Abstract
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.
Introduction
Research in the social sciences increasingly seeks a tangible outcome in addressing social issues. Whether through calls for public scholarship, action research, or broader impacts, scholars today are frequently asked to reflect on how our research has outcomes beyond the academy. This is especially the case in participatory research, through which many scholar-activists seek to create social change via their research and community relationships (de Leeuw, et al., 2012; DeLyser and Sui, 2013; Kindon et al., 2010). Social change does not come easily, however. Scholarship on social movements highlights the significant time, work, and motivation necessary to create tangible social change (Davenport, 2015; Levkoe, 2014). In social and academic activism, affect, emotion, and feelings are key to sustaining the motivation to continue that hard work (Askins, 2009; Bosco, 2007, Hayes-Conroy and Martin, 2010). In this article, we argue not only that affect is a critical component of sustaining a participatory research process, but also that reflexively attending to affective experiences in participatory research can help researchers to do participatory research in more effective ways. Research projects are rarely as durable and significant as the social processes they tap into and study. Accordingly, pretending (or over-emphasizing one’s desire) to have an ability to impart major change can be misleading and harmful to collaborators; yet, participating sensitively and meaningfully in the development of the affective economies (Ahmed, 2004) that drive social processes and change can be rewarding and valuable to all.
Affect – or the always-there experiences of being affected by feeling or emotion 1 (Anderson, 2006; Thrift, 2004) – is evident throughout participatory research events with important implications for understanding subjectivity, difference, and power (Longhurst et al., 2009). Several feminist theorists have dealt with the role of affect and emotion in everyday life through emphasizing the many ways in which ‘feeling is negotiated in the public sphere and experienced through the body’ (Askins, 2009: 334). These experiences are always present in everyday life and as such are carried with all collaborators in participatory research processes. In this article, we seek to reflexively examine the impacts of our participatory research events to highlight the role affect plays in shaping research outcomes, hierarchies embedded in research processes, and impacts on social change objectives. While many participatory researchers would agree that affective social experiences are an important part of such projects, this article seeks to take such recognition further through attending to potential outcomes of explicitly designing opportunities for producing and reflecting on affective experiences in participatory projects. In particular, we focus on a ‘praxis of affect’ in two research projects implemented in Medellín, Colombia, via collaboration among the authors. These projects produced important affective experiences for the researchers and co-collaborating authors, as well as other participants in the research events (described further below). In probing these experiences, we call attention not only to the productive capacities of affect itself, but also to what reflexively attending to affect within participatory research can do. We describe how creating space for reflecting on and theorizing affective experiences may bolster motivation to sustain engagement in social activism, even if some of those experiences are considered negative. We suggest that the longer-term, capacity-building results of reflexive affective work can be seen as a successful outcome of participatory research, even when more tangible results of social transformation fail to materialize.
To begin, we consider the increasing focus on addressing local community concerns within participatory geographic research and the criteria by which those efforts are deemed successful. We then describe our research experiences before highlighting the productive value of affect within them, focusing in particular on the emotion involved in forming social bonds, producing feelings of solidarity, sharing expertise, and building hope and trust. We do not prioritize certain affective experiences, but instead reflect on those most prominent in our research events to argue that research seeking social transformation (whether participatory action research, scholar-activist research, or other approaches) produces affective experiences that can be particularly valuable for group reflection. These experiences, and associated exercises of reflection, can contribute to the tangible social change outcomes of the work but are also valuable in and of themselves for the socio-emotional impacts on all involved.
Measuring success in the growing field of action-oriented research
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. Nearly two decades later, this emphasis on community participation in geography (and cognate disciplines) continues to grow. In this turn to participatory research, the concerns of local communities are often a focal point. For some this means devising tangible actions to implement in the community, making the ‘voices’ of marginalized communities ‘heard’, and employing reflexivity to consider power relations in the research.
