Appreciative Inquiry as a method of transforming identity and power in Pakistani women

Abstract

This paper describes a three-year action research project that used Appreciative Inquiry to work with marginalised Pakistani women living in Sheffield. The research encountered many of the difficulties and dilemmas that have been previously identified in the theory and practice of Appreciative Inquiry. However, it also empowered the participants to develop critical thinking, particularly around issues of power and identity. Through generating authentic and untold stories, Appreciative Inquiry enabled participants to discuss, subvert and challenge the identities that had been constructed for them by sources of power within their community and culture. The paper describes the innovative application of Appreciative Inquiry, offers a theoretical response to criticisms of Appreciative Inquiry and suggests how it may be effective in enabling marginalised people to critically address issues of power.

Keywords

Appreciative Inquiry critical theory power transformation culture women

Introduction

Pakistani women are among the most excluded in society. Within this group, new migrants who come to the UK for marriage are particularly disadvantaged. There is substantial evidence that their financial, emotional and mental well-being is worse than women from any other ethnic group (Anand & Cochrane, 2005; Anandi & Platt, 2011; Platt, 2007). St Mary’s Community Centre is an organisation that has worked closely with this group for over 10 years, employing a small team of Pakistani community development workers who live locally.

We believed that the persistent disadvantage experienced by Pakistani women may be caused at least in part by social and cultural factors: the arena of community power that Aziz, Shams, and Khan (2011) have called the ‘critical meso’ level. Aziz et al. describe the way that this informal arena of power impedes the empowerment of women in Pakistan despite government policy efforts to bring greater equality. We wanted to understand how these factors are present in the UK Pakistani community but were concerned that the process of this research should also have tangible benefits for participants (Reason, 1999). The Pakistani community are well aware of their disadvantaged situation and women are particularly conscious of their low status. A research methodology which focussed on the problems of the community could undermine this key requirement of Action Research by reinforcing feelings of powerlessness, need and diminishment (Ecclestone, 2004).

Therefore, we chose Appreciative Inquiry (AI; Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987) as a research methodology that we hoped would yield detailed information about the social and cultural meso-level whilst also building the capacity of people in the community. This paper describes how AI enabled the telling of untold stories, creating a new level of critical consciousness and power within the group (Freire, 1968/2000). Fieldwork involved 39 Pakistani women over an 18 month period. The paper outlines the processes that researchers went through to adapt and contextualise AI as an approach and how the method enabled a group of disadvantaged women to think critically and creatively about their identities and about power. The study suggests links to transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1981) and also responds to Grant and Humphries (2006) work on critical appreciative processes.

AI as a philosophy for action research

AI is not so much a research methodology as an underpinning philosophy: an orientation to research and to engaging with individuals and organisations (Bushe, 2012). It has its origins in organisational development and renewal (for example, Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2008; Lewis, Passmore, & Cantore, 2008) and is based on the social constructionist premise that the sort of attention you give to a question determines what you find (for example, Burr, 2003). Therefore, AI focuses attention on ‘the best of what is’, or the ‘life-giving properties’ within social systems, operating from the premise that solutions are already within organisations, teams, individuals or communities and will be discovered if the right attention is given.

One of the key claims made for AI is that it differs from other organisational development methodologies because it creates new thought processes and transforms systems, whereas traditional methods seek merely to create new behaviour whilst keeping the existing system intact (Bushe & Kassim, 2005). The claim that AI can transform systems is clearly of interest to researchers looking for ways to address the meso-level systemic disadvantage experienced by Pakistani women.

However, Bushe (2012) outlines three waves of criticism that have been directed at AI, primarily because its ‘profound philosophical perspective’ has been oversimplified and reduced to a series of simplistic steps that promise to find ‘the positive’ in a way that is artificial and unreal. In a previous issue of this journal, Grant and Humphries (2006) also argue that AI must take a more critical account of wider societal influences and advocate the development of a bridge between AI and critical theory (CT) to create what they term ‘critical appreciative processes’.

Since the interaction of AI and power is a key theme of this paper, we first discuss how we conceptualised and worked with meso-level power and how this informed a critical application of AI that is closer to its philosophical underpinnings and responds to the critiques outlined above.

