Action Research

Participatory research in the study of poverty invites those living in difficult circumstances to participate in an analysis of their own livelihood situation. A participatory poverty assessment was facilitated with a small group of women who are members of a food co-operative in Niagara Falls, Canada and who live in poverty. The women explored together issues of well-being, the stress of living in poverty, the role of the social assistance system in shaping their lives and community attitudes. Important themes which emerged included an emphasis on social relationships, the impact of the pervasive scrutiny of the social assistance bureaucracy, the importance of community good will and the possibilities for community action. This article discusses the contribution of local knowledge to an understanding of poverty as well as the limitations of participation in changing social policy.

In this article, I reflect on how my white racial identity shaped and, in turn, was shaped by my dissertation data collection. I identify specific choices and experiences in the research interviews that were influenced by my race, using data both from my own journal as well as feedback about my interviews from two informants of color. I also trace how conducting the interviews and writing about them in my journal affected how I make meaning of my racial identity. I offer these reflections as a contribution to two conversations, both related to exploring and learning about race. First, my discussion of how being white influenced my study contributes to important dialogues about how researcher identities reverberate through the research process. Second, my consideration of the change in my racial identity suggests implications for those interested in learning from and about race. Specifically, it suggests that whites must claim a voice on race in order to contribute meaningfully to cross-racial learning.

In support of Erica Foldy’s premise that we cannot learn about race until we make it a ‘discussable’, we join her in reflecting on the relationship between her white identity and her dissertation research. We describe experiences of our own that are very like Erica’s – seeking absolution and approval from people of color, hoping that we can develop relationships with people of color that will somehow transcend race, taking responsibility for our limited consciousness about white hegemony so that people of color won’t have to spend so much effort educating us. We also explore what we think are unanswered questions in Erica’s first-person inquiry and conclude by describing an important state of inquiring mind that we call critical humility.

This article presents a conceptualization of organizational discourse as situated symbolic action that is then illustrated through an analysis of a meeting of senior managers during an organization development intervention. This perspective encourages a more holistic understanding of organizational contexts and offers an actionable framework to help make sense of workplace episodes and choose appropriate interventions. The ways in which action research was conceptualized and applied are also discussed.

The value of spirituality in organizational life and in social research is becoming increasingly recognized by members of organisations and by social science researchers. In this article, the motifs of Ignatian spirituality, the heritage of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) – a transformational spirituality in the Roman Catholic tradition in which action is a central motif – are introduced and explored in terms of some of the main tenets of action research. This article shows how Ignatian spirituality contributes a faith-based transformational methodology to the field of action research.

This article explores the issue of how action researchers might fully account for their subjectivity while simultaneously seeking to more fully understand ‘the other’ as they engage in inquiry processes. Ideas from the 20th-century philosophical tradition of phenomenology, including that of the ‘Lifeworld’, ‘presence and readiness-to-hand’, ‘bracketing’, and ‘objectivity for subjectivity’ are considered for the insights they bring to this paradox. The article considers the nature of truth generated through epistemologies based in subjectivity, and examines the role objectivity plays in establishing valid claims to truth. It concludes that subjectivity and objectivity are necessarily intertwined in the creation of valid truths with the consequence of this being the interdependence of meaning with truth as well.