Much of this methodological approach, particularly participatory action research, is also explicitly oriented toward social transformation or espouses liberatory goals of being counter-hegemonic in its knowledge production (de Leeuw, et al., 2012; DeLyser and Sui, 2013; Kindon et al., 2010; Kinpaisby-Hill, 2011; Ponzoni, 2016). Importantly, this orientation toward ‘broader impacts’ has been a key component of participatory research since before its mandate stemmed from major funding institutions in the US and Europe. This orientation has evolved in part from researcher interest in going beyond simple representations of traditionally silenced groups (Crang, 2002) toward a more explicit commitment to fostering social change (Askins, 2009; Ponzoni, 2016). The participatory process and desired outcomes are influenced by and, in turn, influence the immediate context as well as wider institutional, political, cultural, and environmental situations (Chilvers, 2009).
As a result, participatory research is increasingly assessed on the tangible impact created in local contexts. Whether that means changing local policy, cleaning up a park, or increasing awareness of environmental concerns, the success of a project is often determined by the concrete progress made toward redistributing, consolidating, or reconfiguring power (Kesby, 2007; Stanton, 2014; van der Riet, 2008). In this article we follow other social movement scholars (Bayat, 2000, 2013; Butler, 2015) in highlighting the ongoing work of assembled bodies for creating less visible changes. Butler (2015) argues that the assembling of bodies itself ‘speaks’ about collective political desires, while Bayat (2013) calls attention to smaller everyday actions as quietly attempting to subvert governing norms. In bridging their analysis, it is possible to recognize that much work is achieved by smaller groups who come together in both public and private spaces to weave the connections necessary (though not themselves sufficient) for broader social transformation (c.f. Davis 2017). This less-visible work is often at once affective, political, and practical, and also where much of the intersection with social research occurs. Recognizing this intersection, it is possible to conceive of the participatory research process as part of the broader system of ‘supports’ (in Butler’s terms) that enables people to gather and work collectively for social transformation.
Here we consider the affective nature of such work. We argue that qualitative researchers can heed these arguments through valuing the affective potential of bringing people together in participatory processes. While some researchers have argued that the process of participatory research is just as important for creating enabling spaces as the research outcomes (Askins and Pain, 2011; DeLyser and Sui, 2013; Kindon et al., 2010; Maguire, 1996), they pay less explicit attention in scholarly writing to the role of affect in those experiences. Some scholars have pointed out the necessity of building spaces and capacity for affect into activist practice (Brown and Pickerill, 2009; Clough, 2012). We seek to take these arguments further through arguing here that the affective capacity building that occurs during participatory research processes can be part of that practice, is critical for social transformation, and should be counted among the outcomes of participatory research. The performative experiences of assembling bodies together to pursue social change can create bodily responses that do things like lift moods, energize spirits, and open new possibilities for collaboration. Such experiences can also produce negative affects. Because affect is always a part of participatory research, but not always intentionally so, we propose a ‘praxis of affect’ in order to trace the consequences of affective experiences for individuals and communities as they co-produce knowledge and social action. This praxis requires providing intentional space for reflection and theorizing about affect within participatory work. More than simply recognizing affect as valuable to participatory processes, we discuss the potential to embed opportunities for reflection and theorizing on those affective experiences – what we call a praxis of affect – in order to better harness the possibilities they enable.
A wide and fast-growing literature on affect within and beyond geography has emerged over the last decade (Anderson, 2006; Hayes-Conroy, 2010; McCormack, 2003; Thien, 2005; Thrift, 2004; Tolia-Kelly, 2006; among others). Rather than complicate debates about distinctions between affect and emotion (and feeling) in geography, we understand each as a different aspect of the same phenomenon. Following Anderson (2006), we see affect as the relationship between a body and other bodies/ideas/things that holds the capacity to shift bodily feelings/sensations in ways that we often describe with emotional categories. Attending to affect in research allows for ‘thinking through the body’ as a site of ‘surface and depth, outside and inside, solids and fluids, materiality and spirituality, and head and heart’ in relation with the world around and in it (Longhurst et al., 2009: 335). The relational concept of affect makes visible how our bodies actively participate in meaning making, shape life-worlds, and frame social policy and socio-political relations (Hayes-Conroy, 2010; Cahill, 2010; Ringrose and Renold, 2014). 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). While some researchers discuss the emotions and embodied experiences involved in participatory research projects (Cahill, 2010; Vachelli, 2018), they attend less explicitly to how those always-already existing emotions impact co-collaborators’ participation throughout the process itself. The following examples thus seek to contribute to this literature by documenting what can happen when researchers and collaborators engage in a praxis of affect that seeks to foreground the ways that affect can shape research outcomes of participatory work. In doing so, we argue that the affective experiences of research collaborators during the participatory research process can be a critical element for success, and that participatory research may want to prioritize reflection and co-theorizing on the role of affect, and to document the effects of such praxis.
