: Using Reflexive Cycles in Feminist Participatory Action Research. Williams, J. & Lykes, M. B. (2003). Feminism & Psychology. 13(3). 287-294.
Pointing out theoretical resonance between PAR methodologies and feminist principles that focuses on empowerment processes and social action against traditional hierarchies of exclusion and PAR methodologies, the authors takes a stance of feminist PAR and discusses challenges and benefits in this article.
Their initial Photovoice project with Mayan women failed because few of the participants took photos. In the quest for solutions to the problem, they adopted role-plays. The authors note that through the re-enactment and reflexive conversations the participants hinted at their gender relations, traditions and community interactions, which were usually inaccessible to outsiders. The participants met once a month for a year and shared photos they took. The authors stress that, while the practices of photovoice allowed the women to give voices to the community members and to gain self-confidence and interpersonal skills, the "iterative praxis" of photovoice afforded the researchers insights into the risks and challenges confronting the women as well as gender/social oppressions within the community.
It is not so clear what the authors refer to as the limitations and strengths of feminist PAR. I assume that
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Activist Participatory Research Among the Maya of Guatemala
: Constructing Meanings from Situated Knowledge. Lykes, M. B. (1997). Journal of Social Issues. 53(4), 725-746.
Reflecting upon her experience in Guatemala, Lykes discusses strengths and limitations of PAR and in particular explores her "situated otherness within a praxis of solidarity". Realizing that (in)voluntary silencing was a key element that affected post-war life, she attempted to break the silence, and criticizes positivist social science methods that fails to capture the collective nature of individual experience and cultural symbolism that weave such experience. With this context, Lykes proposes activist participatory research, where relationships between researchers and participants constitutes an action. Within this model, Lykes positions herself as situated other and attempts to understand herself through an experience of shared subjectivity.
As a means of embarking on communication, Lykes utilized techniques of popular education, such as art working, dramatization, story-telling, etc. She explains that the use of creative productions as part of research served as texts for further analysis and discussion while creating multiple channels of representation and wider distribution.
As a situated other, Lykes continues to analyze her position in terms of otherness and in particular being female. She summarizes a challenge of PAR as follows:
"[T]he processes engaged toward establishing partnerships and engaging in PAR challenge our basic assumptions of who we and "the other"are. These challenges demand continuing re-visioning not only of the relationships themselves but also of our developing understanding of ourselves and the meanings we are making of the "data" we are gathering." (p.735)
Pointing out word-oriented knowledge distribution, Lykes describes the strengths of using visual images in carrying out research and distributing findings, as seen in Photovoice. She writes that such technique provided a unique tool for documenting women's concerns from their own perspectives. She adds that Photovoice complements other strategies that involves with indigenous resources and facilitates collaborations for further action and wider reaching out to the local communities. She articulates that the strength of photo is also weakness in that multiple-reading may contribute to meaning making but it may challenge participants who have been isolated and silenced for long.
Finally Lykes suggests criteria for evaluating adequate PAR: 1) the method's compatibility with other indigenous resources, 2) the easiness, 3) contribution to action, 4) representing multiple realities, 5) potential for sharing multiple indigenous practices and 6) minimization of risk to the participants.
Reflecting upon her experience in Guatemala, Lykes discusses strengths and limitations of PAR and in particular explores her "situated otherness within a praxis of solidarity". Realizing that (in)voluntary silencing was a key element that affected post-war life, she attempted to break the silence, and criticizes positivist social science methods that fails to capture the collective nature of individual experience and cultural symbolism that weave such experience. With this context, Lykes proposes activist participatory research, where relationships between researchers and participants constitutes an action. Within this model, Lykes positions herself as situated other and attempts to understand herself through an experience of shared subjectivity.
As a means of embarking on communication, Lykes utilized techniques of popular education, such as art working, dramatization, story-telling, etc. She explains that the use of creative productions as part of research served as texts for further analysis and discussion while creating multiple channels of representation and wider distribution.
As a situated other, Lykes continues to analyze her position in terms of otherness and in particular being female. She summarizes a challenge of PAR as follows:
"[T]he processes engaged toward establishing partnerships and engaging in PAR challenge our basic assumptions of who we and "the other"are. These challenges demand continuing re-visioning not only of the relationships themselves but also of our developing understanding of ourselves and the meanings we are making of the "data" we are gathering." (p.735)
Pointing out word-oriented knowledge distribution, Lykes describes the strengths of using visual images in carrying out research and distributing findings, as seen in Photovoice. She writes that such technique provided a unique tool for documenting women's concerns from their own perspectives. She adds that Photovoice complements other strategies that involves with indigenous resources and facilitates collaborations for further action and wider reaching out to the local communities. She articulates that the strength of photo is also weakness in that multiple-reading may contribute to meaning making but it may challenge participants who have been isolated and silenced for long.
Finally Lykes suggests criteria for evaluating adequate PAR: 1) the method's compatibility with other indigenous resources, 2) the easiness, 3) contribution to action, 4) representing multiple realities, 5) potential for sharing multiple indigenous practices and 6) minimization of risk to the participants.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Action and Knowledge
: Breaking the monopoly with participatory action-research. Orlando Fals-Borda and Mohammad Anisur Rahman (Eds.) (1991). NY: The Apex Press.
