Action Research, Democracy and (Global)Citizenship. Building bridges among traditions and practices
Danilo R. Streck
IJAR – International Journal of Action Research, Issue 2-2023, pp. 112-124
Abstract: The theme of the 6th Symposium of the International Journal of Action Research invited participants to explore the role of Action Research on the edges that societies are facing today around the world.1 Among these edges, citizenship as a necessary socio-political process to the functioning of democracy is of special relevance, and in a sense connects with all the other edges, from poverty and migration to climate change. The paper is intended to be an initial exploration of how Action / Participatory Research in its different traditions implicitly or explicitly conceives its role in the promotion of citizenship. The argument is that there is an important democratising legacy sometimes lost or forgotten in favor of a more instrumental approach for organisational functioning and productivity. Listening to some selected voices from Europe and Latin America will lead to the proposal of a framework for comparative studies on the theme.
Keywords: Action Research, democracy, global citizenship, comparative studies, learning from differences, systematization of experience
Investigación Acción, Democracia y Ciudadanía (Global): Construyendo puentes entre tradiciones y prácticas
Resumen: El tema del 6º Simposio de International Journal of Action Research invitó a los participantes a explorar el papel de la Investigación Acción en las aristas que enfrentan las sociedades hoy en todo el mundo. Entre estas aristas, la ciudadanía como proceso sociopolítico necesario para el funcionamiento de la democracia cobra especial relevancia, y en cierto sentido se conecta con todas las demás aristas, desde la pobreza y la migración hasta el cambio climático. El artículo pretende ser una exploración inicial de cómo la Investigación Acción/Participativa en sus diferentes tradiciones implícita o explícitamente concibe su papel en la promoción de la ciudadanía. El argumento es que existe un importante legado democratizador que a veces se pierde u olvida en favor de un enfoque más instrumental para el funcionamiento y la productividad organizacional. La escucha de algunas voces seleccionadas de Europa y América Latina conducirá a la propuesta de un marco de estudios comparativos sobre el tema.
Palabras clave: Investigación Acción, democracia, ciudadanía global, estudios comparados, aprender de las diferencias, sistematización de experiencias
As introduction: Is there fire under the ashes?
Action Research, as other researchmethodologies and science in general, are today challenged to rethink their role. When the proponents of the 6th Symposiumof the International Journal of Action Research invited participants to explore the edges of Action Research, they seemed to be suggesting that research may have its share of responsibility for the multifaceted crisis we are facing today and that are well known: hunger in many parts of the world, forced migrations, the installation of authoritarian regimes in many countries, drastic climatic changes and environmental degradation and disasters, to name a few. How does Action Research fit into this picture? Eventually, where can alternatives be anchored?
In these circumstances two simultaneous movements are called for. One of them is to acknowledge the myriad of innovative practices that can be found all over the world. A quick look at the articles published in the International Journal of Action Research, and other journals in the field, makes us aware that academics and practitioners are struggling to find ways to make a difference, and in different ways. In the last years I have been happy to see experiments in doctoral dissertations and master theses that constitute healthy methodological transgressions, for instance, mixing Action Research with Autobiography, developing creative strategies of participation in times of Covid-19 pandemic such as writing and sharing “pedagogical letters” for constructing the data corpus to be collectively analysed. These experiments are signs of the unrest which is an essential ingredient for any change.
The other movement is a return to the origins of what has become known as Action or Participatory Research. What where the original promises of Action Research, and to what degree have they been fulfilled? Are they still valid and necessary today? If they have been covered by ashes, are there some embers to be awakened and that can potentialise innovative practices and help to redefine the role of Action Research in today’s societies? The search for fire beneath the ashes is evinced through the frequent citations to what can be considered founders or “fathers/mothers” of the movement, such as Kurt Lewin, Eric Trist, Marja Lisa Swantz, Orlando Fals Borda and Paulo Freire, among many others.
There seems to be a general agreement that since its beginning Action Research, in its various formats, is related to the promotion of democracy. I will try to check this argument, and identify aspects that have been highlighted in some discussions in Europe and in Latin America, based on the assumption that different socio-political-cultural contexts will require and produce different approaches to actualise the democratising principle, and that the dialogue among these approaches is an important step towards the understanding of citizenship that, while necessarily linked to nationalities and states, today needs a broader scope given the global dimension of the problems facing humanity and planetary sustainability.
The boundaries of citizenship have shifted significantly in the last decades. Melissa S. William has summarized these boundary shifts in four categories: a) the boundaries of political and cultural identities, meaning that there is a rise in the number of individuals who hold dual citizenship or who have strong bonds of membership in more than one country, such as “diasporic communities”; b) with the trade increase and the rise of multinational corporations, the economic boundaries no longer coincide with the nation state; c) the political-institutional boundaries tend to be expanded through international agreements that generate binding decisions, such as the European Union and other regional initiatives; d) the boundaries of democratic participation are gaining in scope, having increasingly a transnational character, from indigenous populations to ecological movements. These boundary shifts affect not only our understanding of citizenship, but the way of producing knowledge with these citizens (William, 2006, p. 224).
