Working Method

: Research and Social Justice. Lois Weis & Michelle Fine (Eds.). (2004). New York: Routledge.

Participatory Action Research: From Within and Beyond Prison Bars (Fine, M., Torre, M.E., Boudin, K., Bowen, I., Clark, J., Hylton, D., Martinez, M., "Missy", Rivera, M., Roberts, R.A., Smart, P., & Upegui, D., pp.95-119)

Fine et al. argue that PAR is grounded in the epistemological assumption that knowledge is rooted in social relations and most powerfully produced in collaboration and action, and note that PAR has been typically practiced within community-based social action projects.

In their cursive history of PAR, the authors point out Kurt Lewin as the genesis of action research in the United States since the 1940s in that he validated participant knowledge for democratic research. The authors find the root of PAR in Gramsci's notion of organic intellectuals, who deeply ground their lives in class struggles and bring about counter-hegemonic knowledge. Thus PAR, according to the authors, constitutes fundamental challenge to Gaventa's "official knowledge", and Habermas's "scientism".

The authors assert that feminist approaches and critical studies took PAR to a new horizon in the recent years. This movement include Lykes's commitment to PAR, Linda Tuhiwai Smith's indigenous studies, Kum Kum Bhavnani's questions of feminist objectivity, which delves into self-conscious subjectivity in the quest for the objectivity.

The authors introduce their own PAR done in a women's prison about the impact of college on women prisoners. The outside researchers offered courses about research methods and conducted the research together with a group of inmates as inside researchers. Highly valuing insiders' knowledge, the authors point out the requirements of successive PAR when outsiders and insiders work together. These are common and complementary skills, trust, respect and understanding.

As insider's dilemma, the authors write self-censoring, which in the case of a study about inmates is almost survival instinct. Another problems that arose during the research is, they point out, unregulated interruptions such as illness, outside commitments, unexpected absences, etc. However, they emphasize that "the extra time we have been afforded through this process has strengthened our sense of being a true research "team", as our relationships have grown over time. Each struggle we have individually and collectively undergone has helped us to better understand one another's ideas and theoretical perspective" (p.115)--It is the process of reciprocity that leads to better understanding.

Another issue pointed out in this article in relation to PAR is intentional ignorance. The authors write, "[W]e have met insider researchers and practitioners who have self-censored, worried that the material was "too hot" and would be used against the community, and feared that the researcher would be shunned, the research attacked, and the story further silenced" (p.117). The authors mention that ultimately they figured out ways to talk about the materials.

One of the advantages of PAR is mentioned in this article. In the authors' expression, they "dance between detachment and engagement". They explain that, while outsiders bring in fresh eyes by asking deliberately naïve questions, insiders know where to get more in-depth material, bring about the complexity of the problem without romanticizing inmates as powerless or victims.

[In this article, it is not clear what sort of actions had been brought about through this research.]


CHECK OUT M. Brinton Lykes (2001). Activist Participatory Research and the arts with rural Maya women. In D. L. Tolman & M. Brydon-Miller (Eds.), From subjects to subjectivities: A handbook of interpretive and participatory methods (pp. 183-199). New York: New York University Press.