Some basic ingredients (O. Fals-Borda, 3-12)
Fals-Borda (and Rahman) does not distinguish participatory research (PR) and PAR strictly and rather specify the action component to emphasize action-research grounding in participation and participatory research tied with action.
Fals-Borda finds practical uses of PAR in a research method, adult education and sociopolitical action in that PAR encompasses the three aspects as an experiential methodology. He explains that experiential methodology is a process of personal and collective behavior and implies knowledge acquisition upon for power construction and social movements for the oppressed.
Fals-Borda lays out as the philosophical ground experience, which allows one to apprehend the essence intuitively, feel and understand reality, and thus place oneself in a wider context. He states that the experience, which contributes to understanding knowledge for change, stems from two different strands: one is Cartesian and academic and the other is experiential and practical. He proposes practical commitment, a form of praxis, as the only resolution to the dialectical tension between the two knowledge strands. He thereby writes,
"Therefore academic knowledge combined with popular knowledge and wisdom may result in total scientific knowledge of a revolutionary nature which destroys the previous unjust class monopoly."(p.4)
His approach to epistemology is grounded in a revolution and change and calls for commitment and praxis. In this regard, he argues that such commitment and praxis leads to a rejection of the asymmetry of the subject/object relationship that characterizes academic research and daily life.
Participatory theory, on the other hand, demands the destruction of the asymmetry and the transformation to the subject/subject relationship through participation, Fals-Borda writes. For him, the essence of participation is voluntary separation from the submission and dependence implicit in the subject/object relationship through experience. He adds that the authentic participation is resplendent with feelings and attitudes of an altruistic, cooperative, communal, thus democratic nature. He emphasizes that the process of participation thereby leads to a rejection of vertical authoritarian structure and exploitation and turns all the involved into organic intellectuals of the working class, who can continue the transformation process without external agents.
Fals-Borda succinctly says that PAR generally proposes a resolution of contradictions in a given region through recourse to endogenous elements and thereby may mobilize people from bottom to up and from periphery to center.
Besides a PAR's implication in a sociopolitical context, Fals-Borda looks into a phenomenological aspect of PAR from the experiences of those involved in PAR. Fals-Borda argues that they learn to "know and recognize" themselves as a means of empowerment by realizing that the science is a cultural production of purposeful and relative knowledge, which serve those who create and control it, thus it is equally possible that people's science is created through an informal and endogenous process. In this way Fals-Borda refuses the universality of knowledge and emphasizes the multiplicity of knowledge and its constructivism.
He suggests four techniques of PAR that may cultivate people's countervailing power: 1) collective research, 2)critical recover of history (selective discovery through collective memory of past elements useful in defense of the interests of the oppressed), 3) valuing and applying folk culture (to mobilize people, it is essential to develop techniques based on the folk culture, such as art, music, drama, myths, story-telling, etc.) 4) production and diffusion of new knowledge (for better efficient communication). Fals-Borda elaborate the fourth technique within the concept of knowledge ownership. He argues that there should a systematic way of returning the knowledge to the community and organization in order for them to maintain the ownership.
The Theoretical Standpoint of PAR (M.A. Rahman, 13-23)
Rahman delineates the basic ideology of PAR that "a self-conscious people, those who are currently poor and oppressed, will progressively transform their environment by their own praxis. In this process others may a catalytic and supportive role but will not dominate" (p.13).
Rahman precisely points out domination of masses by elites in controlling material production and means of knowledge production and the validation of knowledge. He asserts that scientific knowledge depends on consensus as to the method of verification, thus there exist different epistemological paradigms with different verification systems. From this perspective, he argues that the mass can ground their scientific knowledge based upon their own verification system, and maintains that an immediate objective of PAR is to bring to the people the legitimacy of such knowledge and the right to use it in order to act upon it.
Rahman finds a reason for growing application of PAR in the crisis of the right and the left, which the wisdom of "vanguards" is challenged, particularly in Eastern Europe. From this angle, Rahman regards PAR as a promotion of people's empowerment for changing their immediate environment at a micro level intervention via-a-vis states' imposing ideas of development. This empowerment, in his analysis, comes from two elements: autonomous/democratic people's organization and the promotion of popular knowledge. These two elements are either side of one coin to Rahman. He stresses that the process of organization is preceded and accompanied by a process of "concientization"--Rahman defines this term as a process of self-awareness raising through collective self-inquiry and reflection, which takes different forms such as dialogues, investigations and knowledge generation. Thus, to him, the transformation of the relations of knowledge is central to the entire task of empowerment.
Rahman also looks at PAR as a macro-level social transformation at a national level and concludes that PAR as the macro-social transformation is characterized as a cultural movement, independent of political movements. He finds the reason for the rise of such cultural movements in the crisis of left that assumed "advanced consciousness" (p.19).
