Democratising Participatory Research

Carmen Martinez-Vargas

Description

In this book Carmen Martinez-Vargas explores how academic participatory research and the way it is carried out can contribute to more, or less, social justice. Adopting theoretical and empirical approaches, and addressing multiple complex, intersectional issues, this book offers inspiration for scholars and practitioners to open up alternative pathways to social justice, viewed through a Global South lens.


Martinez-Vargas examines the colonial roots of research and emphasises the importance of problematising current practices and limitations in order to establish more just and democratic participatory research practices. Although practitioners have been challenging the Western roots of research and participatory research for decades, their goals can be compromised by pluralities and contradictions in the field. This book aims not to replicate past participatory research approaches, but to offer an innovative theoretical foundation—the Capabilities Approach—and an innovative participatory practice called ‘Democratic Capabilities Research’.


Democratising Participatory Research is not only timely and relevant in South Africa, but also in the Global North owing to the current crisis of values jeopardising the peaceful existence of diverse societies. The book gives essential recommendations for capabilities and human development scholars to reframe their perspectives and uses of the Capabilities Approach, as well as for participatory practitioners to critically reflect on their practices and their often limited conceptualisation of participation.
 

Sujets

• Post-Colonialism
• Political Science
• Sudáfrica
• South Africa
• Capability approach
• Intersectionality
• North-South divide
• Social justice
• Colonialism
• Democracy
• Research
• Afrique du Sud

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800643116
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

DEMOCRATISING PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH

Democratising Participatory Research
Pathways to Social Justice from the Global South
Carmen Martinez-Vargas





https://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2022 Carmen Martinez-Vargas




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for non-commercial purposes, providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Carmen Martinez-Vargas, Democratising Participatory Research: Pathways to Social Justice from the South . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0273
In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1511#copyright . Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
ISBN Paperback: 9781800643086
ISBN Hardback: 9781800643093
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781800643109
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781800643116
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781800643123   
ISBN Digital ebook (xml): 9781800643130
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0273
Cover image: Sander van Leusden (Studio SanArt), Transmorphosis (2016), all rights reserved. Cover design by Anna Gatti.

Table of Contents
Acronyms
vii
Acknowledgements
ix
1.
Introduction
1
2.
Coloniality and Decoloniality in the Global South Higher-Education Context
29
3.
Traditions and Limitations of Participatory Research
41
4.
Democratising Participatory Research: A Capabilitarian Conceptualisation
75
5.
Co-Researchers’ Valued Capabilities
105
6.
The South African DCR Project: Undergraduates as Researchers
135
7.
Broadening Our Participatory Evaluations: A Southern Capabilitarian Perspective
171
8.
DCR for Socially Just Higher Education: Perspectives from the South
203
9.
Redrawing Our Epistemic Horizon
229
List of Figures
237
List of Tables
239
Index
241

Acronyms
AR – Action Research
ARNA – Action Research Network of the Americas
CA – Capabilities Approach
CARN – Collaborative Action Research Network
CPAR – Critical Participatory Action Research
DCR – Democratic Capabilities Research
EAR – Educational Action Research
HDCA – Human Development and Capabilities Association
PA – Participatory Approaches
PALAR – Participatory Action Learning Action Research
PAR – Participatory Action Research
PR – Participatory Research
PRIA – Participatory Research in Asia
UFS – University of the Free State

Acknowledgements
A multiplicity of people and entities has enhanced my capabilities, allowing me to embark on this exciting and exhausting book. Firstly, for funding, I am grateful to NRF Grant No. 86540 which funded my research under the SARChI Chair in Higher Education and Human Development, without which this study would not have been possible. Equally, I am enormously grateful to Alessandra Tosi, the commissioning editor of Open Book Publishers, for making open access publications possible for early-career scholars like me. Similarly, I should also thank Melissa Purkiss, Luca Baffa and Anna Gatti for all your support and hard work during the production process of this book. It has been a pleasure working with all of you. Further, my most sincere appreciation to the two anonymous reviewers for their deep and generous engagement with my work. Thank you for believing in this book and making it even better.
I am equally indebted to Melanie Walker not only for helping me tirelessly with this study and my professional development, but for being more than a mentor in my life. I am grateful for all you have done for me before, during and beyond this book. I would also like to thank Talita Calitz and Nelson Masanche Nkhoma for guiding and supporting me during this study and subsequent book—your support throughout this work and your friendship are much appreciated. Thank you for all your help and inspirational conversations over many years. Thank you to Alejandra Boni for introducing me to the Capabilities Approach as well as providing the link to become part of this amazing research programme in South Africa. Without your guidance and leadership in the years prior to this book, my work would not have been possible. To all my colleagues from the HEHD research group, but especially Mikateko Mathebula and Faith Mkwananzi, thank you for your support and help, in addition to our friendship. Your kindness, selflessness and hard work have been a constant source of inspiration to me. Thank you for this and our long conversations about Africa, South Africa and social injustices, which helped me to develop many of the ideas in this book. To my beloved husband, Sander van Leusden, thank you for remaining supportive and caring despite my ups and downs throughout this book. The journey has not been easy, but I could not imagine undertaking it without you. You have been a central pillar of strength for my work. Finally, but not least, to all the DCR co-researchers that took part in the collaborative inquiry, thank you for your enthusiasm, dedication and hard-work despite your academic commitments. Without you this book would not have been possible. I feel grateful for our friendships and to have shared with you all this time during and since the project.

For Sphe

1. Introduction

© 2022 Carmen Martinez-Vargas, CC BY-NC-ND https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0273.01
1.1 This South African Story Matters to All of Us
As a young, working-class girl who grew up in a mono-parental family in the South of Spain, knowledge meant something simple but also something unattainable. First, it was clear to me that we all have the capacity to know many things to a certain extent. Back then, I thought my mother knew a lot, many adults did as well. They knew how to do things and how things worked in the local context. However, there was another kind of knowing that was relegated to others, especially not for a family like mine, the knowing from universities and what is usually understood as scientific or academic knowledge.
University knowledge, the knowledge nourished within universities’ walls, was a mystery to me and many of the members of my family and friends, however, somehow whoever was able to access it or embodied it through university degrees or any diploma would become something ‘more’. This ‘more’, was not a distinction between which kinds of academic knowledge we were talking about. It was an intrinsic value that raised the person possessing scientific knowledge to a level of dignity that was strange to imagine for someone who had never been seen in that light. Equally, becoming ‘more’ meant of course, we were ‘less’; less respectable, less educated, less intelligent, and less dignified than those who were part and parcel of these elitist institutions.
And all this became overwhelmingly clear when I first entered university at the age of eighteen and, as expected, I failed, and I dropped out during my second year. I was constantly wondering: how do I not belong in this university when everyone said (directly or indirectly) to me that this is what I have to do to become a dignified human being in my society? To have opportunities, to have a voice, to have freedoms, to become the person I wanted to be. At that time, it was not yet the moment to understand but to experience that other worldview so different from the one I grew up with and I lived in. It was not yet the time to deconstruct all these underlying assumptions, until I overcame certain structural barriers.
I was not meant to become an academic, not meant to complete my university degree, masters or PhD, but the fact that I did positioned me in this world with a slightly different perspective, understanding the intersecting disadvantages I experienced, as well as my privileges as a white and European member of our global and unequal society. Of course, it was not only my educational pa