Abstract
I’ve gathered five papers for the second issue of 2023. Read together they show the variety and global scope that we expect at ARJ. Re-reading them, many months since after their initial acceptance, I’m struck by the behind-the-scenes insights they offer on today’s headline news. For example, Steve Kroeger (2019) writes from the ongoing unrest in Palestine, while Lillian Omondi (2020) writes about climate resilience. Both topics will remain relevant well beyond the contexts in which they write and, I fret, for years to come.
Action researchers can’t really help transformations happen in contexts of intractable problems if we are not, slowly but surely, introducing new ways of working with power. This is unfamiliar territory for most of us. As Lillian Omondi (2020) puts it, “[action research processes] may not be every academic’s cup of tea, as they require relinquishing more power to the research subjects than most researchers would be comfortable with. The element of self-critique and reflection for continuous improvement while collecting data may also not be what most researchers are familiar with.” Her article, and that of the others in this issue, tells us that the reflexivity called for in our work is indeed worth it. I hope that more of us will find a taste for this particular action researching “cup of tea.”
To move from our (colonial) legacy of power-over to power-with, be it with one another or with Mother Nature, takes self-critiquing reflexivity. For Kroeger this becomes a call to examine how he shows up as a US citizen in Palestine. How often we forget to examine our own sensemaking and so we continue with extractive dynamics according to norms we unconsciously carry with us.
New participative methods enrich the action research orientation
Each article also offers new methods and new takes on familiar methods for working in a liberating power-with way. Kroeger (2019) introduces subtextual phenomenology in his context of educational reform. Omondi’s (2020) work describes Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in harvesting local knowledge about climate resilience; Menon and Hartz-Karp (2020) write from their context in India to describe public deliberation processes in Indian cities toward a more sustainable path; Loignon et al. (2020) describe photovoice as it’s used by persons living in poverty to have their voice included in decisions that affect their healthcare. Taliep et al. (2020) describe community asset mapping and show us how participants can elevate awareness of the internal and external assets of a community. In each, we see there exist more supportive resources for helping transformations than they initially knew.
Action researching methods prefigure the outcomes in fresh collaborations
Tailep’s et al. (2020) asset mapping had me think about the many resources we are not used to noticing, much less supporting and elevating. Their article comes from the decolonizing context of South Africa where they seek to promote positive forms of masculinity, safety, and peace. Tangible assets identified in the mapping included interfaith collaboration, religion, religious institutions and worship as well as intangible assets such as trust, love, positivity, good morals, and respect. Some of the intangibles were co-produced during the action research itself.
Ormondi points to what locals already know but have forgotten or passively discounted. In reading Omondi’s work, the timely question of how to live a climate resilient life may come as much from looking back to our grandparents’ ways of living as relying on new technology. In other words, we may also carry solutions for how to live differently in whatever our context of climate change, be it drought, flooding, etc.
The participative methods enable co-creative solutions that prefigure the future that stakeholders are drawn to. The past we each carry shapes but does not merely limit what we can do together. The transformative promise of learning and participative change remains a radical opportunity to work for.
Note also we include a description (Warwick et al., 2023) of what we call the new Book++ Review. The “++” refers to podcasts and other materials we’ll include in our annual review. We welcome your suggestions. For now, I invite you to grab a real cup of tea or beverage of choice. Enjoy and learn from the excellent papers of our new issue.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.