Similar to the argument made by Fals-Borda, Rahman maintains there coexist intellectual/professional knowledge and popular/organic knowledge without dominance of one over another. By noting that the macro-level movements of PAR have been led by those coming from intellectual/professional tradition, Rahman points out negative forces implicated within such practices. Besides the assumed superiority of consciousness of the leaders, he sharply points out the fragility/instability of commitment for change:
"[C]ommitment us subject to transformation with the evolution of one's social existence. It often collapses from defeat, but may also diffuse or degenerate through the attainment of success that brings glory and power, altogether new experiences in one's existence. And commitment has also sometimes shown its fragility in the face of attractive temptations...In any case, there is no assured method of transferring commitment to succeeding generations who have not lived through the struggles from which commitment is socio-historically born." (p.21)
Rahman stresses the possibility that PAR sustains the macro level movements benefiting the initiatives of the people:
"Leaders may emerge to become a part of macro social-transformative efforts and thereby influence their course of progress; the culture of PAR may se a standard for working with the poeple and challenge macro vanguards to demonstrate teir commitment; the deepening of popular awareness, if PAR is successful, may work as a countervailing force against attemps at domination; aand the social formations (aware and assertive people's organizations and popular movements) promoted by PAR may be expected to support the best macro leadership that exists or that may emerge in the society" (p.22-23)
Despite the hopeful speculations of PAR, Rahman emphasizes the implementation of permanent vigilance and self-criticism within PAR. In particular in the face of instability, he stresses the recognition of possible degeneration and open popular analysis of such phenomenon.
A self-review of PAR (M.A. Rahman and O. Fals-Borda, 24-34)
Rahman and Fals-Borda reflect upon PAR for the past twenty years in the early 1990. They pays attention to the World Symposium on Action Research and Scientific Analysis in Columbia in 1977, where Antonio Gramsci became a prominent figure and the notion of participation was revisited. During this period, they summarize that PAR was regarded as 1) a research methodology that emphasizes the subject/subject relationship evolving in symmetrical and non-exploitative patterns of life and 2) social activism that is characterized with commitment to a promotion of people's collective and systematic praxis, which they argue became a primary object of PAR.
Since the early 1980s, they note, PAR advanced from micro and local community issues to complex, urban and regional dimensions while simultaneously becoming subject to cooptation. Examples of cooptation include: widening academic careers in the subject, a growing number of academic discussions and forums, appointments by governments, UN agencies' recognition of PAR as a viable alternative, and NGO's participatory approach.
With this circumstance, the authors emphasize the philosophy and practical results of PAR as a means of countering faulty assimilation. According to them, PAR validates and stimulates popular knowledge--"knowledge existing as local or indigenous science and wisdom, to be advanced by the people's self-inquiry" (p.31)--with their own verification system and its results should be seen in real life. To Rahman and Fals-Borda, PAR is a philosophy of life as much as a method in that PAR as a method for rigorous knowledge search is an open-ended process toward a structural transformation of society and culture, which requires continued commitment, an ethical stand and self-critique.
Rahman and Fals-Borda state that the purpose of PAR is to break up the monopoly of science and culture led by elites and to support people's movements for progress and facilitate their transition to the political dimension. The reason is found in the authors' standpoint of knowledge: they see that unequal relation of knowledge is a critical factor that perpetuates class/elite domination over the people. What is the most important to them with respect to popular action for socio-political change is to break the monopoly of knowledge and stimulate popular knowledge, which they call "a knowledge of life".
Toward a Knowledge Democracy: viewpoints on participatory research in North America (John Gaventa, 121-131)
Gaventa reviews participatory research within the context of democracy in a knowledge society in North America (He notes that participatory research has been explored much in the Third World within the context of adult education and development.) He finds three domains where PR is observed: 1) for the purpose of attaining knowledge of their own, 2) for the purpose of community-based, labor and minority education, and 3) New Left/environmental movements.
Gaventa sheds light on three strategies that are used in popular PR:
1. The reappropriation of knowledge: it is concerned about public access to knowledge/information, which is produced by the dominant knowledge system and shielded from the ordinary by secrecy, privatization and professionalization. The process of people's gaining control over knowledge is an empowering one because it allows people to realize the power structure that exists behind the knowledge control. (Gaventa's assumption is that power has been exercised through the control of knowledge.) An example is found in a research project done in a mining town to see whether chemicals in their water or work place are destroying their health. The participants were taught a basic literacy skill to read medical textbooks and in fact investigated the case. He label the process of people's viewing themselves as researchers and developing unique ways of gaining information "guerilla research". The reappropriation of knowledge contributes to challenging the fallibility of scientific knowledge and grounding action upon the unmasking of power structure, however, it is limited in the sense that it has little to do with creation of knowledge.
2. Development of people's knowledge: Gaventa develops this idea from the notions of Fals-Borda's popular science and Gramsci's intellectual and organic knowledge. Popular science means popular wisdom or knowledge based on empirical and common sense that belongs to the grassroots people and constitutes their culture (Fals-Borda, 1982, Participatory Research and Rural Social Change, Journal of Rural Co-Operation, X(1), 25-40). Fals-Borda's approach to popular knowledge resonates in Gramscian's tradition, which regards everyone as intellectual who can develop a popular and organic knowledge that turns the common sense into "good sense". Gaventa also notes that Robert Chambers in his book Rural Development: Putting the Last First (1983) demonstrates that such local knowledge of the ordinary proved to be more useful to them. Gaventa argues that the common approaches to PR are also useful in industrialized western societies in that "Within the Western world, popular knowledge is constantly being created in the daily experience of work and community life. The legitimacy of such knowledge, too, is constantly being devalued and suppressed by the dominant science" (p.128). The limitation of this strategy lies in the fact that the base of popular knowledge stems from people's experiences. What if knowledge required do not come from experience? Do all people need to be experts to participate in the process?
3. Popular participation in social production of knowledge: In the above case, Gaventa seconds a division of labor in a way that a group of people are involved in a decision making of knowledge production through popularly controlled research centers. An example of this approach is found in some research groups in Denmark and Sweden, where "reference groups" of those affected by research are involved with professional researchers in carrying out the projects.
