The D i s c o v e r y o f P a r t i c i p a t o r y R e s e a r c h As A New Scientif ic

P a r a d i g m : P e r s o n a l and Inte l lec tual Accounts

PETER PARK

The article presents considerations for the placing of participatory research in the practice of sociology. The changing conditions in contemporary society have compelled social scientists to rethink the way social theory has been conceptualized and has been practiced in relation to social change. Modernist social theory, of which sociology is a prime example, has been imbued with the biases of the Enlightenment that privilege the essentialized male rational actor set above the ordinary people. As a consequence it has produced nar- ratives and practices that are not in the interest of the people, especially those who have been dominated and oppressed. In order to live up to the potential of sociology as a vehicle for the improvement of social conditions, it must include the interest and the wisdom of the people in its researching and theorizing activities. It is argued that participatory research provides an opportunity to follow this course in sociology. Participatory research, it is contended, will lead to a paradigm shift in the social sciences because it is based on an expanded conception of knowledge and because it changes the relationship between the researcher and the researched and between theory and practice. Arguments are drawn from the history of science, critical theory, and postmodernist and feminist critiques.

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Par t ic ipa tory r e sea rch as an identif iable and se l f -conscious intel lectual activi ty

in the social sc i ences is n o w abou t t w e n t y years old. Its e m e r g e n c e and devel-

o p m e n t rough ly co inc ide in t ime wi th the inte l lectual t r ans fo rma t ion that I w e n t

t h r o u g h as a sociologis t . I th ink o f these parallel and at t imes in te r twin ing events

as be ing r o o t e d in the same social changes that s tar ted h a p p e n i n g in the sixties.

Peter Park is currently on the faculty of the Fielding Institute. Address for correspondence: Peter Park, 1313 Richards Alley, Wilmington, DE 19806.

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I was profoundly moved by the questions being asked about the social sciences, as were many others, in the climate of revolutionary fervor affecting all spheres of life at that time. The story of how I came to participatory research in address- ing some of these questions, I think, gives witness to the energy and vision that motivate participatory research. For this reason, I have chosen to talk about how the movement for participatory research came about from a personal point of view, intermingling my understanding of the history of participatory research with an account of the journey that has brought me to my present posit ion as a founding member of an organization devoted to the practice and promot ion of participatory research. 1

D e f i n i n g P a r t i c i p a t o r y R e s e a r c h

Participatory research is a way of creating knowledge that involves learning from investigation and applying what is learned to collective problems through social action. A critical difference be tween traditional social research and par- t icipatory research is that in the latter the people on whose behalf the investi- gation-action cycle is carried out get directly involved in the process, from prob- lem formulation, to inquiry, to action. In reality, it is more than research, under- stood in the conventional sense, since it has as its consti tuent elements theoriz- ing and action in addition to investigation. As far as the investigative aspect is concerned, it utilizes all manner of methods, some well known, such as ques- tionnaires and quantitative analysis, and others less known or understood, such as dialogue and theater. In this sense, participatory research is decidedly not a new kind of method. However, it is a new way of doing social science, poten- tially a harbinger for a paradigm shift.

Whenever a group of people put their heads together to puzzle out a problem that concerns them collectively and join hands to come up with ways of dealing with it, we have the rudiments of participatory research. Viewed this way, participatory research is not new, since humans have practiced it since the beginning of their communal existence. What is new is to think of this very human activity in terms of knowledge creation and to call it research. By doing so we expand the domain of intellectual knowledge, turn upside down the relationship be tween theory and practice, and restore the place of ordinary people as the creators of knowledge.

