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Practising participatory geographies: Potentials, problems and politics
Abstract
Participatory approaches have become increasingly popular within geography in recent years, but some would argue that participatory working is both in vogue and in crisis. In this special section of Area we have drawn together a series of papers to reflect on the complexities, tensions and difficulties that are caught up with the potentials and politics of participatory ways of working and thinking. In this introductory editorial we set out the impetus behind the special section, reflecting on the history of participatory geographies and the contemporary challenges arising from such ways of working. The role of the Participatory Geographies Research Group as a collective supporting and critically engaging with participatory research is also outlined.
... There is a growing, and seemingly sustained, call for 'participation' in geographic research (Caretta and Riaño, 2016;Chilvers, 2009;DeLyser and Sui, 2013;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015). Chilvers (2009) discusses a 'participatory turn' in environmental geography as well as development geography, social geography, and geographic information systems (GIS) in the early 2000s. ...
... Research itself can produce bodily feelings that 'charge or chill' individuals to particular actions in their social and material worlds, including social organizing (Hayes-Conroy, 2010; also see Henry, 2012;Vacchelli, 2018). The growing literature on affect has influenced some theory and methods of participatory research (Wynne-Jones, et al., 2015), and the fact that participatory research can produce affects/emotions/feelings is not at all foreign to participatory researchers. Still, participatory research is not always explicit about the importance of affective experiences of research collaborators (although see Cahill, 2007). ...
... In particular, she suggests an ethical obligation of long-term knowledge sharing and reporting back to those who helped create that knowledge. Meanwhile, Franks (2015) suggests a more 'modest' approach to participatory research that does not assume prolonged commitment to a cause as the most ethical approach (see also, Wynne-Jones, et al., 2015). We also have followed Kesby (2000) and Cahill (2007) in understanding participatory processes as not isolated in time and space, but instead providing openings for building new social relations, spaces, and ways of being. ...
Participatory research increasingly seeks tangible outcomes contributing to social transformation. We reflexively examine the role of affect in two participatory research projects in Colombia to argue that intentionally making space for and reflecting on affective experiences can help generate more effective research. Such ‘praxis of affect’ focused on building social bonds, demonstrating solidarity, distributing expertise, and sharing hope were critical for sustaining motivation toward the research endeavor and social transformation efforts. This article contributes to literature on participatory research by considering ways to implement socially-responsible research that creates momentarily affective spaces and recasts the desire for more durable outcomes in such spaces.
... Un objetivo epistemológico de esta crítica ha sido cuestionar la barrera entre el "investigador experto" y las "comunidades investigadas", en cambio propone espacios de colaboración, negociación y co-construccción del conocimiento (Wynne-Jones et al. 2015). Esto ha llevado a nuevas formas de mapeo (Perkins 2003;2006) conocidas como cartografía social o mapeo participativo, que en su esencia intentan invertir el poder de los mapas y avanzar a proyectos contrahegemónicos o de contramapeo que puedan representar topónimos indígenas, historias y concepciones de paisajes borrados por los mapas producidos por actores estatales o corporativos (FIDA 2009;Sletto 2013Sletto y 2015. ...
... Esta metodología de mapeo la podemos resumir en tres alcances. Teóricamente, permite mayor control de las comunidades en los procesos de mapeo en donde la gente pueda reflexionar críticamente sobre sus elaboraciones (Wynne-Jones et al. 2015); el mapeo se convierte en un impulsor para la memoria dando así mayor peso al proceso que al producto cartográfico (Sletto 2013); y desde un punto de vista posrepresentacional, la cartografía borra otras formas de producción para representar cosas seguras y estables, en contra de presentarse como un objeto ontológicamente inestable y siempre en proceso (Sletto 2015). En su potencialidad para analizar, promueve la apertura y fluidez en métodos participativos y critica la posicionalidad del investigación para reconocerse y confrontarse a sí mismo sobre lo que analiza y los propósitos que tiene de por medio (Wynne-Jones et al. 2015); busca explorar el potencial del trabajo de la memoria en contextos de lucha y cambio social, en donde el proceso de mapeo inspira el discurso de la memoria (Sletto 2013); los elementos (símbolos, imágenes, textos, dibujos) se comprenden como rastros de espacios afectivos aún presentes en el diseño del mapa, de emociones que quedan atrás y que constituyen los lugares (Sletto 2015). ...
Este trabajo se enfoca en demostrar que el método de cartografía social puede convertirse en un dispositivo político que permite visualizar epistemológicamente otros saberes territoriales que se materializan en un mapa, con el fin de reivindicar derechos territoriales indígenas. Para eso, se elaboraron mapas con la comunidad de Chapiquiña en el norte de Chile, representándose la apropiación sobre su territorio. En nuestro caso, este método es el acceso hacia las “geo-grafías” mentales invisibilizadas por el Estado chileno, las cuales nos permiten inferir hipotéticamente que el proceso de migración desde los pueblos hacia la ciudad de Arica no se trata de una desterritorialización de las comunidades aymara, sino de un proceso de movilidad que ha permitido la construcción y transformación del territorio aymara contemporáneo, tanto en lo urbano como en lo rural.
... The main researcher lived with a farm family in Vent for 10 weeks in the winter of 2015/2016. Building on authors such as Kinsbaisby-Hill (2008) and Wynne-Jones et al. (2015), participant observation involved the researcher moving between participating in the community by deliberately immersing himself in its everyday rhythms and routines, developing relationships with people who could explain what was going on in the community, and writing accounts in a field diary of how these relationships developed and what was learned from them. Participant observation, thus, focused on studying everyday events and how they were experienced and understood by participants, helped investigate social events and non-verbal interactions, and helped link data to reality, i.e. understanding what people were doing rather than just interpreting what they were saying (Wynne- Jones et al., 2015). ...
... Participant observation, thus, focused on studying everyday events and how they were experienced and understood by participants, helped investigate social events and non-verbal interactions, and helped link data to reality, i.e. understanding what people were doing rather than just interpreting what they were saying (Wynne- Jones et al., 2015). Field diary notes were treated as 'raw data' (Wynne-Jones et al., 2015) and analysed as a textual document focusing on recorded impressions, feelings and comments. Third, archival information was collected to analyse historical path dependencies, with a key focus placed on the new 'social memory' archive opened in the Ötztal valley in 2013 which contained valuable photos, letters and diaries that also included stories from the village of Vent. ...
Building on critical community resilience studies, this study analyses the resilience of the village of Vent, a remote mountain community in the Austrian Ötztal valley challenged by slow-onset disturbances such as climate change, outmigration of young people and the repercussions of the post-2008 recession. A conceptual framework which focuses on how well economic, social, cultural, political and natural domains are developed within a community, is used as the conceptual springboard to assess the resilience of Vent. The study highlights that Vent is facing substantial resilience challenges and that the community is particularly vulnerable (weak resilience) with regard to the political and natural domains, is only moderately resilient in economic and social terms, and that only the cultural domain emerges as strongly resilient. Overall, Vent is, at most, moderately resilient in the face of continuing and future shocks/disturbances. The study interrogates current resilience frameworks and suggests that an approach based on the five resilience domains provides a richly textured framework for understanding the subtleties of resilience pathways, all the while acknowledging that obtaining a relatively complete picture of resilience is easier in small (and geographically bounded) communities.
... important and we echo sentiments from Wynne-Jones et al. (2015) and suggest that the experience of researchers using co-creation should be widely shared to inform the impact agenda. ...
Complex socio-ecological challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss have resulted in an increased focus on the co-creation of knowledge to increase the diversity of those represented by and within research, make research more accessible and ensure research has impact outside of academic contexts. However, guidance and dialogue around the many processes that underpin co-created research remain limited. This perspective piece is informed by practical experience in the co-creation of research with historically underrepresented communities and represents a culmination of our experience and perspectives as academics, artists, community development officers and project workers. First, we share methodological insights, including tools used to identify community concerns and promote engagement in the co-creation process. We then present key guiding principles that we believe are important underpinnings of co-creation including: 1) valuing the entire co-creation process; 2) identifying conditions needed for inclusive co-creation; and 3) participatory evaluation. We also share recommended practices that provide illustrative examples of how guiding principles were addressed in practice across each of our case studies. Recommended practices include - but are not limited to - valuing people not ‘check boxes’, understanding safe spaces, shared language, and integrating evaluation throughout the research process. Our Findings inform future empirical work on co-created initiatives that have meaningful impact for both society and the environment.
... Luque-Ayala and Neves Maia (2019) discuss a case of Google providing favela mapping in Brazil and conclude that the company is interfering in a way that is both state-like (for which the company has no mandate) and (out of commercial interest) prioritizes the economic dimensions of the favelas. The latter involves suppressing the actual concerns of residents, including their mapping, possibly leading to a technological form of neocolonialism and a perpetuation of pre-existing inequalities in the affected areas (Leszczynski, 2016; Rambaldi et al., 2006;Ramirez-Gomez et al., 2013;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015). These and other structural issues related to digital mapping of informal areas are closely linked to managing expectations and building trust (Brown & Kyttä, 2018) (although there are also counterexamples where residents proactively approach academics regarding facilitating digital participatory mapping, see Vergara-Perucich & Arias-Loyola, 2021), and they pose significant challenges to the realization of actual resident participation. ...