Action-oriented, participatory research in Medellín, Colombia
The authors have all collaborated in action-oriented research projects in Medellín, Colombia, for several years. One of the common methods in our research has been to create events for community members to come together and share stories, knowledge, and food. Two projects during 2015–2017 in particular, Saberes y Semillas (knowledge and seeds) and ElAtlas, engaged residents in displaced and/or economically-marginalized communities in Medellín in activities to address concerns of inequity, meeting daily needs, and transforming their neighborhoods. Both of these projects involved community leaders who had years of experience in managing community-based events as affective/emotional spaces, and their ‘praxis of affect’ (the ability to intentionally think through and manage affect in action) greatly shaped these projects. Here we engage in a conversation with each other in order to reflect on lessons learned. We attend to how these research experiences impacted us as researchers, collaborators, and/or participants in the events, as well as consider impacts on others involved. The article emerged from shared recognition by Colleen Hammelman and Allison Hayes-Conroy of the role of affect in these events. We then asked Cesar Buitrago,Uriel Cuadros, Diana Muñoz,Ximena Quintero and Alexis Saenz-Montoya to share written reflections on their experiences in facilitating the participatory research events. In particular, the facilitators were asked after the events to describe their experiences facilitating the participatory activities and the affects they experienced while planning, facilitating, and participating in the events. The community-based facilitators were also asked to reflect on the role of affect or emotion in community events, on their role in managing it, and how such events contribute overall to processes of social change. The facilitators were intentional about creating space to discuss affective experiences in the research events (and their ongoing community work) which was then reflected upon in developing this article. In addition, in the participatory events themselves, avenues were created for participants to reflect on how they felt (i.e., specific questions within focus groups), while the academic researchers took note (via field notes and transcription of focus group data) of instances in which participants remarked on such characteristics of their experience. Hammelman analyzed facilitator reflections and Hammelman and Hayes-Conroy contributed data from the participatory events to identify the dominant themes presented here. This article presents a plural voice sharing each of our reflections, not necessarily a conforming voice in which we all identified the same feelings during the shared experiences. This article does not describe in detail the results of our two research projects, but instead seeks to reflexively consider how researchers, collaborators, and participants experienced the participatory research events in order to consider how such activities can be improved and interpreted to achieve desired goals.
Saberes y Semillas (for which Buitrago, Cuadros, Hammelman, Quintero and Saenz Montoya collaborated) included community meetings with urban gardeners to share seeds and starter plants, gardening knowledge, and vision the creation of a network of gardeners. The gardeners represented displaced women in low-income neighborhoods throughout the city that established community gardens to supplement their food budgets, but that struggle to obtain sufficient inputs and maintain secure land tenure (see Hammelman, 2017). In these meetings, gardeners share a meal, starter plants and seeds from their gardens, and stories of successes and challenges. Some of the gardens have been tended for many years by gardeners with extensive experience in growing food while other gardens are in their very early stages. The meetings emerged from a desire of the gardeners to share resources and experiences with each other, especially as the more experienced gardeners were proud of their success stories and anticipated encountering similar struggles from which they could learn from each other’s expertise. The gardeners intend to continue hosting the community meetings and seek to build a more active network, but are limited by resources, time, and logistical constraints.
The ElAtlas project (for which Hayes-Conroy, Muñoz and Saenz Montoya collaborated) engaged young people in a digital mapping project to visualize the spatial extent, power and connectivity of youth organizations (including those that create affective experiences for young people to express themselves in ways that are alternative to violence). This project developed from a desire of young creative activists to raise the visibility of their anti-violence organizing. A working group of young people held several symposiums and events in Medellín to connect activists and begin its work toward an online platform enabling data collection and communication among groups and an offline, on-the-ground program supporting collaboration and resource-sharing. Similar to Saberes y Semillas, ElAtlas is ongoing without a strict timeline, pre-defined deliverables, or an endpoint, but grows and changes with the needs of its grassroots participants. Both projects focused on the goals described above, but most participants also joined these projects with the intention of effecting social change that would lead to greater economic dignity, peace, social equity, and representation for them in the city.