From my point of view, the best known and most elaborate example of par- t icipatory research in this country comes from Appalachia. After the major flood that devastated the region in 1977, local residents with the help of communi ty organizers, community educators, and academic researchers collected themselves into a research team to investigate the conditions that produced the endemic poverty in the region with the intent of bringing about changes through com- munity actions. In the process citizens learned research skills and actively par- t icipated in civic politics to bring about changes in local tax codes that had been impoverishing the regional economy in favor of the absentee landowners, mostly coal mining companies (Gaventa and Horton 1981). 2 This project captures for

30 The American Sociologist/Winter 1992

me some of the key ingredients of participatory research that I will highlight later on in this article.

Other examples in the same vein from outside the United States include: people 's struggles for protect ion against deforestation in India (Society for Par- ticipatory Research in Asia 1982); securing rights for farmer-settlers in the south- ern Philippines (Callaway 1980); developing equitable agricultural marketing structures in Colombia (Sanz de Santamaria 1987); and reforming agricultural practices in Nicaragua (de Montis 1985).

A P e r s o n a l J o u r n e y

Participatory research comes out of the intellectual impasse that many social scientists, including myself, have faced personally in the postcolonial, postindustrial era. In the fifties, when the Cold War was accelerating, we saw the global ascendancy of American sociology cast in the positivist mold. And in the late sixties and the early seventies, many of us social scientists who had been at- tracted to the field by its promise of providing the vehicle for humanizing so- ciety came face to face with the reality that professionalized sociology and re- lated fields were not only irrelevant to any liberatory social change agenda but were actually antithetical to it. Social theories that underlay the social change thinking at the time were replete with western biases that rationalized the imperialism of the First World in the name of modernizat ion and development and promoted the managed, if not engineered, society at home in keeping with the tenets of social sciences (Huizer and Manheim 1980; Beals 1968; Herzog 1971; Kelman 1968).

In research supportive of this program, so-called scientific methods in fashion prescribed the t reatment of the people being studied as objects, as in the physi- cal sciences. Minorities and the poor bore the brunt of this treatment, since their relative lack of power exposed them disproport ionately to being "studied to death" by social researchers. Not only were they subjected to the indignities of being probed as under a microscope, like carriers of social diseases, which they were presumed to be (Lander 1973; Sanchez 1971; Tong 1977; Park 1979), but to make things worse, they received no tangible benefits from social science research. The promise of positivistic social science was only imperfectly fulfilled then, as now, and it looked as though the t r iumph of scientific social science would be attained, if at all, only at the cost of demanding more sacrifices in human dignity across the board, especially for those at the lower end of the power spectrum. I, for one, came to this conclusion by critically examining sociological practices from the point of view of an uncompromising positivist (Park 1969).

This was the turning point in my development as a sociologist. The realization that hewing to the rigors of a science modeled after the physical sciences en- tailed abrogating human values was unsettl ing to me deep at a subconscious level, as I reflect on it now, especially at a time when human spirits were bursting out in liberation movements of all kinds that were raging worldwide,

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f rom the feminist movement to liberation theology to socialist revolutions. I then r e m e m b e r e d why I had wanted to be a sociologist to begin with. My earlier interest had been part icipat ion in the recons t ruc t ion of Korean society after the

devastat ion brought down on the count ry by Japanese colonialism in which I

was born and raised. I was, however , to lose this youthful aspiration gradually

as I progressed in the American educat ional system, first as an undergraduate in the liberal arts tradition and then as a graduate student pursuing an academic degree in sociology that subtly advocated the status quo in the name of scientific value-neutrality. While becoming a professional sociologist, I had fallen into a state of political, moral, and spiritual amnesia. As I woke up from this forgetful-

ness, I began to search for a new paradigm of sociology that would be true to the original impetus of sociology to address the promises and problems of the mode rn age and that would at the same time respect the needs, intelligence, and

dignity of the peop le whom it is supposed to benefit. Part icipatory research

seemed to hold the promise of satisfying these requi rements when I first en-

coun te r ed it. My coming to part ic ipatory research was gradual and in a sense accidental. I

