Critically Engaging Participatory Action Research

Sara Kindon, Rachel Pain, Mike Kesby, Sara Kindon, Rachel Pain, Mike Kesby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780367023041
• eBook ISBN: 9780429682377
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography

This timely and informative book reasserts the value of Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR): an approach to participatory action research (PAR) that is informed by critical theories attending to questions of privilege and power, and that generates collaborations focused on challenging structural inequality.

The authors, writing explicitly from Minority World perspectives, are experienced researcher-practitioners who have worked with communities in the UK, USA, South Africa, Australia, India, and Colombia over many years. They offer an assessment, exploration, and illustration of CPAR at this point in time, outlining how the approach has evolved over time and space. Exploring its roots in strands of critical thought including postcolonialism, anti-imperialism, feminism, antiracism, queer theory, and Indigenous ontologies, the book asks how PAR is being critically re-engaged to maintain its commitment to greater justice and transformational change. Each chapter provides a rich case study of how these theories inform current collaborations and offers reflection on the entanglements of power that come with attempting CPAR in different institutional and geopolitical contexts. Their examples show that critical interrogation of PAR practices may lead to innovative and impactful outcomes for those involved, as well as new theoretical and substantive research findings.

The collection will be of especial interest to students and researchers across the social sciences and humanities, as well as those working outside universities, who are interested in developing or extending their use of CPAR.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Critically Engaging Participatory Action Research
• 2. “Can We Track Human Dignity?”: Critical Participatory Ethics and Care
• 3. We Sing the Land: Researching for, with and as Country in North East Arnhem Land, Australia
• 4. Radical Imaginings: Queering the Politics and Praxis of Participatory Arts-Based Research
• 5. Mapping Our Home: Using Participatory Mapping to Challenge Police Violence in the South Bronx
• 6. Using Participatory Action Research for Performing Stories and Imagining Inclusive Communities
• 7. “You Think Too Much!”: Emotional Geographies of Participatory Action Research
• 8. Pathways to Scaling Social Inclusion Innovation Through Participatory Action Research
• 9. Movement Memories in the Afterlife of Participatory Action Research (PAR): Dreaming and Forgiveness Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC)?
• Index