As conclusion, I will draft an outline of a possible framework for comparative studies in Action Research, more specifically as related to its democratising legacy and potential. Based on comparative methodology, the framework will be made up by three dimensions which, on their turn, can be broken up in units of analysis. The contextual dimension contains units of analysis that correspond to the identification of stakeholders, the socio-cultural environment, and political conditions. In the epistemic dimension we ask about the theoretical and conceptual foundations, the specific role of the researcher and other stakeholders. The third dimension, identified as strategic, asks about the future perspectives, emergent models, and new insights.
The democratic legacy of Action Research
In the literature we find Action Research associated with expressions such as participation, involvement, co-production, co-generation, co-determination, co-creation, and partnership. The differences in terminology point to particularities in socio-cultural contexts, as well as to methodological choices made by researchers. What they have in common is the effort to bridge the gap in traditional research among those who are involved in the process of knowing. Marianne Kristiansen and Joergen Bloch-Poulsen (2021) ask whether we could refer to a participatory turn, considering that participation has become so pervasive, although with sometimes antagonistic meanings. As they put it, “It seems to be more and more widely accepted that citizens, users, customers, employees etc. should not simply be told what to do, what is to happen to them, or what is best for them. They should be involved to a greater extent” (p. 17). This may refer to people having more influence on decisions that affect their lives, but it may also refer to improving efficiency and achieving more durable results. That is also why, in their assessment, Action Research practices tread a fine line between improving efficiency and promoting democratisation and humanisation.
This fine line seems to be at the risk of being blurred in favor of consumerism and productivity, in what is being defined as surveillance capitalism. As pointed out in a recent collective text: “Surveillance capitalism succeeds in expropriating citizens’ civil rights as well as their capacities to participate in deliberative democracy and to live their lives according to their individual preferences. Surveillance capitalism thus attacks democracy at its very roots” (Fricke et al, 2022, p. 12). The authors then argue that to reduce Action Research to improving organisational processes or coping with specific social and environmental issues means giving up the democratic ambitions that are part and parcel of Action Research.
These democratic ambitions can be found already in Kurt Lewin. In his seminal text “Action Research and minority problems” he makes explicit that the methodological approach he is proposing is far from neutral, or situated in a sphere above the actual problems people are facing in their lives and communities. We may question his “social engineering” concept as too mechanical, but his recommendation that “it will be necessary to install fact-finding procedures, social eyes and ears, right into social bodies” has become a basic principle in the various traditions or tendencies of Action Research (Lewin, 1946, p. 38). These social ears and eyes are to be installed in social bodies to produce changes by the people themselves based on values of social justice. Science, he points out, gives more “freedom and power to both to the doctor and the murderer, for democracy and fascism” (p. 44). Already in his time he recognised that the so-called minority problems are indeed the majority problems. Today we might prefer to say that that they are the problems of humanity.
But there are two other features in Lewin’s article that I want to highlight for the arguments in this text. First, there is the recognition that Action Research should be carried out by a “symphony” of disciplines given the complexity of social problems. Interestingly, economics should be integrated with psychology, sociology anthropology and other social sciences. He foresees a promising future for the integration of disciplines, whether through the amalgamation in one social science or a just a co-operation, both of which are still far to be accomplished. Institutionalisation of inter and transdisciplinarity is still a major concern when it comes to facing today’s major social and environmental problems (Klein, Baptista & Streck, 2022).
The second point I want to highlight from Lewin’s text is the geopolitical scope of social problems, a fact that is also becoming more evident with growing global interconnectedness. Lewin’s insight may have become a kind of common sense, but we are still far from finding a solution. Let us listen to him: “The last point I would like to mention concerns the relation between the local, the national, and the international scenes. No one working in the field of intergroup relations can be blind to the fact that we live today in one world” (Lewin, 1946, p. 45). He then goes on saying that intergroup relations in the United States will be affected by events in the international scene, and particularly by the fate of “colonial peoples”. Foreseeing the strength of the emergent power he asks if the United States would be willing to give up the usual policy of exploitation “which made colonial imperialism the most hated institution the world over” (p. 46). It can be mentioned only in passing that Lewin’s admonition points to what today is being discussed in (de)colonial studies, where coloniality of knowledge is imbedded in power structures that keep reproducing social inequalities, racial discrimination and not least the exploitation of nature (Moraña, Dussel & Jáuregui, 2008).
The democratic and democratising legacy of Action Research can serve as an ethical reserve to deal with the present historic situation (Gunnarsson et al, 2016, p. 6). There is obviously no single or easy answer even to what we understand by democracy, but most of us would agree that democracy goes beyond electing representatives from time to time. It involves the enabling of people for responsible participation in designing and defining their lives as well as the life, present and future, on and of the planet. This implies recognising the political dimension of Action Research, and its capacity to create new kinds of knowledge due to the democratic participatory way of producing this knowledge. Ahedo (2022) argues that Action Research must “recover the political sense of community action” (p. 31) starting from the bottom up, rebuilding the self by “incarnating and politicising pain”. Only so could the individual Cinderellas break the condemnation to perpetually scrubbing the floor and, united, change the story.
1 “Action Research on the Edge” – IJAR 2022 Symposium, October 12–14, 2022, organized and promoted by Arama – Initiative in Action Research, Sabanci University, Istanbul.
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Would you like to continue reading? This article was published in issue 2-2023 of IJAR – International Journal of Action Research.
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