Social Innovation and Participatory Action Research: A way to research community?

Abstract

Civil society actors gathered in so-called 'community' initiatives generate a particular impetus for low carbon transitions. This paper seeks to outline a methodological approach that can be used in order to help understand such movements, and more fundamentally, the role of community in Social Innovation (SI). The article offers an overview of Participative Action Research (PAR), and outlines its strengths and weaknesses in studying community-based social innovation, in this case the Transition movement. PAR is not an 'off the shelf' kit, or a 'conforming of methodological standards', but rather a series of approaches that ought to inform research. The paper argues that these approaches, rather than techniques, are essential to get right if the intangible, granular, and incidental-but-fundamental aspects of community are to be grasped by researchers. Given the small-scale nature of community low carbon transitions a granular analysis is preferred to a more surface, superficial overview of such processes. Qualitative research is preferred to quantitative aggregation of initiatives, due to the need to understand the everyday, more phenomenological aspects of community, and the specific tacit relations and subjectivities enacted through their capacity to cut carbon. Despite challenges with using PAR for SI, the Transition Research Network offers an active guide to achieving this.

Scaling for social impact: understanding social innovation through local empowerment strategies

“…Both groups see social innovation as a bottom-up process originating from communities and from there transforming the institutional order. With their interest in “bottom-linked” and “participatory governance,” Moulaert and like-minded authors seem most interested in capacity-building aspects, whereas writers in the sustainability transitions school emphasize concrete innovations such as transition towns and energy transitions (De Geus et al , 2023; Hewitt et al , 2020; Aiken, 2017). Both groups pursue distinct, although complementary objectives focusing on democratic and inclusive governance on the one hand, and ecological sustainability on the other.…”

“…Rather than community empowerment, the motivation for these authors lies in ways to create more sustainable societies. These writers likewise refer to PLA/PAR-type strategies (see De Geus et al , 2023; Hewitt et al , 2020; Aiken, 2017). In publications associated with the technocratic school of social innovation such approaches are mentioned the least often (Murray et al , 2010 is the only source we encountered).…”

Toward an enhanced methodology to mitigate challenges of applying participatory action research in managing innovation projects

“…Identifying the current situation and organization context (Aiken, 2017;Kampf et al, 2021;Katoppo and Sudradjat, 2015), processes (Kocher et al, 2011), stakeholders (Shaikh et al, 2020), dominant groups (Aiken, 2017), sense-making about organizational norms/values (Brown and Frame, 2007;Hanafizadeh and Mehrabioun, 2020), common concerns/interests (Katoppo and Sudradjat, 2015) (Chalmers, 2013, p. 25) and such myopia results in industry blindness (Adobor, 2019;Brunswicker and Hutschek, 2010;Boutellier et al, 2013). Industry blindness, in turn, may lead to neglect of industry structures, inter-relationships between industries and macro trends in innovation projects.…”

“…In this context, the recruitment of participatory action research (PAR) emerges as a justified and powerful approach to managing innovation projects. PAR, by its very nature, actively involves stakeholders and project participants in the research and decision-making process (Aiken, 2017; Baldwin, 2012; Cicmil and O'Laocha, 2016; Fageha and Aibinu, 2013). This inclusion of diverse perspectives and the co-creation of knowledge align perfectly with the dynamic and creative dimensions of innovation projects.…”

The multifunctionality of urban agriculture projects in Brussels

“…The participatory action-research methodology used in this study integrates the people concerned by the object of the study as co-researchers (Chevalier and Buckles, 2019), who actively contribute to the research process at all its stages (planning, acting, observing, and evaluating) through iterative cycle and/or reflexive approach (Lewin, 1946) with the willingness to transform the system studied and democratise the research (Aiken, 2017). This methodology has several advantages when working on multilevel scales, diversity of actors and transdisciplinarity: bringing together the actors of the system facilitates the removal of barriers and allows fair negotiation between them (De Muynck and Nalpas, 2021); constructing the methodology of the study with the parties involved in the problem focuses the work on the real problems and gives the insights of the feasibility of propositions according to field reality; monitoring the study and analysing the results together allows the actors to modify their practices or policies in a way that is consistent with the results.…”