In these projects, a central pattern that emerged, and a reason for creating these events, was that they acted as resources (especially funds for travel and space for meeting) that enabled (re)connection of people, many of whom were already connected through family or social ties, but who had not had the opportunity to enjoy time together in months or years. Similar to other participatory research, these projects sought to use these events to both enhance knowledge (from multiple perspectives) and to effect change in the community. The next section illustrates how affective experiences in the participatory research process contributed to these goals.
Affective contributions to participatory research
A key strategy in both projects was to pursue a praxis of affect by making space for affective experiences and prioritizing reflection on those experiences. In Saberes y Semillas events this included designing the meetings so that participants had time and space to tell stories, build relationships, and reflect on their own feelings in both the meeting and their urban agriculture work. Each meeting began with gardeners from different neighborhoods introducing themselves and describing their gardens and challenges in their neighborhoods. They were then asked specific questions about their work (including on the roles of feeling and emotion) and what they would like to do as a network of urban gardeners to further that work. Following these sessions of sharing knowledge and experiences, the participants exchange seeds and volunteer plants and share a meal together. For ElAtlas, a praxis of affect evolved in two steps. First, they developed an action board of youth organizers that would act as a working group for creating and implementing the mapping initiative that eventually became known as ElAtlas. This group had already been a part of a wider project that emphasized embodied emotions and feelings and therefore this topic was foregrounded in discussions. Second, the board worked to socialize the idea – and receive feedback – in a wide variety of broader social settings: community events, festivals, neighborhood organizational meetings, and so on. In each of these circumstances the development of motivation through affective experiences was given top priority. In both cases, these spaces of affect were prioritized by the co-authors, some of whom have extensive experience in community organizing, because they find affect to be key to building the necessary social dynamics for social transformation (see for context, Hayes-Conroy, 2018).
Specific affective experiences that emerged during our research events can be understood as doing the following: 1. building social bonds and solidarity, 2. sharing varied kinds of expertise, and 3. communicating embodied feelings and emotions. While they are addressed separately below for clarity, all of these affective emphases intertwine and relate to each other.
Social bonds: the affects of ‘working together’
Participants in these events frequently remarked on the bonds of friendship that were (re)produced by sharing the same spaces with others that are often hard to reach logistically. The significance of the events for social bonding was particularly evident in the community meetings between urban gardeners who cannot regularly travel to each other’s gardens because of the difficulty and resources required to move between neighborhoods in Medellín. During a 2017 Saberes y Semillas meeting, the participants discussed how to grow a stronger network of gardeners. One gardener replied: ‘Those with the knowledge can share it with others in order to foster a brotherhood among all of us, and we can share, doing a type of trade in knowledge and also in seeds, to make a big network and also get a commitment to work in a certain way’. Many in the event made it clear that as gardeners, they find that it is important to have good relationships with others and participate in networking events such as Saberes y Semillas in order to reinforce a sense of community and collaboration among gardeners. The events were also specifically designed to provide space for building and reflecting on those relationships.
The role of affect in this case, and particularly of shared affective/emotional events, is in helping to strengthen gardeners’ commitment and/or desire, so that the gardeners can work in networks that dynamize and strengthen food production. To be clear, it is not that all gardeners felt the same way at the Saberes y Semillas events, but rather that the events provided opportunity – a setting, financial support for transport, and various resources for exchange (seeds, food, facilitation) – through which participants could both engage with each other and reflect on how such engagement felt. Creating this space for building affective capacity fostered the forming of social bonds in support of a wider mission toward community change. Maguire (1996) points out that ‘human development requires at its core human interaction, the building and nurturing of relationships’ (1996: 114). Participatory research has the potential to bolster this building and nurturing if it is intentionally fostered in its organization and practice. Cultivating bonds of friendship during these events seemed to foster trust and respect among research participants – critical elements for sustaining social movements.
