Principles for Participatory Action Research

McTaggart, Robin. (1991). Adult Education Quarterly, 41(3), 168-187.
McTaggart ascribes that the modern concept of PAR is a convergence and coalescence of theoretical and practical traditions in many fields such as agriculture, social work, education, heath, community development, etc., and it is often characterized with communitarian politics.

Analyzing the cyclic nature of Lewinian action research, McTaggart asserts that group decision and commitment to improvement are central to the approach. He sharply points out, however, that Lewin’s approach did not consider the commitment of all the participants to research, which is fundamental to PAR, thus this lack of insight to participation and its power dynamics became a confusing factor in identifying the nature of PAR.

Within this context, McTaggart distinguishes participation from involvement, writing “People are often involved in research, but rarely are they participants with real ownership of research theory and practice” (p.51).

Criticizing often reoccurring imperialistic relationships of researchers with participant in PAR, McTaggart attributes them to academic command of particular specialized discourses and deference and uncertainty of participants (workers in his term) who have been forced hegemonically to accommodate what they were told to do. To counter this, he emphasizes the practice of ideology critique to maintain its reciprocity and symmetry of relations….

Participatory video in geographic research

: A feminist Practice of Looking? Kindon, Sara. (2003). Area, 35 (2), 142-153.

Criticizing the predominant masculinist gaze, Kindon explores possibilities of using participatory video as a means of achieving a feminist practice of looking in geographic research for more equitable outcomes and transformation for research participants.

Citing Sarah Pink's note, "the use of video as a method of qualitative research and representation has become 'revived' as a topic in discussions of qualitative methodologies" (p.586), Kindon maintains:

"[U]sing video makes the gaze explicit within a research process. It highlights the relationship between researcher/researched, observer/observed, drawing attention to who is in control of the viewing technology, what is being framed and how the images are being produced or represented. In particular, participatory video demands critical attention to the exercise of power within research relationships, it challenges us to explore reflexive ways that enable us to, 'join with another, to see together without claiming to be another' (Haraway 1991, 193)." (p.145-146)

In her criticism of the use of video for empowerment, Kindon sharply points out that, while such video enables researchers to discuss participants' self-reflexivity, it does not acknowledge reseachers' influence on the research or encourage their own reflexivity, which makes researchers effectively remain invisible in the video they make. [This is a paradox that Kindon draws from the practice of participatory video.] She continues that by rigorously participating alongside participants, the research method may destabilize conventional power relations between researcher and researched, observer and observed, and documentarians and documented.

Kindon compares cons and pros of using video for research. She writes about the potential benefit of using video, "[G]reater attention can be paid to the corporeal aspects of knowledge production by focusing on everyone's body language, use of and movements through space" (p.148). She cites other negative practices, such as confidentiality (negative impact on researcher-subject relationship) and access (the limitation of context-dependency). Kindon denotes that the same problems arose even in the participatory video project she involved with when those who were not directly involved with the research project were requested for an interview. However, she evaluates that participatory video transformed the relationships and the nature of research as shown in the discussion of the use of created video, which implies ownership, individual experience of empowerment, and a process of disruption of researchers' assumption.

Lastly she sheds light on the (time) commitment necessary to render the potential of transformation and empowerment that PV may bring to participants as well as researchers.


[Pink, S. (2001). More visualizing, more methodologies: on video, reflexivity and qualitative research. The Sociological Review, 49, 586-99.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature. Free Association Books, London.]

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I do this through a consideration of how participatory video may offer a feminist practice of looking, which actively works to engage with and challenge conventional relationships of power associated with the gaze in geographic research, and results in more equitable outcomes and/or transformation for research participants. (p. 143)

I then discuss how a form of participatory video was employed in a bi-cultural research project with a group of Maaori people in Aotearoa New Zealand. This project was developed to explore
the relationships between place, identity and 'social cohesion' in communities in the district.

videos produced were not designed to travel outside of the iwi or be used for advocacy purposes, but were part of a process of internal capacity building and knowledge sharing. (p. 144)

Yet, using video makes the gaze explicit within a research process. It highlights the relationship between researcher/researched, observer/observed, drawing attention to who is in control of the viewing technology, what is being (p. 145) framed and how the images are being produced or represented. In particular, participatory video demands critical attention to the exercise of power within research relationships, it challenges us to explore reflexive ways that enable us to, 'join with another, to see together without claiming to be another' (Haraway 1991, 193). (p. 146)

Criticizing Ruth Holliday's video diary, Kindon argued:
They enable researchers to discuss participants' self-representations and reflexivity, but do not always acknowledge the influence of the researcher, or encourage their self-reflexivity. The researcher effectively remains invisible and reinforces conventions associated with documentary film and scientific observation. If the recordings generated are then treated as 'untainted realities', rather than as representations and/or performances produced in the context of social relationships and strategies of self representation (Pink 2001 b, 87), they may perpetuate unequal power relations and assumptions about objectivity within the research process.

