The participatory research approach in non‐Western countries: practical experiences from Central Asia and Zambia

This paper focuses on the application of the participatory research approach in non‐Western contexts. The aim is to provide critical insights into the participatory research discourse through an examination of its theory and practice based on our own experiences of using this approach in our doctoral research in five Central Asian countries and Zambia. Firstly, we summarise the published literature on the approach in both disability and development studies which are our academic disciplines. Secondly, we critically analyse some of the challenges we came across in applying participatory research in our doctoral studies in practice. By this we wish to contribute to making this approach more viable and to increase research participation by disabled persons in non‐Western contexts. Finally, based on our own experiences we give some suggestions for the use of the participatory research approach in non‐Western contexts.     

Participatory video: toward a method,advocacy and voice (MAV) framework

Using the new conceptual framework of participatory visual media as method, advocacy and voice (MAV), the author explores an action research study using an exemplar in which advocates from the disability community created and distributed a series of videos about love and sexuality as a critical human rights issue in the disability community. The author proposes that conceptualizing these three areas as overlapping, rather than being mutually exclusive, offers an integrated way of understanding collaborative media practices that are community-based and action-oriented. Methodological, practical and ethical considerations are also addressed regarding collaborative-based research that involves public distribution.     

Empowering Homeless Youth: Building Capacity through the Development of Mobile Technology

Information-communication technologies, like computers and cell phones, are popular among young people. This article details a youth-centered participatory action study in which 12 homeless youth designed and developed a mobile application for other homeless youth. We frame our analysis through a theory of critical youth empowerment and discuss the steps taken to develop the application, as informed by the method of spiral technology action research. Developing the application allowed these young people to express their opinions and frustrations, while also providing an opportunity for them to make the lives of their peers better through improved access to supports and services.     

Advancing scientific knowledge through participatory action research

This paper aims to demonstrate the value of participatory action research (PAR) for advancing scientific knowledge as well as for solving practical problems. The article supports the argument through brief summaries of three PAR cases in industry: Norwegian shipping, Xerox Corporation, and the FAGOR group of the Mondragón cooperatives. While noting the practical gains achieved through PAR, the author concentrates particularly on the advances in substantive knowledge and theory that would have been unlikely to emerge out of more orthodox sociological research. The author suggests finally that wider use of participatory action research can have a stimulating effect upon the future development of sociology.     

Participatory art within,against and beyond financialization: benign pessimism,tactical parasitics and the encrypted common

This essay examines three critical artists who orchestrate participatory spectacles and experiences as a means of challenging neoliberal financialization, an overarching paradigm and process that is reshaping economics, politics, society and culture. Critical art, I argue, can offer us a particularly insightful vantage point on these transformations. This is not, as it is usually supposed, because art has some lofty transcendental perspective above society; rather, it is precisely because art is already so deeply integrated into finance and financialization. Not coincidentally, “participation” appears as a keyword for the restructuring of both art and finance today, which I argue is key to understanding the challenges, limits and potentials of even avowedly critical participatory art, with lessons for cultural production more broadly. In order to analyse and draw broader lessons from the three artworks in question, I identify each with a strategic paradigm: benign pessimism, tactical parasitism and the encrypted common. These strategies, I argue, emerge within, against and beyond financialization and can help complicate our approach to its complex cultural politics.     

Reflections on doing participatory research in health: participation,method and power

The author has reflected on her experience in facilitating three participatory research (PR) projects to identify key issues surrounding participation, method and power. The three PR projects in health, all undertaken in the same region in southeast Australia, assessed the needs of women who have experienced breast cancer, evaluated an Indigenous healthy lifestyle programme and developed and documented a model of coordinated care by a consumer group. In particular, the three participatory projects suggested that participants do not always want to maximise their own participation and may prefer external researcher involvement – relationships, confidentiality, anonymity and time‐impacted perspectives of participation. In one study, quantitative methods were selected and time and previous knowledge of research shaped participants' selection of method. In the projects, power relations were complex and issues of negotiation, inclusion, quality of research, agendas, roles and integrity are discussed. The lessons learned here are that participatory researchers can be open to differing levels of participation and methods while also comfortable with sharing decision‐making in research, even if it alters the research outcome.     

Engaging girls with disabilities in Vietnam: making their voices count

This article addresses a theoretical and methodological intervention in support of inclusion for girls with disabilities in Vietnam. Drawing on an internationally collaborative project, Monitoring Educational Rights for Girls with Disabilities in Vietnamese schools, we critically engage the politics of inclusion and exclusion of girls with disabilities in education. Using a critical methodological framework that foregrounds the lived experiences of 21 girls with disabilities in Vietnam, we ask how we might strengthen participatory knowledge production through the work of monitoring rights in order to inform practices and policies related to disability and education. Through a preliminary analysis of the visual data emerging from our participatory visual methodologies, we demonstrate how these methods can contribute to constructing more inclusive practices and policies for girls with disabilities in both the Vietnamese and the global contexts.     

