From community participation to organizational therapy? World Cafe and Appreciative Inquiry as research methods

Abstract

popular approaches to participatory research and policy-making that also frequently define themselves in relation to community development. They both seek to create environments in which participants ’ shared activity and inter-subjectivity enable positive responses to problems and challenges. WC and AI offer interesting and innovative approaches in research but present a number of problems within the field of community development. Several key issues are raised including the risk of imposing an interpretation of structural problems as ‘misperceptions’, a troubling and potentially stigmatizing interpretation of ‘empowerment’, and questionable assumptions about social change.

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