Ways of Seeing

Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.

Chapter 1 (7-34)
Largely drawing ideas from Walter's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Berger asserts that the authority of art is being destroyed through the modern means of reproduction and art begins to permeate among the masses. Thus, he argues, different use of the language of images would confer a new kind of power and we could begin our experiences more precisely in areas where words are inadequate--he succinctly writes, Seeing comes before words--and this experience is characterized not only with personal one but also historical one in relation to the past, which gives meaning to the present and enables us to be active agents.

"If we new languages of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power. Within it we could begin to define our experiences more precisely in area where words are inadequate. (Seeing comes before words.) Not only personal experiences, but also the essential historical experience of our relation to the past: that is to say the experience of seeking to give meaning to our lives, of trying to understand the history of which we can become the active agents." (p.33)

Chapter 3 (45-64)
Berger reads the social presence of a woman through nude painting, where he asserts women are the principal, ever-recurring subjects in European oil painting. Writing, "Nudity is a form of dress," he argues that naked women are depicted for their spectator as a sign of their submissiveness and for the spectator's pleasure. In this regards, he explains the contradictory condemnation portrayed in the painting, "Vanity" (by Memling 1435-1494):

"The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of women. The moralizing. however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting, "Vanity", thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure." (p.51)

Berger denotes that such tradition continues to diffuse today widely through media such as advertising, journalism and television, without changing the essential way of seeing women because the ideal spectator is assumed to be male and the image of a woman is designed to flatter to him.

[This indicates that women is a more oppressed entity for their subjectivity in the domain of visual media, whereby more vigorous subversive action needs to be taken.]

Doing Participatory Research: a feminist approach

Maguire, P. (1987). Doing participatory research: A feminist approach. Center for International Education, School of Education, University of Massachusetts.

Maguire describes three core activities of PR--investigation, education and action--and emphasizes that these activities are collective processes, denoting that it is collective inquiry that builds group ownership of information while carrying out research. With regard to action, Maguire stresses the fluid time frame of action, writing "While direct community action is an intended outcome of participatory research, people may also decide not to act at a particular point in time. The important point is that those involved in the production of knowledge are involved in the decision making regarding its use and application to their everyday life" (p.37). Hence, she defines PR as "a systematic approach to radical social transformation grounded in an alternative paradigm world view" (p.37).

She finds the origins of PR in three domains: international economic development in the 60s and 70s, alternative adult education and social science communities: (1) radical and reformist reconceptualizations of internatinal economic development assistance by including the poor into full participation in development decisions, processes, and benefits, (2) the reframing of adult education as an empowering alternative to traditional educational approaches: Freire, for instance, emphasized the importance of critical consciousness, conscientization, for social change, and this consciousness is developed by taking actions. Bud Hall brought PR practices to adult education on the ground that adult learners participate actively in the world while adult education regards them as passive entities. (3) an ongoing debate within the social sciences, challenging the dominant social science paradigm.

Maguire delineates the underlying assumptions of PR as follows: (1) PR begins with the premise that knowledge the single most important basis of power and control and only one particular knowledge, scientific knowledge, became validated in society, excluding other types of knoweldge, in particular, knowledge developed by the ordinary. (2) PR emphasizes the partnership between researcher and participant, insisting on their further learning through collaboration. (3) PR assumes that ordinary people, provided with tools and opportunities, are capable of critical reflection and analysis. (4) The principle of shared power is central to PR to the extent that it attempts to shift the power and control of decision making to participants. (5) PR conceives social change by returning the power of knowledge production to the ordinary.

Maguire sharply points out the androcentricity of PR: PR, breaking the positivist monopoly of knowledge creation, appears to collude with the predominant male bias of the social sciences by rendering gender indistinguishably through generic terms such as "people", "oppressed", "the community", etc.

