BOOK CHAPTER: Continuing the Journey: Articulating Dimensions of Feminist Participatory Action Research

TITLE: Continuing the Journey: Articulating Dimensions of Feminist Participatory Action Research

REFERENCE: (FPAR)

Reid, Colleen and Frisby, Wendy, 2008, Continuing the journey: Articulating dimensions of feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) in Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury (Ed), THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ACTION RESEARCH-Participative inquiry and practice. SAGE: London

BOOK CHAPTER

MY SUMMARY

This book chapter is a good guideline for a novice feminist participatory action research (FPAR). Reid and Frisby emphasized that FR, AR, and PAR are ‘allies’ and complete each other, three of them emphasized about power versus powerless, lived experience, and social change that is intersected with gender, racial and class in a society. The concept of ‘insider and outsider’ and reflexivity during FPAR are key points to generate rich data, knowledge construction, data analysis and then to perform the collective action, particularly for women issues. Interestingly, Reid and Frisby (2008) articulated six dimensions on FPAR as further guidelines to ease every novice FPAR traveller, including: “centering gender and women’s diverse experiences while challenging forms of patriarchy (p.97), accounting for intersectionality (p.97), honoring voice and difference through participatory research process (p.98), exploring new forms of representation (p.99), reflexivity (p.100), and honoring many forms of action (p. 101)”. Guidelines questions were also provided for each dimension.

11 December, 2017, Najmah

IMPORTANT DIRECT QUOTATION

Feminist research (FR), participatory action research (PAR), and action research (AR) are critical approaches that focus on democratizing the research process, acknowledging lived experiences, and contributing to social justice agendas to counter prevailing ideologies and power relations and that are deeply gendered, classed and racialized. FR, PAR and AR have been critical of the academy’s control over knowledge generation practices and have struggles with straddling the community/academy divide (Chrisp, 2004; lykes and coquillon, 2006) P. 93

We believe that FR, PAR, and AR researchers would be mutually well served if they became allies. As a result, we are calling for feminist participatory action research (FPAR) approaches that build on the strengths and overcome the limitations of these three research traditions. Not only are they more powerful as a larger and connected community, but epistemologically and methodologically they serve to buttress one another (Manguire, 2001/200; Brydon-Miller and Wadsworth, 2004; Greenwood, 2004; lykes and Coquillon 2006). P 94

Feminism’s theoretical and epistemological debates, while honoring the agency and lived experience of women as it is historically and culturally situated, can serve to strengthen PAR and AR’s ability to understand its communities and the implications of an action orientation (Reid et al, 2006) p. 94

Participatory and action research, with its deliberate and long-standing tradition of advocating action towards social change, can help feminist researchers move out of the academic armchair by engaging in more transformative research that better serves women’s diverse communities (Meyerson and Kolb, 2000) p.94

With increased calls for participatory research designs, more attention is being paid to the importance is being paid to the importance of insider-outsider roles and remaining reflexive about each other’s social positioning, how this shifts over time and possibly confounds knowledge generation and plans for collective action (Lykes and Coquillon, 2006; Reid 2004a: Reinharz, 1992) p. 95

Some feminist researchers have explored the unique challenges and opportunities of conducting research with women in interpersonal and relational framework, with some arguing it is necessary to create close relations, while others warn of the risks of building trust, rapport, and disclosure with participants (Cotterill, 1992; Finch, 1993; Williams and Lykes, 2003) p.95

We need to imagine ourselves as existing at the intersection of multiple identities, all of which influence one another and together shape our continually changing experience and interaction (Brydon-Miller, 2004:9)-‘Travelling companions: Feminism, teaching, and action resarch’å

For example, Yoshihama and Carr (2002:100) -'Community participation reconsidered: Feminist participatory action research with Hmong women'-discussed the tensions around participation in FPAR for Hmong women in a male-dominated social order, as the women became vulnerable to criticism and rejection from their own families and neighbors because the topic of violence was not welcomed by the community. This illustrates why reflexivity and developing non-colonial research practices are so central (Tuhiwai Smith, 2005). What remains unclear is the extent to which FR researchers are aware of the growing number of FPAR studies that are drawing and building upon the participatory and action tenants of PAR and AR.p.95-96.

