Education, Particpatory Action Research, and Social Change

: International Perspectives. Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan (Eds.).(2009). NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Introduction: International Perspectives on Education, PAR and Social Change (pp.1-11)/ (Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan).
Kapoor and Jordan argue that PAR that was initiated for political intents in the global south is being tainted by imperial and colonial ambition tied to Eurocentric knowledge production and interests of capital referred to as globalization. One of the key research interests includes an emphasis on the political nature and contribution of PAR to various international political projects while continuing to rely on its "critical reflexivity concerned with the moral, practical and political ramifications and contradictions of PAR activations" (p. 3). They explain the term, critical reflexivity as a defining ingredient of any PAR process committed to a politics of margins and the constant reinvigoration of participatory research approaches(p.3). Kapoor and Jordan look at PAR in four different ways in this book: 1) co-optation and assimilation of PAR in a global context, 2) from the perspective of knowledge creation and the critique of mainstream social sciences, 3) PAR as social movement learning and 4) PAR as an indigenous methodology.

From a Methodology of the Margins to Neoliberal Appropriation and Beyond: the Linages of PAR (Steven Jordan, pp.15-27)
Jordan argues that PAR, which began in the ground of anticolonial movement of the global south since 1960s, became gradually and insidiously separated from its radical and political origins and slowly institutionalized and co-opt by mainstream social science researchers, private consultants, government bodies, international development agencies, and NGOs.
Tracing back the lineages of PAR, Jordan asserts that PAR itself is a blend of a broad range of research approaches, such as participatory research, action research, feminist praxis, critical ethnography, aboriginal research methodologies, transformative/critical pedagogies and popular community education. But he argues that PAR, more generically participatory research, has not always been aligned to radical/political movements and it has rather increasingly subject to assimilation and co-option to the mainstream research. Within this context, Jordan pays particular attention to the neolibral appropriation of PAR. He argues that such research process contributes to reconstitution of PAR as a tool of capitalist accumulation after all. Thus, he calls attention not to what neoliberal institutions, for instance, World Bank, do, but to who become empowered and under which condition.

Based upon the theoretical critique of PAR, Jordan reclaims PAR within three layers. First, he suggests that PAR should form alliance with research communities following the tradition of critical ethnography, which abandons epistemological positivism. Secondly, he states that PAR practitioners should pursue the stream of learning in social action (Foley, 1999, Learning in Social Action). The reason is, Jordan explains, that learning in social action, which emphasizes informal learning, in particular, through struggle, urges us to pay close attention to the co-option process of informal learning to neoliberal policies and people's resistance. Lastly Jordan calls attention to language and conceptual framework of PAR. It is a question of critical self-examination about questions to pose, research process to construct, and analytical framework to explore. He argues subtle uses of mainstream concepts impact on the research questions, process and analysis.

Participatory academic research (par) and People's Participatory Action Research (PAR): Research, Politicization, and Subaltern Social Movements in India (Dip Kapoor, 29-44).

In his critical analysis of a subaltern social movement, Kapoor distinguishes par from PAR. First of all the ways in which research is done in university settings is different from social movements that originate from living experience and struggle for rights, and it is less flexible. Kapoor writes that a par process is perhaps theoretically engaged but contextually disconnected, and often detailed by a PAR process embedded in a movement dynamic that demands an urgent flexibility. A dividing line between par and PAR is, according to Kapoor, that par relies on academic theoretical construction while PAR relies on reflection that emerges from lived realities in a specific context of engagement. He is cautious of the danger of par, which is its theoretical hearing impairment produced by blind adherence to theorizing and political interest, ruling relations of capital.

When Research becomes a revolution: Participatory Action Research with Indigenous Peoples (Cora Weber-Pillwax, 45-58)
Her PAR came very naturally when she was involved in her organizing experience of providing educational support to aboriginal communities in the 1980s. She describes the project as follows:
"Life and education was continuing. People were learning. People were involved. People were participating. There was anger, there was frustration but there was the excitement of learning. People wanted to be at the meetings, they wanted to participate. They saw hope because they were engaged. As long as these things were in place, PAR was happening. Life was happening. When some people wanted to keep the power, they started to try to control the movement. They put administrative procedures in place to ensure predictability and manageablity. When that happened, the process stopped. There was no longer participation. there was no longer hope, there was no longer anything living and vital about the system. At that point, PAR no longer existed" (pp.56-57).

Weber-Pillwax argues that transformation is a significant principle of PAR at the outset when Freire and Fals-Borda were developing the theory and practice. She adds that they never intended to use PAR outside of community-based research to bring about transformation or change in personal/collective environment.

