Abstract
This book is an introduction to the issues, debates and practices relating to Participatory Activist Research (PAtR). PAtR belongs to the research family of action research (AR). The emphasis of this book is on helping new and practicing cultural professionals to understand the complex and diverse nature of the broader action research tradition and to develop systematic ways of engaging in it. It is intended to help readers step beyond a ‘how-to’ text to also tackle the questions of why, who for and when? It is intended for the activist cultural professional who has an interest in understanding and facilitating social change through research. PAtR is one of many activist tools that the cultural professional might call on, including direct action, campaigning, group work, education, liaison and networking, planning and participation, case work and client organising, skilling, and leadership development.
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Notes
- 1.
A note about the terms we use: In Chap. 5 , we use the term field texts to name what some might call data collection or data construction. We have borrowed this term from Clandinin and Connelly (2000) to quite deliberately, through the use of this language, draw attention to the processes that information from the field of research are subject to, in their journey from being just that, information, to being considered ‘data’. In Chap. 7 , we refer to methods of research text construction (aka data analysis) to again draw explicit attention to the shaping of information into ‘data’ and the deliberate manipulation of this data in ‘analysis’. We make these naming moves to draw neophyte researchers’ attention to their own manipulation of the scene. As you will read in coming chapters, we do not consider knowledge an ‘objective’ thing, waiting outside ourselves to be discovered; rather, knowledge is a situated and positioned construct of the participants on the scene. Hence, we use these terms to be open and explicit about our position with regards to knowledge and to remind ourselves constantly of this.
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lisahunter, Emerald, E., Martin, G. (2013). Introduction. In: Participatory Activist Research in the Globalised World. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4426-4_1
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