By and large, Gaventa holds the creation of an alternative organization of science and knowledge that "is not only for the people but is created with them and by them as well" (italic from the original text, p. 131) toward genuine democracy.
Remaking Knowledge (O. Fals-Borda, 146-164)
Fals-Borda defines PAR as an autonomous collective investigation different from typical research methods. It is characterized as a "communal enterprise" in which the knowledge is validated socially through people's own verification system. Fals-Borda summarizes three theoretical elements that enrich the process of PAR:
1. the ontological possibility of a popular science: Popular science, which is emancipatory and collective by nature, becomes a tool in the quest for justice and answer to epistemological questions such as knowledge for whom and knowledge for what.
2. the existential possibility of transforming the researcher/researched relationship: Fals-Borda redefine the concept of participation to create a subject/subject relationship. For him, participation goes beyond representative democracy. It means "breaking up intentionally by means of vivencias ("experience") the asymmetrical subject/object relationships of submission, dependence, exploitation and oppression that exist between persons, groups and social classes" (p.152). He stresses that despite the recognition of their otherness researcher and researched interact and collaborate to create an enriched knowledge and achieve social progress, for instance, by outsiders' providing technical expertise, situational analysis or acting as intermediaries while insiders provide specific local knowledge and know-how and act as critics.
3. Autonomy and identity in collective research: this is essential to constructing knowledge democracy and build people's countervailing knowledge and power, civic movement and self-reliance promoting organizations vis-à-vis the state, central power, monopolies and military complex.
The third element seems more important to Fals-Borda. Within this context, he stresses praxis as the technical foundation of PAR for critical recovery of history and culture. Following Hegel and Marx, Fals-Borda emphasizes the practicality of praxis and defines as a "dialectical unit formed by theory and action in which action is cyclically determinant" (p.156).
Among the theoretical convergences between PAR and other schools of thought noted are critical pedagogy and some ethnologists who approach indigenous and local culture with a participatory philosophy. He also points out among sociologists Alain Touraine's method of "sociological intervention" (1978 La voix et le regard), which attempted to bridge the gap between research and action by asking researchers to work with social movements as mediators. Fals-Borda differentiates Touraine's social intervention from PAR in that Touraine warned deeper involvement or commitment although he advocated undertaking collective research. It is notable that Fals-Borda finds the nominal root of PAR in Kurt Lewin (1946, Action-Research and Minority Problems, Journal of Social Issues, 2, 34-46). He criticizes that despite the similarity to PAR, his insights were reduced to small group processes (industrial management) and clinical approaches (veteran's rehabilitation) after his death, however, transcended to Organization-Development school of action research in community work, educational systems and organizational change in the 1970s.
Fals-Borda states as PAR's general trends holistic philosophy, relativist knowledge, interdisciplinary descriptive methods, intuition, daily life phenomena and the human scale, and suggests PAR in terms of a new paradigm in that it calls for general epistemic change in its nature. He connects PAR to Foucault's idea of knowledge rather than Kuhnian principles and intends to develop a system of subjugated knowledge through PAR.
Some basic ingredients (O. Fals-Borda, 3-12)
Fals-Borda (and Rahman) does not distinguish participatory research (PR) and PAR strictly and rather specify the action component to emphasize action-research grounding in participation and participatory research tied with action.
Fals-Borda finds practical uses of PAR in a research method, adult education and sociopolitical action in that PAR encompasses the three aspects as an experiential methodology. He explains that experiential methodology is a process of personal and collective behavior and implies knowledge acquisition upon for power construction and social movements for the oppressed.
Fals-Borda lays out as the philosophical ground experience, which allows one to apprehend the essence intuitively, feel and understand reality, and thus place oneself in a wider context. He states that the experience, which contributes to understanding knowledge for change, stems from two different strands: one is Cartesian and academic and the other is experiential and practical. He proposes practical commitment, a form of praxis, as the only resolution to the dialectical tension between the two knowledge strands. He thereby writes,
"Therefore academic knowledge combined with popular knowledge and wisdom may result in total scientific knowledge of a revolutionary nature which destroys the previous unjust class monopoly."(p.4)
His approach to epistemology is grounded in a revolution and change and calls for commitment and praxis. In this regard, he argues that such commitment and praxis leads to a rejection of the asymmetry of the subject/object relationship that characterizes academic research and daily life.
Participatory theory, on the other hand, demands the destruction of the asymmetry and the transformation to the subject/subject relationship through participation, Fals-Borda writes. For him, the essence of participation is voluntary separation from the submission and dependence implicit in the subject/object relationship through experience. He adds that the authentic participation is resplendent with feelings and attitudes of an altruistic, cooperative, communal, thus democratic nature. He emphasizes that the process of participation thereby leads to a rejection of vertical authoritarian structure and exploitation and turns all the involved into organic intellectuals of the working class, who can continue the transformation process without external agents.
Fals-Borda succinctly says that PAR generally proposes a resolution of contradictions in a given region through recourse to endogenous elements and thereby may mobilize people from bottom to up and from periphery to center.
Besides a PAR's implication in a sociopolitical context, Fals-Borda looks into a phenomenological aspect of PAR from the experiences of those involved in PAR. Fals-Borda argues that they learn to "know and recognize" themselves as a means of empowerment by realizing that the science is a cultural production of purposeful and relative knowledge, which serve those who create and control it, thus it is equally possible that people's science is created through an informal and endogenous process. In this way Fals-Borda refuses the universality of knowledge and emphasizes the multiplicity of knowledge and its constructivism.