Informal areas in the Global South are still relatively under-researched. This is partly due to the difficulties associated with accessing these areas, especially when it comes to more complex research topics such as understanding the daily lives of residents and other phenomena that are difficult to measure from the outside or purely through data. In planning, access to informal areas is relevant not only for research, but also for civic participation. The latter has become mainstream in recent years, leading to a growing body of literature on participatory planning. Participation typically involves some form of data collection and, since much data is spatial, mapping, most of which is now done digitally. However, little is known about the interface between digital mapping (in the sense of geodata acquisition involved in wider participatory mapping activities) and participation in informal contexts. This review explores that interface. The collected corpus of articles was assembled according to a rigorous protocol and analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. The results show that digital mapping has so far resulted in relatively little additional direct participation by affected residents. However, the results show a number of side effects that have a positive impact on the involvement of informal area residents in the political planning process. We also note that the relevant studies often focus on a few select countries per continent, which may have an impact on the transferability of the results published in the literature. We hope that this scoping review will be useful to both planning researchers and practitioners.
... This is a marked departure from more traditional forms of public engagement in policy analysis that views public consultation simply in terms of soliciting people's views (Aldred, 2009;Mullally et al. 2018). Recognising that knowledge is socially constructed, that there are multiple understandings of a phenomenon and that a plurality of knowledge can exist across multiple spaces and places, participatory approaches are value based and informed by a strong social justice ethos that incorporates the principles of equality, reciprocity, and respect (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015). This emphasis on justice, particularly social justice, is one way in which participatory approaches can be 'a potent means to achieve key democratic values' (Fung, 2015, p 1). ...
... Feminist scholars engaged in anti-colonial and decolonial work also offer frameworks for honoring refusals within the research process (Coddington 2016;Tuck and Yang 2014). For some of these scholars, rather than uncritically drawing on more participatory research designs or even centering marginalized voices (see Pain 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Caretta and Riano 2016), carefully taking on refusal require assessing whether research is the appropriate method of responding to questions and issues (Coddington 2016). ...
Qualitative ethnographic methods paired with participatory photography
... When looking for literature to help me understand my own experiences, the literature drawn from participatory geographies was particularly useful in its ability to attend to the systems and institutions involved in the research and processes of group formation and dynamics, particularly across difference (Askins, 2017;Pain, 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015). A reflective approach and (subsequent) engagement with literature stemming from participatory geographies encouraged me to connect my experiences to wider critiques of "partnerships" between academia and (global development) institutions, in particular the power dynamics, organizational hierarchies, the fragility of collaborations, the sometimes-conflicting timescales and the constraints of academic processes (see also Fransman et al., 2021). ...
This paper examines the pedagogies of collaborative doctoral education. Collaborative doctoral studentships link the academy to wider societal concerns and aim to address unease about employability post-PhD. Dominant discourses of collaboration by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and its associated research councils, give primacy to importance of knowledge exchange within doctoral education. By drawing on my own experiences of undertaking a collaborative studentship this paper articulates the benefits of a reflective pedagogical approach to collaborative studentships. This reflective pedagogy is both a way in which collective aims are potentially accomplished and an opportunity to understand more about the institutions, systems and environments in which the research relationship is embedded. This approach resonates with participatory geographies literature and this body of work can be drawn on to support collaborative students to explore the relational dynamics of the research process and reflect on the role of the university. A reflective approach highlights the importance of the relationships that are produced through collaborative research and it is by attending to these relationships that collaborative students can understand more about the inner socio-political worlds of both the academy and their non-academic partners
... Participatory approaches and methodologies have become more and more common among geographers in the effort to make knowledge production processes more relevant, just, inclusive, and equal and to prompt social change (Borda 2001;Wynne-Jones et al. 2015). Often, participation is pursued by using creative and visual research methodologies, contributing to what has been argued to constitute a 'creative turn' in geography (Hawkins 2019;de Dios & Kong 2020), as "geographers long fascinated with the practices of poetry, visual art, photography, performance, dance, cabaret, story-telling and more, are becoming creators and collaborators (rather than simply analysts)" (Hawkins 2019, 963). ...
In this article, I make the case for an underexplored research practice – participatory dissemination – and reflectively introduce a new research method, IBZM (Interview-Based Zine-Making), which I developed in my fieldwork research on the gentrifying neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, in New York City. Participatory dissemination is a practice that engages research participants in the interpretation of preliminary research findings, and through art-based methods, leads to the coproduction of visual outputs and research communication for diversified audiences, especially those beyond solely academic readers. Participatory dissemination has received little attention within academic debates thus far. The paper addresses this gap in the literature by outlining the rationale and potential for incorporating participatory processes within research dissemination, even where so-called traditional (non- or less-participatory) research methods are used. IBZM follows the technique of zine-making (that is, the practice of cutting, rearranging, and creatively pasting printed materials in a new pamphlet), but instead of using media texts and pictures as raw materials, IBZM works with transcribed texts from researcher-conducted interviews. The aim is to let the research participants (zine-makers) engage with the perspectives of the interviewees and find assonances, disagreements, and connections with their own thoughts. The output is a collectively produced zine to be further disseminated. IBZM offers a means of combining traditional detached research methods, such as interviews, with participatory and creative/visual research methods. As such, participatory dissemination can be helpful in bridging literatures and debates on participatory and traditional research methods, providing new avenues for researchers working primarily with the latter to incorporate participatory elements into their research process and outputs.
... Feminist scholars engaged in anti-colonial and decolonial work also offer frameworks for honoring refusals within the research process (Coddington 2016;Tuck and Yang 2014). For some of these scholars, rather than uncritically drawing on more participatory research designs or even centering marginalized voices (see Pain 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Caretta and Riano 2016), carefully taking on refusal require assessing whether research is the appropriate method of responding to questions and issues (Coddington 2016). ...
... Feminist scholars engaged in anti-colonial and decolonial work also offer frameworks for honoring refusals within the research process (Coddington 2016;Tuck and Yang 2014). For some of these scholars, rather than uncritically drawing on more participatory research designs or even centering marginalized voices (see Pain 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Caretta and Riano 2016), carefully taking on refusal require assessing whether research is the appropriate method of responding to questions and issues (Coddington 2016). ...
... Feminist scholars engaged in anti-colonial and decolonial work also offer frameworks for honoring refusals within the research process (Coddington 2016;Tuck and Yang 2014). For some of these scholars, rather than uncritically drawing on more participatory research designs or even centering marginalized voices (see Pain 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Caretta and Riano 2016), carefully taking on refusal require assessing whether research is the appropriate method of responding to questions and issues (Coddington 2016). ...
... Feminist scholars engaged in anti-colonial and decolonial work also offer frameworks for honoring refusals within the research process (Coddington 2016;Tuck and Yang 2014). For some of these scholars, rather than uncritically drawing on more participatory research designs or even centering marginalized voices (see Pain 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Caretta and Riano 2016), carefully taking on refusal require assessing whether research is the appropriate method of responding to questions and issues (Coddington 2016). ...
... Feminist scholars engaged in anti-colonial and decolonial work also offer frameworks for honoring refusals within the research process (Coddington 2016;Tuck and Yang 2014). For some of these scholars, rather than uncritically drawing on more participatory research designs or even centering marginalized voices (see Pain 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Caretta and Riano 2016), carefully taking on refusal require assessing whether research is the appropriate method of responding to questions and issues (Coddington 2016). ...
Volume 83
P. 34-39
Feminist and postcolonial anthropology have long
stressed the need to perceive the researcher as a
positioned and biased subject (Collins 1991, Rosaldo
1989, Weston 1997) and it is, therefore, important to
reflect on one’s position in the field as well as the writing
practice. Today it has become standard practice to have at
least one student assignment on ‘positionality’ in
anthropology or human geography classes. However, in
my PhD research, the need to reflect upon my social and
cultural position was not only prescribed by social and
cultural anthropological practice but also demanded from
the interlocutors themselves—because I am a white
German woman researching Afrodescendent and Black26
identities. Also, I work with Black feminist activists, who
form part of a political community in which questions of
representation are a core theme. In this essay I reflect on
fieldwork experiences I made at conferences and with
research interlocutors and explain how I deal with my
own positionality as a white female researcher.
... Feminist scholars engaged in anti-colonial and decolonial work also offer frameworks for honoring refusals within the research process (Coddington 2016;Tuck and Yang 2014). For some of these scholars, rather than uncritically drawing on more participatory research designs or even centering marginalized voices (see Pain 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Caretta and Riano 2016), carefully taking on refusal require assessing whether research is the appropriate method of responding to questions and issues (Coddington 2016). ...
This edited issue on "Feminist research practice in geography" deals with the many and recurrent conversations on the beauty and rewards, but also the struggles and problems around conducting research in the social sciences.