Feminist agree that there is a need to develop a range of research methods that address diversity and divergence as well as commonalities in women’s lives (Olesen, 2005), and experimentation with novel data collection techniques is important (Lykes in collaboration of Maya Ixil Women, 2001/2006 p.96)

Development in Feminist Research (FR)

In addition, Reid and Frisby (2008) articulated six dimensions on FPAR as further guidelines to ease every novice FPAR traveller, including: “centering gender and women’s diverse experiences while challenging forms of patriarchy (p.97), accounting for intersectionality (p.97), honoring voice and difference through participatory research process (p.98), exploring new forms of representation (p.99), reflexivity (p.100), and honoring many forms of action (p. 101)”.

Centering gender and women’s diverse experiences while challenging forms of patriarchy

Gender and women’s experiences are central to FPAR in several ways-in understanding how different forms of patriarchy create domination and resistance, in identifying key issues for research, and in giving explicit attention to how women and men, and those who do not identify with either of these binary gendered categories, benefit from action-oriented research (or not).p.97

Guiding questions:

What issues are of central content to girls and women participating in FPAR projects, and how are these issues tied to their everyday experiences?

How are experiences tied to gendered, classed and racialized power relations?

What is the larger historical, cultural and political context that the study is situated within and what are the implications for the research?

How will experiences with the issues identified be uncovered, interpreted, and collectively analyzed?

How do experiences very and what accounts for this?

What forms of patriarchy exist and how they shape/challenge researcher/participant worldviews?

Could challenges to dominant patriarchal norms put participants and/or researchers or others at risk How will we know this, and what strategies will be used negotiate risks?

Accounting for Intersectionality

Feminists have argued that additive and interlocking conceptualizations of oppression have inadequately captured women’s experiences and that intersectional analyses can be productively advanced by adopting an FPAR framework. P.97

Brydon-Miller, Maguire, and Mclntyre (2004), and Lykes and Coquillon (2006) provide examples of studies at the interstice of FPAR, FR, PAR, and AR that have problematized how power shaped and is shaped across these intersections and how crucial such analyses are for understanding the complexities of women’s lives and conceptualizing meaningful possibilities for activism and social change. P.98

Though open dialogues with both our participants and ourselves, we can begin to understand the nature of oppression, domination, and exploitation as they intersect and interrelate with gender, race, class, and other forms of advantage and disadvantage. P.98

Guiding questions:

How can intersectionality be considered and what complexities and tensions could this create?

How do intersectionality shape identities, experiences, and relationships; and how does this shift over time?

What non-colonial collaborative processes are in place to build relations and work across differences in gender, class, race, culture, sexuality, able-bodiedness and other markers of difference?

How will intersectionality be taken into account when deciding on research questions, collecting and analyzing data, and deciding upon action plans?

Honoring voice a difference through participatory research processes

FPAR is an approach to producing knowledge through democratic interactive relationships that are committed to making diverse women’s voices more audible by facilitating their empowerment through ‘ordinary talk’ (Maguire, 2001/200enam) p.98

The aim is to connect the articulated and contextualized personal with the often hidden or invisible structural and social institutions that define and shape our lives. This can foster the development of strategies and programs based on real-life experience rather than theories or assumptions, providing an analysis of issues based on a description of how women actually hope to transcend problems encountered (Bansley and Ellis, 1992).p.98

Like PAR, FPAR researcher argues for participatory argue for participatory strategies that involve participants in the design, implementation, and analysis of the research that can be deepened through collective dialogue, even though this can be fraught with conflict and challenges (Frisby et al, 2005, Naples, 2003) p.98

Yet, the feminist ideals of using participatory research techniques to give voice to people’s experience and create change by focusing on action aimed at social transformation have not been fully realized. According to Maguire (1987:35), how knowledge is created and who retains control over the knowledge generation and dissemination ‘remains one of the weakest links in feminist research’. P.99.

Guiding questions:

Who is and is not participating in FPAR projects, how are they participating, and what are the consequences?

How will the voices and experiences of women in relation to broader structural conditions be heard?

How will research questions be decided upon and who sees them as being relevant?

What opportunities will women have to participate in all phases of research?

Could participation put too much of a burden on some participants and how will we know and account for this?

Is attention being given to barriers to participation (e.g. childcare, transportation, language, inscribed gender roles)?

What sources of conflict, power imbalances, and silences are emerging and how will these be anticipated and dealt with?

