of the project team” and Sense’s role required him to become more controlling of the process.

Some thoughts on Control…

Sense points to some real tensions in a PAR process – the list of tensions seems to be growing as I read more about PAR!  The difficulty of participating in a PAR project and also meeting the needs of the academic community is a general theme and the PAR process seems especially messy. Researchers seem caught between trying to assist in developing practical solutions for very specific problems and also attempting to carve out the space to develop theory and ideas for a very different audience.  Understanding who is in control and when they are in control seem good questions to ask. However, in this case I am unsure if Sense is really describing a PAR project and because of this a wider issue of control is potentially masked.  He talks about PAR as a “method” and he applies this to working with a team of 3 senior managers adapting and implementing organizational change. With PAR squeezed into an organizational change process already determined by the firm’s management, I wonder if the issue of control at the micro-level (between researcher and participants) is largely irrelevant.  The important question, here, might be around how a PAR researcher can avoid being manipulated. A participatory process to ensure the smooth introduction of a prescribed change doesn’t fit comfortably with ideas associating PAR with democracy, reducing inequality, self-determination and collaborations with personal and collective benefits.  PAR is vulnerable in these contexts as it offers those with a vested interest in change a way to gain legitimacy and reduce resistance by showing a willingness to engage in dialogue. This raises the importance for PAR researchers to not only recognize the controlling interests outside of the direct PAR process that shape and influence the environment in which the PAR project operates, but also to assess whether they individually have the means to gain the space to deliver transformative change with long-term effects..

Sense, A. (2006). Driving the Bus from the Rear Passenger Seat: Control Dilemmas of Participative Action Research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology. 9 (1), 1-13.

In a recent post I explored some criticisms of PAR by those with a positivistic standpoint.  In this post I examine some of the criticisms of participatory approaches as experienced in the field of development.  Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari* argue that, in this field, there has been an inexorable spread of participation as an approach that has produced tyrannical effects resulting in illegitimate and unjust exercises in power. They cite a number of problems including:

• simplistic assumptions by proponents about the rationality inherent in participation and the irresponsibility of not participating;
• an emphasis on the importance of informal networks while the actual work is with formal organizations;
• collective decisions are vulnerable to group dynamics – risky shift (group members take more risky decisions than they would have taken as individuals), the Abilene Paradox (where people second-guess what they think everyone else wants when the opposite is the case), groupthink (ingroup dynamics lead to evidently bad or wrong decisions being made) and coercive persuasion (manipulation of group members towards a particular outcome);
• a naivety of assumptions about the authenticity of motivations and behaviours in participatory processes;
• how the language of empowerment masks a real concern for managerial effectiveness;
• the quasi-religious association of participatory rhetoric and practice;
• how an emphasis on the micro-level of intervention can obscure and indeed sustain macro-level inequalities and injustice.

Frances Cleaver* explores in depth the role organizations and institutions play in causing some of these problems. He argues that advocates of participation are strongly influenced by discourses on the “new institutionalism” – the idea that institutions can help to formalize mutual expectations of cooperative behaviour and identify the sanctions associated with deviance.  However, the focus on institutions is towards formal practices – contracts, committees and property rights – and most commonly conceptualized as organizations: a form, Cleaver argues, that is visible, analyzable and amenable to intervention and influence.  The downside of such an approach to institutions is that it:

1. ignores the “informal” practices and interactions between people that often take place outside of formal organizations and “that the interactions of daily life may be more important in shaping cooperation than public negotiations”;
2. can misread “meaningful participation” – for example, if participation is assessed in public meetings in terms of individual (verbal) contributions this may be counter to local norms and practices. Cleaver provides an example of Tanzanian women who were seen to not participate in public forums as much as men but who explained how they nominated representatives to speak for them;
3. can result in problematic notions of community  that are often conceived as a “natural social entity characterized by solidaristic relations” where ideas of  “conflict, negotiation, inclusion and exclusion are occasionally acknowledged but little investigated”.  This ignores the interplay between “solidarity and conflict, shifting alliances, power and social structures” and feeds into a myth that communities are capable of anything if their latent capabilities can be mobilized;
4. misses the opportunity to see a person “positioned in multiple ways with social relations conferred by specific social identities”. This can mean that it may be more beneficial for some not to participate. For example, some women in Nepal gained by not participating in an irrigation association where clear gender roles were dominant, opting instead to operate outside of the organization where they could act without censure or detection.

A strong emphasis on participation of individuals and their potential empowerment is not supported by convincing analyses of individual positions, of the variability of the costs and benefits of participation, and of the opportunities and constraints experienced by potential participants.

Understanding institutional dynamics – enduring social phenomena (Hughes, 1936), the persistence of which depends on systemic conditions that automatically reward compliance and penalize noncompliance (Jepperson, 1991; Phillips, Lawrence & Hardy, 2000) – appears essential not only to explore individual motivations to participate but also to explore how the structures and practices that privilege some and disadvantage others are sustained . If, as Cleaver states, there is “little evidence of the long-term effectiveness of participation in materially improving the conditions of the most vulnerable people or a strategy for social change”, then exploring and articulating the “institutional work” of creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) may be critical in understanding the relationship between participation and social change.

*Cooke, B., & Kothari, U. (2001). The case for participation as tyranny. In B. Cooke & U. Kothari (Eds). Participation: the new tyranny? (pp1-15). London: Zed Books.
*Frances, C. (2001).  Institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory approaches to development. In B. Cooke & U. Kothari (Eds). Participation: the new tyranny? (pp1-15). London: Zed Books.
Institutional Theory References (To be added! – available on request)

Over the last few weeks I have been grappling with some of the tensions associated with PAR – in particular how “outsiders”, such as academic researchers, can engage with “insiders” , local participants, in ways that somehow meet their often diverse needs.  One model that I have found helpful is by Max Elden and Morten Levin* which they outline as “cogenerative learning”.