... Participatory research is often held up as the pinnacle of 'good' development research practice -emphasising co-production of research, the collection of data that is more representative of the perspectives of the community being researched, and the production of research that is useful to those participants as well as to the academics who produce it (Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Kindon et al., 2007). However, embedded within this approach is an assumption that such research will be inherently more acceptable to research participants, and that they will want, and be able, to actively participate. ...
In this paper, we critically analyse our experiences of initiating participatory research in the challenging context of the Atacama Desert, Northern Chile. We use our experience of organising participatory workshops with Aymara and Quechua women community leaders to reflect on the politics of participation/non-participation, and explore these experiences in light of our multiple and overlapping positionalities as Chilean/British, male/female, white/mestizo. In the light of one workshop being entirely unsuccessful, we discuss the ways in which our empirical and methodological thinking has nevertheless been enriched by this experience. We situate the challenges we faced in relation to negotiating the tensions presented by debates on decolonising research from our positions within the neoliberal academy, exploring the questions raised by indigenous women activists' research 'refusal', and critically reflect upon the emotional responses this situation elicited in each of us. We argue for the importance of embracing such apparent fieldwork 'failures' and, recognising the resulting emotional swirl of panic, anxiety and inadequacy that they produce, emphasise these experiences as illustrative of the inherent tensions around decolonising research, as well as an often inevitable element of conducting research with marginalised communities involved in socio-environmental conflicts.
... farm workers and growers) who interface with pesticides on a day-to-day basis would need to be recognized and empowered as knowledge producers who can collect emergent data on pesticide toxicity and help identify undone science that needs to be conducted. This type of participatory governance (Wynne-Jones et al., 2015) which empowers stakeholders as knowledge producers would 'enhance the democratic accountability of the politics of non-knowing' (Beck and Wehling, 2012: 35) to better protect beekeepers and their bees. ...
In this article, I examine the knowledge politics around pesticides in the United States and the role it plays in honey bee declines. Since 2006, US beekeepers have lost an average of one-third of their colonies each year. Though a number of factors influence bee health, beekeepers, researchers and policymakers cite pesticides as a primary contributor. In the US, pesticide registration is overseen by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with the required tests conducted by chemical companies applying for registration. Until 2016, the EPA only required chemical companies to measure acute toxicity for non-target species, which means that many pesticides with sublethal toxicities are not labeled bee-toxic, and farmers can apply them without penalty while bees are on their farms or orchards. In addition, California state and county regulators will typically only investigate a bee kill caused by a labeled bee-toxic pesticide, and so emergent data on non-labeled, sublethal pesticides goes uncollected. These gaps in data collection frustrate beekeepers and disincentivize them from reporting colony losses to regulatory agencies – thus reinforcing ignorance about which chemicals are toxic to bees. I term the iterative cycle of non-knowledge co-constituted by regulatory shortfalls and stakeholder regulatory disengagement an ‘ignorance loop’. I conclude with a discussion of what this dynamic can tell us about the politics of knowledge production and pesticide governance and the consequences of ‘ignorance loops’ for stakeholders and the environment.
... Whilst participatory mapping has been widely praised for its role in just and sustainable natural resource management, investigators have nevertheless cautioned against its irresponsible application, recognising that maps are inseparable from the political and cultural contexts in which they are created and used [5,21,22]. Although participatory mapping processes can empower the voiceless, they can also perpetuate existing inequalities by favouring the voices, perceptions, realities, and spatial languages of those that are already privileged [22][23][24]. Additionally, by sharing spatial information, communities or individuals can put themselves at risk by revealing spatially sensitive information (at times unintentionally), or may risk exploitation of their intellectual property for research and management [22]. ...
Digital participatory mapping improves accessibility to spatial information and the way in which knowledge is co-constructed and landscapes co-managed with impoverished communities. However, many unintended consequences for social and epistemic justice may be exacerbated in developing country contexts. Two South African case studies incorporating Direct-to-Digital participatory mapping in marginalized communities to inform land-use decision-making, and the ethical challenges of adopting this method are discussed. Understanding the past and present context of the site and the power dynamics at play is critical to develop trust and manage expectations among research participants. When employing unfamiliar technology, disparate literacy levels and language barriers create challenges for ensuring participants understand the risks of their involvement and recognize their rights. The logistics of using this approach in remote areas with poor infrastructure and deciding how best to leave the participants with the maps they have co-produced in an accessible format present further challenges. Overcoming these can however offer opportunity for redressing past injustices and empowering marginalized communities with a voice in decisions that affect their livelihoods.
... geographers have experimented with participatory approaches that go beyond mere inclusion of research participants in research design, instead seeking to radically reconfigure the purpose and approach of geography, calling for collective action against social injustices(Mrs Kinpaisby, 2008;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015;Russell, 2015;Autonomous Geographies Collective, 2010). Yet as Coombes et al., argue too much of this work risks reinscrib[ing] placed-based (2014: 847) confining them to the(Brewer, 2013). ...
Indigenous and decolonising geographies should be unsettling and challenging to the ontological foundations of the geographical discipline. Yet despite many scholars recognising and arguing for the need for these perspectives, Indigeneity remains marginal and Indigenous knowledge has been denied academic legitimacy within geography. Using ‘doings’ as an active, emergent, and evolving praxis, this paper examines how we can do Indigenous and settler geographies better. It illustrates how knowledge, emotions, feelings and intuition only come into being through the doings of the body with other bodies, places, and objects, including non-humans. Action and thought are indistinguishable, feeling is knowing, and the world becomes known through doing and movement. In these doings, place – particularly the land and sea – is an active agent in the making of beings and knowledge. By focusing on active doings in place, and acknowledging the temporalities of Indigenous ontologies, geographers are better able to support political and everyday struggles, situate our work in relation to colonialism, recognise and value everyday practices of resurgence, and spend time building relationships. ‘Doing’ geography differently would decentre academics as the source of knowledge production, employ more diverse voices in our teaching and provide embodied and material resistance to colonialism and neoliberal capitalism.
... Recent analysis of participatory video has done a great deal to highlight several challenges, including: the limitations of video leading to social change; individual versus community empowerment; the tendency of videos to perpetuate simplified notions of community through the presentation of homogeneous "community voice"; and the institutional constraints present in development projects (Cleaver, 1999;Hickey & Mohan, 2004;Kindon, 2003Kindon, , 2016Milne, 2016;Mistry & Berardi, 2012;Mistry et al., 2016;Plush, 2015aPlush, , 2015bRogers, 2016;Shaw, 2016;Walsh, 2016;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015). As with participatory approaches more broadly, there is a risk that participatory video may "render technical" complex political and social problems and so overlook systemic power relations and thus reproduce rather than challenge dominant norms (Cooke & Kothari, 2001;Ferguson, 1990;Li, 2007;Leal, 2011;Mosse, 2011). ...
Recent scholarship has contributed important insights into the political dynamics inherent in the process of making and showing participatory videos. As a research method and an instrument for social change, participatory video has both potential and limitations for overturning the power dynamics embedded within research and in development processes. This paper focuses on experiences of incorporating participatory video in land management projects in four countries in Africa. Along with other participatory methods, the videos represented an effort to include community perspectives and objectives into the research process. Analysis of participatory video has largely focused on examining the tensions and contradictions involved in the process of making participatory videos. There has been less focus on the content of the videos themselves and what it might suggest for empowerment, voice and representation. This paper attempts to address this gap by examining the implications of the narratives that emerge in five different videos. On the surface, the participants appear to repeat dominant national and global narratives about land degradation. However, the fact that farmers present themselves as experts on these topics and the ways in which they appropriate and reconfigure the dominant narratives, can be seen as an act of empowerment. In this way, they preclude the need for external intervention on how to manage their resources. This paper focuses on experiences of incorporating participatory video in land management projects in four countries in Africa. Along with other participatory methods, the videos represented an effort to include community perspectives and objectives into the research process. This paper examines the implications of the narratives that emerge in five different videos.
... Although no harm was caused during the research, PAR ideology suggests that research should also "do good on participants' terms, rather than academics'" (from the Participatory Geography Research Group Constitution 2009, in Wynne-Jones et al. 2015 218). I do not believe that this aim has been realised. ...
Adopting a governmentality framework, this research interrogates the Australian national imaginary. It does so via the experience of two iconic forms of labour inextricably linked throughout history, and yet with contrasting visibilities and anxieties: sex work and mining. Through technologies of power – the “authoritative and managerial structures … [with] the common objective of directing the actions of the governed in a particular way” (Dufty 2007: 28) – two iconic forms of labour constitute a distinctive axis of social marginalisation. In the national imaginary, mining has been elevated to heroic proportions, while sex work has been marginalised and stigmatised, or simply forgotten. The way these forms of labour are framed in the national imaginary affects the experiences of citizenship of those undertaking such work, and of how these two industries have come to impact our conception of ‘Australianness’. This thesis traces the contrasting visibilities and anxieties of sex work and mining, and the way their representations in the national imaginary have become deeply embedded within institutions, and are operationalized via technologies of power, intersecting with moral norms.
