Re-politicizing participatory action research: unmasking neoliberalism and the illusions of participation

Abstract

Utilizing potential cross-pollinations of theoretical insights taken from approaches to educational and social research that have mostly emerged outside of the university and been generated by critical theorists and most recently indigenous researchers as work that has not only challenged the epistemological and ontological foundations of the Western social science canon but have systematically contested the coloniality of neoliberal globalization in policy and practice, the primary purpose of the paper is to foreground the contributions that these critical perspectives can bring to reconceptualizing participatory action research (PAR) as a vehicle for energizing social networks that are anti-capitalist and anti-colonial. First, the paper outlines some of the key principles that have guided the development of critical or radical approaches to PAR methodology and practice over the past five decades. We then move onto discuss the impact of neoliberal thought on educational and social research in the contemporary era. In particular, we focus on the way in which it has infiltrated and reorganized the knowledge producing practices of academic institutions by closely aligning them with the ‘value-chain’ and commercialization of knowledge. The third section of the paper explores possibilities for reinvigorating PAR as a specifically anti-hegemonic project for challenging neoliberal and colonial ideological modes of thought in educational and social research. Three approaches are considered for their potential to contribute to a theory of PAR as a network-building methodology. The final section offers some concluding remarks and reflections on the arguments that have been advanced in the paper.

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