first started to break out of the de tachment mold of sociology by gett ing in- volved with Asian-American communi t ies through federally sponsored research in the late seventies. In one project , I was interested in learning about the newly arriving Korean immigrants in wes te rn Massachusetts and ended up helping them organize a communi ty among themselves (Park 1978). The projec t began with the trappings of survey research, including a formal in terview schedule,

among o the r things. As the project got under way, it quickly became obvious to me that the need of the part icipants in the study, who were geographical ly

dispersed in rural New England, to get to know and to relate to one another was

overwhelming. And I was in a posit ion to help them in this regard as an estab- lished resident of the area with university connec t ions with privileged access to

all the immigrants through the research apparatus. It would have been uncon- scionable for me and my assistant, also a Korean American, to keep the social and psychological distance that is dictated by the canons of social science research. This would have violated the Korean cultural norms dictating affiliative behavior among peop le from koyang, home, not to speak of human decency. I was not only a "fellow countryman" to them, but also someone who was in a pivotal posit ion to help them in the process of settling in a new and strange environment ,

which I was eager to do. By this t i m e - - t h e late sevent ies - - I had already reestablished in my mind the

priori t ies that should exist be t ween human values and the methodological de- mands of sociology, and I was happy to serve as a vehicle for bringing the

immigrant families toge ther into a ne twork by means of the research process. The survey, in which Korean immigrants part icipated as active shapers of their reality, yielded rich information and served as a useful ins t rument for enabling them to get acquainted with one another . It eventually led to the formation of

a Korean immigrant organization in the region. This was the kind of result I began to anticipate as the project progressed, and in that sense it was a success.

32 The American Sociologist/Winter 1992

This was my first participatory research project, al though I did not have the name for it then.

I was to discover that what I was doing was called participatory research in the process of carrying out another project about the same time, involving Pacific Asian American mental health workers (Park 1985). The purpose of this project was to investigate the reality of therapeutic practices involving Pacific Asian American clients, in order to make those practices culturally and ethnically more sensitive and relevant. To this end, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, educators, and communi ty organizers of the Pacific Island and Asian American background came together from different parts of the country in a series of workshops. They presented and discussed the problems they encoun- tered and the practices they found useful, and then formulated recommenda- tions to be followed in their practices.

The participants in the workshops made self-conscious at tempts to bring out the suppressed ethnic voices in their professional encounters with enthusiasm, with the knowledge that the workshops were most likely the first such occa- sions ever for Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans dealing with mental health issues. The point about this event is not so much that it was so uniquely differ- ent from other conference-type gatherings of professionals and academics, be- cause it was not. It is rather that by putt ing the workshops in the context of participatory research, I began to see that knowledge that serves human needs can be created by means other than those described in social science methods textbooks. I was beginning to expand my horizons on methodology propelled by practical needs with moral and political implications.

H i s t o r i c a l Roots o f P a r t i c i p a t o r y R e s e a r c h

In the early seventies, young social scientists of the First World working as development specialists in Africa became frustrated with the social science methods they were using in connect ion with their aid efforts. They found the research techniques developed in the West to be too rigid for useful application in the African setting. The local assistants they were working with were a lot more effective in eliciting needed information from the people by using their own methods rooted in the local culture, one important feature of which is commu- nal sharing of knowledge. More fundamentally, they also began to see that the use of the social science research methods, which privileges the experts who control the product ion and distribution of knowledge, went hand in hand with the imposition of a development model that was tied to the western dominat ion of the newly emerging African nations. Based on these insights, development workers began to rely more and more on local knowledge for the technical solution of the problems facing the people, who were encouraged to participate wi th their experience, wisdom, and skills. As far as I can determine, Marja-Liisa Swantz of Finland, then working in Tanzania, was the first to use the term "participatory research" to refer to this approach to action-oriented research in the African setting (Hall 1991).

