ABSTRACT
There is too much pessimism about the potency of participatory action research. This stems from two main sources. First, there is unjustified optimism about the pace with which even the most obviously unjust social practices can be dismantled. Most injustice is sustained deliberately, systematically and hegemonically by longstanding social practices which promote advantage as well as disadvantage. The latter are not completely complementary, but are significantly so, and advantage is very reluctantly surrendered. It follows that disadvantage is persistently difficult to redress. Further, the multiple causal chains of injustice are notoriously difficult to simultaneously influence enough to effect lasting change. There is a pressing need to heed the literature of innovation and to vitalise more complex networks of ‘participants’ to work on the most pressing problems. Second, there is a proliferation of theorising, sponsored by the commodification of knowledge in the academy, which makes a fetish of the
new and privileges critique over social impact. This is not to say that new ideas are not useful or necessary, but that new coalitions and new practices are more important than new ways of labelling problems people have made some progress towards solving. Social progress requires personal progress, and that requires attention to the pedagogies of reform, some of which are clearly not working to secure collaboration among diverse groups and across institutional hierarchies. People come to social issues with different backgrounds, different skills, and different views; there is a need for advocates for change to work more generously, tolerantly and strategically.
