Participatory Theatre and Video: Acting Against Violence in Northern Nigeria

Oga Steve Abah, Jenkeri Zakari Okwori and Ogoh Alubo. (2009). Institute of Development Studies [IDS] Bulletin, 40(3), 19-26.

The authors discussed the use of theatre for development [TFD] and participatory video [PV] in the research on violence in northern Nigeria. First, they carried out a survey throughout several communities, then developed a drama performed in each community and followed by a debate. PV was used throughout. The research finding is interesting: they argued that people do not see contemporary violence as a result of religion; rather, people perceive it as the organizing platform.

Interesting to note the reasons for choosing TFD and PV for this participatory action research (p. 21):
1. high level of illiteracy
2. "Wonderment about video makes people eager to speak to the camera" (p. 21)
3. can "afford participant ownership of the research tools and process.
4. "participatory process. . . is a spur to reflection and self-critical analysis".
5. alternative ways of looking at violence and manipulating the end of violence.-->seed for change.

The way they used PV techniques was to record the process from the community survey through drama-making to the discussions after the performances. It also recorded message from people on opposite sides of the religious and ethnic divides. It was done by trained community researchers.

The authors defined the roles of theatre and PV played:

"Theatre thus played multiple roles of information-gathering, feedback, analysis and triangulation or validation of facts, while PV played a role in building up a broadly accepted and pluralistically-constructed version of events, and in data-recording on both content and process" (p. 22).

Reflecting on the methods, the authors wrote:

"In broad terms, the TFD and PV, the quantitative research and qualitative interviews complemented each other very nicely throughout. The quantitative component provided useful information on the areas most affected by the violent incidents in Kaduna, Plateau and Kano States" (p. 23).

[Seamless use of quantitative, qualitative, arts-based methods for community-based research]

Arguing the suitability of TFD and PV for participatory research, the authors wrote about its connection with oral culture, reinforced reflection, and catharsis:

"The appeal and relevance of such reinterpretation and reflexivity are underscored by the fact that the work we do is mostly situated in oral cultures where the ability to read and write are limited or non-existent. Instead of being constrained by specific questions, people were enabled to connect with the incidents of violence in a reflective manner, through testimony or narration of their experiences during the drama and during the PV discussion. This outpouring appeared to allow them purgation and relief" (p. 24)

They also pointed out the importance of non-verbal expression that constitutes real life reflected in the methods of TFD and PV:

"In real life, most meanings are constructed not just by words, but by signs and body language. Eliciting these through TFD and then capturing them for posterity using PV generates a permanent and rich source of complex data including body language, facial expressions, postures, movements, bodily adornment and material culture" (p. 24)

As an advantage of PV over TFD, the authors argued for its transferability:

"While TFD can only be experienced at the place and the moment when it is happening, the videos enabled community members to see what happened in other communities, hear the views
of others and see the multiple ways these were articulated, including their emotions and bodily
expressions. No dramatic action can be repeated exactly twice, but PV can record the action and
repeat it several times over, which allows for deeper reflection" (pp. 24-25)

The authors asserted that this research contributed to consciousness raising achievement by telling some emblematic stories of individual participants. They attributed two factors --the participatory method and the experiential lives of the community --to the outcome. They argued that these two factors created ownership, participants' ownership not only of the research process but also of the discussions, arguments, etc. [Ownership is discussed in the context of the content]

The North-South convergence : A 30-year first-person assessment of PAR

Orlando Fals Borda. (2006). Action Research 4(3), 351–358. DOI: 10.1177/1476750306066806

Fals-Borda warns the attempts of asserting a set of rules or guides applicable to all. He argued that there are so many autonomous groups. So, he argued:

[I]t is preferable for us to seek our own explanations for building an alternative paradigm, by studying our indigenous or founding regional groups and emphasizing their values of human solidarity. Some of these groups extend from one country to another without respecting present frontiers . . . . The fundamental values of the founding groups provide a strong ethos identifiable with a deep-rooted non-violent socialism that is worth salvaging to repair our deteriorating social fabric.(p. 356-357)

Within this perspective, he called for an alternative methodological paradigm pertinent to regional context:

Our methodology is now faced with the creative challenge of constructing an alternative paradigm in regional contexts, for understanding and valuing the complexities of societies,
as regards their oral links, particular characteristics, present situation and spontaneous nature. (p. 357)

Paragidmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences

Egon G. Guba & Yvonna S. Lincoln. (2008). In Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research (3rd ed.) (pp. 255-286). Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi, and Singapore: Sage.

The authors developed their definition of the nature of paradigms proposed in 1994 by incorporating John Heron and Peter Reason's (1997) participatory/cooperative paradigm. In this chapter, they focused on issues of axiology, commensurability, action, control, foundations of truth and knowledge, validity, voice, reflexivity, and postmodern textual representation.

It is interesting to note that they changed their perspective on commensurability: in the past, they had argued commensurability between paradigms is not possible, although within each paradigm, mixed methodologies may make good sense. Yet, in this chapter is argued that it would not be impossible to blend some elements from each paradigm. For instance, positivism and postpositivism are clearly commensurable.

