Action Research and Transformation: Lessons from Three Decades of Practice

Abstract

In this paper I look back over three decades of doing participatory action research and extract some lessons that bear upon the pressing issues of our time—namely, how to act in the face of unsustainable socio-economic growth trajectories and cascading environmental degradation. I start with my circuitous journey into action research and to the importance of human subjectivity to transformation processes. I then trace the thinking that shaped a postmodern feminist social research agenda. Next follows an account of developing a research design for poststructuralist participatory action research (PPAR) that foregrounds understanding ‘ways of living’ in place. Drawing on actual action research projects, the lessons that emerge concern the importance of 1) inventory and bearing witness to difference; 2) new techniques of resubjectivation that encourage transformation; and 3) shifting the action focus from human subjects to socio-technical assemblages in which humans, material infrastructures, habits and experimentation are interwoven. Throughout my three decades of involvement with action research I have learnt about the limits to the durability of subjectivity change and the need to work on support from wider ecosystems of governance, infrastructure, health and social expectation.