Foucault (1975, 1976) argues that power is experienced at all levels of society and through every human interaction. The only response to power is to be aware of it and adapt appropriate strategies. In particular, he discusses how communities exercise power through the process of surveillance in which the actions/movements of individuals are monitored and then judged. After a while, Foucault maintains, the surveillance/judgement process becomes internalised and shapes consciousness so that compliance need no longer be enforced physically. Freire (1968/2008) takes a similar view and discusses the processes by which the demands of the oppressor are internalised by the oppressed who become willing subjects of the system that is controlling them.

Habermas (1987) offers a different image of power – that of colonisation. Just as an imperial power controls subjects by invading and replacing their language and world view, so a ‘system’ colonises the lifeworld of individuals, preventing the lifeworld from renewal. Habermas is more optimistic than Foucault that individuals can overcome the limiting effects of power through ‘communicative action’: an ideal state of dialogue that occurs when two interlocutors treat each other as equals. As with most ideal states this happens very rarely.

Habermas and Hannah Arendt influenced each other’s thinking about how dialogue can form a response to power (d’Entreves, 2006). Arendt concentrated on the dialogue that is created when people come together to share the stories of their lives in ‘a web of relationships and enacted stories’ (Benhabib, 1996, p. 125). When this happens, a process emerges which shapes the consciousness and identity of the storyteller: indeed, Arendt asserts that the identity of a person ‘becomes tangible only in the story of the actor’s and speaker’s life’ (p. 127). She calls this process narrative action. Narrative action becomes a source of power because it contests the identity imposed by community power. Arendt writes that the power of narrative action:

springs up between people when … word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities. (Arendt, 1958, p. 200)

In narrative action, the powerless begin to define who they are and resist externally imposed subjugating definitions of identity. Such storytelling is defined as action because it is a process of invention, of construction.

Arendt also argues that a selective approach to the past is a necessary response to power, contending that:

it is necessary to redeem from the past those moments worth preserving, to save those fragments from past treasures that are significant for us. Only by means of this critical reappropriation can we discover the past anew, endow it with relevance and meaning for the present, and make it a source of inspiration for the future. (d’Entreves, 2006)

There are clear parallels between this critical reappropriation of the past and the emphasis of AI on selecting life-giving properties as a topic of inquiry.

However, a key practical question is how such a critical reappropriation may be developed in people who are oppressed since many practitioners find it difficult to apply the principles of CT to the reality of the lives of the people who need it. Wiggins (2011) discusses the gap between CT and popular education and particularly the inaccessibility of CT to ordinary people. Kincheloe (2008) and Taylor (2009) offer a way forward by developing the epistemological case for a holistic and accessible approach to critical reflection: one that is less reliant on rational and analytical discourse and emphasises affective and relational ways of knowing. Taylor asserts that critical reflection is ‘often prompted in response to an awareness of conflicting thoughts, feelings and actions [which] at times can lead to perspective transformation’ (p. 9).

Kincheloe (2008) develops this thinking by drawing on the work of Dewey (1916) and Gramsci (1988) to define a ‘critical complex epistemology’ which combines both logic and emotion, arguing that people cannot ‘know’ without feeling and that critical scholars must engage with the emotions of the people they want to help. Therefore, the work of both Taylor and Kincheloe speaks to the dilemma posed by Wiggins (2011) and aligns with Arendt in understanding critical reflection as an outcome of authentic and emotionally engaged dialogue which is rooted in relationships.

The rest of this paper explores the way in which AI enabled women to tell the stories of their lives and to develop authentic relationships which transformed their understanding of their identity and power. It addresses the need to link CT and AI identified by Grant and Humphries (2006) and suggests future work in the application of AI.

Method

The team conducting the research was drawn together from a range of cultural and academic backgrounds. The principal investigator (PI) and one of the co-authors is the Director of St Mary’s Community Centre in Sheffield’s inner city and is a white male educated to Masters level. Academic oversight was provided by the co-investigator (and co-author) who is a white male Reader at Sheffield Hallam University and is referred to as the CI.

In recent issues of this journal, van der Meulen (2011) and Letiecq and Schmalzbauer (2012) discuss the respective advantages and disadvantages of being insider or outsider researchers when attempting to engage with hard-to-reach groups of people. They conclude that ‘insider positioning’ is important if research is to reflect the reality of the subjects and to resonate with their experience of life.

