Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

26 ACTION RESEARCH
Arendt’s insight of plurality (Arendt 1978: 187) that provides us with our
most reliable organizing principle, as well as her understanding that it is
through our actions that we make meanings rather than through words.
Fascination with idiosyncrasy, respect for difference, effort to understand
the experience of others within their own terms not ours, constant vigilance
against falling into complacency and the ability to catch ourselves out
in unthinking, routinized power play – these are all qualities that we should
strive for if we are serious about social justice. Put more simply it’s about
taking delight in the diversity of human beings while recognizing our commonality
of experience. As Griffiths puts it so eloquently:
It is difficult to balance the knowledge that we are all the same in
being human, with the knowledge that part of being human is,
precisely, our unquenchable agency, our lovely creativity, our need
and ability to make societies and communities: so that we are all –
humanly – different.
(Griffiths 2003: 7)
There is a necessary intellectual toughness, too. As Walker points out (1995:
17) there is the need to use scholarship to challenge any easy acceptance of
‘common sense’ understandings and to recognize that making meanings on
the basis of experience alone is insufficient. She advocates ‘passionate
scholarship’ … to prevent action research from being ‘domesticated’ and
‘congealing into hegemonic orthodoxy’.
The concept of democracy is particularly problematic since its meaning
has become blurred by politicians’ habitual use of it to claim a moral highground.
The unthinking application of the concept of democracy as a
solution to the problems of third world countries is an example of what
Fals-Borda and Mora-Osejo (2003a) call ‘Eurocentrism’. They identify the
need to develop regulatory structures and governmental practices that are
sensitive to the complexity of developing countries’ cultures and practices,
and call upon participatory action research as a means of resisting the
unthinking operation of hegemonic power by countries such as the USA.
Gergen (2003) presents a particularly intriguing and insightful analysis of
the concept of democracy in which he starts by defining ‘first order democracy’
in the context of many participatory action research projects as no
more than ‘effective coordination,’ an essential first step in ensuring the
functionality of society, but containing within itself an impetus to exclude
and dominate (Gergen 2003: 51). He argues that what is needed is ‘second
order democracy’ in which easy categorization of practices is resisted. His
key concept is ‘relational responsibility’:
The proposal in this case is that we bracket the tradition of indi-