Such experiences of bonding and friendship in the research process have also allowed participants to recognize the social power of their connectedness. Participants in ElAtlas – especially the young leaders on the action board – often talked about generating feelings associated not only with camaraderie but also with anticipation/excitement over their growing social networks. These discussions were documented through group memoing. When relying on the social bonds that were strengthened or renewed during the participatory research process, collaborators reported feeling more motivated to work toward the creation of strong communities and pursuing a sustainable world through economic and social solidarity. Collaborators often narrated a sense not simply of broader purpose but of ‘broader connectivity’ that was exciting to feel and, they hoped, would be inspirational to map.
Importantly, though, the social bonds and related affects that developed through research collaboration have not always been easy. Negative affective experiences also often arise in working together as hope, trust, and love can shift toward frustration and anxiety when obstacles arise to achieving goals. In both Saberes y Semillas and ElAtlas we encountered some of the following: frustration about slow processes and feelings of being unable to effect community change; remembrance of negative experiences, which can elicit feelings of grief or fear; and interpersonal conflict among participants. For example, in ElAtlas, frustrations with co-collaborators emerged as the project became more challenging (and perhaps started to be perceived as failing by some). Experiencing the initial brainstorming and conceptualizing together as a ‘research team’ made it easier to develop social bonds, but when trying to create a product at the end, more tensions began to emerge about who was going to do the work, and what kind of effort it would take. Negative affective experiences of frustration also became apparent as it was less clear who was taking the lead on the project over time, and as personal challenges emerged that not only effected who did what, but also affected us as concerned allies.
Still, the ElAtlas team (which has shifted throughout the project) has been able to use such negative affects productively, generating new dialogue about the direction of the project and about the intersection of academic geography and community organizing. For example, when affective tensions emerged around leadership, the team used them to identify concrete challenges (such as economic resources) as well as emotional barriers (such as differences in vision) and come up with solutions that made sense for the whole team (such as collaborating on a community grant proposal or expanding the purpose of the growing ElAtlas network to include multiple dynamic visions). To be clear, affect ‘worked’ and was worked upon in this case by a praxis of affect that created space for reflection about feelings caused by participation in the growing ElAtlas network, and by offering means of analyzing these feelings (theorizing) beyond any individual interests. Through such a praxis of affect, the team was able to chart new paths forward. Often, team members were able to trace the origin of particular elicited feelings (like anxiety) to structures of economic inequity, violence, or social hierarchy in ways that both prompted situated problem solving (e.g. what can we do given these constraints) and reinforced the desire to continue to work together on a broader vision for change. These reflections indicate a need to consider not only how affective experiences change throughout the life of a project, but also how both negative and positive affects generated through working together can be used productively to move projects forward.
Solidarity: the affects of ‘sharing a cause’
Participatory research processes also have the potential to produce feelings of solidarity with a larger cause, an affective stance often thought to be necessary for sustaining efforts at social transformation (Bosco, 2007). Likewise, creating feelings of solidarity during research events may be necessary for the success of participatory research as Maguire (1996) argues that we ‘must first create a community base before [we] can do collective investigation’ (1996: 115). Affording space for (and reflection on) affective experiences related to the shared cause is one strategy for creating such a community base in participatory research processes. The affective experience itself need not be momentous. Something as simple as sharing a meal during participatory research projects can be an important opportunity to foster feelings of community and broader purpose. In many activities of ElAtlas as well as the Saberes y Semillas events, the participants share a sancocho, a festival lunch. This meal is often made to share with a large group of people, including unfamiliar people, and has served as an opportunity to build a sense of shared purpose through the acts of taking care of each other through food/feeding/eating. Longhurst, et al., (2009) similarly found that visceral experiences of food can offer a lens into people’s affective relations with social-political spaces.
Beyond sharing food, other events also worked affectively for the projects. For example, research collaborators reported feeling solidarity in pursuit of a larger cause while building the ElAtlas network through outreach activities in local neighborhoods where they had a chance to explain their work – and the purpose behind it – to others. These moments of feeling solidarity provided motivation to serve in leadership roles, work to empower others, and commit to even broader transformative goals. These moments particularly helped to motivate collaborators and other participants to (want to) weave the social networks needed to moderate feelings of anxiety, despair, and frustration associated with the challenge of achieving big goals in a short time. They also lay a motivating foundation for future social change work by youth facilitators evident in the continued work of ElAtlas to build affective networks addressing ongoing community concerns.