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There was also an upsurge of similar pract ices addressing problems of social change in parts of Asia and Latin America, which were likewise exper ienc ing pains of struggle for l iberation from foreign and/or dictatorial domination. Paulo

Freire 's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1970) captured this l iberatory spirit wi th its t renchant crit ique of what he called domesticat ing educat ion and its

advocacy for putt ing the learner at the center of the teacher-s tudent relation- ship. At the same time, it tied educat ion to an agenda of social change in which learning was to be coupled with the investigation of social conditions, on the one hand, and their transformation, on the other. In his powerfu l formulation, there could be no reading of the word wi thout reading of the world. Freire's

interest in this work and many of his o ther writings has been to res t ructure

educat ion so that it would serve as the vehicle for helping people overcome the political and social dominat ion that p roduces pover ty and disenfranchisement .

Because of its political message, Pedagogy has served as the manifesto for l iberation movements in many Third World countries and for political and eco-

nomic minorit ies in the United States and o ther developed countries. But it also describes in sufficient detail how people move from problem formulat ion to social action through investigative steps based on Freire's own exper i ence in adult l i teracy work in Brazil. Consequently, Pedagogy has set a theoret ical and

practical model for participatory research and related approaches to social change

in which learning through investigation occupies the central role. Freire in fact made a definitive linkage be tween his phi losophy of educat ion and par t ic ipatory

research, wi thout explicit ly using this terminology, in a talk he gave to frus- trated social scientists working as deve lopment specialists in Africa (Freire 1982).

For me personally, the discovery of Freire's work began to open up a perspec- tive from which to view research in terms of living knowledge that peop le gain in their struggles to free themselves from political and social domination, and to make research part of collective action for social change. The reformulat ion of social research that Freire helped me to make was powerfu l in conceptua l terms. More importantly, the language of love and hope, of communi ty and critique, that infuses his writing spoke to me of a world that is made and remade not just by technical knowledge but also through what our whole beings, our hearts and spirits, tell us. This is the subtextual message that people resonate with when they read or listen to him. Through this encoun te r with Freire, I broke out of

the positivist mold that had kept me captive in the pseudolabora tory of social science, cloaked in value neutrality, de tached from people , and intent on con- trol. I saw a glimmer of hope for a humanistic sociology.

T h e P o t e n t i a l f o r a P a r a d i g m Shi f t

I believe that part ic ipatory research provides a potent ial for a paradigm shift in sociology and I base this assertation on three different considerations. I have

made these arguments elsewhere, though not exhaustively (Park 1988, 1992; Park, Brydon-Miller, Hall, and Jackson 1993), and here I have room only for a summary of the relevant points.

34 The American Sociologist/Winter 1992

The first is lessons that we can derive from the history of science. Modern science began by leaving the cocoon of medieval scholarship that was control led by the schoolmen with their canons of learning. This break was brought about by a new brand of scholars, like Galileo, who were imbued with the ethos of explorat ion, fueled by the exigencies of nascent capitalism. The capitalist revo-

lution significantly advanced the part icipat ion of one segment of society, the bourgeoisie, in the cont ro l of the social s t ructure and in the en joyment of the

benefi ts deriving from it. Galileo and others fashioned their science by making use of the part icipat ion of this class of people , artisans and craf tsmen in particu-

lar, and learning from their crafts and skills. Needless to say the privilege and benefits of participating in society and sci-

ence did not ex tend in equal measure to the segments of the popula t ion that the bourgeoisie ended up dominating. Fur thermore, this science excel led in provid-

ing technical know-how for extract ing weal th from nature for the benefi t of the

capitalist class and the bourgeoisie, but was blind to o ther forms of knowledge

that make human life possible, since they were deemed not particularly useful

for the capitalist poli t ical-economic agenda. The ruling class could not foresee

and did not conce rn itself with the hor rendous social and environmental conse- quences of its unfe t te red application, consequences that we have begun to see

only recently, some four hundred years later. There are two different lessons to be learned from this history. One is that if

we are to ex tend the social and material benefits of the capitalist revolut ion to

the rest of humanity, which justice dictates, we have to ensure the part icipat ion of the peop le - -a l l peop le this t ime- - in the creat ion of the requisite knowledge, as well as in the poli t ical-economic arena. And the o ther is that this knowledge

cannot be just technical but must include o ther forms of consciousness.