Negotiating a third space for participatory research with people with learning disabilities: an examination of boundaries and spatial practices

The focus of this article is participatory research with and by people with learning disabilities. Drawing on discussions that took place across a series of seminars, we use the concepts of space and boundaries to examine the development of a shared new spatial practice through creative responses to a number of challenges. We examine the boundaries that exist between participatory and non-participatory research; the boundaries that exist between different stakeholders of participatory research; and the boundaries that exist between participatory research with people with learning disabilities and participatory research with other groups. With a particular focus on participatory data analysis and participatory research with people with high support needs, we identify a number of ways in boundaries are being crossed. We argue that the pushing of new boundaries opens up both new and messy spaces and that both are important for the development of participatory research methods.     

The use of photovoice with people with intellectual disabilities: reflections,challenges and opportunities

Photovoice is part of the growing use of participatory research approaches with people with intellectual disabilities. In this paper we explore the process, opportunities and challenges associated with the use of photovoice with people with intellectual disabilities, illustrated through a research project entitled ‘This Is Me’. Photovoice requires researchers to share power and control in the research process and to tolerate uncertainty. Large investments in time and money are also required. These challenges, however, are outweighed by the benefits of the use of photovoice with people with intellectual disabilities. Photovoice creates a space where people with intellectual disabilities can meaningfully participate and exert control in the research process, and as such is an empowering experience. As a participatory research approach, photovoice is accessible and offers the opportunity for people with intellectual disabilities to develop new skills, confidence and experience inclusiveness in their own terms.     

“We’re Who We’ve Been Waiting For”: Intergenerational Community Organizing for a Healthy Community

This study, guided by principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), presents the processes, challenges, and effects of intergenerational community organizing practice of a local grassroots organization to promote community health in multiracial and historically marginalized communities. Three major lessons emerged: (1) the central role of experiential communal learning and critical analysis in collective knowledge creation, (2) development of collective efficacy through a genuine sense of connection and mutual affirmation, and 3) the importance of a co-learner stance in fostering intergenerational leadership. The interconnection between process and product is emphasized as the central tenet in both community organizing and CBPR processes.     

An exploration of factors which may influence how teachers perceive participatory action research tools being employed in schools

This article draws on a lead researcher's observations about participatory research collaboration within a qualitative research project involving teachers, pupils and members of the communities surrounding schools. It presents a practical account of research processes aimed at uncovering to how pupils, teachers and community members in economically and socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods perceived their own roles in relation to creative activity with groups of children, who had been identified by their schools as being in need of help to engage in learning. The activities were led by artists who would not normally be involved in schools. Social constructionist frameworks for evaluation are combined with the literature on participatory appraisal, in order to suggest a politically sensitive course of action by which practitioners and peer interviewers could be involved more usefully in the future, through direct collaboration on the planning tasks to reveal rarely articulated pupil attitudes.     

PUBLIC ART/PRIVATE LIVES

This essay traces a body of work, as it emerges in the space between visual art and an engagement in the public sphere. A range of projects and exhibitions, using photography as medium, is described in the context of a discussion about the complexity of the photographic transaction. All of these projects explore notions of intimacy, pushing at the boundaries between ‘the private’ and ‘the public’ in the South African public cultural domain. The essay focuses particularly on Hotel Yeoville (2010), a participatory public art project-based online and in the library of the old Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville. Yeoville's estimated 40,000 inhabitants are largely disenfranchised migrants and refugees from every part of the African continent. The project comprised a website and an exhibition space with a series of digital, interactive booths in which members of the public were invited to document themselves through mapping, video, photography, text and social media applications. The essay reflects upon the performative, evocative and expressive potentials of the media platforms that could be accessed through the Hotel Yeoville installation and in this particular social and political context asks questions about the photographic encounter and its relationship to self-representation, truth, knowledge and power.     

Community struggles and the shaping of democratic consciousness

Grass-roots protest activities against economic growth have often been viewed as particularistic, random, self-interested actions that have little significant impact on the larger political economy or movements for social change. This article, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding these community conflicts by examining the structural contradictions of political life that frame such conflicts and by showing, through a case study of a toxic waste protest, the ways in which these structural contradictions are subjectively experienced in the process of political protest. This integrated analysis thus shows how ordinary citizens may develop a more active, participatory concept of democracy.     

Exploring the value of involving experts-by-experience in social work research: experiences from Slovenia and the UK

The evidence base for the methodological validity of conducting participatory research is becoming established. This article reviews the experiences of two researchers undertaking Ph.D. studies in Slovenia and UK, respectively, and considers the value of involving service users and carers in social work research. The Slovenian research involved user-researchers who developed research tools and undertook qualitative research. The first author explores the co-researchers’ impact on the research process and its outcomes, identifying both individual and collective empowerment of the co-researchers. The English study involved people from diverse backgrounds, who developed a recovery training programme for carers of people with schizophrenia. The second author describes how the steering group, and the carers who participated in the programme were impacted by the research process and experienced a sense of empowerment and how they influenced the development of new knowledge through the reflexive cycle. The authors draw out the commonalities and differences in our research that add to the existing evidence base supporting the development of participatory inquiry. We conclude by affirming the value of user participation in research in leading to the empowerment of users, the development of new research perspectives, and in contributing to theory in social work research and practice.     