The co-authors were acutely aware of being ‘outsiders’: white males who spoke no Urdu. Therefore, we created a research team consisting of six local Pakistani women to carry out front line field work and to be involved in data analysis and interpretation. In this paper, they are referred to as research assistants (RAs). One of the RAs was recruited as a full-time research assistant and played a major role in collecting and interpreting the data. Two part-time RAs were experienced female community development workers of Pakistani origin who had worked with the local Pakistani community for over 10 years and were well-trusted and networked in the community. The remaining three were sessional workers who maintained a variety of roles in the community: one was a receptionist at the local medical centre, one an employee at the local Asian dress shop (which served as a valuable informal community hub) and one was employed at a University.

The RAs gave the research team a high level of insider positioning since they lived in the local community and were fluent in Urdu. The RAs also had personal experience of meso-level cultural influences, most importantly the impact that arranged marriage had on their education and future prospects.

Social power and arranged marriage

The main reason that women travel from rural Pakistan to live in Sheffield is for arranged marriage

Aziz et al. (2011) comment that:

Social life in Pakistan is heavily affected by family and community (bidari) traditions while gender relations rest on the perceptions that ‘women are subordinate to men’ and ‘a man’s honour resides in the actions of the women of his family’. (p. 307)

Arranged marriage is one of these family and community traditions and is defined by O’Brien (2008, p. 40) as ‘a type of marital union where the bride and groom are selected by a third party rather than by each other’.

O’Brien notes that arranged marriage was common across the world until the 18th century and is still prevalent in many Islamic countries including Pakistan. Whilst this form of marriage requires the consent of both bride and groom, the reality is that community expectations make that consent extremely difficult to withhold, particularly in situations of poverty and poor education (Brown, 2006).

Arranged marriage is still strongly observed amongst the Pakistani community in the UK, though Dwyer (2000) notes that whilst young women in rural Pakistan are normally married soon after puberty, young Pakistani women in the UK are deploying a range of discourses and strategies to delay their marriage until they have completed their education and experienced the workplace. The RAs had a range of experiences: three had arranged marriage at 16 and one, contrary to her expectations, was removed from her A-level studies to get married. Only one had managed to negotiate the terms of her marriage to enable her to complete University undergraduate education. The shared experience of arranged marriage was crucial to their positioning during the research because, whilst the RAs differed from the participants in terms of their overall power and autonomy, they shared a defining life experience over which they had little control.

The negotiation with cultural expectations continued into their working life and all the RAs spoke of developing dual identities: being ‘Western’ and modern in the work place whilst reverting to more traditional subservient roles at home, an experience consistent with the Pakistani girls interviewed by Dwyer (2000).

All the RAs had a deep frustration with the way in which the Pakistani community was limited by cultural and religious factors. They had a negative view of the culture and a trait-based understanding of women in it. It was important that such attitudes and motivations were exposed to reflection and so the whole research team undertook four days of research training delivered by the co-investigator (CI). The training comprised research philosophy, qualitative research methods and AI so they could make field notes during workshops, record one-to-one interviews and run Open Space events in Urdu. This training was vital in enabling the research team to be close enough to the participants to interpret their voice with authenticity, but sufficiently distant to reflect critically on findings (Bohman, 2012).

The RAs were instrumental in recruiting a further 39 women who over the next 18 months were participants in the research project. The majority of participants had met their husbands only briefly (in some cases not at all) before getting married and coming to Sheffield. All had come from rural areas of Pakistan and had experienced very little formal education. Some had lived for years in the UK but, despite the availability of free English classes, none spoke anything but the most rudimentary English, reflecting their level of isolation. They dressed traditionally, wearing salwar kameez and headscarves with which they sometimes covered their faces if the PI was in the room. Dwyer (2000) observes that such a dress code is indicative of cultural norms of ‘appropriate femininity’ which are closely monitored by the community. A summary of the participant characteristics is given in Table 1.

Table 1.

Participant characteristics.

Marital status
Arranged marriage	30
Married, chosen own spouse	1
Divorced	9
Unmarried	0
Length of time in UK
0–3 years	6
3–7 years	12
7 years +	22
Ability to speak English
Able to speak conversational English	2
Unable to speak English	38
Age left education
Under 12 years	23
12–16 years	10
16+ years	7

Participants invited to join the research were known to St Mary’s because they attended English classes or were recruited through playground contacts. The participants were informed as to the purpose of the research by the RAs following protocols agreed by the PI and the CI’s university ethics committee. Consent was sought through both verbal and written communication in Urdu. It was made clear that participants could withdraw at any time. Those who completed were given a £25 gift voucher in recognition of their time and effort.