... Threaded through this work are significant challenges around whose voices are present/heard/re-presented, and diverse geographies of power as limiting. This speaks to wider debates in PAR regarding epistemological and ontological interventions/orientations to social and spatial justice (Wynne-Jones et al. 2015). ...
This review offers thoughts, queries and hesitations regarding articles drawing on participatory action research (PAR) published over 25 years of Gender, Place and Culture. It foregrounds the interconnections and overlaps between PAR and feminist geographies, and considers a continuum of participations-collaborations-actions-knowledges co-produced across a range of interrelated feminist methodologies. I emphasise epistemological commitment as central to PAR, pointing to work in GPC that evidences critical approaches to research process, embedded in feminist perspectives regarding how scholars re-produce the world and/as act/ing in the world, particularly in attending to shifting, situated and complex subjectivities and power inequalities. Working together with participants is vital, through an ethic that centres participants’ voices, as actors in their own lives. Highlighting the emotional and embodied geographies that weave through such research and writing, this review suggests deepening and strengthening interdependences and a feminist ethos of care as researchers, to further foreground diverse stories and voices, work towards social and spatial justice, and co-produce progressive changes with people and place.
... The trend towards participatory research in Human Geography is evident since the late 1990s. Despite this shift towards more participatory forms of research in Geography (Darby, 2017;Harney, McCurry, Scott, & Wills, 2016;Kindon & Elwood, 2009;Kindon, Pain, & Kesby, 2007;Pain, 2003Pain, , 2004Wang, Yi, Tao, & Carovano, 1998;Wynne-Jones, North, & Routledge, 2015) there are few resources available to support graduate students interested in community engaged scholarly research within the discipline despite an increasing interest from students to incorporate feminist methodologies into their studies (Moss, 2009). Unfortunately, students wishing to use this more democratized form of research find few sources to support their work. ...
Although literature on participatory and action research approaches is increasing, little is published specifically about using such approaches as part of the doctoral dissertation in Geography. The dissertation process and its requirements are different enough from other research endeavors that it is worthwhile focusing specifically on the challenges of conducting a Participatory Action Research (PAR) dissertation and, most importantly, how to navigate these challenges. This article helps to fill this gap by exploring the impacts of PAR constraints on our dissertations, the factors that contributed to the success of our projects, and the benefits (both academic and non-academic) based on our experiences from the student perspective. We build on what others have written about PAR adding specific examples of how we negotiated some of the traditionally perceived challenges to provide a resource for other Geography students applying PAR in their doctoral dissertations.
... A key part of this is the perception that PAR is somehow a 'more ethical' or just form of research. PAR centrally claims that it can address some of the failings of mainstream academic research on social groups (Kindon et al., 2007), where research is 'extractive', taking up participants' time and energy, giving little or nothing in return (Blackstock et al., 2015;Cameron and Gibson, 2005b;Lahiri-Dutt, 2004;Wynne-Jones et al., 2015). Or, more normatively, PAR can utilise researchers skills and social capital to help 'build a better world' (Chatterton, 2008) or 'make a difference' (Fuller & Kitchin, 2004). ...
This paper seeks to outline a methodological approach that can be used in order to help understand such movements, and more fundamentally, the role of community in Social Innovation (SI). The article offers an overview of Participative Action Research (PAR), and outlines its strengths and weaknesses in studying community-based social innovation, in this case the Transition movement. PAR is not an ‘off the shelf’ kit, or a ‘conforming of methodological standards’, but rather a series of approaches that ought to inform the research. The paper argues that these approaches, rather than techniques, are essential to get right if the intangible, granular, and incidental-but-fundamental aspects of community are to be grasped by researchers. Given the small-scale nature of community low carbon transitions a granular analysis is preferred to a more surface, superficial overview of such processes. Qualitative research is preferred to quantitative aggregation of initiatives, due to the need to understand the everyday, more phenomenological aspects of community, and the specific tacit relations and subjectivities enacted through their capacity to cut carbon.
This article critically reflects on the Victoria County History's (VCH) relationship with participatory historical geography approaches. Telling a story of change, it argues that it is not only possible, but also extremely productive for long‐standing, well‐established academic research projects to embrace participatory approaches and engage in transformative research. The VCH is a national project to write the history of every parish‐sized area in England. Begun in 1899, the VCH's contemporary network of place‐based historians still actively pursues this goal. Overseen by a central editorial team, most of the network's activities are conceived, run and funded by independent county trusts. These trusts research and write the VCH's well‐known ‘Big Red Books’ and a range of shorter publications, but have also begun to cultivate participatory projects that embed local communities in the development of local histories and allow these communities to reflect on how their histories have shaped their collective identities. Focusing on the project's engagement with local knowledge and communities, this article traces the VCH's use of collaborative and participatory methodologies. Acknowledging the VCH's routes in Victorian encyclopaedic endeavours, it critically reflects on how it collaborated with local people during the early twentieth century. Shifting its attention to the early twenty‐first century, it then considers how the VCH has begun to develop frameworks for engaging in individually, socially and academically transformative research. While recognising the limitations of these approaches, it highlights the latent potential within the VCH's emerging engagement with participatory historical geography approaches and, emphasising how the project's future depends on continual integration of participatory methods within its activities and outputs, identifies several ways in which the VCH could continue to develop its participatory methods.
This commentary introduces civic geographies as a theme in Area , where papers can be collected, allowing a space for discussion at a time when the civic university agenda has become a priority for the sector. It calls for the discipline to share and debate ideas about civic geographies, showcase civic geographical research and teaching, and create a community of practice to develop approaches to engagement and social responsibility.
Though Geography began as a tool of empire and war, now some of us are using this master's tool to dismantle the master's house. But we are tweaking the tool in various ways to make it more liberatory. People's geography aims to take Geography to the streets, and the streets to the ivory tower. It works to popularize radical geography, and radicalize popular geography. Community geographies focus on collaborations between academics and public scholars to co‐produce knowledge that serves social change. This term has grown in use recently in the US, where there is a new community geographies specialty group. The term public geography has perhaps been more often used in the UK, where the focus on “impact” by the REF has given it more weight. That sort of push from funding agencies is a growing trend internationally, though the terms used vary. Participatory research aims to foster civic engagement and look alongside research subjects, rather than looking at them. It is a strong influence on both community and public geographies, though the overlap is not exact. Other terms used are engaged research and reciprocal research. This work takes longer and is often undervalued as simply service, rather than research. Too often it has been done despite, rather than with support from, academic policies. That is beginning to change. Some terms and traditions have more resonance in some contexts than in others, but whatever the label used, it is important that we organize to honor and nurture this work.
As climate change impacts increase, there are growing calls for strengthening relationships between researchers and other stakeholders to advance adaptation efforts. Participation and co‐production are widely held to be key to such relationships, both intended to open substantive engagement in science and research to non‐experts. Gains commonly attributed to participation and co‐production include improved understanding of user needs and contexts, enhanced trust, creating actionable knowledge for adaptation planning and decision‐making, and other new outcomes and practices supporting adaptation progress. At the same time, scrutiny of existing efforts to use participation and co‐production reveals limits and gaps in understanding the conditions and processes required to undertake them in meaningful, appropriate, and effective ways. This review assesses such limitations and gaps across the growing volume of research focused on adapting coastal and island communities within Europe. We systematically reviewed 60 peer‐reviewed papers, drawing on a novel meta‐method review approach to synthesize patterns in participation and co‐production implementations, types of outcomes, and the latter's associations with study research designs. We identify a propensity toward using more simplistic definitions of community, more conventional, extractive research methods in working with study communities, and emphasizing knowledge generation over other outcomes. These issues are all limits on participation and co‐production effectiveness, and we make recommendations to reduce them. We also recommend further recourse to systematic review methods to aid the development of participation and co‐production knowledge for adaptation.
This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change
Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change
Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of Development
Recent debates within Geography have discussed the benefits of collaborating with non‐academic partners in research (e.g. Campbell & Vanderhoven, 2016, Knowledge that matters: Realising the potential of Co‐production . Manchester, UK: N8 Research Partnership; Holt et al., 2019, Area , 51, 390). We discuss these debates in relation to two key concepts in Geography: Impact and Participation. In this article, we critically reflect on our own experiences as PhD researchers conducting collaborative research projects, discussing the outcomes, challenges and ‘expectations gaps’ of collaboration with non‐academic partners (Flinders et al., 2016, Evidence & Policy , 12, 261, p. 269). Our contribution lies in our reflections on collaboratively producing knowledge through being embedded in non‐academic expert organisations. Much of the debate in Geography has focused on collaboration with marginalised groups or vulnerable communities (e.g. Holt et al., 2019, 2019, Area , 51, 390), and we add to these debates with the experiences of collaborating with two expert organisations: a specialist climate journalism organisation (Carbon Brief); and a government organisation (Met Office). First, we discuss the varying forms of impact that were produced through conducting our research collaboratively, not only through improving the quality of our academic outputs through ‘ontological transformation’ (Barry et al., 2008, Economy and Society , 37, 20, p. 20), but also ‘real‐world’, actionable impacts for the collaborative partners. We relate both these experiences to ideas of impact which go beyond the REF Impact Agenda, specifically finding important the concept of ‘impact‐in‐process’ (Marzi, 2022, Area ). Second, we discuss the ethical complexities and power dynamics involved with embedding a researcher in an expert organisation. We highlight the need for broader conceptions of ethnical research, drawing particularly from Campbell and Vanderhoven's ‘ethical state of mind’ (2016, p. 30). In sum, we argue that although PhD research which is produced collaboratively with expert organisations can produce practical benefits to both researcher and partner, there are important discussions around power dynamics and ethics which can prevent PhD research done in this way from fully realising the transformational potential of collaboration.