(p.61)
[CONTINUE]

Considering More Feminist Participatory Research

: What Congruency Got to Do With It? Maguire, P. (1996). Qualitative Inquiry, 2(1), 106-118.

Mcguire begins her inquiry about the contribution of feminism to the development of PR with the questions, who benefits from the research? and whose interests are served?

Mcguire argues that, because gender oppression takes place in the web of all kinds of oppression, feminism(s) and PR hold in common transformative and liberatory intentions, yet PR often neglected ‘gender’ oppression through androcentric filter.

“Participatory research highlights the centrality of power in the social construction of knowledge. But it is feminist research that calls attention to the centrality of male power in that social construction of knowledge. This power and its manifestations are too often ignored in PR projects and debates. Likewise, there is still little attention paid to the manifestation of male privilege in the everyday relationships and workings of PR and its advocates. Participatory research, while championing Freire’s observations about man’s alienation in the world, is still struggling with grasping women’s alienation from that man-made world in research and beyond.”(p.111)

Mcguire denotes that, whereas PAR contributes to valuing personal experience as part of research process, it is feminism that recognize personal is political, thus leading us to narrow the gaps between personal politics and public practices and examine/challenge our institutions, organizations and our practices and relationships within them.

Mcguire defines PR as a combination of research, education and action. Referring the fact that both feminism and PR are concerned about empowerment, she points out the ontological convergence between the two (Stanley & Wise, 1990).

Thus, she calls for more feminist participatory research by incorporating certain feminist research aspects such as considering redistribution of power, emphasizing shared life or people’s organizational entity, including large-scale studies often utilized in feminist studies, and sharing flaws and shortcomings of PR.

Traveling Companions

:Feminism, Teaching, and Action Research. Brydon-Miller, M., Mcguire, P., & McIntyre, A. (Eds.). (2004). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Introduction (Mcguire, Brydon-Miller, & McIntyre, pp. ix-xix)
Despite the initial enthusiasm of feminists for PAR as a counter-hegemonic approach to knowledge creation through the collaborative process of inquiry, education and action, the authors denote, the androcentrism of PAR marginalized feminist issues as manifested in 1997 Cartagena World Congress. In response to the marginalization, the authors initiated a movement that connects feminist scholarship and PAR since then, including the publication of this book.

The authors explain that PAR and feminism shares its common ground that knowledge is produced in the context of human relationships where hierarchical power is embedded, thus, both feminist researchers and PAR practitioners attend to the dynamics and mechanics of researcher/participant relationships and attempt to reconstruct them. In this regard, the authors sharply point out that feminist-informed PAR embraces the notion of multiple positionalities/identities and multiple ways of being oppressed and oppressing. Within this context, they state that third-world feminist, Women of Color, contributed to challenging a monolithic or universal feminist perspective. The authors also argue that PAR will contribute to providing a framework to translate feminist insights into tangible action for social change.

Understranding Muslim Women's Self-Identity and Resistance to Feminism and Participatory Action Research (Barazangi, Nimat Hafez, 21-39)
She criticizes mainstream Western approach that have marginalized the world-view of Muslim women "by both dismissing their views as 'religious' and taking, unknowingly. the prevailing Muslim male elites' views at their face value" (p.23). Thus she calls for a genuine dialogue between western feminists and Muslim feminists.

Testimonio: Bridging feminist and Participatory Action Research Principles to Create New Spaces of Collectivity (Brabeck, Kalina. 41-54)
Looking into Testimonio, an indigenous literary genre that emerged in Latin America in the 1960s, Brabeck associates principles of feminism and PAR that converge in the genre. First, she asserts that feminism, despite variations, addresses issues of power and gender, calls attention the ways in which patriarchal oppression shapes women's experiences and perceptions of reality, intend to create a feminist consciousness and to be self-reflexive (in her explanation, it is, e.g.
"to reflect upon, examine critically, and explore analytically both the research process and one's own self" (p.43).
Within this context Barbeck outlines the common ground between feminism and PAR as follows:
1) Both regard subjective experience as a basis of knowledge production. PAR, aiming real-life change through the collective research-participant knowledge creation, calls attention to the researcher's subjective experience, self-reflexivity, to interrogate her assumptions, biases, privileges and power positionalities.
2)Both reappropriate silenced voice and agency of the oppressed. In order to do so, PAR explicitly move people from objects to subjects in their own research process. Feminist researchers seeks feminist perspectives and representation by challenging traditional, male-oriented research biases and distortions.
3)Both seek commitment to political action: While PAR attempts to change oppressive social structure as well as the positions of both researcher and participant, feminist researchers engage in action to achieve social justice for all.
4)Both encompass a commitment to collaborative work and solidarity among peoples: Like PAR, feminist research methods focuses on inclusive, accessible and creative dialogue between participants as well as shared process of discovery, expression, interpretation. Thus, self-reflexivity, that explores the power relationships between researcher and participant, is an important aspect for both. In particular, Lyke exclusively delves into this discourse--a (powerful) us and a (powerless) them (Lykes, 1997, "Activist Participatory Research Among the Maya of Guatemala: Constructing Meanings from Situated Knowledge").