The research method comprised a series of activities that were designed to generate positive and productive conversations consistent with AI philosophy. The precise content of the session changed slightly from cycle to cycle, but followed roughly the following pattern. The sessions were 3 hours long, requiring considerable commitment from participants. However, the energy and level of participation was always high. The women were completely unfamiliar with group work and so initial sessions took a lot longer than the research team had anticipated. The group activities were supplemented by one-to-one structured interviews conducted after the River of Life exercise (see below). The interviews were designed to help the women to articulate and explore the meaning of their stories.

The activities and their theoretical rationale are described Table 2.

Table 2.

Research activities.

Activity	Purpose and impact	Theoretical basis
Setting ground rules In week 1, these were suggested by researchers. In future weeks, increasing ownership was given to participants.	To reinforce the need for confidentiality and create a context of trust in the group. The ground rules were rehearsed each week and were a crucial enabler, creating a different space free from the gossip and judgement which have a powerful impact within the community.	Aziz et al. (2011) affirm the importance of constructing a separate space within which dialogue can occur.
Ice breakers	To help establish trusting relationships within the group. The icebreakers were very important and were planned so that levels of disclosure increased as weeks went on. For example, early icebreakers would be name games or group tasks. Later ice breakers may involve picking a question from a hat which required more personal disclosure.	Wiggins (2011) notes that icebreakers are important because ‘laughing and acting “childlike” serves to equalise differential levels of power between participants’ (p. 42).
Family tree	Drawing a family tree and representing each character through drawings, or cutting pictures out of magazines. Group discussion. This is important to identify people who set the social context. It gives the women the chance to define the identities of others. It was often humorous as women had the chance to construct slightly subversive identities of their family (e.g. sticking a ‘For Sale’ sign on the image of their husband).	Foucault (1975, 1984) notes that activities which involve ‘transgressing’ are an important response to power.
River of Life And group discussions	Participants constructed a narrative of their life using the image of a river winding its way through fertile fields, rapids and rocks, shallows and so on. Participants were encouraged to think of the times of happiness, strength and resilience. Research assistants also constructed their own river of life alongside the women, to model disclosure and to create an equality and openness with the women. This was a crucial aspect. Once the narratives were constructed they were shared with the group. The women found this activity challenging, but extremely rewarding. There was a step change in trust and disclosure and high emotional content.	Enabling participants to define their own identities and speak with their own voice about their lives, for the first time ever. The emotional biographical nature of the stories created an environment for critical thinking (Taylor, 2009) and for critical complex epistemology (Kincheloe, 2008).
The hot seat	Participants took turns to sit in the hot seat and then group members were allowed to ask them three questions about their life story. The participants learned how to ask questions that probed below the surface.	Disclosure creates trust.
Arshi’s story	A fictional case study of a Pakistani woman who had just been married and arrived in Sheffield and was isolated, controlled and depressed. The participants were encouraged to discuss how they could respond to this situation. This exercise created a great deal of energy and insight, and allowed the women to engage in a more objective power analysis, contributing to the development of their critical thinking.	Kincheloe (2008) emphasises the need to draw on emotions, passions and life experiences to enable the development of critical thinking.

All activities were conducted in Urdu-Punjabi by the RAs. Extensive field notes were taken of the group sessions. The individual interviews were recorded and transcribed in full. All data were then imported into NVivo 8 software for coding.

This information was supplemented by Action Learning sets taped and transcribed by the CI which gave the full research team (PI, CI and RAs) an opportunity to explore both their practice and feelings. This was an important aspect of keeping the right distance with participants. Finally, the CI conducted probing interviews with each member of the research team to explore their learning and reflections. These interviews were also taped and transcribed.

Coding was conducted concurrently with data collection using Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) so that concept development was firmly located in the empirical data and use of academic literature was limited to facilitating interpretation of the concepts that emerged during field work. Open coding was carried our concurrently with data collection by the full time RA, the PI and CI. Axial coding to identify common themes and concepts was carried out once data collection was completed, initially by the full time RA, PI and CI and then discussed and refined in discussion with the other RAs.