This article develops a decolonial participatory method to map the geographies of descendants of fugitives from slavery, or Maroons, to disrupt white-Mestizo constructions of Latin American territories. Maroon-descendant communities can take advantage of existing archives and their extensive oral history to explain their territorial development from a home-grown perspective. With the researcher's assistance, members of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, used their knowledge and emotions as a lens through which to analyse colonial records to map their territory from both a historical and present day perspective. Feeling/thinking about dispossession and resistance while counter-using the colonial archive to reclaim Afro-descendant territory is a subversive undertaking, one that is engrained in the legacy of Maroon resistance.
Recent debates on ‘graphic’ geographies and the reinterpretation of the notion of ‘democratic experimentalism’ in local development suggest the rise of a new ‘representational experimentalism’ that explores graphic methods for place‐based approaches. Graphic methods of research can assist geographers in conducting and presenting the results of place‐based research to wider audiences. Graphic products of research function as tools for storytelling and spatial planning. They can also provide intersubjective dialogue between researchers, local communities, and local governments to create more inclusive, place‐based narratives. In this paper, we present a verbo‐visual manifesto and an illustrated fieldwork journal as two empirical examples of ways to engage with graphic methods and realise the potential graphic outputs of research. These graphic products are the result of a collaboration between geographers, students in Local Development and Sustainable Territorial Development (at the University of Padua), two professional illustrators, and a group of local stakeholders; they used scribing and observational drawing as place‐based graphic methods during a residential seminar at the Po Delta in north‐eastern Italy. This paper contributes to both recent debates on creative methods in local development and the study of the use graphic and visual methods in geography. It proposes graphic methods as a way for embracing place‐based approaches to local development in peripheral, fragile, and contested areas, making hidden voices visible.
This study explores Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a practice that promotes collaborative knowledge construction between researchers and participants. Within this framework, a PAR experience carried out for the transformation of a school in the province of Valencia (Spain) is explored. The aim is to analyse the shared construction of knowledge during the process and the changes produced through the perceptions of the educational community and the research group. From a qualitative methodology, a case study is elaborated through the analysis of documents produced during the research and ad hoc focus groups, and the data obtained are analysed following a mixed categorization. The results show that the shared construction of knowledge during PAR has led to the development of more horizontal roles and strategies between researchers and participants, and changes towards a new school model, for which the improvement of the participation of the agents involved has been key. Elements that invite reflection on the shared construction of knowledge through PAR are discussed, among which stand out the complexity of the researchers’ task, the timing, the articulation of the students’ voice and the relationship between the type of research carried out and the changes produced.
Abstract This paper focuses on "talking" methods, noting their wide application across the social sciences, and identifies potential spaces for innovation in this field. Drawing on interview material from the Methods for Change project, we argue that researching methods requires creative approaches to talk. With research methods as our focus, we draw on data collected from online interviews with 36 academics, which aimed to explore the transformative potential of social science research methods. We make three contributions. First, we consider challenges and potentials for talking about methods and communicating the transformative potential of social science methods to diverse audiences. Second, we elaborate on the detail of doing talking methods, identifying potential spaces for innovation. Third, we suggest there is value in supplementing interviews with creative techniques when talking with and about method. We highlight three such techniques used in our project as a means of eliciting conversation about the transformative potential of methods: how‐to instructions; object interviewing; and methods as animals. The conceptual underpinnings, practical applications and obstacles encountered with each technique are discussed, including our own reflections on creative interviewing in a context where face‐to‐face research was restricted. In doing so, we respond to and advance recent debates about the need to talk more about the doing of talking methods. We argue that academics need to articulate why methods matter in creating change to global challenges, and that creative techniques can play a pivotal role.
Participatory research (PR) has been increasingly used by geographers and other social scientists in recent decades. However, in practice PR often departs from the transformative and empowering characteristics that define it. This article uses candid reflections on the first author's attempt at PR to highlight areas where the under-theorisation of the complexities of fieldwork and the co-constitutive nature of research and emotions could be contributing to such depoliticised practice. Some problematic aspects of how power is understood in PR are also discussed, echoing the call from proponents of participation at large for more coherent frameworks to understand power relations.
This article examines the complexity and affordances of staying in ‘the field’. Time as a resource for qualitative research is widely experienced as diminishing. Yet increasingly, academic emphasis is also being placed on the merits of time intensive approaches, like participatory scholarship. This tension raises critical questions about the ethics and practices of collaboration within arguably narrowing parameters. Taking a view from the edges of conventional research practice, this article focuses on staying beyond the formal completion of a sociological research project. Drawing on over 10-years of collaboration with youth service providers in an English city, I examine the dynamics and complexities of staying, where temporalities, relationships and practices extend beyond research. In doing so, this article contributes to methodological debates about research exit and participation, by introducing staying as a practice that affords new collaborative freedoms and possibilities.
Volunteers have been increasingly important in responding to rising UK poverty in the last decade in the context of austerity and the retracting welfare state. Faith-based organisations in particular have played a vital role in this response but whilst there has been attention to how religious faith can motivate people to volunteer, this paper is one of the first geographical pieces to specifically focus on how volunteers’ religious faith is affected by volunteering. Inspired by the geographies of religion, it conceptualises faith as fluid and relational. This means faith cannot only be understood as a motivation at the start of volunteering, and therefore how faith is affected by volunteering needs to be understood. This paper is based on the experiences of volunteers at a participatory research project ‘Lunch’ responding to UK children’s holiday hunger. Engaging with volunteers’ journeys at Lunch drew out two dominant ways in which volunteers’ religious faith was affected: encouragement and challenge from volunteering at a faith-based project without explicit faith content, and secondly, the challenge of giving an unconditional welcome to volunteers and children at Lunch. Overall, I argue that whilst religious faith can motivate people to volunteer, this is not a unidirectional relationship because volunteers’ faith can also be challenged by their experiences which can not only affect their motivations and whether they will persist in volunteering, but can also fundamentally change their understanding of their religious faith.
This paper advances the geographies of religion, spirituality and faith's limited attention to positionality by discussing the critical issues raised when using participatory approaches. Reflecting on three cases of participatory research, we foreground the dynamics of being a researcher with faith when working with participants from faith communities. Advocating participatory approaches as valuable methodologies that should be used more extensively to explore beliefs, faith practices, and social justice, we argue that greater attention needs to be given to the positionality of researchers undertaking this sort of research. Our cases raise three themes for discussion. First, the variety of ways in which faith positionalities influence how research is developed, concluded and concluded. Second, the intersections between our faith and other positionalities and how they shape our roles and relationships with research participants. Third, the fluid and multifaceted nature of faith positionalities and how they are changed, emphasized, and softened through the dynamics and entanglements of fieldwork. In doing so, we reflect on the complexities of being a researcher with faith, argue that faith positionality is a helpful dimension of their research rather than a limitation, and that all cultural, social and historical geographical researchers should reflect on their faith positionality.
Embodied and emotional gentleness are crucial aspects of interpersonal and more‐than‐human research, yet seldom feature in representations of fieldwork. In an attempt to redress the effacement of gentleness in academic research (Horton 2020), this paper makes its focus the mundane moments of ‘taking care’ (Mountz et al. 2015, p.1251) that are often weeded‐out of academic accounts to make space for theoretical and conceptual content. Drawing on participatory research conducted with ‘seed savers’ (gardeners who cultivate fruits and vegetables, then select, process and save seeds for themselves and other growers), this paper builds on existing ‘care‐full’ (Williams 2017) scholarship on embodiment, temporality and reciprocity to identify what a gentle methodological approach might look and feel like.
This paper examines potentials for using the philosophies and practices of participatory action research (PAR) within the production of housing. Drawing on findings from a collaborative build project, working with a group in housing need in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, the paper explores the added social and educational value that processes of collaborative design and making can offer those that might be socially and spatially isolated. The paper argues that participation in housing is often colonized by those that have existing social, economic or knowledge capital and therefore bringing PAR into conversation with housing offers some unique opportunities, and also challenges, that other forms of collaborative housing may not. In assessing these opportunities the paper focuses on the mechanics of participation, including ethics, processes of learning through making, power, care and the potential for personal and collective transformation.