The second considerat ion girding my argument for a paradigm shift in the

social sciences relates to this quest ion of different forms of knowledge. Under the sway of positivism, sociology has privileged the form of knowledge that is

obtainable by following the methods of the physical sciences, which are mistak- enly thought to be "objective," i.e., true reflect ions of reality and not tainted by subjective values. By so doing it has banished o ther forms of knowledge that are essential to human exis tence beyond the boundaries of science. In going beyond the kind of knowledge narrowly defined by positivism as science, I have found

it immensely useful to bor row from critical theory, especially as reformulated by Jurgen Habermas. In their crit ique of instrumental rationality, of which positiv- ism is a phi losophical offspring, critical theorists have argued persuasively, at

least for me, that human rationality consists of more than supposedly value-

neutral calculations of ends and means. On this account , rationality must also include the ability and the pract ice of critically examining the ends themselves

from a posit ion of commi tment to human emancipat ion. Human unders tanding deriving from and leading to the connec tedness involved in everyday interpre- tation and interact ion is equally a part of rationality that makes social life pos-

sible. Habermas has argued from a theory of human communica t ion that this expanded view of human rationality is g rounded in an unders tanding of basic

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human interests that include mastery, emancipation, and communication. Corre- sponding to these three basic conditions of human life are three forms of knowl- edge, paraphrasing Habermas, which I will call here, respectively, instrumental, critical, and relational (subsuming both interpretive and interactive) (Habermas 1971, 1984, 1987).

Equally important has been the feminist critique of the social sciences that follow the positivist paradigm. There are of course differences among feminist scholars in their understanding of how women ' s being and history affect their social and political situation and influence their ways of knowing; and these scholars espouse different political and intellectual agendas for the liberation of women. But underlying these differences is the persistent voice that speaks for the importance of bringing out women ' s way of knowing, which has been ex- cluded from the domain of rationality and the social sciences (Harding 1986; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberg, and Tarule 1986; Jagger 1989). This includes, among other things, knowledge imbedded in gossiping, caring, connecting, and loving, which I would like to subsume here under relational knowledge.

I emphatically do not want to imply that this kind of knowledge is the exclu- sive proper ty of women by reason of biology or ontology or that women alone should continue to be the repository of this sensibility. This would be a prescrip- tion for the cont inued exclusion of women from the world of male privilege and their subjugation in the name of preserving the "virtues" of the "gentler sex" for the good of humankind. My point is rather that relational knowledge belongs to all humanity, both women and men, and it should be reinstated in the realm of rationality and be pursued, together with instrumental and critical knowledge, as a form of legitimate knowledge.

A look at the current practice of participatory research reveals that it is usu- ally directed at solving specific problems and hence the knowledge it generates is explicitly instrumental in character. But the problems participatory research deals with have social origins and implications that require collective participa- tion of the affected community. For this reason, participatory research is likely to begin with an often implicit critique of the status quo, leading to critical knowledge anticipating social changes, though it may not be clearly articulated. Similarly, the success of participatory research depends on the existence of a functioning collectivity, and its execut ion in turn tends to generate relational knowledge that strengthens social ties. That is to say, there are critical and relational dimensions to participatory research that cannot be ignored. It is true that wri t ten reports on participatory research projects typically do not dwell on these aspects of knowledge generation as main concerns, concentrat ing instead on the problems tackled, the methods used, and the results obtained. This is because the participatory researchers who write up the reports usually have ties to academia and find it more congenial, comfortable, and strategic to continue to think and to justify their activity in terms of the conventional academic cri- teria tinged with the positivist valorization of instrumental knowledge. But the promise of participatory research as a new way of doing the science of social relations lies in breaking this bondage to a failed epistemology and asserting its

36 The American Sociologist/Winter 1992

efficacy in terms of all forms of knowledge, those that have been devalued by the social sciences as well as the one honored by positivism. The potential for generating critical and relational forms of knowledge is immanent in the actual practice of participatory research and should be emphasized as much as instru- mental knowledge.