Decolonising research in a Sub-Saharan African context: exploring Ubuntu as a foundation for research methodology,ethics and agenda

In all parts of the world, researchers are addressing the colonial legacy of research. This article aims to contribute to the decolonisation of research in a sub-Saharan African context by exploring Ubuntu as an indigenous Southern African research paradigm. Drawing on lessons learnt from participatory action research with South African science teachers and on Ubuntu research literature, I develop, and reflect on, characteristics of an Ubuntu research ethics, agenda and methodology. Understood as humanness, Ubuntu encompasses a dimension of becoming human and being human. Both dimensions are realised through lived community and respectful, caring relations with other living beings and the environment. Thus, ethical protocols evolve around relating positively to others. Ubuntu research agendas contribute to strengthening community and methodologies are community based, relational and participatory. The emphasis of the article is not on presenting Ubuntu research as categorically oppositional to conventional methodologies, but on an approach to research that is grounded in indigenous African epistemologies.     

Linking Disconnected Spaces or Venue Shopping? Trade-Offs in Participatory Opportunities in the EU

This article discusses why national civil society organisations (CSOs) use or abstain to use the participatory opportunities that the EU has developed in the last years. This is done by analysing the role of French and Spanish civil society groups in the debates on participatory democracy during the drafting and the referendum debates of the European Constitution (2002–2005). The paper departs from existing assessments of the role of national civil society in the Convention and demonstrates that national organisations built on their expertise on certain EU policies, on access to EU-level political actors and on contacts and alliances with other CSOs. It also differs from previous studies in finding that participation does not entail sharing the interpretive frame promoted by the EU. The finding that access opportunities do not fundamentally influence the frames of the organisations is related to their ability to strategically choose to participate in European and national venues. The paper finds that because of their scepticism on the constitution's participatory framing, French organisations preferred a stronger role at the national level, whereas Spanish organisations did not have real incentives to develop a campaign at the national level. While it is expected that dialogue with CSOs can contribute to bridging the gap between the EU and its citizens, this paper finds that the institutional setting provided incentives for national organisations to get involved only in one of the levels rather than to link them.     

The Delphi technique: an untapped approach of participatory research

In this article, we describe ways that the Delphi technique can be extended from its more traditional approaches and processes in order to make it a tool for scholars using participatory methods. This innovative proposed approach is called the change-oriented Delphi. We describe this innovative approach using an example from our own work to create solutions to the growth of non-tenure-track faculty in higher education institutions, which is negatively impacting student outcomes.     

Toward a Critical Social Theory of Youth Empowerment

SUMMARY

This article contributes to the development of a critical social theory of youth empowerment which emphasizes collective efforts to create sociopolitical change. It draws upon analysis of four youth empowerment models, and upon findings from a participatory research study which identified key dimensions of critical youth empowerment: (1) a welcoming, safe environment, (2) meaningful participation and engagement, (3) equitable power-sharing between youth and adults, (4) engagement in critical reflection on interpersonal and sociopolitical processes, (5) participation in sociopolitical processes to affect change, and (6) integrated individual- and community-level empowerment. It concludes with discussion of the measurement of outcomes, and the challenges and opportunities for empowerment in youth organization.     

Mapping the terrain of strategic politics among social change-oriented youth

This paper explores the ‘everyday’ politics of social change-oriented (SCO) youth. We apply an everyday network of youth politics approach in order to explore the lived experience of politics for SCO youth, accessing how they understand, negotiate, and actualize youth politics. Our study demonstrates that SCO youth negotiate politics through everyday, localized, and relational networks. Utilizing a youth-led participatory action research model, we present qualitative findings drawn from interviews conducted by SCO youth-researchers among their SCO youth peers.     

Citizens of the margin: citizenship and youth participation on the Moroccan social web

This paper examines how marginalized youth in Morocco use YouTube to contest hegemonic discourses of state power and institutional practices of social exclusion. The paper analyses a user-generated, YouTube web-series, Tales of Bouzebal, as a performance of marginality and a social critique of state bureaucracies and institutions in the context of post-Arab Spring Morocco. Using a combined method of textual and discourse analyses, the paper argues that the new media practices of producing and consuming user-generated video are best understood as practices of cultural citizenship that contribute to social change through the production of counter-discursive political subjectivities among youth in MENA. The paper posits that the concept of citizenship needs to be expanded to account for citizen participatory media practices that contest the conditions of marginality and inequality sustained by normative definitions of citizenship.