Participatory Action Research - Overview

Overview

Like the simultaneous invention of agriculture in the Nile valley and the Crescent between the Tigris and the Euphrates, PAR in the 21st century has multiple progenitors. Originating with the pioneering work of Kurt Lewin (1946) and the Tavistock Institute in the 1940s, PAR is a well-documented tradition of collective self-experimentation backed up by evidential reasoning, fact-finding and learning. All formulations of PAR have in common the idea that research and action must be done ‘with’ people and not ‘on’ or ‘for’ people (Brock and Pettit, 2007; Chevalier and Buckles, 2008, 2013; Heron, 1995; Kindon et al., 2007; Reason, 1995; Reason and Bradbury, 2008; Swantz, 2008; Whyte, 1991). Taken together they constitute a robust alternative to positivism’s denial of human agency, one that promotes the grounding of knowledge in a critical, action-oriented understanding of social history (as in much of political economy). Inquiry based on PAR principles makes sense of the world through collective efforts to transform it, as opposed to simply observing and studying human behaviour and people’s views about reality, in the hope that meaningful change will eventually emerge.

In the field of development, PAR has drawn considerable inspiration from work of Paulo Freire (1982), new thinking on adult education research (Hall, 1975), the Civil Rights Movement (Horton and Freire, 1990), South Asian social movements such as the Bhoomi Sena (Rahman, 2008, 2011), and key initiatives such as the Participatory Research Network created in 1978 and based in New Delhi. "It has benefited from an interdisciplinary development drawing its theoretical strength from adult education, sociology, political economy, community psychology, community development, feminist studies, critical psychology, organizational development and more" (Hall, 1992, p. 16). The Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda and others organized the first explicitly PAR conference in Cartagena, Colombia in 1977 (Hall, 2005). Based on his research with peasant groups in rural Boyaca and with other underserved groups, Fals Borda called for the 'community action' component to be incorporated into the research plans of traditionally trained researchers. His recommendations to researchers committed to the struggle for justice and greater democracy in all spheres, including the business of science, are far-reaching:

"Do not monopolise your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers. Do not trust elitist versions of history and science which respond to dominant interests, but be receptive to counter-narratives and try to recapture them. Do not depend solely on your culture to interpret facts, but recover local values, traits, beliefs, and arts for action by and with the research organisations. Do not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals." (Fals Borda, 1995)

PAR strategies to democratize knowledge making and ground it in real community needs and learning represent genuine efforts to overcome the ineffectiveness and elitism of conventional schooling and science, and the negative effects of market forces and industry on the workplace, community life and sustainable livelihoods. These principles and the ongoing evolution of PAR have had a lasting legacy in fields ranging from problem solving in the workplace to community development and sustainable livelihoods, education, public health, feminist research and civic engagement. It is important to note that these contributions are subject to many tensions and debates on key issues such as the role of clinical psychology, critical social thinking and the pragmatic concerns of organizational learning in PAR theory and practice. Labels used to define each approach (PAR, critical PAR, action research, psychosociology, sociotechnical analysis, etc.) reflect these tensions and point to major differences that may outweigh the similarities. While a common denominator, the combination of “participation”, action” and research reflects the fragile unity of traditions whose diverse ideological and organizational contexts kept them separate and largely ignorant of one another for several decades (Brown and Tandon, 1983; Brown, 1993).

The following review focuses on traditions that incorporate the three pillars of PAR. Closely related approaches that overlap but do not bring the three components together are left out. Applied research, for instance, is not necessarily committed to participatory principles and may be initiated and controlled mostly by experts, with the implication that ‘human subjects’ are not invited to play a key role in science building and the framing of the research questions. As in mainstream science, this process "regards people as sources of information, as having bits of isolated knowledge, but they are neither expected nor apparently assumed able to analyze a given social reality" (Hall, 1975, p. 26) PAR also differs from participatory inquiry or collaborative research, contributions to knowledge that may not involve direct engagement with transformative action and social history. PAR, in contrast, has evolved from the work of activists more concerned with empowering marginalized peoples than with generating academic knowledge for its own sake (Freire, 1970; Hall, 1981; Tandon, 2002). Lastly, given its commitment to the research process, PAR overlaps but is not synonymous with Action learning, Action Reflection Learning (ARL), participatory development and community development — recognized forms of problem solving and capacity building that may be carried out with no immediate concern for research and the advancement of knowledge (Bartunek and Schein, 2011).