Exploring new forms of Representation

They ‘continue to seek authentic ways in which the subaltern may articulate her experience and speak on her own behalf in ways that can be heard and understood by members of the dominant culture’ (Brydon-Miller, 2004; 12-13) p.99

Yet tensions are inherent in representing women’s voices and experiences because questions are continually raised about ‘who has the authority to represent women’s voices and to what end’, ‘what forms of the representation will best capture the dynamics involved’, ‘who decides whether they are credible’, and ‘’do representations reinscribe rather than transcend dominant power relations?’ p.99

Diaries and journals; dialogic and interactive interview formats; participatory workshops; poetry, photography, film and art; practices such as co-writing are just some examples of ‘counter-practices’ being explored in FPAR projects (Brabeck 2004; Frisby et al, 2005; Lather, 2001; McIntyre and Lykes, 2004; Reid, 2004a; Wang et al, 199enam; Williams and Lykes, 2003; also see Fine and Torre (Chapter 27), Chui (Chapter 34) and Chowns (Chapter 39 in this volume) p.99

Yet, ‘we must trouble any claims to an accurate representation to raise new possibilities for knowing and for what is knowable (Fonow and Cook, 2005:2222) and we cannot assume that women will want to collaborate and co-construct representations of their lives (Brueggemann, 199:19). While such representations will always be shifting, partial, and contested, working with women to explore the advantages and risks of alternative ways of co-producing knowledge is a key consideration in any FPAR project. P.100

Guiding questions:

What forms of representation of subalterns and other voices are being explored?

Who has authority over-representation and how was this determined?

How will data be collected, interpreted, analyzed and communicated?

What advantages and challenges are posed by this exploration?

How might these new forms be received or resisted in the community, the policy arena, and in the academy?

How are forms of representation connected to action plans?

Reflexivity

Generally, reflexivity means attempting to make explicit the power relations and the exercise of power in the research process. It involves critical reflection on a number of levels: the identification of power relationships and their effects in the research process; the ethical judgments that frame the research and mark the limits of shared values and political interests; and accountability for the knowledge that is produced (Ramazanoglu and Holland, 2002:118-19) P.100

FPAR researchers require a great deal of humility, patience, and reflexive dialogue between themselves and their participants so they can learn from their failures and partial successes (Williams and Lykes, 2003)-‘Bridging theory and practice: using reflexive cycles in feminist PAR

Manguire (2004) refers to this as shared vulnerability”, “a willingness to examine deeply held beliefs and to try new ways of thinking about gender, sexism, racism, heteronormativity, and oppression to explore new ways of being FPAR researchers. P.101 from this perspective, the beginning of the journey begins from within (Maguire, 2004). FPAR researchers are in a position to develop truly reflexive texts that leave both the author and the reader vulnerable, so they must think carefully about the intended and unintended consequences of their research (Reid, 2004a). p.101

Yet with the importance of being self-critical, we cannot just ‘write ourselves into action and activism and use our self-reflections to generate an action of self-reflection within the research process (Reid et al, in press). This can become a resource to account for power imbalances while also facilitating and possibly transforming them.  P. 101

Guiding questions:

What are intended and possible unintended consequences of the research?

What are the power relations within and surrounding the project and what steps are being taken to level imbalances and mobilize power?

What ethical issues are framing the research and its representation?

Who owns the research, how will it be produced, communicated, and acted upon?

How are the researchers accounting for their own social locations and insider/outsider status?

What emotions and struggles are being encountered in building relationships?

Honoring many forms of action

FRAR projects need to seek clarity about the emancipatory goals for their research while articulating how they understand action, which is a dynamic process. What actions are desired is based on one’s social, economic, and political situations and it can occur at both individual and collective levels (Reid, et al, in press)  p. 101

Action is an integral part of reflexive knowledge, and can be conceptualized as speaking, or attempting to speak, to validate oneself, and one’s experiences and understanding in and of the world (Gordon, 2001/200enam) p.101

Guiding questions:

What are the emancipatory goals associated with the ‘project and how are these being decided upon?

What forms of action/in-action were being taken before the project began?

What different forms of action are (or could be) taken and by whom?

What forms of action were unrealized but may be taken in the future?

Who is benefiting (or not) from the actions being taken?

Are the actions contradictory or being resisted or too risky/difficult to implement and what are the implications of this?

Do the actions contribute to a larger social change agenda, what steps could be taken to accomplish this, if desired?

“the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”