He suggests four techniques of PAR that may cultivate people's countervailing power: 1) collective research, 2)critical recover of history (selective discovery through collective memory of past elements useful in defense of the interests of the oppressed), 3) valuing and applying folk culture (to mobilize people, it is essential to develop techniques based on the folk culture, such as art, music, drama, myths, story-telling, etc.) 4) production and diffusion of new knowledge (for better efficient communication). Fals-Borda elaborate the fourth technique within the concept of knowledge ownership. He argues that there should a systematic way of returning the knowledge to the community and organization in order for them to maintain the ownership.
The Theoretical Standpoint of PAR (M.A. Rahman, 13-23)
Rahman delineates the basic ideology of PAR that "a self-conscious people, those who are currently poor and oppressed, will progressively transform their environment by their own praxis. In this process others may a catalytic and supportive role but will not dominate" (p.13).
Rahman precisely points out domination of masses by elites in controlling material production and means of knowledge production and the validation of knowledge. He asserts that scientific knowledge depends on consensus as to the method of verification, thus there exist different epistemological paradigms with different verification systems. From this perspective, he argues that the mass can ground their scientific knowledge based upon their own verification system, and maintains that an immediate objective of PAR is to bring to the people the legitimacy of such knowledge and the right to use it in order to act upon it.
Rahman finds a reason for growing application of PAR in the crisis of the right and the left, which the wisdom of "vanguards" is challenged, particularly in Eastern Europe. From this angle, Rahman regards PAR as a promotion of people's empowerment for changing their immediate environment at a micro level intervention via-a-vis states' imposing ideas of development. This empowerment, in his analysis, comes from two elements: autonomous/democratic people's organization and the promotion of popular knowledge. These two elements are either side of one coin to Rahman. He stresses that the process of organization is preceded and accompanied by a process of "concientization"--Rahman defines this term as a process of self-awareness raising through collective self-inquiry and reflection, which takes different forms such as dialogues, investigations and knowledge generation. Thus, to him, the transformation of the relations of knowledge is central to the entire task of empowerment.
Rahman also looks at PAR as a macro-level social transformation at a national level and concludes that PAR as the macro-social transformation is characterized as a cultural movement, independent of political movements. He finds the reason for the rise of such cultural movements in the crisis of left that assumed "advanced consciousness" (p.19).
Similar to the argument made by Fals-Borda, Rahman maintains there coexist intellectual/professional knowledge and popular/organic knowledge without dominance of one over another. By noting that the macro-level movements of PAR have been led by those coming from intellectual/professional tradition, Rahman points out negative forces implicated within such practices. Besides the assumed superiority of consciousness of the leaders, he sharply points out the fragility/instability of commitment for change:
"[C]ommitment us subject to transformation with the evolution of one's social existence. It often collapses from defeat, but may also diffuse or degenerate through the attainment of success that brings glory and power, altogether new experiences in one's existence. And commitment has also sometimes shown its fragility in the face of attractive temptations...In any case, there is no assured method of transferring commitment to succeeding generations who have not lived through the struggles from which commitment is socio-historically born." (p.21)
Rahman stresses the possibility that PAR sustains the macro level movements benefiting the initiatives of the people:
"Leaders may emerge to become a part of macro social-transformative efforts and thereby influence their course of progress; the culture of PAR may se a standard for working with the poeple and challenge macro vanguards to demonstrate teir commitment; the deepening of popular awareness, if PAR is successful, may work as a countervailing force against attemps at domination; aand the social formations (aware and assertive people's organizations and popular movements) promoted by PAR may be expected to support the best macro leadership that exists or that may emerge in the society" (p.22-23)
Despite the hopeful speculations of PAR, Rahman emphasizes the implementation of permanent vigilance and self-criticism within PAR. In particular in the face of instability, he stresses the recognition of possible degeneration and open popular analysis of such phenomenon.
A self-review of PAR (M.A. Rahman and O. Fals-Borda, 24-34)
Rahman and Fals-Borda reflect upon PAR for the past twenty years in the early 1990. They pays attention to the World Symposium on Action Research and Scientific Analysis in Columbia in 1977, where Antonio Gramsci became a prominent figure and the notion of participation was revisited. During this period, they summarize that PAR was regarded as 1) a research methodology that emphasizes the subject/subject relationship evolving in symmetrical and non-exploitative patterns of life and 2) social activism that is characterized with commitment to a promotion of people's collective and systematic praxis, which they argue became a primary object of PAR.
Since the early 1980s, they note, PAR advanced from micro and local community issues to complex, urban and regional dimensions while simultaneously becoming subject to cooptation. Examples of cooptation include: widening academic careers in the subject, a growing number of academic discussions and forums, appointments by governments, UN agencies' recognition of PAR as a viable alternative, and NGO's participatory approach.
With this circumstance, the authors emphasize the philosophy and practical results of PAR as a means of countering faulty assimilation. According to them, PAR validates and stimulates popular knowledge--"knowledge existing as local or indigenous science and wisdom, to be advanced by the people's self-inquiry" (p.31)--with their own verification system and its results should be seen in real life. To Rahman and Fals-Borda, PAR is a philosophy of life as much as a method in that PAR as a method for rigorous knowledge search is an open-ended process toward a structural transformation of society and culture, which requires continued commitment, an ethical stand and self-critique.