Results and discussion

At an early stage, methodological contradictions and problems started to emerge, largely because we were naïve about the criticisms of AI and focussed too closely on trying to find ‘the positive’. At the start, the RAs conscientiously tried to create and maintain a ‘positive’ tone in the facilitation of workshops and interviews. If the women’s stories were tinged with hardship and ‘negativity’, RAs would gently steer them back to the ‘positive’ in their situation, or open up a conversation that might lead in a more ‘positive’ direction. The RAs found it difficult and unnatural to intervene, particularly when stories recalled painful emotions. This difficulty is consistent with the experience of other practitioners who describe similar problems in adopting a ‘positive’ approach to AI (Bushe, 2007; Grant & Humphries, 2006).

The discomfort with this approach to AI methodology came to a head during a review of stories emerging from the first group of women. As will be seen in the section below, women spoke of being completely isolated in households where no one would speak to them, or where their family spoke English knowing that they could not understand. They gave accounts of disinterested or absent husbands, of in-laws who expected them to do all domestic work. They spoke of loneliness and boredom and a complete sense of dislocation from all that was familiar to them. The alienation and isolation that the women experienced at home was a source of chronic distress.

These were stories that the researchers had never heard before, despite the fact that they too were embedded in the community. Their eyes were opened to hidden powerlessness of newly arrived migrant women whose stories were marginalised and discounted in the dominant discourse of the community.

These stories forced us back to question our methodological assumptions. We realised that trying to construct a strengths-based discourse which was insufficiently cognisant of the way that power operated in the lives of the women was counter-productive. Indeed, we realised that by privileging a positive narrative, we may inadvertently contribute to the power imbalance by imposing a definition of what is ‘positive’ (van der Haar & Hosking, 2004) and preventing the women from understanding the way in which their lives were shaped by the discourses and power interests of others.

Therefore, whilst the RAs continued using the AI exercises, narratives were allowed to develop more naturally. Participants were still encouraged to discover strength and competence, but these ideas were not privileged at the expense of the untold stories. While this shift in approach responded to the need to respect the integrity of the participants’ experience, it led us to a nagging worry that we had abandoned our methodology at an early stage.

The emergence of transforming stories

Once the data collection phase was completed, the open codes were worked into axial codes which became the basis of our theory generation. It was during this phase of data analysis that the fog began to clear as we started to see patterns in the data that surprised us: clear evidence that participating in the AI sessions had had a transformational impact on the women.

It was immediately apparent that AI was a successful technique for enabling a fairly reticent group of migrant women to generate rich, fine-grained and emotionally textured stories of their lives. These stories gave the research team new knowledge and understanding of the way in which community power defined the women’s identity.

The most defining event was marriage, which led to the women leaving their family and country and journeying to England to live with a person and a family they barely knew. Yet, this life-changing event was totally driven by the power of others. The following account was not untypical:

I live in a village in Pakistan. We didn’t know this family at all. My cousin met them somewhere and they started to say that they are looking for a marriage proposal. My cousin told them about us and they came to visit. We 5 sisters did not know anything about this, we just made food for them and when they left they said to my parents that they would want to marry from here. I guess my parents knew why they had come. They came again the next day and formalised the marriage. Within 7 days all the marriage rituals had happened and I was married and taken to their house. My husband stayed for further 8 days then returned saying he had to get back to work. (Interview)

This account illustrates how the process of arranged marriage creates and controls the identity of a woman. The construction of a subordinate identity continues as the women settle into their new families where all the major decisions about their lives are made by their in-laws, and where their influence or voice is minimal.

My father-in-law says ‘if you don’t do as he says, you will regret it. they will kick you out like they have kicked the first one’. I thought to myself ‘I have no one here, where am going to go. I am stuck – I have to stay here now’. (Interview)

I don’t talk about my learning at home as they have never accepted it. They don’t want me to learn. My father-in-law, mother-in-law and husband would rather me stay at home. It’s not important to them. Housework is important to them. I do the housework and cooking. (Interview)

I did not have permission to speak to my sister alone, because she had some problems in her marriage. My in-laws went with me everywhere. They wanted me to stay at home and care for them. The full responsibility is mine. Wash and iron clothes, cook for everyone, look after in-laws. (Interview)

People at home they did not do anything, they did not think anything about me. I started to understand their habits and that’s when I started to think about myself. My husband never spoke to me, whoever I asked they did not take notice of me. (Interview)

This subordinate identity becomes internalised as the following spontaneous statement from a woman in our study articulates:

We women do not trust ourselves: we don’t trust our own abilities. That’s the reason we do not move forwards. If we are strong then it is our confidence that lets us down. We are all like dead people. (Interview)

This is further highlighted in an extract from one of the RA’s field notes:

An informal discussion began about why Pakistani women are the least likely to learn English. Sania stated that ‘there is nothing in our heads,’ Shanaz added ‘Pakistanis are always at the bottom’.

