Abstract
My reading of the six accounts of co-operative inquiry in this volume comes during a historic moment for action research in which the tensions of celebration and caution pull in opposite directions. On the one hand, the recent successes of legitimizing action research as an approach to knowledge creation gives those of us committed to participatory, experiential, action-oriented research much to celebrate. We have pried open the former strangle hold of positivist research, never to turn back. Action research is used in settings ranging from social justice organizations to multinational corporations, from formal schools to community-based literacy efforts, from human services to for-profit businesses, from international development agencies to social services, and from hospitals to prisons. On the other hand, the question nags, is action research being co-opted into a depoliticized tool for “improving practice” devoid of critical understanding of power relations and structures. Improving our practice for whose purposes, whose benefit? The danger of delinking action research from its transformational potential and emancipatory intentions is worrisome. Gaventa and Cornwall (2001, p. 77) analyze the dangers as large-scale international development organizations “scale-up” field-based participatory approaches, while the development organizations themselves are hierarchical, nonparticipatory, and inflexible. Greenwood and Levin raise similar concerns about the teaching of and promotion of action research in institutions of higher education, which are undemocratic, hierarchical, and rigid (1998).
REFERENCES
Alinsky, S. (1972). Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Vintage Books, New York.
Bell, E. (2001). Infusing race into the US discourse on action research. In Reason, P., and Bradbury, H. (eds.), Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London, pp. 48-58.
Collins, P., (1991). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Routledge, New York.
De Roux, G. (1998). An Invitation for Peace. In O. Fals Borda (ed.), People's Participation: Challenges Ahead, FAIEP, Bogata, pp. 37-40.
Dill, B. T., and Baca Zinn, M. (1997). Race and gender: Revisioning the social sciences. In Anderson, M., Fine, L., Geissler, K., and Ladenson, J. (eds). Doing Feminism. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 1-26.
Gaventa, J. and Cornwall, A. (2001). Power and knowledge. In Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (eds.), Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London, pp. 70-80.
Greenwood, D., and Levin, M. (1998). Introduction to Action Research: Social Research for Social Change, Thousand Oaks, Sage.
Hartsock, N. (1974). Political change: Two perspectives on power. Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, 1(1).Reprinted in Building Feminist Theory: Essays from Quest 1981. New York: Longman, pp. 3-19.
Maguire, P. (1987). Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach, Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
Maguire, P. (1996). Proposing a more feminist action research: knowing and being embrace openly.In de Koning K., and Martin, M. (eds.), Participatory Research in Health. Zed Books, London, pp. 27-39.
Maguire, P. (2000). New preface. In Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach, Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, pp. xiv-xix.
Maguire, P. (2001). Uneven ground: feminisms and action research. In Reason P., and Bradbury, H. (eds.), Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London pp. 59-69.
McIntyre, A. (1997). Making Meaning of Whiteness: Exploring Racial Identities with White Teachers.State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
McIntyre, A. (2000). Inner-City Kids, New York University Press, New York.
Miller, J. (1986). Toward a New Psychology of Women, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Morawski, J. (1997). The science behind feminist research methods. In Brydon-Miller, M., and Tolman, D. (eds.).J. Social Issues, Special Issue Transforming Psychology, 43(4), 667-681.
Park, P., Brydon-Miller, M., Hall, B., and Jackson, T (eds.). (1993). Voices for Change: Participatory Action Research in the United States and Canada. Bergin and Garvey, Westport, CT.
Reason, P., and Bradbury, H. (2001). (eds.). Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Maguire, P. Commentary: Reflections on Co-operative Inquiry in This Historic Moment. Systemic Practice and Action Research 15, 263–270 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016348610237
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016348610237