The three of us – Marina Apgar, Alfredo Ortiz Aragón & Paul Gray, associate editors, Action Research Journal (ARJ) – were recently given an opportunity to work together to deepen our understanding and share more broadly how action research can more intentionally support sustainability. The result of our collaboration is a new issue of ARJ, Vol 17 issue 3, that pulls together six articles. Each showcases how action research is supporting sustainability by actively addressing inequality, bridging across actors and sectors, and seeking to be methodologically transformative.
The articles provide examples of creative methodological arrangements that deeply engage people’s knowledge and identities at individual and system levels, while uniquely weaving these levels together through first (me), second (we) and third person (them) practices that support sustainability on our living earth. They also highlight how specific actors such as universities might re-conceive action research to better align with territorial needs and movements.
We share next what we personally loved about each article.
Alfredo writes: I really loved how Kettleborough’s first-person critically-reflective writing style invited me in to her mourning process. As she reflects on the respect that was shown for her aunt’s life and death at her wake, she wonders aloud why the same honor is not extended to species who are becoming extinct. As I read this section I scribbled in the margins of the paper: “Why do we not have wakes to mourn lost species? We clearly see ourselves as separate from the planet and nature”. In this moment I realized that her first-person approach had invited me into dialogue with her and into critical questioning of my own connections with nature. The whole paper does this in a very interesting way, which I think will generate meaningful conversations with others as well.
I also really appreciated how she framed participation in terms of how humans see and understand our connections with all other species in cycles of death and rebirth. As such we are all implicated in Living Earth’s sustainability or destruction, and so participation is about assuming co-responsibility for protecting the earth and its creatures, including ourselves.
Paul writes: This study used narrative as a way of eliciting excellent data, encouraging respondents’ collaboration and overcoming reticence on a sensitive topic among a hard-to-reach, indigenous population. There is a sense in which conventional public health messaging carries a colonizing massage, to the effect that authorities know “what is good for you.” The impact on sustainability is two-fold. This exercise not only increased available information about HIV in the population under study, but it also empowered young people to speak in a clear voice that is likely to be believable and worthy of peoples’ attention.
Marina writes: Romano’s article is a brave and inspiring narration of the personal journey we are all on, or at least should be on, as action researchers—reflecting on our responsibilities as researchers in how we build intersubjectivity. She skillfully links her own journey through the PhD process to Freire’s praxis through her use of cycles of action and reflection. I loved the powerful metaphor she uses of ‘slaying my own ghosts’ to bring to life the ‘breaks’ she experienced as she learned to embrace action research within a formal academic setting. Building on the first-person narration of ‘classical’ action research, she situates her reflection in territory and engages with what it means to be embedded in complex processes of change. She says “We can extract reflections and learning from theory, but it is necessary to contextualize it in each territory” and as she emerges through a transformative process she provides much needed evidence of how action research “may therefore be considered to be a strategy of change” for each one of us (first person), for how we learn together (second person) and for the change we aspire to make in the territorial spaces we work in (third person).
Marina writes: The power of Evans-Agnew et al.’s article was for me their central story of citizens being transformed from data collectors “into builders of collective community knowledge and generators of policy change.” This resonates with my own search for linking participatory methods with systemic analysis for real solutions to complex problems. They inspire us to think creatively about methodological bricolage within a well-designed action research process. They bring to life youth-driven entangled situated methodologies – mixing quantitative and qualitative data collection with visual methods and discourse analysis through an ecofeminist environmental justice lens. The process leads to systemic analysis as data made visible the invisible – woodsmoke in their homes – and through photovoice was linked to outdoor burning by marginalised people (the homeless) – which in turn identified leverage points for systems change – housing the homeless as a solution to a problem they face in their own homes. A fabulous story of how action research and methodological bricolage can enable youth-led responses to the complexity of cross-scale sustainability challenges.
Paul writes: This research took place in a relatively low status neighborhood on the fringes of Taipei, an area with a rich history but low awareness of “place.” Action research was utilized for the purpose of “reconstructing Narratives” created by elements of the local population. This study makes creative use of film, social media, and carefully staged social events in order to elicit authentic content from residents and to empower them.
The narratives are seen by the author “as the cornerstone of dialogical community planning to counterbalance the impending top–down implementation of urban renewal or regeneration projects.” In that sense both Flicker et al and Kang use action research to accomplish similar goals. Both projects bring people together through encouraging collaboration and local wisdom. And, both projects demonstrate that sustainability is less likely when people are told what to do by the authorities. And more likely when people are empowered to contribute and to appreciate each other’s contributions.
Alfredo writes: Larrea’s article also resonated with me a lot, as I am just in the process of seeking ways to create more applied learning and research opportunities for our PhD students in my own university. She offers a frank assessment of how many universities present difficult settings for AR because they lack explicit commitment to democratizing knowledge for social change, and mechanisms for engaging communities in real-life change processes outside the university. She soberly asks: “How can AR be the engine of change in an organisational setting where conditions are inimical to its practice?” But she offers practical strategies for doing so, including working on strengthening university enabling conditions as part of research projects, developing sandboxes outside the university that can move at a speed and rhythm of community and territorial actor needs, tempering our expectations that everyone become a critical AR practitioner, and adopting heterogeneous teams of researchers and practitioners. At the same she reminds is that AR is borne out of critique of other approaches, and so adopting too much of a pragmatic and pluralistic research worldview to reduce conflicts and productive tensions generated by the use of AR, may move AR into the realm of pluralistic and pragmatic effectiveness, & remove its radical edge. She offers additional strategies for keep the creative tension alive through the ongoing process of “constructing agreements over this conflict”. I feel like I have someone to reach out to as my own shared action research experimentation continues at my university!
Conclusion Through this issue, we hope ARJ readers can also learn how to put their transformative intentions into practice, as we as associate editors were inspired to do with this curated issue. We end with a final thought by Paul, that speaks for all of us:
“Although I have taught Action Research and engaged in it myself, I found that the experience of selecting these articles for the special issue of the journal has deepened my personal understanding. What I learned is that action research methodology is intrinsically connected to sustainability. It is a powerful tool for reaching poorly organized or hard-to-reach populations. It is equally valuable to methodologists and change-makers!”
A copy of our editorial essay is available to you for free download from ARJ and do check out all the papers in Vol 17 Issue 3. Enjoy!