Rahman and Fals-Borda state that the purpose of PAR is to break up the monopoly of science and culture led by elites and to support people's movements for progress and facilitate their transition to the political dimension. The reason is found in the authors' standpoint of knowledge: they see that unequal relation of knowledge is a critical factor that perpetuates class/elite domination over the people. What is the most important to them with respect to popular action for socio-political change is to break the monopoly of knowledge and stimulate popular knowledge, which they call "a knowledge of life".
Toward a Knowledge Democracy: viewpoints on participatory research in North America (John Gaventa, 121-131)
Gaventa reviews participatory research within the context of democracy in a knowledge society in North America (He notes that participatory research has been explored much in the Third World within the context of adult education and development.) He finds three domains where PR is observed: 1) for the purpose of attaining knowledge of their own, 2) for the purpose of community-based, labor and minority education, and 3) New Left/environmental movements.
Gaventa sheds light on three strategies that are used in popular PR:
1. The reappropriation of knowledge: it is concerned about public access to knowledge/information, which is produced by the dominant knowledge system and shielded from the ordinary by secrecy, privatization and professionalization. The process of people's gaining control over knowledge is an empowering one because it allows people to realize the power structure that exists behind the knowledge control. (Gaventa's assumption is that power has been exercised through the control of knowledge.) An example is found in a research project done in a mining town to see whether chemicals in their water or work place are destroying their health. The participants were taught a basic literacy skill to read medical textbooks and in fact investigated the case. He label the process of people's viewing themselves as researchers and developing unique ways of gaining information "guerilla research". The reappropriation of knowledge contributes to challenging the fallibility of scientific knowledge and grounding action upon the unmasking of power structure, however, it is limited in the sense that it has little to do with creation of knowledge.
2. Development of people's knowledge: Gaventa develops this idea from the notions of Fals-Borda's popular science and Gramsci's intellectual and organic knowledge. Popular science means popular wisdom or knowledge based on empirical and common sense that belongs to the grassroots people and constitutes their culture (Fals-Borda, 1982, Participatory Research and Rural Social Change, Journal of Rural Co-Operation, X(1), 25-40). Fals-Borda's approach to popular knowledge resonates in Gramscian's tradition, which regards everyone as intellectual who can develop a popular and organic knowledge that turns the common sense into "good sense". Gaventa also notes that Robert Chambers in his book Rural Development: Putting the Last First (1983) demonstrates that such local knowledge of the ordinary proved to be more useful to them. Gaventa argues that the common approaches to PR are also useful in industrialized western societies in that "Within the Western world, popular knowledge is constantly being created in the daily experience of work and community life. The legitimacy of such knowledge, too, is constantly being devalued and suppressed by the dominant science" (p.128). The limitation of this strategy lies in the fact that the base of popular knowledge stems from people's experiences. What if knowledge required do not come from experience? Do all people need to be experts to participate in the process?
3. Popular participation in social production of knowledge: In the above case, Gaventa seconds a division of labor in a way that a group of people are involved in a decision making of knowledge production through popularly controlled research centers. An example of this approach is found in some research groups in Denmark and Sweden, where "reference groups" of those affected by research are involved with professional researchers in carrying out the projects.
By and large, Gaventa holds the creation of an alternative organization of science and knowledge that "is not only for the people but is created with them and by them as well" (italic from the original text, p. 131) toward genuine democracy.
Remaking Knowledge (O. Fals-Borda, 146-164)
Fals-Borda defines PAR as an autonomous collective investigation different from typical research methods. It is characterized as a "communal enterprise" in which the knowledge is validated socially through people's own verification system. Fals-Borda summarizes three theoretical elements that enrich the process of PAR:
1. the ontological possibility of a popular science: Popular science, which is emancipatory and collective by nature, becomes a tool in the quest for justice and answer to epistemological questions such as knowledge for whom and knowledge for what.
2. the existential possibility of transforming the researcher/researched relationship: Fals-Borda redefine the concept of participation to create a subject/subject relationship. For him, participation goes beyond representative democracy. It means "breaking up intentionally by means of vivencias ("experience") the asymmetrical subject/object relationships of submission, dependence, exploitation and oppression that exist between persons, groups and social classes" (p.152). He stresses that despite the recognition of their otherness researcher and researched interact and collaborate to create an enriched knowledge and achieve social progress, for instance, by outsiders' providing technical expertise, situational analysis or acting as intermediaries while insiders provide specific local knowledge and know-how and act as critics.
3. Autonomy and identity in collective research: this is essential to constructing knowledge democracy and build people's countervailing knowledge and power, civic movement and self-reliance promoting organizations vis-à-vis the state, central power, monopolies and military complex.
The third element seems more important to Fals-Borda. Within this context, he stresses praxis as the technical foundation of PAR for critical recovery of history and culture. Following Hegel and Marx, Fals-Borda emphasizes the practicality of praxis and defines as a "dialectical unit formed by theory and action in which action is cyclically determinant" (p.156).