As digital media grows increasingly pervasive, cultural geographers continue to engage with new mechanisms for conducting and sharing their research. This article discusses a collaborative ethnography project that I conducted on artisan chicken in Miyazaki prefecture, Japan, and shared as a playlist of six YouTube videos. Although inexperienced with creating film, I found that making these collaborative videos created a mechanism for sharing and recognizing collaborators’ efforts in raising and retailing artisan chicken. To reduce the chance of adverse outcomes, I clarified the project’s goals, sought input from participants at multiple stages, curated the video content, and scrutinized the best website and settings for sharing the project. Even with these precautions, however, the project created tension between my role as a researcher and video blog curator. In conclusion, I reflect on the benefits, tensions, and pitfalls of this project. Despite its challenges, I encourage other scholars to reflexively pursue opportunities presented by digital media.
Geographers have made important contributions to scholarship on the lived experiences of masculinity, highlighting the ways in which identities emerge through embodied and emplaced performances that are shaped by intersecting dimensions of gender, sexuality, race, class and religion. While a small number of studies have considered masculinity in relation to physical disability, more work is needed to examine other experiences of disability and the ways that they intersect with gender. In this article, we draw from feminist and queer disability theory to explore the social geographies of men with intellectual disability. We draw on in-depth, participatory research in Toronto to examine how men labeled/with intellectual disabilities imagine and enact masculinity in domestic settings and public places. Our analysis highlights that men confront multiple constraints and pervasive paternalism in public and domestic settings that frustrate their efforts to craft an adult identity. Partly in response, many men aspire to a normative heterosexual masculinity as a way to militate against the disabling conditions of everyday life. This reflects the tremendous pressure the men confront to ‘fit in’ but it also forecloses opportunities to imagine and enact other forms of disabled masculinity.
In light of the global humanitarian crisis, a climate of fear has arisen around refugees which is often exacerbated by the media perpetuating misinformation and negative stereotypes. Such misrepresentation is problematic as a skewed perspective of refugees, compounded with ethnic and cultural barriers to belonging, is leading to discriminatory practices in New Zealand. Thus, there exists an incongruence between New Zealand's non-discriminatory equal citizenship rights in law; and refugee and ethnic discrimination and marginalisation in processes of social integration. To begin to bridge this incongruence, this research explores how theories of social connection may be practically applied to enable more equitable social outcomes. A scholar activist orientation was employed, informed by a participatory action research epistemology. These philosophical foundations influenced a qualitative multi-method methodology consisting of painting workshops, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and public feedback. Within the workshops, former refugee and host society participants explored how concepts of home, belonging, and visibility within public space are imagined, normalised, and contested within everyday practices of inclusion and exclusion in Wellington. These themes were significant in enhancing understanding of participants' unique experiences of displacement and place-attachment, and theorising how host societies might extend a more sincere welcome to newcomers. Applying a sociospatial relational framework to centralise participant interactions, I analysed how processes of social connection can begin to deconstruct negative refugee stereotypes, challenge normative conceptualisations of belonging, and enhance former refugees' access to citizenship rights. As New Zealand prepares to raise the annual refugee quota, such democratic explorations and representations of place are crucial in informing a multicultural social policy framework to guide equitable integration praxis and critical political debate.
In this paper, I discuss the ways I have fallen short as a participatory geographer and activist both in my teaching and research practices. I use three critical moments in the development of our PAR collective in Colombia to push debates in geography on participatory research and pedagogy further through reflection on my struggles in the streets and in the university. Additionally, I connect these experiences and previous discussions in participatory geographies with Orlando Fals Borda's discussion of sentipensar (a concept that engages feeling and thinking simultaneously). I draw attention to the Latin American origins of PAR philosophy by placing Fals Borda into dialogue with the protagonists of our social movement in Colombia including human rights activists, homeless drug users and sex workers. In a general sense, this paper is an examination of the challenges I have faced in the contact zones of PAR inside and outside the classroom.
Many environmental concerns such as climate change and reducing fossil-fuel dependence seem ‘out of reach’ for the majority of us regarding creating change. However, food systems and how we interact with them, offer tangible opportunities to respond to these environmental concerns in small but meaningful ways. By examining the impact of our food consumption, we are provided with an opportunity for ongoing self-assessment. To engage in this self-assessment as part of a community of practice, we argue, is all the more impactful.
This paper is self-reflective, exploring the process and outcomes of a group of non-experts working together to develop a workshop to explore the politics of everyday eating. This workshop took the form of a seven-course meal. To disquiet this indulgence, these seven courses included both food for physical sustenance and food to provoke hearts and minds, because ‘we don’t usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics’ ( Singer and Mason, 2007 : 3). The three food courses were sourced and cooked for conference participants by the authors of this paper. While undertaking these activities, we debated and documented our sourcing decisions and mused on the role of food in Aotearoa New Zealand. The remaining four courses served our guests the critical musings of food rescuers, local food producers and other food thinkers to cleanse the palate by way of presentations, poetry and performances. By using a meal as our methodology, we, as non-expert organizers and chefs, sought to explore our own, and allow others to explore their food consumption and ethics.
Co-productive research practices are being increasingly adopted by academic researchers, and expected by some research funders, to both better represent the voices and experiences of researched groups and ensure that research presents value for money in instigating societal change. While co-production is a key feature of inclusive research, its pervasiveness as a broadly-defined guiding principle in the literature nonetheless leaves some questions unresolved: the nature of the co-productive partnerships forged; whether all co-produced research is inclusive; who are valid partners of co-productions; whose voices and experiences, priorities and agendas should be listened to in forging research pathways and trajectories? The paper brings together a collection of papers that engage in co-production with disabled people, the carers of older people, and migrants; all groups who frequently have marginalised subjectivities, being located at the periphery of dominant ideas of the citizen.
Social Economics and the Solidarity City explores the impact and potential of the social economy as a site of urban struggle, political mobilization and community organization. The search for alternatives to the neoliberal logic governing contemporary cities has often focused on broad and ill-defined political, social and environmental movements. These alternatives sometimes fail to connect with the lived realities of the city or to change the lives of those exploited in neoliberal restructuring. This book seeks to understand the capacity of the social economy to revitalize urban ethics, local practices and tangible political alterity. Providing a critical account of the social economy and its place in urban and state restructuring, this book draws on a range of international cases to argue that the social economy can be made a transformative space. Evaluating community enterprises, social finance, and solidarity economics, author Brendan Murtagh maps the possibilities, contradictions and tactics of moving the rhetoric of the just city into local and global action.
We engage with scholarship in participatory geographies and critical disability studies to consider the difficulties and prospects of co‐producing knowledge with people with intellectual disabilities in a project examining their uses of urban public space. The research employed an inclusive, collaborative design and had an explicit focus on social change, articulated in the research process (e.g., the development of research and self‐advocacy skills) and outcomes (e.g., lobbying to improve material conditions, challenging ableist assumptions about “intellectual disability”). Our analysis highlights three tensions: the time/spaces constraints faced in “slow” participatory work, the nature and duration of relationships among collaborators and the shifting relations of power and influence within the project. We reflect critically on how these tensions were negotiated and what lessons might be learned for participatory practice. We engage with scholarship in participatory geographies and critical disability studies to consider the difficulties and prospects of co‐producing knowledge with people with intellectual disabilities in a project examining their uses of urban public space. Our analysis highlights three tensions: the time/spaces constraints faced in “slow” participatory work, the nature and duration of relationships among collaborators and the shifting relations of power and influence within the project.
This paper is about rewilding and the tensions it involves. Rewilding is a relatively novel approach to nature conservation, which seeks to be proactive and ambitious in the face of continuing environmental decline. Whilst definitions of rewilding place a strong emphasis on non-human agency, it is an inescapably human aspiration resulting in a range of social conflicts. The paper focuses on the case study of the Cambrian Wildwood project in Mid Wales (UK), evaluating the ways in which debate and strategic action to advance rewilding is proceeding, assessing the extent to which compromise and learning has occurred amongst advocates. As such, we provide an important addition to the field, by detailing how conflicts play out over time and how actors’ positioning and approach shifts, and why. In this case, tempers have flared around the threat that rewilding is seen to pose to resident farming communities. Tensions discussed include the differing social constructions of landscape and nature involved; the distribution of impacts on different stakeholders; and the relative power of different actors to make decisions and gain representation. Responding to these, the paper outlines how rewilding advocates havesought to advance a more peopled and culturally responsive vision, whichseeks to champion sustainable livelihood strategies. The changes in approach detailed demonstrate a reflexive stance from rewilders, which suggests that learning and adaptation can occur. Nonetheless, caution is expressed regarding the extent to which rewilding can truly advance inclusive opportunities for rural change, given a continued return amongst stakeholders to exclusionary narratives of belonging and authenticity, suggesting substantive difficulty in moving beyond longstanding concerns over identity and the re-imagination of place. Rewilding, it would seem, is about who we think we are and how we co-constitute our sense of self. We, therefore, close by arguing that tactics and politicking can only have so much bearing, tensions over rewilding are unavoidably emotional.