AI setting a new context

The level of storytelling and of disclosure between the women was a completely new experience for them. It was clear that AI set a unique emotional context and enabled the emergence of conversations that were utterly different from any that the women had in their everyday life. Through these conversations, they started to generate new and fresh narratives: stories that had never been articulated and therefore never subject to reflection or the possibility of learning from them.

Yes, I have heard a lot of gossip, but you never know how truthful that is. In AI we were actually honest about our situations and that created a bond that allowed us to speak of our issues without the fear of it going back into the community or back to your own household. At first I thought that I was all alone in my situation and was very scared to talk to anyone about it. But being in AI has helped me realise that ‘we are all in the same boat’. (Interview)

I have realised that my story is not much different to the ladies attending AI. We are all in the same boat of dependency when we come here. I have never heard women speak like this before. The conversations we have in AI are more focused. (Interview)

As the women shared in storytelling a new self-understanding began to emerge and they began to recognise and to challenge the identities that had been given to them.

For the first time I recognised my identity as Shanaz and I understood that I am a person in my own right. Before I was always ‘wife’ or ‘mum’ or ‘big sister’. This was the first time that I was identified by my name. (Interview)

The RAs also noted a change in the women’s self-identities:

RA: I think Nasia said something about how the AI has not just had an effect on her learning, but also her personality. Let me see if I wrote that down … she said ‘It’s made a difference on both my English and my personality. It’s given me peace and hope as well’.

CI: Is she telling you what you want to hear?

RA: I think that is genuine … because a lot of people don’t comment on their personality, but she did. I think that felt quite genuine. (Transcript from CI interview with RA)

As the women began to construct more resilient identities, they also started tentatively to develop a critical view of power by questioning whether their future had to be determined by others. This transformation is illustrated in the following three interview extracts:

I feel that I have gained more confidence in myself. I feel ready to change my situation and am now a little more decisive in what I want from life.

I now know that slowly I can achieve what I want. By seeing others, their responses to problems, their mannerisms, their problems, their way of finding solutions - all this has helped me look at my life and encouraged me to do something positive about my issues.

I used to be very scared of everything and everybody before. But not anymore: I do not feel the same fear.

Storytelling as a critical act

Without exception, the women said that the most powerful aspect of the research was sharing and discussing their stories in an environment that felt safe and confidential. The atmosphere in the storytelling sessions was emotionally charged and often accompanied by tears. As they realised that they were not alone, they started to examine, and in some cases to change, their perspective on fundamental issues of identity and power.

Van der Haar and Hosking (2004, p. 1027) observe that AI invites a ‘particular way of participating’. We would suggest that the ‘particular’ nature of AI is its subversive premise that strength, competence and possibility reside in the most unlikely people, even those whose identity is impoverished by the power which operates at the critical meso-level of the community.

From a Foucauldian perspective, AI is an act of transgression (Foucault, 1977, 1984) which crosses the limits set by power and which does things differently. It speaks to excluded Pakistani women as they have never been spoken to before and allows them to speak their untold stories in return. Much of what we did through AI was to do things differently, to create a space, a context of trust and of equal relationships where stories could be told for the first time. The space created by the stories enabled the women to have subversive conversations and to be playful with the identity of those who are dominant (for example, sticking a ‘for-sale’ sign on the image of their husband and laughing about it). Such acts of transgression demonstrate that things can be done differently and contribute to the formation of a new ‘knowledge-power constellation’.

The stories that emerged from our AI were not all ‘positive’ but they resonated powerfully with the life experiences of the participants. They were all ‘possibility-full’ (van der Haar & Hosking, 2004, p. 1026) because they engaged with the thing that really mattered to the participants – their sense of their own identity. Kincheloe (2008) draws on Gramsci (1988) to argue that an effective critical pedagogy must have such emotional content because emotional ‘knowing’ subverts dominant ideological forces which emphasise the importance of keeping things objective and logical. From this perspective, the AI contributed to the development of a critical complex epistemology and also responds to Grant and Humphries (2006, p. 404) call for a wider definition of ‘appreciation’.