Critical Complexity and Participatory Action Research: Decolonizing "Democratic" Knowledge Production (Joe Kincheloe, 107-121)
In this examination of the epistemological and ideological foundations of PAR, Kincheloe emphasizes the notion of critical complexity. The assumption of critical complex epistemology is, he explains, that "the mind creates rather than reflects, and the nature of this creation cannot be separated from the surrounding social world" (p. 109). Based upon this epitemological foundation, he criticizes scientific neopositivistic research has neglected diverse perspectives and interpretations of non-dominant groups, such as the poor, women and people from different ethnic backgrounds for the sake of finding the universal truth. He also warns the essentialism often surfacing among PAR that "glorifies the perspectives of the collaborators and community members in a form of left democratic essentialism" (p.112). Ground in these ideas, he propose critical PAR, which emphasize dissimilar interpretations of the world and diverse impacts, and understanding particular nature of phenomenon in people's lived experience or particular sociocultural/educational circumstances. In this way, critical PAR validates the knowledge and expertise of minority groups, uncovers dominant discourses of power and its insidious practices to maintain the status quo, thus challenging epitemological and ideological aspects of Western research.

Reconceptualizing Participatory Action Research for Sustainability Education (E. Lange, 123-136)
Lange finds the origins of PAR in the international development field, the education field, and the community development field and asserts that the purpose of PAR in each case is disrupting hegemony:

1. Predominant in the global south, PAR began to a response to failed northern-inspired development approaches and the limitations of positivist research paradigm in the hope of creating knowledge, educational practices and social action towards inherent transformation in local communities. The approaches taken by Orlando Fals-Borda and Paulo Freire are inspiring examples for Lange. She explaines that, for Fals-Borda, PAR was "a research tool to enable the popular classes (working class and peasants) to identify their issues and generate 'popular' knowledge useful for discerning effective actions for transforming society toward social justice" (p.124). She sheds light on the assertion that Pablo Lapati made, which is there is a tight connection between the popular education methodology of Freire and PAR in that a political commitment to the oppressed of Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed resonates in the spirit of PAR, a political commitment to solidarity with the marginalized towards sustainable social change.

(For Lange, sustainability means maintaining social needs without diminishing the prospects for health and justice for self, others and environment.)

2) On the other hand, Lange notes, PAR, originating from the Action Sociology of the Frankfurt School, is practiced in community social action field in the global north. One significant different between the development PAR and community PAR is that community PAR revolves around a community of interest, not bound geographically. Nevertheless community PAR is characterized collective analysis and organization for social change for the benefit of those involved in the knowledge production and learning process.

3) The third strand Lange introduce is found in educational action research. This approach is more practice oriented--as a living practice--rather than knowledge production. From this perspective, teaching is a social matter that requires collective dialogue, theorizing and action and at the same time, an ethical issue in that it sees great potential. It delves into deep awareness of being on the basis that "who one is becomes completely caught up with what one knows and does" (Carson and Sumara, 1997, p.xvii).

Lange also look at PAR from living systems theory, which sees the world as an undivided wholeness that is continuously shaped by our cognition and action as well as the natural process. Perceived from this theoretical foundation, PAR conveys particular ontological/epistemological/pedagogical assumptions and implications in social transformation.

With regard to the epistemological assumptions, Lange questions whether middle-class individuals with little politicization can be shifted into an active mode to generate knowledge for civic engagement and empowerment. In her response, Lange states that PAR offers a "reflexive practice that engage them in a more penetrating social analysis of their own historical and class position" (p.129). Lange also maintains that PAR attends to "extrarational" ways of knowing such as intuitive knowing which could transform their being.

Lange sheds light on the three dimensions of PAR that Lapati (1988) described: research/education/action dimensions. Through PAR, Lange emphasizes, one can test their own views against others' perspectives and by acting upon them. Lange connects this pedagogical process with Freire's notion of intervening, which enables learners to become curious and unsettled, and with Briton's (1996) notion of a pedagogy of engagement, which stresses on adults' engagement in critical democratic practices and resistance to the modernity that denies their right to make decisions and maintain dignity. Thus, Lange writes, "learning is a personal and political encounter" (p.131).

Her perspective on social transformation in relation to PAR is interesting. She maintains that such social transformation is a reinvention of power in responding to changing contexts and by telling new stories, enacting alternative social processes and redirecting energies. Thus she calls patience so that the transformation reveals itself.