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PAR on the Web
This website is designed as a window into what types of participatory action research taking place not only in the Western academic world, but across the globe, in varying forms and functions. Visibility is a core concern for Women’s Studies and feminist research. With this webpage, we hope to increase the accessibility of a variety of research programs to the best of our ability. PAR has been gathering significant interest from feminist researchers in resent years yet its representation on the internet does not adequately represent the variety of projects being done. We have placed emphasis is upon women of color, non-Western feminist research, and forms of feminist research that may be considered outside the boundaries of mainstream wester scholarship, such as PAR programs working with communities to create sustainable energy sources.
Of course, our compilation will leave gaps, and this is no small matter. As such, in the spirit of expanding our understandings of feminist research we encourage you to provide feedback and your own ideas of what else should be included.
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Web sites about PAR
Welcome to PARticipatory FEMinism!
Based at Cornell University, PARFEM is devoted to joining feminisms and participatory research, given their common basis in ‘active process.’ The preliminary goal of PARFEM is to “create a learning environment for restructuring the relationship of feminism and PAR.” The site includes an extensive bibliography which lists important statements on feminisms and activist research. Attentive to difference, the bibliography of feminist PAR research includes the perspectives of a variety of Mid-East, Global South, and American women of color thinkers.
PARnet
Parnet is a non-affiliated site devoted to making visible various forms of action research. It provides access to a wide array of PAR research, without the need to pay subscription fees. Parnet makes every effort to keep its stock of research material up-to-date, and understands that PAR as always tied to real communities, in its objectives and its substance. More specifically, Parnet “will seek to develop computer assisted tools to help the community reflect on the global picture of action research, to identify trends and common elements as they emerge, and to refine shared concepts and definitions.”
PARticipatory FEMinism: Blog
Parnet’s ‘feminist blogs’ site gives voice to feminist researchers engaged in participatory action research. This site provides an opportunity to see how PAR functions in a number of different academic disciplines (e.g., history, women’s studies, education, physics) and in global perspective. Selections range from carefully detailed accounts of previous and ongoing PAR efforts, to free-flowing blogs addressing the ethical underpinnings to activist research.
Bridging the Gap: Feminisms and PAR
This site is devoted to a Western New Mexico University conference on feminist PAR. The conference was devoted to “bridging the gap” between different feminisms and orientations to PAR. As such, this conference represents a wide array of global perspectives, including work by Muslim feminists, Central American thinkers and other global feminist activist researchers. It should be noted, however, that the conference participants are mostly located in American academic settings. Throughout all the pieces, heavy emphasis is placed on personal experience.
Resource Centres for Participatory Learning and Action
This site is devoted to the network of Resource Centres for Participatory Learning and Action. With member organizations from seventeen territories across the globe, including in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, RCPLA conducts “writeshops” in various locations, striving to give people authorship over development efforts. RCPLA’s mission is to “...share field experiences, facilitate capacity building and encourage the use of participatory practices...” The site includes a list of publications related to practical PAR global projects.
Sharing Sacred Rituals: The Use Of Participatory Research To Promote Empowerment And Social Justice
This page describes a set of PAR projects coordinated to examine various issues at the intersections of gender, socioeconomic status, and welfare reform among women in a various communities in the western United States. After a brief introduction to PAR, the page offers highlights of three projects, their structures, and outcomes. Issues examined in the projects include the role of family, addiction, mental health, poverty and welfare, and the balance between the role of the research among those they are working with.
Women of Courage: A Participatory Action Research Project
This page provides an abstract of a PAR study that initially started by looking at women who participated in literacy groups. After awhile the group members started to focus on the common issue of violence in their personal lives and discuss resources in the community to assist those in violent relationships. Finally, the group decided to reach out to other women who participated in literacy programs in hopes of providing assistance and support to other women who may also be experiences violence.
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
This project is among several listed on in the links that discuss issues of energy, renewable resources, and the environment in several communities. The goal of this project was to work with communities in Nepal and India in efforts to identify energy needs and develop plans for implementing renewable energy technologies within the community. The site includes a discussion of the methodology used, problems encountered, and concluding remarks.
Theory and Critical Analysis of PAR
International Workshop on Participatory Action Research
This page provides a response by Peter Reason (University of Bath, UK) to the opening remarks at the International Workshop on Participatory Action Research. It provides a more in-depth investigation and analysis of the structure and meanings of PAR in the research community. After highlighting two projects, he notes several methodological problems within PAR and analyzes them in a constructive framework that aims at finding the best solution while maintaining the initial values set out in PAR work.
Transforming Suppression-Process in Our Participatory Action Research Practice
This page provides the account of a feminist researcher and her experiences integrating the intersection of racial understanding into PAR projects. She questions the boundaries of participant action research on the lines of race, asking if the findings of such work are skewed by the racial relations between the researchers and participants
Selected Publications
Abuse Survivors
This link provides a copy of a journal article examining the needs of women dissociative disorders who are also sexual abuse survivors in Canada. The researchers base their project on the fact that traditional medical models designed to address abuse survivors are disempowering to those who are also affected by dissociative disorders. In order to find better ways to help this group, the authors designed a PAR project that empowered these women, which allowed these women to feel more comfortable talking about their experiences and thus allowing for the establishment of a set of methodologies designed to help those with both dissociative disorders and histories of abuse.
Community Participation Reconsidered: Feminist Participatory Action Research
The Hmong’s Women’s Project is a participatory action research project among Hmong women living in a large Midwestern city. In addition to building stronger community relationships among the women, the aim of the project is to help women identify common goals and resources in their neighborhood. The project coordinators work under a feminist lens as they incorporate a re-thinking of what “community” and “participation” mean as they work to create an ethnically sensitive and viable project.
Whose Voices? Whose Choices? Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development
Participatory action research and development projects are critically assessed. The question is raised: do evolving perspectives aimed at increasing women’s empowerment and participation in civil society rely upon problematic concepts of gender? This essay provides a critical challenge to participatory initiatives – not dismissing PAR, but pressing it to reevaluate its orientation. Citation: Cornwall, Andrea. 2003. Whose Voices? Whose Choices? Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development. World Development 31(8):1325-1342.
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