The other transgressive act that AI enables is the development of subversive social relations. The women formed relationships with each other and with the research assistants which cut across perceived barriers of class or status. Through the sharing of untold stories, power differentials were minimised as the following extract illustrates:

In AI, we were actually honest about our situations and that created a bond that allowed us to speak of our issues without the fear of it going back into the community or back to your own household … [it] helped me realise that ‘we are all in the same boat’. (Interview)

Youngman (1986) argues that hegemony arises from social relations and not just intellectual ideas. Therefore, storytelling which helps people to reconceptualise their social relations will enable them to develop a more critical view of their situation and resist the colonising influence of meso-level power. The importance of relationships is highlighted by Arendt’s assertion that narrative action occurs through a ‘web of relationships’ (Benhabib, 1996, p. 125). This view is reinforced by Taylor (2009) who recognises that critical reflection is not an abstract exercise but one which is grounded in relationships: ‘Without the medium of relationships, critical reflection is impotent and hollow, lacking the genuine discourse necessary for thoughtful and in-depth reflection’ (p.13).

Therefore, we argue that AI can include a strong critical element if it is conducted in a context where the emotional and relational aspects of its practice promote authentic dialogue and reflection. It is this holistic approach that can give AI its ability to generate a critical understanding of power relationships within the community: weaving together ideas, emotions and relationships, discovering and ‘appreciating’ hidden stories, allowing identities to emerge through acts of transgression.

Conclusions and implications

Our findings suggest that many of the problems with AI result from a simplified methodology that has been written in a large number of handbooks and manuals (Bushe, 2012). In this paper, we have attempted to counter this by strengthening its philosophical underpinnings and by releasing the practice of AI from a rigid adherence to the positive, seeking instead to find the possibility full (van der Haar & Hosking, 2004).

Our experience is that, in a complex situation of human dynamics and community power, AI makes an effective contribution to the development of critical thinking and action. Although the approach to AI described in this paper was not simplistic, it offers an accessible and engaging method for bridging the gap between CT as advocated by scholars and the difficulties of critical practice on the ground: the gap between ‘what we must do’ and ‘how to do it’ identified by Wiggins (2011), Bushe (2012) and Grant and Humphries (2006). We believe therefore that AI may have a widespread application to practitioners working in disadvantaged communities as it is effective in creating generative themes that disrupt self-limiting and taken for granted assumptions (van der Haar & Hosking, 2004).

Framing AI in the context of Arendt’s work on narrative action focuses the practice on creating authentic connections between individuals and then trusting the process of co-production and discovery to create power and identity: genuine co-production. In this way, AI is released from slavish adherence to a simplistic methodology and responds to the need to develop the critical appreciative processes advanced by Grant and Humphries (2006).

We suggest that this study contributes to debates about critical pedagogy (Kincheloe, 2008) and to Mezirow (1978, 1981, 2009) and Taylor’s (2009) work on transformative learning theory which enables people to change their frame of reference. Along with journaling and coaching approaches, such as those adopted by Meyer (2009), AI involves the ‘appreciation’ of emotional pain as the first step in learning. It has a key role to play in work in communities whose well-being has been compromised by deep-rooted marginalisation.

Footnotes

Funding

This research has been funded by a Big Lottery Research Grant (No: C756A981).

Acknowledgements

We like to thank the participants of the SCUTREA Conference 2012, The NCVO Research Conference 2012, and the International Social Innovation Conference 2012, for feedback on earlier drafts and papers related to this research project.

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Author biographies

Graham Duncan is Director of St Mary's Community Centre situated in inner city Sheffield. He completed a Masters in Management (with distinction) at Sheffield Hallam University in 2010. His practitioner and research interests concern the application of asset based approaches, including Appreciative Inquiry, to intractable social problems. This is his first published article.

Rory Ridley-Duff is Reader in Co-operative and Social Enterprise at Sheffield Hallam University. He won a PhD scholarship to Sheffield Hallam University in 2002 and subsequently won research excellence awards from Emerald Publishers and the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (2011). He is currently Vice Chair of Co-operatives Yorkshire and Humber and board member of the Social Enterprise Journal.

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