Concerning the call to action, the authors noted:
"The mandate for social action, especially action designed and created by and for rearch participants with the aid and cooperation of researchers, can be most sharply delineated between positivist/postpositivist and new paradigm inquirers. (p. 267)

Another controversy around paradigms is centered on control of the study: who initiates? who determines research processes? who determines what to be represented? The authors noted that the issue of control is deeply embedded in the questions of voice, reflexivity, and postmodern textual representation, which are relevant only to new paradigm inquirers. Interestingly, however, the term control is used to foster empowerment, noted the authors:

"[F]or new-paradigm researchers control is a means of fostering emancipation, democracy, and community empowerment, and of redressing power imbalances such that those who were previously marginalized now achieve voice (Mertens, 1998) or "human flourishing" (Heron & Reason, 1997). (p. 268)

Validity is the most controversial term among paradigms. Questions relevant to validity include: are the findings sufficient enough to act upon them?

Voice: In the past, the only appropriate voice was "voice from nowhere" (p. 277). While the voice of informants becomes important, the authors observed that it is critical to participatory research, having a researcher's voice in the text and simultaneously letting participants speak for themselves through various media, such as plays, forums, performance-oriented media... The authors remarked: "Performance texts, in particular, give an emotional immediacy to the voices of researchers and research participants far beyond their own sites and locale" (p. 278). For Rosanna Herz (1997, Introduction: Reflexivity and voice. In (Ed.), Reflexivity and voice), voice is a struggle for representation of the author's self as well as the respondents' selves. She wrote:

Voice has multiple dimensions: First there is the voice of the author. Second, there is the presentation of the voices of ones' respondents within the text. A third dimension appears when the self is the subject of the inquiry. (p. 278).

[Participatory video, these dimensions come into play. How do participants represent their voice when they present their respondents' interviewed voice? Is this argument really relevant ti PV in any case? I explored a bit of this issue in writing reflexivity.]

Reflexivity: The authors defined as reflexivity here reflecting critically on the self as researcher, instrumental to research.

Postmodern textual representations: postmodern and poststructural perspectives brought forth criticism around conventional texts: their reductionist representation of human reality and contribution to historical oppression. As a counter-text, new forms of texts flourish to break boundaries and moving the center to the margin. One of the examples is "messy texts" (Marcus & Fischer, 1986), which breaks the binary between science and literature. The authors noted that "Representation may be arguably the most open-ended for the controversies surrounding phenomenological research today" (p. 280).

In concluding, the authors remain as constructivists. They think it is highly unlikely and even less than useful that positivist and new paradigm forms of inquiry resolve their differences because of the assumption that there is no single truth. Thus, they wrote:

"We stand at the threshold of a history marked by multivocality, contested meanings, paradigmatic controversies, and new texual forms" (p. 281).

A Participatory Inquiry Paradigm

John Heron and Peter Reason (1997). Qualitative inquiry, 3 (3), 274-294. doi: 10.1177/107780049700300302

Deveoloping Guba and Lincoln (1994, Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N.
K. Denzin & Y S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research), the authors articulate a participatory paradigm by supporting Guba and Lincoln's argument that the constructivist paradigm is unclear about the relation between constructed realities and the original cosmos. In this light, the authors argued that "participative realities" are more useful.

The authors begin a paradigm building from the constructivist worldview. Further, it emphasizes human beings in relation to the living world and experiential knowledge, inquiry and reality. They argued:

"Constructivist views tend to be deficient in any acknowledgment of experiential knowing; that is, knowing by acquaintance, by meeting, and by felt participation in the presence of what is there. (p. 277)

For them, reality is a form of experience and experiential reality is both subjective and objective. For instance, holding someone's hand means that it shapes the person and simultaneously I meet the person. Thus, they stated, "To experience anything is to participate in it, and to participate is to both to mold and to encounter; hence, experiential reality is always subjective-objective" (p. 278). This participatory, subjective-objective, experiential reality constitutes the ontology of participatory worldview. Heron (1996 p, 11 ...) wrote:

It is subjective because it is only known through the form the mind gives it; and it is objective because the mind interpenetrates the given cosmos which it shapes. (p. 11)

Thus, in this paradigm, they argue that there is a primordial reality, in which the mind actively penetrates and cocreates reality through interaction with the cosmos.

Epistemology: the authors emphasize critical subjectivity as the epistemological ground. They acknowledge that knowing is from a perspective and that perspective has authentic values as well as restricting bias. Thus, what involves is critical subjectivity, such that a self-reflexive attention is given to the knower's ground. Developing the community consensus (which determines relative truth) of constructivism, the authors add shared experiential meaning to judge the relative truth. [THIS ARGUMENT IS VERY VAGUE.] In this light, they argued that critical subjectivity extends to critical intersubjectivity, for personal knowing is always set within cultural and experiential shared meaning.

Methodology: Collaborative/Cooperative forms of action inquiry.
The authors argued that cooperative inquiry rests on two participatory principles: epistemic participation and political participation:

The first means that any propositional knowledge that is the outcomes of the research is grounded by the researchers in their own experiential knowledge. The second means that research subjects have a basic human right to participate fully in designing the research that intends to gather knowledge about them. (p. 284)

The more participatory systematically the more cooperative. Thus, they distinguish this methodology from the mainstream qualitative paradigm:

Qualitative research about people is a halfway house between exclusive, controlling, quantitative, positivist research on people and fully participatory, cooperative research with people. (p. 285)

Cooperative inquiry is "a wide-ranging science about any aspect of the human condition that a group of coresearchers choose to explore through the instrumentality of their own experience" (p. 286).

Axiology: the authors contended that the omission of axiology in Guba and Lincoln's paradigm table is a critical deficit because axiology ultimately asks why we try to create reality and what it worthwhile and valuable. In this question, the authors respond that the participatory paradigm answers it is for human flourishing. It is practical knowing of "how to choose and act" (p. 287).