My third and last argument for thinking of participatory research as the thin edge of a paradigm shift in the social sciences has to do with the apparent exhaust ion of universalistic theorizing derived from western rationalism. The social science theories founded around the turn of the century, which guided intellectual projects for dealing with the problems occasioned by the advent of the modern age, have come under attack for their failures. The challenges to classical sociological theories and their offshoots come from both postmodernist theories and feminist consciousness and practice (Foucault 1970, 1980; Derrida 1976; Lyotard 1986; Poster 1988; Jameson 1984; Best and Kellner 1991; Fraser 1989; Flax 1990; Lather 1991). As a consequence of these attacks, the conven- tional edifice of social theory is now beginning to look like a precarious frame- work for addressing the pains that emanate from the current sociocultural sys- tem that engulfs the entire world with ever-changing machinations. This rupture in the conceptualization of modernist social theory and practice opens up an oppor tuni ty to rethink and redefine the way social science can insert itself in the process of improving the human condition.

The charges of failure brought against established social theory can be consid- ered at two interrelated levels for convenience. One set of charges stems from theory 's inability to account for the social and cultural conditions prevailing today and to provide an adequate agenda for bringing social changes that it prophesies and supports. The fizzling out of the sixties' revolutionary fervor, especially after the missed oppor tuni ty of 1968 in Paris, dramatically demon- strated the inadequacy of the theoretical enterprise as a kind of blueprint for action. One of the reasons for this shortfall is that by then the world had changed beyond the easy reach of nineteenth-century conceptualizations tied to the te- nets of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment promised progress through the realization of the universal man acting rationally. Under the auspices of late capitalism, however, metropoli tanization moved around and brought together people from different parts of the world, while homogenizing the material sur- face of their lives through intensified and internationalized consumerism. This movement of people and goods was both physical (because people and things literally moved around) and symbolic (in that the increasing mass media capabili- ties create what is often optimistically referred to as the global village). At the same time, the changing political economy of the center in the world system has altered the relationships among people situated in different traditional catego- ries, notably along the lines of sex and race. The resulting juxtaposit ion of actors of different racial, ethnic, sexual, social, and cultural background heightens the differences among them in history, consciousness, interest, and politics, chal- lenging the central position that western man has occupied. This phenomenon is associated with the fragmentat ion of subjectivity (multiple identity). It is also

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responsible for the rise of new social movements centered on issues such as ecology, peace, disability, AIDS, sexual orientation, etc. These micro-level activisms cannot easily be reduced to classical analytical categories, such as class or ratio- nalization. There are also new cultural phenomena brought about by heightened consumerism together with the domination of mass media and the accelerating invasion of technology in everyday life. These result in such observed symptoms as the blurred distinction be tween reality and representat ion (the world as Disneyland), the inability to locate oneself in a meaningful spacial context (the L.A. syndrome), and the tendency to disregard and disengage from both the past and the future (presentism). Classical modernist theory fails to account for and deal with these manifestations of the new culturally induced consciousness.

The second-level charges are related to these shortcomings. People who have been banished to the margins of society, as well as those who are not oppressed but are still concerned with ~the agenda of social progress as detached observers, namely intellectuals, are now challenging the vision of society provided by modernist social theory. The critical reflections have turned to the root characteristics of modernist social theory. The classical social theory of the nineteenth century, of which sociology provides the most notable prototype, was conceived in an at- mosphere of optimism in the face of the mounting evidence that the modern age ushered in by capitalism was producing new problems in society. The source of this optimism was the Enlightenment faith in the ability of reason to produce progress for humanity, as with the physical sciences. And hope was that reason would create true knowledge distinct from ideology by protecting itself from vulgar common sense and divorcing itself from metaphysical superstitions of the previous era (Crook 1991).

