Sampling and sex trading: Lessons on research design from the street by Lauren Martin offers a great start to our new issue. We learn that inclusion of a representative sample is a difficult problem for those seeking to study the sex industry. This is an industry that remains shrouded in mystery and replete with abuse and around which knowledge exists along a spectrum of taboo to tantalizing. We learn in the opening scene of this paper that a community meeting gave voice to all stakeholders on the matter of sex trading in their neighborhood, all that is, except (of course!) the women who actively engage in what is referred to as the oldest profession of all. That those who trade sex are mostly women only adds to the marginalization and disempowerment. Addressing the challenge of inclusion is then an important matter if we are ever to understand better how this industry is to be managed. Given its size and the ancillary impact on our social psyches, as porn culture seeps ever more into the mainstream, this is a matter that affects us all. Dr. Martin’s focal contribution was to reduce the harm that occurs in sex trading (“prostitution”) by using the action research orientation, rightly associated with a more respectful, humane and therefore valuable form of knowledge creation.
Collaborative participatory action strategies for re-envisioning young men’s masculinities by Jessica J Eckstein and Kyle Pinto. Jessica Eckstein leverages her university position to work with the surrounding community noted for its large and growing diversity, in Connecticut, a US state often presumed simply to be wealthy and white. Kyle Pinto is a skilled facilitator, concerned for making young men comfortable enough to speak honestly of their real experience so that it can be transformed in inquiry with others. Central to the issue of violence that the community experiences is young men’s sense of themselves; images of violence infect conventional enactment of masculinity which in turn infects intimate relationships. This action research draws especially on Peter Reason’s concerns for multiple ways of knowing (ironically, this was originally associated with women’s consciousness raising!) in the context of cooperative inquiry. The article allows us understand the power of group inquiry as norms of everyday language are exposed for their predation and violent undercurrents. The men’s group learns to embody for themselves and their intimate partners the respect modeled by the facilitators. Because of propinquity to Lauren Martin’s article, one can’t help but appreciate how action researchers’ work to bring honest inquiry to the still marginalized topic of sexuality/gender allows us to address some of the most deep seated dysfunctions of the patriarchal system we have inherited. But of course conventional (patriarchal) social science has eschewed sexuality as a topic! All the more reason I am happy to welcome inquiry into sexuality in our journal. We have much work yet ahead of us to overturn the wounds of patriarchy. As exemplified in this paper, action researchers’ efforts to bring partnership between women and men, scholars and practitioners, university faculty and community stakeholders, makes this transformative reach ever more possible.
Intersecting journeys in creating learning communities in executive education by Schon Beechler, Rachel Ciporen and Lyle Yorks. The work this paper describes is very close to my own heart – indeed what is described is very much like the work I have done for decades with executive students using a developmental leadership model. In fact so familiar was the work, I wondered what’s new here?! Then I realized that few rich accounts of this work have actually been published through peer review. I am delighted that these colleagues from Teachers College offer self inquiry useful for its transparency and reflexivity. They reinstate for us that Columbia University, for so long a bastion of action research in its doctoral preparation, continues to deserve a fine reputation among action researchers! In this paper we are given a useful template to inform further efforts at program and faculty development, where development is understood to progress through action logics (defined by Bill Torbert) that increasingly allow more spaciousness to personal ego so that more stakeholders can be served.
Participatory action research as a tool in solving desert vernacular architecture problems in the Western Desert of Egypt by Marwa Dabaieh. I know so little of architecture and so perhaps all the more, the few photos in this paper spoke a thousand words. I am sensitized by this work to look more closely at the place that I have chosen to live (and write editorial essays in) with its emphasis on sustainable design with a lot of glass for light and wood floors and clean lines. Context matters. Because the action research described comes from Egypt, which is so often in the news of late I conjure a society which, not incidentally, appears to be deeply patriarchal. How does action research work in such a context? I am struck by how assembling a traditional community to discuss how vernacular architecture can be refreshed for the modern era is a perfect way for a community to come together. Perhaps in time, having added more beauty and experienced more community inquiry together, there may even be a leap toward peace. Indeed to the degree that constricted notions of self may be relaxed to include consideration of all relevant stakeholders (as is the practice of action research) then we see how this self is seamless with the architectural environment. The environment comes then also to be treated more as self.