Peer support action research is a co‐production method used by groups of people with a shared experience, in order to generate knowledge and mutual assistance. This paper analyses co‐production experiences from a recent Australian research project, which formed peer support groups to explore how disabled people were managing their transition to self‐directed support. Using the project as a case study and applying a community participation framework derived from social geography, this paper addresses questions about which collaborative mechanisms strengthen peer support research so that the research process and outputs benefit each of the participants involved. The project used a mixed‐method, co‐production approach. University researchers formed research partnerships with disability community organisations to support the research activity in each Australian state. The community organisations formed peer support groups, facilitated the groups and communicated group processes and findings to the university researchers. The group members and facilitators decided what they wanted to do in the group and how to do it. The academics provided research support, training, a topic guide and resources for group activities. All participants reflected on challenges and lessons learnt and modified the project as it progressed. Both the methods and findings have implications for peer support as co‐productive research. The process enhanced the research capacity of the participants, disability community and academics, and strengthened peer support, advocacy and confidence about self‐directed support. The findings from the peer support groups about their transition to self‐directed support demonstrated their preference for, and trust in, peers as information sources. The regular collective reflections with the facilitators produced an additional level of data collection and analysis that enhanced the quality of the co‐production, enabling greater participant control over design and knowledge generation.
Geography has a long tradition of community-engaged research and teaching. Conventional institutional and departmental norms in many U.S. universities and colleges, however, often discourage such engaged scholarship and teaching, especially among junior faculty. We argue that geographers are well poised to unravel society's twenty-first-century intractable problems if engaged scholarship is more intentionally supported. As community geographers in junior faculty positions at research-intensive universities, we discuss our experiences with placing community engagement at the core of our scholarship, highlighting opportunities for a more robust integration of engaged scholarship in academic geography.
Recent debates around urban encounter, integration cosmopolitanism, and renewed engagement with contact theory have raised questions about the spaces of interaction that may enable meaningful encounters between different social groups. Reflecting on a participatory art project with young people of African and British heritage in northeast England, we argue that discussion and practice around participatory action research, including the deployment of contact zones as theory and method, can cast some light on what fosters transformative spaces. Through analysis of two different approaches to community art used in the project, we show how elements of each enabled and disabled meaningful interaction between young people. We draw attention to the materiality of art (the tools) within participatory practices (the doing of it) in contributing to a space where interactions might take place, emphasising a complex interplay across/between actors, materials, and space that frames encounters as emergent, transitory, fragile, and yet hopeful. We examine the potential of a focus on the material in thinking beyond moments of encounter to how transformative social relations may be 'scaled up' before considering the implications for research and policy.
This article draws on research and activism with a local currency group, the Brixton Pound, in order to extend discussions of scholar-activism to encompass broad and inclusive notions of activism. As broad and inclusive notions of activism dislodge the boundaries between academia and activism, they have enabled scholars to challenge the idea that it is necessary to keep activism separate from research and to explore why and how activism and research might be combined. Despite this, however, the academic literature on scholar-activism is presently dominated by ‘capital A’ activism and activists, suggesting there is more to do to embed inclusive notions of activism within it. This article makes a contribution to such efforts, positioning involvement in a local currency group, the Brixton Pound, as combining activism with research, in order to provide motivation and resources to a more diverse audience, particularly those who may not have previously combined research with activism or who may be ‘put off’ by narrow notions of ‘capital A’ activism. In light of the continued centrality of concerns about the usefulness of academics in debates about activism and the academy, I choose ‘being useful’ as a rubric through which to organise this article. My involvement with the Brixton Pound suggests that the loss of the privileged position of critique atop the ‘Ivory Tower’ opens up a range of other contributions extending across boundaries between activism and research and between theory and method. I identify three ways of ‘being useful’, including practising ethics of reciprocity, developing embedded research projects through engagement and building more generative critical (geographical) scholarship. Together, these ways of being useful make a contribution towards transforming critical geography into a more hopeful, generative (sub-)discipline, more closely connected with issues of practical significance to (broadly understood) activism.
The problematic of the activist/academic relationship has been a source of sustained concern for radical Geographers over the past 15 years. Drawing on my personal experience within the radical climate movement(s), this paper looks to develop on the commitments of militant research, contribute to the development of militant ethnography as a research approach and consider the subsequent implications for thinking through the activist/academic problematic. Elaborating on the epistemological distinction between ‘truth relaying’ and ‘knowledge production’, it is contended that militant research is an orientation and process synonymous with the disavowal of positivist knowledge and the construction of situated partisan knowledge(s). Rather than the (social) science of transmitting truth, research thus becomes the art of producing tools you can fight with. From this perspective, the activist/academic problematic is not a ‘neutral’ problem but a product of a certain way of knowing associated with the academy. The paper concludes that our concern should not be to navigate between (and thus reiterate) the fields of ‘activism’ and ‘academy’, but to surpass the problematic altogether. We are tasked not with reproducing the university in its current form, but reimagining it as a machine for the production of other worlds.
In the search for strategies that work in the continued fight against the corporate takeover of education and in taking solidarity with oppressed peoples, this short article reports back to fellow academics, action researchers and other activists on the first year of a brand new Masters programme dedicated to campaigning and social change. It argues that in the present neoliberal context, teaching radical politics and encouraging students to engage with social movements and struggles as part of their studies is vital, both to stop the further corporate takeover of higher education and to generate new ideas and solutions for emancipatory politics. Following a brief introduction to the broad processes of neoliberalisation underway, the article provides a glimpse into the commodification project enclosing university education through the journey of the MA course. I then set out the main aims and structure of the MA, recount some of the experiences so far and respond to some of the main and recurring "criticisms" by activists towards the course. In conclusion, the paper argues that while there are many problems with setting up a Masters programme in "activism", the course team is unapologetically committed to using education for social change.
This paper explores the contribution that geographers can make to debates about the nature and utility of participatory approaches. It argues for a constructive reconciliation between these approaches and the growing poststructural critique of participation. Through an examination of the similarities and entanglements between power and empowerment it highlights the centrality of geographical issues to understanding how participation works and how its resources might be distanciated beyond the arenas of participatory projects to produce empowering effects elsewhere.
In this paper we draw critically upon actor network theory (ANT) in order to analyse the contours of relationality, communication, and operational logic within a global justice network—People’s Global Action Asia. Drawing upon the concept of translation, we consider how connections are fostered and sustained within the network, focusing upon the work of key organisers (those we term the ‘imagineers’) and key events in producing the network. In so doing, we ground ANT in direct political engagement and introduce the concept of ‘grassrooting vectors’ to highlight the power relations at work within global justice networks, a consideration which is crucial to the formation of mutual solidarity between social movements.
Positionalities: It's not about them and us, it's about us Positionalities can be understood as how research is created through the interactions and relationships between researchers and those being researched. The title is derived from a phrase Arthur uses ‘it's not about them and us, it's about us’, and focuses attention on the mutual construction of research and research relationships that move beyond objective them/us segregations. At times positionalities can be reduced to the effects of personal backgrounds on research and addressed using simplistic lists of social differences (gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, dis/ability). In social geography research contexts, the practices of reflecting on, analysing and critiquing researchers’ positions in relation to those being researched is termed reflexivity (or more accurately reflectivity; see Falconer-Al-Hindi and Kawabuta, 2002: 104). These processes are to be encouraged in assessing and possibly addressing issues of exploitation and inequitable power relations. More than this, as Haraway ...
Within the wider ongoing debate of Participatory Action Research, this paper interrogates the capacity of participatory mapping not just as a means to tap into plural knowledges over and emanating from specific geographies but rather to disrupt exclusionary constructions of space and place and the reproduction of the governing relationships that cause inequality. Focusing on a participatory mapping experience undertaken by the authors in collaboration with local residents in the steep slopes of Bogotá's eastern hills – an area threatened by forced evictions in the name of ecological preservation and risk protection arguments – we explore why and under what conditions participatory mapping might have the potential to disrupt conflicting interpretations of place and space held both by local residents and state agencies, which in turn can open the room to rework what types of interventions are actually needed and why. We hypothesise that this depends on the extent to which mapping can abridge the different scales at which the state and marginalised communities make sense of a site historically underpinned by different forms of spatial myopia and territorial stigma. This is in our view not just a consequence of the application of participatory mapping techniques per se, but depends on the way in which mapping is used to expand the political space in which different conceptions of a territory can effectively talk to each other.