The critique of social theory deriving from this philosophical optimism takes two different paths, one radical and the other more reformist. The radical cri- tique of modernist social theory, under the rubric of postmodernism, would have none of the Enl ightenmentmnot the progress-minded social theory deriving from it, not the premises on which it is based. Noting the impotence of social theory in the face of the social and cultural upheavals that erupted since the sixties, some postmodernists are suspicious of its oppressive potential, if not its hidden agenda (Foucault 1980). Others seriously doubt the ability of any theo- retical account (or narrative, as they put it) to represent reality (Derrida 1976; Lyotard 1986). Still others question the reality of reality, reducing the contem- porary social and cultural scene to spectacles of simulations and simulacra (Beaudrillard 1983). Nevertheless, they are all united in decrying the foundationalism of the modernist social theory. They also complain of its essentialism, reduction- ism, universalism, and sometimes dualism. But the common charge, at least for the present purpose, is that of foundationalism, which is the claim that the Enlightenment 's rational knowledge is founded on a bedrock of prior, certain knowledge that cannot be questioned, a claim that goes back to Descartes's methodological meditations (Descartes 1968).

The reformist branch, on the other hand, holds on to the promise of reason to produce adequate theories to deal with the new problems and attempts to

38 The American Sociologist/Winter 1992

modify nineteenth-century social theory to make it adequate to the task. For example, Jameson, a Marxian cultural analyst, agrees with postmodernist critics that we are now experiencing social and cultural organizations in contemporary society that are fundamentally different from the previous era. But unlike other postmodernist theorists he wants to situate these phenomena in the developmental stage characterized by the logic of late capitalism and to bring Marxist theory up to date in order to understand them better (Jameson 1984).

More central to the concerns of this article, Habermas has embarked on cri- tiquing and reforming modernist social theory. He subscribes to the emancipatory agenda of traditional Marxism but revises Marx's original analytical f ramework in light of the new developments in the capitalist political economy. One key aspect of this revisionism has to do with an expanded understanding of rational- ity. In Habermas's view, Marx's historical materialism was compromised by his limited understanding of rationality in which he saw only its instrumental dimen- sion and ignored the historical /hermeneutic and critical dimensions. By broad- ening the definition of rationality in this way, Habermas hopes to make room for bringing into the realm of theoretical discourse issues of social relations in everyday life and the deliberations of values, nei ther of which classical social theories can adequately address within their theoretical frameworks (Habermas

1984, 1987). The postmodernists have articulated the bewildering aspects of the contem-

porary social condit ion and pointed to the telling disarray in modernist social theory. And they are right to question the faith in the certainty of rationalism on which modern western civilization is founded and to extend this skepticism to all foundational thinking. But in insisting on the absolute relativism of different standpoints as the standard of judgment and in asserting the certainty of their uncertainty about representation and reality, extreme postmodernists themselves fall into a kind of foundationalist position (Crook 1991). And when they deny the possibility of any social theory to produce accounts of social situations that could lead to positive changes, they can rightly be accused of a nihilism that justifies the conservative social agenda (Habermas 1985). More importantly for the present purpose, this extreme postmodernist position is an extension of elitist modernist theory that privileges the narrative of the theorist behind the backs of the ordinary people.

