Social Research Between Participation and Action. Theoretical Reflections and Practical Suggestions

Abstract

Participatory research (PR) has gained particular interest in recent times and has been used in a variety of contexts. As often occurs with terms that become commonly used (i.e. “mainstream”), they often lose their original meaning and their ability to indicate an unambiguous significance. To clarify how the concept of PR is interpreted in the author’s objectives, the paper first discusses the term participation in social research, highlighting a taxonomy that allows us to identify different levels of participation in the research activity. The second step – based on Paulo Freire’s reflection – is to discuss how and why PR shares with ‘action research’ the fact that it is performative, due to its characteristic of involving different stakeholders (practitioners and non-professionals), as the co-production of knowledge is not without consequences for people’s everyday practices (Bergold & Thomas, 2012). Likewise, the paper emphasizes why PR can enable the contribution of different actors, i.e. the multiple types of stakeholders that could be involved and, particularly, marginalized groups, by allowing them to have a voice. Given the limited scope of the paper, the objective is to underscore the relevance of PR as a pertinent methodology to address the multifaceted challenges posed by a complex society, mainly when different reasons of contention emerge. For this reason, in the last section, it presents an internationally well-known case study, emphasizing the role of participation in the research process: the aim is to propose solutions for promoting social participation as a research methodology even in a conflictual situation.