Elden and Levin propose a model that identifies that insiders and outsiders use different frameworks – ways of understanding, language, or cognitive maps – which need to be combined to develop “local theory” – a new shared framework.  They argue that the

richness and quality of the research depends on the ability of the insiders and outsiders to play their different frameworks and expertise against each other to create a new, third explanatory framework.

Insiders are experts in the specific setting and know from personal experience how things work.  This knowledge is highly individual, non-systemic and tacit and insiders are focused on solving practical problems.  In contrast, outsiders have specialist skills in designing and carring out research and approach participation with a general theory about the problem in hand.   The way these two groups can connect that integrates their different expertise – such as “insiders become more theoretical about their practice and outsiders more practical about their theory” – is through cogenerative dialogue.

Cogenerative Dialogue

Elden and Levin argue that cogenerative dialogue occurs when

insiders and outsiders operate out of their initial frames of reference but communciate at a level where frames can be changed and new frames generated.

Their experience is that participants take some time to learn about their expertise but by the end of the process the insiders take the lead in creating new knowledge.  Elden and Levin recognize the different power and knowledge bases of the participants and that the outside expert may have more powerful and explicit “sense-making models” giving them a possible “model monopoly” that needs to be overcome.  However, they are not advocating that researchers should avoid shaping the content.  They state that “what’s important is that the arena for possible action has been enlarged because ideas from our framework have been seriously considered”.  In fact this tension is at the core of facilitating cogenerative dialogue:

The contradiction between the outsider’s responsibility for introducing new ideas and concepts and planning a learning process and the participants’ control and active influence in framing the new knowledge that is developed must always be resolved based on the participants’ values and interests.

Local Theory & Action

If successful, the insiders and outsiders generate a concise and coherent explanation of why things are the way they are.  They generate a situation specific theory that explains relationships in a given situation that makes sense to those with the most local experience.  Elden and Levin argue that this leads to change as the theory can then be tested and improved in the local situation as well as used to inform more general theories.  They suggest three categories for academics: further development of the PAR process (eg develop a taxonomy of PAR); new knowledge of specific social problems;and research aimed strictly at academic-oriented theory production.

The neatness of this model is that it tries to recognize and navigate the tensions around participants possessing diverse skills and interests as well as trying to find a way for PAR to not only solve practical local problems but also contribute to general social science theory and knowledge.  That said, much rests on the idea of cogenerative dialogue and the participants’ ability to recognize and then utilize existing frames in discussions and then feel able to transform them.  This may be influenced not only by the skills of the participants but also the nature of the frames – how embedded and taken for granted practices have become and the sanctions and rewards that sustain the existing “local theory”.

* Elden, M., & Levin, M. (1991). Cogenerative learning: Bring Participation into Action Research.  In W. F. Whyte (Ed.) Participatory action research. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications.

Participatory research methods may be becoming more acceptable within Universities but its openly ideological approach and challenge to conventional science may lead some to conclude that it is an approach only for those academics who have tenure or have found other forms of immunity.  Patricia Maguire*, however, shows that it can be done as a doctoral student – albeit with some particular challenges!

Maguire was living in a small multi-cultural community in New Mexico and decided that she would use PR in her doctoral project. She responded to a request she read on a local laundromat bulletin board asking for volunteers to help with women and children who had experienced domestic violence and, after volunteering for some time, she approached the nonprofit board to gain access to former clients, with the goal of setting up an independent battered women’s organization. She describes how she interviewed a number of women, how they were mobilized to meet and the challenges of running those meetings.

Some of her take-aways for doctoral students considering PR include:

• Carve out time up-front – recognize that the initial stages of a PR project can be “very elongated” and require a lot of time.  There is no way to short-circuit this process of developing meaningful relationships although she points out that she started her project from scratch whereas it might be better for a student to either join an existing PR team or collaborate with an organization.

Collective work is messy and time-consuming. People may decide not to take action. They will surely not become empowered, liberated or transformed on our schedules.

• Pure PR projects are rare – Maguire talks about her group being more of a consciousness-raising group rather than a research group and that the group did not formulate a specific research question or collectively design, conduct and control a PR investigation. However, at the end of the process group members talk of a rehumanizing process where they no longer felt alone and had firsthand experience of collective problem posing and solving.
• The importance of resources – to sustain collective reflection and action over time requires considerable resources and Maguire argues that her group might have continued beyond her involvement if she had been more effective in connecting it to the local nonprofit agency.
• PR has personal implications – Maguire writes about being “challenged daily to consider the dilemmas and contradictions of my own life choices”and her struggles with the process:

By working hard to motivate women to become active and regular group participants was I trying to make the project, also incidentally part of my dissertation, a success? Was this “contamination” of a true participatory research project? Was that fear itself a holdover from the old research paradigm?

• Find faculty who are open to learning!  Obvious but essential!

• Practical issues of PR – from the lack of transportation to enable participants to make the meetings to the difficulty in getting women to facilitate discussions reveals that the experience of running a PR process is a messy one and long term collective action isn’t inevitable:

At the meeting several of the most active members suggested that it would be a good time to stop, even if only for the summer. A few quieter members offered no opinion. Two members, who had no transportation nor had offered any active leadership throughout, were adamant that we continue. But the majority won out. After an evaluation discussion, we ended with a fried chicken dinner.

* Maguire, P. (1993). Challenges, contradictions, and celebrations: Attempting participatory research as a doctoral student. In P. Park, M. Brydon-Miller, B. Hall, & T. Jackson (Eds.) Voices of change: participatory research in the United States and Canada. Westport, Conn: Bergin & Garvey.