To the extent that Habermas invests his theoretical argument for emancipatory projects in the expanded rationality, he cannot easily escape being accused of Enlightenment foundationalism, as he has been by some postmodernists. But since he derives his argument from a quasi-empirical analysis of language prac- tices, (to the effect that underlying human communicat ion are interests for emancipation and connectedness as well as mastery), room is left for treating this proposit ion as a historically contingent statement that can serve as a starting point in dialogues involving different standpoints. Furthermore, his understand- ing of communicative action, in which the claim to the validity of knowledge is redeemed in the context of discourse aimed at common understanding, reflex- ively applies to his own theory. Thus, in the context of a tempered postmodernist

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critique, social theory would proceed from inquiries that take place in diverse sites of struggle against domination and oppression. Such practice could poten- tially lead to a nonfoundational and nonelitist theory, avoiding some of the defects that have incapacitated modernist social theory as an emancipatory ve- hicle since its inception and especially now a century and a half later.

Participatory research carries the potential for this development.

C o n c l u s i o n

If we are to overcome the impasse of modernist social theory conceived as the practice of reason, we cannot continue to privilege social scientists as the purveyors of certified knowledge. We must instead regard them as members of communities, joined together with ordinary people, facing common problems of life. Any inquiry addressing these problems must, therefore, take seriously the participation of the community in inquiries concerning its problems. The knowl- edge of the world as ordinary people experience i tmwha t matters, what hurts, what feels good, what puzzles, what makes sense, what worksmmus t be the basis for the choice of problems to be addressed and the procedures to be followed (Smith 1987; Crook 1991). We must, in the final analysis, respect the good-sense judgment that results from the sharing of concerns, perspectives, and experiences in open discussion, carried out in good faith. This is a difficult procedure to follow in the present-day atmosphere of pervasive cynicism and fragmented communities, not to speak of academic elitism. It is also at times cumbersome and untidy to execute. When all is said and done, the new partici- patory paradigm cannot claim some indubitable foundational basis, and it does not guarantee assured outcomes compatible with preconceived agendas or pro- grams. But it is through this sort of pragmatic process that we live our lives and do our science (Gadamer 1975; Rorty 1982). And it should be the way to fashion a social theory that is true to the ideals of human emancipation.

Participatory research as it has emerged through practice provides the means by which social theory can be turned around, so that it can more adequately deal with the problems of contemporary society. Existing examples of participa- tory research do not always present themselves in the light of the larger liberatory goals that have informed this paper. 3 And there are participatory research ap- proaches that do not appear to subscribe to these goals (Whyte 1991; Brown and Tandon 1983). My purpose in putting participatory research in a metatheoretical context was not to practice a kind of imperialism of naming by claiming an exclusive right to define the concept. Others will understand participatory re- search in different terms and practice it in different ways. My effort is rather an at tempt to depict an ideal type for the practice of the social sciences for this age that is in line with their initial intentions, if not their self-understanding, from which concrete examples must by necessity deviate. In this sense this article is as much about sociology as about an as-yet little recognized methodology in the discipline.

40 The American Sociologist/Winter 1992

In presenting my argument I have taken into account historical, theoretical, and epistemological considerations. But above all my position has been framed by my own biography and sense of values, which must be tempered in dialogue with others in the spirit of improving the practice of sociology addressing the problems that face us as social beings in this age.

N o t e s

Many thanks to Kathleen Tierney and Mark Lynd for their careful reading and criticism on earlier drafts of this article.

1. The Center for Community Education and Action�9 2. See, also, Horton (1993). For other representative examples of participatory research in the United States

and Canada, see, Park, Brydon-Miller, Hall, and Jackson (1993). The annotated bibliography published by the Center for Community Education and Action (25 Maple Street, Florence MA 01060) contains a compre- hensive list of references on participatory research. See, Center for Community Education and Action and Center for International Education (1991). Incidentally, Myles Horton, the founder of the Highlander Folk School (now the Highlander Education and Research Center), which played a major role in this project, was to learn at the time of the project that what he and his school had been doing in the region in the name of education for nearly fifty years is participatory research, a designation he enthusiastically embraced.

3. For an understanding of participatory research as a liberatory practice, see Rahman (1982).

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