E.15. The Colombian Roots of Participatory Action Research with Skip Bivens on AR+ Podcast
In this episode of AR+ Yes/And podcast, Action Research Journal Associate Editor Felix (Skip) Bivens interviews Joanne Rappaport and Victor Negrete (Barrera)
The conversation with Rappaport, recently retired from Georgetown University, and Negrete, a professor at Universidad del Sinu in Colombia and close collaborator with Orlando Fals Borda, focuses on the origins of participatory research in Colombia, and its shift towards more mainstream acceptance.
The context for the conversation is the participatory action research (PAR) experiments facilitated by Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda in the early 1970’s on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Rappaport has documented and analyzed these activities in her book “Cowards Don’t Make History”. Negrete was at the center of this work, collaborating closely with Fals Borda while serving as president of Fundación del Caribe, the coordinating entity for these initial research processes.
Rappaport and Negrete are committed to making Fals Borda’s legacy in Colombia available widely. They emphasize the importance of cultural context, community collaboration and the critical recovery of local history in Fal’s work. Rappaport’s writings in ‘Cowards Don’t Make History’ and her upcoming ‘Historieta Double’ illuminate the methodologies of these early PAR processes by drawing on original documents from Fals Borda’s archive in Monteria, Colombia, and interviews with collaborators like Negrete, providing far more detail and nuance than is commonly available for early PAR work.
Show notes for further reading:
Cowards Don’t Make History: Orlando Fals Borda and the Origins of Participatory Action Research by Joanne Rappaport: https://www.dukeupress.edu/cowards-dont-make-history
Historieta Double: A Graphic History of Participatory Action Research by Joanne Rappaport (available in December 2024): https://utorontopress.com/9781487555177/historieta-doble/
The Orlando Fals Borda Archive in Monteria, Colombia: https://www.banrepcultural.org/monteria/centro-de-documentacion-regional-orlando-fals-borda/bienvenidos