Among the theoretical convergences between PAR and other schools of thought noted are critical pedagogy and some ethnologists who approach indigenous and local culture with a participatory philosophy. He also points out among sociologists Alain Touraine's method of "sociological intervention" (1978 La voix et le regard), which attempted to bridge the gap between research and action by asking researchers to work with social movements as mediators. Fals-Borda differentiates Touraine's social intervention from PAR in that Touraine warned deeper involvement or commitment although he advocated undertaking collective research. It is notable that Fals-Borda finds the nominal root of PAR in Kurt Lewin (1946, Action-Research and Minority Problems, Journal of Social Issues, 2, 34-46). He criticizes that despite the similarity to PAR, his insights were reduced to small group processes (industrial management) and clinical approaches (veteran's rehabilitation) after his death, however, transcended to Organization-Development school of action research in community work, educational systems and organizational change in the 1970s.
Fals-Borda states as PAR's general trends holistic philosophy, relativist knowledge, interdisciplinary descriptive methods, intuition, daily life phenomena and the human scale, and suggests PAR in terms of a new paradigm in that it calls for general epistemic change in its nature. He connects PAR to Foucault's idea of knowledge rather than Kuhnian principles and intends to develop a system of subjugated knowledge through PAR.
Monday, November 2, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, September 7, 2009
More visualizing. more methodologies
: on video, reflexivity and qualitative research. Sarah Pink. The Sociological Review. 2001. 586-599.
Pink regards reflexivity as a key theme in the development of visual anthropology and explores the potential of video for reflexive approach to qualitative research in sociology and anthropology. She cites that in some recent work, video methods and visual methods in general has been situated as part of a reflexive methodology. For instance, for Ruby a reflexive approach to visual anthropology is ethical such that the researcher, as the producer of visual materials, reveals the constructedness of his or her argument by showing his or her own particular way of generating and processing the data.
Pink expands her idea of reflexivity to giving agency to the subject as see from Michaels' study on the impact of television on Aboriginal communities. Similarly, the project where mothers with HIV recorded their messages on video for their children demonstrates a reflexive approach: The producers, mothers, project their own images through negotiation of self-image and performance. The images produced as a result bring spontaneous and vivid information to the researchers. Another example of a reflexive approach to video in the production of ethnographic knowledge is mentioned in Ferrándiz's work, where he recorded video in collaboration with his informants. Through the video work, Ferrández not only learned ritual practices performed by his informants but also the way in which a camera create a visual truth by catalyzing certain aspects of the rituals. In short, such reflexive approaches deepened our understanding of the subject under study.
Pink regards reflexivity as a key theme in the development of visual anthropology and explores the potential of video for reflexive approach to qualitative research in sociology and anthropology. She cites that in some recent work, video methods and visual methods in general has been situated as part of a reflexive methodology. For instance, for Ruby a reflexive approach to visual anthropology is ethical such that the researcher, as the producer of visual materials, reveals the constructedness of his or her argument by showing his or her own particular way of generating and processing the data.
Pink expands her idea of reflexivity to giving agency to the subject as see from Michaels' study on the impact of television on Aboriginal communities. Similarly, the project where mothers with HIV recorded their messages on video for their children demonstrates a reflexive approach: The producers, mothers, project their own images through negotiation of self-image and performance. The images produced as a result bring spontaneous and vivid information to the researchers. Another example of a reflexive approach to video in the production of ethnographic knowledge is mentioned in Ferrándiz's work, where he recorded video in collaboration with his informants. Through the video work, Ferrández not only learned ritual practices performed by his informants but also the way in which a camera create a visual truth by catalyzing certain aspects of the rituals. In short, such reflexive approaches deepened our understanding of the subject under study.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Principles of Visual Anthropology
Paul Hockings. (Ed.). 2003. 3rd Ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Camera and Man (Jean Rouch, 79-98)
When Rouch mentions in this chapter that we owe all we try to do to Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty, who worked in different continents without connections in the 1920s, he has in his mind “the participant camera” as a way of expressing reality. The ways the camera participated are different and Rouch explains: For Flaherty, it was a way of recounting a story collaboratively with Nanook because a camera let ‘Nanook see his own pictures from the very moment of their conception (p.82)’. For Vertov, on the other hand, it is rather of ‘recording small elements of reality’ through a camera lens. Rouch quotes:
“I am the ‘cine-eye,’ I am the mechanical eye; I am the machine that will show you the world as only the machine can see it. Henceforth, I shall be liberated from human mobility” (1923:34; cited on page 83)
Rouch explains Vertov’s idea of cine-eye as seeing with the camera, recording on film and editing. This idea is better explored through thematic reality that Vertov tried to construct:
“…in its willingness to reveal people with absolutely no pretense, to catch them at any moment, to stop as soon as they leave off complaining, to imprison their thoughts…But is not sufficient to present fragments of reality on the screen to represent life by its crumbs. These fragments must be elaborated upon so as to make an integrated whole which is, in turn, the thematic reality…”(1940: 443-444; cited on page 83).
Rouch rightly argues that with extraordinary equipment available today we must re-invent a new language of doing ethnography. In particular, it is important for him that ethnographic films meet the public in their own right. In order to become so, he asserts, the anthropologist needs feedback from the group they research as if a stimulant for mutual understanding, through which he can finally come down from his ivory tower. Rough extols the participant camera as the only tool which allows the anthropologist to communicate with the group they study, as Vertov and Flaherty did without being conscious of what they were doing.