Finally, storytelling, specifically recounting shared histories, was another important aspect of these projects that supported feelings of belonging and broader purpose, and that resulted in enhanced motivation among participants. As also found in other work (Bosco, 2007), a number of collaborators in Saberes y Semillas reflected that this recognition of shared histories motivated participants to move forward in unity for seeking recognition from the state and closing the growing gap between those who produce the land and those who consume what is produced. These shared histories served as a foundation for the networks and trust that are necessary for participatory research, reconstructing possible worlds, and promoting action. As such, an affective praxis of reflection is important for building the capacity to sustain the work.
Sharing expertise: the affects of ‘knowing and learning’
The participatory research events also built affective capacity and enhanced motivation by enabling participants to share their expertise – particularly agricultural and community organizing experiences – with each other. The activities created opportunities for people who are often marginalized from decision making to come together to share their knowledge about their neighborhoods, recent experiences, and desires for the community. Collaborators saw creating space in participatory research to value this expertise as an important outcome in itself, but also the generated affects were effective for bolstering motivation to continue both in the research endeavor and in broader efforts at social transformation.
For example, in early interviews with gardeners that later participated in Saberes y Semillas they reported wanting to share their knowledge and experiences with others and to learn from other gardeners in the city. The knowledge then shared in community meetings (such as how to deal with a disease, grow in more ecologically-connected ways, or cultivate certain plants in the urban environment) built on this reflection. The knowledge sharing also has potential to translate into positive growing outcomes for participants beyond the meetings. In walking through neighborhoods with women to see their gardens, conversations ensued with neighbors who were growing flowers but were not a part of the community gardens. After spending some time discussing the flowers in one woman’s yard, and leaving with many plant volunteers in order to start their own flower plants, one gardener remarked multiple times about the happiness she felt in sharing those conversations and plants. These experiences were among the drivers for starting and sustaining Saberes y Semillas events.
A fundamental piece of this story is the co-production of knowledge between academics and community leaders on urban agriculture and sustainability practices on the edges and slopes of the city. In this case, the experience of participating in research as such, validated the knowledge and experiences shared by participants in ways that many felt as motivational. Again, this validation is important for fostering continued participation in the short-term research. But it also holds potential for enhancing individual capacity to create community change after the project ends (as found by others, such as Allen et al., 2015). In this regard, co-collaborators remarked that validation of participant knowledge had bolstered motivation to create future Saberes y Semillas events and broader collaborations focused on sharing expertise between peasant ancestors and contemporary urban gardeners.
Similar experiences were found during ElAtlas project events. Events gave participants a chance to merge their technological knowledge (e.g., GIS, coding) with expertise in social organizing and youth programming as well as budding skills in diverse social fields including psychology and social work. In accordance with existing norms among participants, ‘academic’ expertise was not privileged in the project, but rather seen as part of a broader set of shared skills that were together essential to advance ElAtlas. Thus, and in a similar way to how Saberes y Semillas was described above, ElAtlas enabled a kind of co-production of knowledge that edged towards a dissolution of the categories of ‘academic’ and ‘organizer.’ For participants, this co-production again was a motivation not only to continue with the research process but also to ‘renew energy’ for contributing to other wider efforts towards broader social transformation in the city.
Generating hope and trust: the effects of affects
Throughout the above examples, feelings often narrated as ‘hope’ and ‘trust,’ alongside other positive feelings (‘productiveness,’ ‘connection to the land,’ ‘taking action’) were both generated out of and provided the foundations for participation in the research process and the ongoing community projects. Gardeners chose to continue their participation in Saberes y Semillas events, and more generally their practice of gardening, in part because of the affects generated through these activities. Growing food in the city was described by many research participants as an act of love. The local government has created policies to encourage these gardens to pursue business goals, but many gardeners worry that the government’s business-orientation discounts the importance of the gardens as affective networks collectively working toward common goals. Coming together in networks of gardeners instead seeks to enhance collaborative efforts toward supporting the work of more gardeners throughout the city.