Within participatory geography and relational aesthetic art literature there have been calls to focus on how participation is framed, who is included and excluded, the types of relations involved and the effects of such practices. Linked to these concerns, questions have also been raised around how participants are framed and understood in participatory projects. For instance, as self-determining and knowing subjects who become politically affirmed through participation, or as subjects caught up in complex processes of becoming. In this article I show how the participatory art project ‘Productive Bodies’ in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, enabled participants to articulate the complex contradictions surrounding waged work, redundancy and unemployment. I suggest that participatory art projects can be a useful way for subjects to explore these complex processes of becoming. Useful because in this case, the project enabled participants to both acknowledge dominant disciplining discourses around waged work, while also creating space to imagine and enact alternatives to more dominant and limiting discourses. I argue that participatory art projects like Productive Bodies can help subjects move away from cognitive understandings of social change and political demands because the process understands subjects as always-already affected by wider societal discourses. Such an understanding recognises the complexity of subjectivities whereby subjects are both complicit in perpetuating and subjecting themselves to more dominant discourses, but also often desirous of change. Participatory art projects like Productive Bodies can enable subjects to articulate these complexities, while also catching glimpses of other selves and other societal relations through affectual-embodied encounters.
In this paper we share insights from four participatory video workshops held in Cambodia as part of a three-year project on domestic violence and legal reform under the ESRC/DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research scheme. The participatory politics that emerged from the workshops organised in partnership with a Cambodian gender-oriented non-governmental organisation (NGO) and an independent translator/co-facilitator forms the crux of our discussion. We define ‘participatory politics of partnership’ as the multi-layered power relations between community groups, gatekeepers and researchers whose respective agency is mediated by the political economy the research emerges from, and takes place within. Highlighting discrepancies between ‘gold standard’ participatory ideals and practice, we argue through three vignettes that greater acknowledgement is needed of intermediaries whose statuses and behaviours, like those of researchers, heavily mediate community engagement in participatory action research.
This paper draws on a series of applied theatre and popular education workshops in Glasgow, Scotland in 2010–11. While the workshop content involved participatory applied theatre and popular education as tools for community environmental and social justice organising, the performance-based methods of these workshops also troubled assumptions of the participating subject as singular and self-reflexive. In the paper I propose that the question of subjectivity in participatory research might be fruitfully linked to the ‘content’ of environmental and social justice in two ways. First, applied theatre is presented as a distinctively mediated participatory space that can rely on an unrealisable conception of subjectivity. I argue that exploring the tensions within this mediated space can illuminate such tensions in participatory research generally, and further a ‘passionate modesty’ – a shared reckoning of limitations that can enrich the potential for praxis of participatory research. ‘Passionate modesty’ is brought to bear on activist research, asking us not to bypass in our writing the complexities and costs of participating in relations of solidarity and resistance. This participatory space is further explored as one of important ecological consequence for the co-production of knowledge. Barad and Bell's work on making the ‘cuts’ that determine what we include (and exclude) in our attentions is used to argue that participatory research, and creative methods in particular, can orient our attention to social–nature relations in distinct and powerful ways. An ecological perspective is proposed, where acknowledging the asymmetry of encounter and the co-performance of responsibility might ‘cut’ such research more modestly but perhaps more generatively. In a concluding response to this invitation, I return to the content of the Glasgow workshops on environmental and social justice, and the complex relationship between the politics of grappling with injustices and a participatory politics of co-learning.
This paper explores the tensions and opportunities involved in becoming a ‘critical friend’ to government agency planners trying to practise more inclusive forms of governance. It thus tackles two interrelated issues: how to build and manage rapport while retaining a critical research agenda, and how to locate niches for further democratising participation within congested multi-level governance structures. A five-year research programme allowed researchers to explore practices by planners charged with developing and implementing natural resource management plans in Scotland. The focus reflects a research interest in opening up governance structures beyond the ‘usual suspects’ to enhance the democratic promise of participatory approaches. The paper reflects on how the balance between rapport and critique influenced the goal of opening up these processes to more public participation. The paper concludes by arguing that analysis of participatory geography must attend to the ways in which transformative opportunities are embraced, resisted or co-opted.
The importance of extending physically based approaches to catchment management to include social considerations has recently been highlighted alongside increasing legislative pressure to utilise public participation in river management processes. Nine water managers, operating at varying geographical scales, from the UK and north-west Europe were interviewed to determine their approach to, opinion of, and success in utilising public participation for decisionmaking. The results indicate that despite variations in approaches to, and perceptions of, participation, one dominant factor constrained the use of higher level participation: scale. The results demonstrate that the degree of participation and influence for ‘non-certified’ experts was inversely proportional to the scale of the project. This was attributed to issues of practicality in communicating between a large number of individuals, but also to underlying factors such as availability of financial support and governing regulations that differ between organisations of different sizes. The findings were used to consider the role of Callon's public education, public debate and co-production of knowledge models of scientific knowledge production (Callon 1990). It is suggested that, for practical application, traditional models be developed into more reflexive approaches that account for the complexity of real-world situations.
This paper seeks to discuss the use of a participatory documentary process (PDP) in human geography as a method of constructing critical visual information on territorial histories of dispossession. The process was also used to enhance social change both in conjunction with local communities and within the communities themselves. The project involved 14 local young participants and four professionals who collectively produced a documentary on the rural context of violence in La Toma District, Colombia. By enabling the reflections and intentions of young participants in the research process, PDP gave special value to their social and political commitment to supporting community social organisation, and provided fresh research insights into comprehending territorial conflict. The paper concludes that this method amplifies participatory and action research approaches in geography by producing knowledge that is academically and socially relevant. Such collective, emancipatory and anti-hegemonic visual representations and actions for social change in PDP are especially pertinent in spaces of conflict and violence.
This paper engages with recent discussions about new requirements for the consideration of the ‘impact’ of research by the UK research councils, and in the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF). The paper argues that the need to consider impact should be critically welcomed, and, given that research is always subjectively evaluated, for academics to take a broad, rather than self-limiting conceptionalisation of what constitutes impact in their research funding bids and submissions to the REF. The paper argues that the emerging Knowledge Exchange (KE) agenda provides a welcome mechanism for funding critically engaged research with real world partners on a participatory basis, and explores experiences of one such KE partnership, Low Carbon Liverpool, to discuss potentialities and problems.
This paper provides an introduction to this symposium issue on participatory action research in geographic teaching, learning and research. It introduces the themes of the symposium and contributions from the participating authors, and also offers additional discussion of the attendant benefits and challenges of using participatory action research within a pedagogic context. The authors begin by discussing the recent growth of participatory pedagogies in higher education, including service learning, research-based teaching and community-based research. They contend that participatory action research may be incorporated in all of these learner-centred and community-engaged pedagogies with beneficial outcomes for teaching, student learning and academic research; however, they advocate for its incorporation into research-oriented and research-based teaching strategies where possible. They also discuss some of the unique political, ethical and logistical challenges involved, and argue that an engagement with participatory action research in our teaching requires more than attention to methods, but, rather, a rethinking of theory–practice, teacher–student, and university–community relationships. They conclude with a brief discussion of the symposium and the authors' contributions.
This article is an attempt at rethinking participatory development (pd) in terms of empire, undertaking a postcolonial and psychoanalytic reading. Postcolonialism helps point out that our discursive constructions of the Third World say more about us than the Third World; while psychoanalysis helps uncover the desires we invest in the Other. Thus, to the question, ‘why do neo-imperial and inegalitarian relationships pervade pd?', the article answers, ‘because even as pd promotes the Other's empowerment, it hinges crucially on our complicity and desire'; and ‘because disavowing such complicity and desire is a technology of power'. The argument, in other words, is that complicity and desire are written into pd, making it prone to an exclusionary, Western-centric and inegalitarian politics. The article concludes with possibilities for confronting our complicities and desires through pd's radicalisation.
In this paper we offer a critique and an alternative to current proposals to include the economic and social impacts of research in the next UK audit of academic research. In contrast to most responses from UK academics, our argument is for impact; while the growing marketisation of knowledge is to be deplored, resources and activities within universities do have a vital role to play in progressive social change. The problem is that the current proposals will produce and retrench an elite model of power/knowledge relationships. We propose an understanding of impact based on the co-production of knowledge between universities and communities, modelled in research practice in participatory geographies. This is more likely to result in more equitable and radically transformative impacts of knowledge, making us socially accountable rather than driven by economic accountancy.
Participatory research approaches are increasingly popular with geographers in developed as well as developing countries, as critical qualitative methodologies which at their best work with participants to effect change. This paper adds to recent debates over the methodologies, practices, philosophical and political issues involved. Drawing on a project on young people, exclusion and crime victimization in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, we discuss the limitations of participatory diagramming and illustrate some of the social and political barriers to meaningful participation in, and action from, this type of research.
What are the methodological and theoretical issues of doing collective research? While raising questions that speak to the process and point to the high and low lights of a collaborative research approach, my paper addresses issues of representation and shifting power that are central to feminist inquiry, critical pedagogy, critical race theory, and research concerned with social (in)justice and inclusion. Specifically this paper grapples with the possibility of research as a vehicle for social change. journal article
Teaching what we (preach and) practise: the MA in Activism and Social Change
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Annual Conference Virtual Issue 2014 Geographies of co-production Larner W Nash F Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
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Annual Conference Virtual Issue2014Geographies of co-productionLarnerWandNashFedsTransactions of the Institute of
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