Observational Cinema (Colin Young, 99-113)
Young recalls a conference in 1968, where the point is made that film is not objective but may objectify. In other words, “the camera tends to lie but the audience tends to believe” (p.100), he explains. He reveals the limit of observational cinema, or its ideology through the comment Herb Di Gioia made: each occasion of being shut-out or of missing things dramatized the limitation of the observational method and justified a more fictional approach. In his conclusion, Young argues that conferences about method are arguments about power and representatives of one approach are racist about all others. He suggests that we just need to learn other rules to avoid confusion if different languages are used.
Beyond Observational Cinema (David MacDougall, 115-132)
MacDougall writes beyond observational cinema lies the possibility of a participatory cinema, which gives its subjects access to the film for correction, addition and illuminations. He contends that through such an exchange a film can begin to reflect the ways in which the subjects perceive the world. In his emphasis of a researcher’s role as a cultural catalyst, he writes:
“The values of a society lie as much in its dreams as in the reality it has built. Often it is only by introducing new stimuli that the investigator can peel back the layers of a culture and reveal its fundamental assumptions” (p.127).
On the other hand, he explains the importance of the subjects’ involvement as follows:
“[T]he fleeting recognition of the film crew which gives a sense of candor but really reveals nothing. For a film to gain meaning from the breakdown of old narrative conventions, that recognition must develop into a genuine conversation” (p. 127).
Into the end of this article, originally published in the mid-1970s, he added a postscript in 1994. In this postscript, he states that the borderline between observational and participatory cinema now appears more blurred and suggests a principle of multiple authorship that leads to an intertextual cinema. There is no much explanation in depth about the intertextual cinema in this postscript, but he argues that through such an approach ethnographic film may better address conflicting views of reality between observers and observed, and reciprocal observation and exchange among them will increasingly matter. [ A new way of participation needs to be explored. So far, the participation is in a way very limited like giving a seat to the subjects in a round table of filmmaking. ]
Camera and Man (Jean Rouch, 79-98)
When Rouch mentions in this chapter that we owe all we try to do to Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty, who worked in different continents without connections in the 1920s, he has in his mind “the participant camera” as a way of expressing reality. The ways the camera participated are different and Rouch explains: For Flaherty, it was a way of recounting a story collaboratively with Nanook because a camera let ‘Nanook see his own pictures from the very moment of their conception (p.82)’. For Vertov, on the other hand, it is rather of ‘recording small elements of reality’ through a camera lens. Rouch quotes:
“I am the ‘cine-eye,’ I am the mechanical eye; I am the machine that will show you the world as only the machine can see it. Henceforth, I shall be liberated from human mobility” (1923:34; cited on page 83)
Rouch explains Vertov’s idea of cine-eye as seeing with the camera, recording on film and editing. This idea is better explored through thematic reality that Vertov tried to construct:
“…in its willingness to reveal people with absolutely no pretense, to catch them at any moment, to stop as soon as they leave off complaining, to imprison their thoughts…But is not sufficient to present fragments of reality on the screen to represent life by its crumbs. These fragments must be elaborated upon so as to make an integrated whole which is, in turn, the thematic reality…”(1940: 443-444; cited on page 83).
Rouch rightly argues that with extraordinary equipment available today we must re-invent a new language of doing ethnography. In particular, it is important for him that ethnographic films meet the public in their own right. In order to become so, he asserts, the anthropologist needs feedback from the group they research as if a stimulant for mutual understanding, through which he can finally come down from his ivory tower. Rough extols the participant camera as the only tool which allows the anthropologist to communicate with the group they study, as Vertov and Flaherty did without being conscious of what they were doing.
Observational Cinema (Colin Young, 99-113)
Young recalls a conference in 1968, where the point is made that film is not objective but may objectify. In other words, “the camera tends to lie but the audience tends to believe” (p.100), he explains. He reveals the limit of observational cinema, or its ideology through the comment Herb Di Gioia made: each occasion of being shut-out or of missing things dramatized the limitation of the observational method and justified a more fictional approach. In his conclusion, Young argues that conferences about method are arguments about power and representatives of one approach are racist about all others. He suggests that we just need to learn other rules to avoid confusion if different languages are used.
Beyond Observational Cinema (David MacDougall, 115-132)
MacDougall writes beyond observational cinema lies the possibility of a participatory cinema, which gives its subjects access to the film for correction, addition and illuminations. He contends that through such an exchange a film can begin to reflect the ways in which the subjects perceive the world. In his emphasis of a researcher’s role as a cultural catalyst, he writes:
“The values of a society lie as much in its dreams as in the reality it has built. Often it is only by introducing new stimuli that the investigator can peel back the layers of a culture and reveal its fundamental assumptions” (p.127).
On the other hand, he explains the importance of the subjects’ involvement as follows:
“[T]he fleeting recognition of the film crew which gives a sense of candor but really reveals nothing. For a film to gain meaning from the breakdown of old narrative conventions, that recognition must develop into a genuine conversation” (p. 127).
Into the end of this article, originally published in the mid-1970s, he added a postscript in 1994. In this postscript, he states that the borderline between observational and participatory cinema now appears more blurred and suggests a principle of multiple authorship that leads to an intertextual cinema. There is no much explanation in depth about the intertextual cinema in this postscript, but he argues that through such an approach ethnographic film may better address conflicting views of reality between observers and observed, and reciprocal observation and exchange among them will increasingly matter. [ A new way of participation needs to be explored. So far, the participation is in a way very limited like giving a seat to the subjects in a round table of filmmaking. ]
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