In some cases, the participatory research processes encouraged people to start something relatively new – to generate trust in broader social circles and to generate hope through activities that were poised as fun for participants and that built self-esteem for activity leaders. For example, in ElAtlas, participants took the general idea of increasing the visibility of youth activism to other communities through outreach activities that they themselves designed. In order to do this successfully, they had to build trust in new neighborhoods and make participation in the mapping exercises fun. With this trust, leaders knew that it would be easier to build the horizontal networks that are crucial in working toward social transformation – in contrast to vertical relationships that risk encouraging competition and generating mistrust. Participants in community meetings related to both Saberes y Semillas and ElAtlas have made clear that projects that do not provide participation opportunities that generate such horizontal relationships often falter. Saberes y Semillas and ElAtlas have thus prioritized the creation of feelings of trust and hope in part out of necessity (and with caution toward the negative affects generated when participatory activities are unproductive), recognizing that few, if any, outcomes of the work would be sustained without these kinds of affective relationships.
Discussion
The work of Saberes y Semillas and ElAtlas is ongoing. However, a focus on the tangible results of the participatory research thus far can be discouraging. The processes have not resulted in many clear outcomes of social change desired by the participants. There are no new gardens, new policies, or new economic resources for the work, despite attempts at community grant-writing and engagement with local policy makers. But, we are not convinced this means that the projects have failed. Instead of those tangible results, these participatory processes have been successful in creating new bonds of friendship, fostering solidarity, validating shared knowledge and experiences, and generating hope and trust. All of these affective byproducts build the motivation critically needed to sustain collective work. For example, while the dynamic ElAtlas team failed at winning a large community grant (after making it to the last round), they are still working together on other concrete ideas (e.g. community-driven tourism) to sustain their organizing.
Affect, feeling and emotion are important to processes of participatory research that seek social change because they are integral to participants’ knowledge building, capacity-sharing, and motivation which can support both the long-term and short-term research objectives identified by collaborators (Askins and Pain, 2011; DeLyser and Sui, 2013; Kindon et al., 2010). Affective experiences can help to provide the strength to continue labor in gardens and to foster the networks necessary to complete this work. As described above, the connections made during Saberes y Semillas events are part of the behind-the-scenes work for building a network of gardeners across the city. They fostered trust and sharing that is necessary for motivating continued work together even when time and resources are in short supply. Further, many of the authors’ years of experience in social justice movements have shown that participatory efforts are bound to fail when attention is not paid to the always-existing (positive and negative) affects generated in and through these processes. Through focusing on a praxis of affect, it is possible to understand how shorter-term participatory research processes can contribute to longer-term individual and community priorities.
One step toward better understanding the role of affect in producing research outcomes is understanding participatory research as an ‘orientation to inquiry’ (Pain and Kindon, 2007) that attends to the research process as well as the research project. In valuing affective experiences, as well as the capacity building and space-making that come hand-in-hand, it is perhaps important to consider the experience/event itself as an outcome in the long journey toward social change. Not all social transformation is found in large, visible movements. Much occurs before, during, and after high-profile change that is essential for making big movements visible and for keeping that work going beyond the excitement of big activities. In attending to the research process, it is possible to value the skills, knowledge, capacities, and bonds that are created in participatory research as affective. The micro-social transformations that can occur during research may be important outcomes themselves. Not only do these shorter-term outcomes hold potential for providing avenues for new actions, but they also often challenge researchers and participants to reflect on their work together. It is difficult, however, to concretely measure how these experiences contribute to the community change that participatory research strives to accomplish. Instead, following Kindon et al. (2010), we suggest a different relationship to research outcomes that focuses on collaborative and relational knowledge production (see also, de Leeuw et al., 2012). Research events are affective experiences and collective reflection on that experience may produce more powerful processes for pursuing such collective outcomes. Additionally, instead of singularly focusing on large-scale transformation from these projects, perhaps evaluating whether or not they have created more change than other approaches is more appropriate (Reid, 2000).