Weaving Words and Pictures in/through Feminist Participatory Action Research (McIntyre, A., & Lykes, M.B. 57-77)
Reckoning the Photovoice projects both in Northern Ireland and Guatemala, McIntyre and Lykes describe the emergence of a third voice through their collaboration with research participants. Regarding the projects as a process of re-storying their realities towards a better and more just future, they conclude that it is building the relationships with each other that contributed to the research projects, and defines their roles as facilitators to the process of insiders' description of their realities whereby previously marginalized voices have generated stories within and beyond their communities.

Reflecting on her own experience in the research project, McIntyre writes recurring discussions about guidance as her own involvement in the research. In this regard, she writes,

"More often than not, we responded to the challenges with sarcasm, friendly banter, and/or by simply ignoring the problem...These behaviors can be distancing at times. Yet they are behaviors that we forged in our relationships as women, friends. and researchers." (p.66)

Lykes defines a third voice as "a dialectic wherein indigenous knowledge and academic research strategies inform knowledge construction within relationships across differences" (66-67). Particularly interesting in her account about the research is the development of a story through multiple reiteration. The example she brings up is a photo of a village girl, who collected wood to sell in the hope of getting a chocobanana. The original photographer incorporated narrations of her group's analysis into her original story when she presented in a conference in the U.S., and the story was transformed again in the final book. Tracing this process, Lykes describes,

"Personal desire and singularity have been deconstructed and resituated in a discourse of childhood characterized by poverty, human pain, and children's rights. The voice represented in the final phototext was coconstructed through negotiated relationality both in Chajul and on tour in the United States--relationships that shifted throughout the nearly three years of this project." (p.73)

Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema

Johnston, Claire. (2006, reprinted). In S. Thornham (Ed.), Feminist Film Theory: a reader (pp. 31-40). New York: NY University Press. (Originally from Johnston, C. (1973). In Notes on Women's Cinema. London: Society for Education in Film and Television (pp.24-31))

Johnston criticizes that, despite changes in the image of man in cinema, the primitive stereotyping of women remained with little modification, which she relates to sexist ideology in cinema. As a result, she argues, the dominant ideology inscribes women as ahistoric/eternal/unchanging entity while placing men inside history. Therefore Johnston asserts that women as women are absent in cinema and their fetishistic images are only portrayed in relation to male narcissism. Further, she writes that the star system relies on the fetishisation of woman, arousing the collective fantasy of phallocentrism.

Within this context, Johnston proposes the concept of counter-cinema as an alternative strategic use of film as a means to disseminate feminist ideas. Looking at emerging feminist cinema, Johnston sharply notes that women's cinema has taken its aesthetics from television and cinema vérité techniques (e.g. Three Lives, Women Talking, Portrait of Jason), which is depicting images of women talking to camera about their experiences, with little intervention by the film-maker. [This approach is very similar to PV] Refuting the possibility of capturing the reality, Johnston emphasizes in expressing women's oppression that "It has to be constructed/manufactured. New meanings have to be created by disrupting the fabric of the male bourgeois cinema within the text of the film (p.37)". In this way, she warns the danger of developing a non-intervention cinema. She argues such cinema promotes a passive subjectivity at the expense of analysis.

On the other hand, she writes, "[A] desire for change can only come about by drawing on fantasy" (p.37). With this respect, she delineates the counter-cinema as a collective work for a desire for change by sharing skills and developing sisterhood. Through the collective methods, she argues, one may truly come to understand how cinema works and demystify the workings of ideology.