There are also numerous challenges that can arise in action research. Several scholars have reported on the inevitably messy, contentious, and variable effects of participatory research (Caretta and Riano, 2016; Kindon et al., 2010). While the examples above are mostly positive, when building spaces to encourage people to dream, research (as such) is not always going to be rosy. These negative experiences must also be considered and care taken to make negative affects productive instead of creating more strain for research collaborators.
In our work, there were also concerns about the long-term impacts of creating spaces to dream up ideas for community change when we, as researchers or (often-marginalized) community members, do not have the resources to quickly put in to practice those ideas. In both projects we collaborated in seeking resources to carry on the work, but such resources often proved difficult to come by (in part because of the challenges associated with working in groups that are not formal organizations for grantmaking purposes). There has already been some debate in the academic literature about such issues. Smith (2012) offers one way forward as fostering reciprocity and feedback. 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. Here we do not try to answer this question, but instead provide it additional context.
Finally, we want to clarify that while we see great importance in attending to the affective nature of research events, we are not arguing for having research events just for the sake of having them. Attending to the contributions of the events themselves in wider movements does not replace the importance of seeking social transformation in action research. Instead it calls forth a rethinking of the desired outcomes of this work to include both tangible changes in a set of issues identified by the research collaborators and building the affective capacity and motivation that help to effect that change. We believe these objectives can both be pursued though a praxis of affect. We are cognizant, however, that participation will not, in and of itself, achieve liberatory goals, even while keeping affect in the foreground. The research must be designed intentionally to do so – with and beyond the realm of affect. This includes attending to power relations and the possibilities for marginalization and inequity to be reproduced within participatory research (de Leeuw et al., 2012; DeLyser and Sui, 2013; Kindon et al., 2010). Various scholars have cautioned that participatory research can be used as a means to build consensus in ways that contribute to governmentality and exploitation (Burgess and Chilvers, 2006; de Leeuw, et al., 2012; Kindon et al., 2010). Some of these scholars also point to questions that must be asked in order to avoid these outcomes. This includes considering how the research will contribute to more enlightened and involved action that can disturb systems and processes of oppression and how research participants can ‘probe questions of identity, representation, and fairness that will enrich their own subjectivity, cultural politics, and art’ (Madison, 2003: 472). We find that attending to and making space for affective experiences in research provides one avenue for answering these questions and achieving co-constituted outcomes of community change.
Conclusion
In this article we have reflexively examined two participatory research projects in Medellín, Colombia, that seek to co-produce research in pursuit of social transformation. We highlighted the role of affect in propelling participation and determining research outcomes. In particular, we call attention to the productive capacity of affect for generating the bonds of friendship and solidarity, shared expertise, hope and the trust necessary for sustaining motivation to work toward social change. In doing so, we suggest a praxis of affect that considers both tangible actions for social transformation and less-tangible outcomes driven by affective experiences.
Grassroots community groups have had a fundamental role in the social development of neighborhoods in Medellín. Since the founding of the first working-class neighborhoods, it has been the grassroots groups that have organized to build churches, health centers, schools, and roads. These supportive solidarity networks built community and opened the way for institutional accompaniment by the local government, who began to finance education, health, and public works in these sectors as a result of the previous efforts of the communities. Since the early 2000s, Medellin has implemented a policy of participatory budgeting. In this mechanism, all community-based groups compete for government funding, which generates rivalry and division between grassroots groups, whereby each group seeks to defend their economic interests. This culture of competition has affected the capacity of grassroots community groups to work together in solidarity. Through action-research activities like ElAtlas and Saberes y Semillas, we instead seek to build solidarity networks rooted in attention to affective experiences for effective exchange. These affective networks help to generate the motivation to collaboratively continue the difficult work of social transformation. The research presented here is limited to reflection on two specific cases but is emblematic of much participatory research and social change activity completed by the co-authors. Throughout those events, we have found affective experiences to be a key tool for building a solid foundation that can support the success of activities but also support the creation of memory, expression, peaceful revolution, and other meanings, which will finally be measured where the community leads, speaks, listens, and lives with others in an active, participatory, social and empowered way.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The ElAtlas project is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant 1452541, (PI Hayes-Conroy). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.