Title: Action Research and democracy from theScandinavian perspective
Abstract: Action Research and democracy from the Scandinavian perspectiveBook Review by Telmo Adams, Paloma Daudt, Carolina Nunes RamosIn the book Action Research for Democracy, dedicated to the late Kurt Aagaard Nielsen, who was the author, among other books, of Action Research and Interactive Research. Beyond Practice and Theory (2006), the editors start from the assumption that Democracy is a key concept for Action Research and democratisation is an immanent political dimension and a specific form of science. This perspective implies a change of paradigm recognising the participants in research as subjects and opens up a new way of thinking about the creation of knowledge. The organisers of the book propose to examine how Action Research deals with the problems related to democratic development and its fragilities in today's societies, in a context of a general sustainability crisis. The current crisis, according to the researchers, should not be seen as transient disturbances, but rather understood interdependently in its multiple dimensions, such as the economic, social, ecological and political ones. The crisis, usually seen as fragility, can, from the perspective analysed here, potentiate the ability of society to renew its living conditions, which necessarily follows the route of democratisation.Besides Kurt Lewin's legacy, other traditions such as those of John Dewey and Paulo Freire likewise provide a foundation for participatory research. However, common to all traditions is the dimension of the democratisation of societies, from which, unfortunately, several currents of contemporary Action Research are moving away by watering down this dimension. Democracy is understood, beyond the formal system of elections, as the concrete action of citizens taking part in establishing the regulation of social life in all spheres, including institutions, work places and everyday life (Gunnarsson & Hansen, 2016). This is, thus, a republican and non-liberal view.The Scandinavian experience is presented as a contribution to deal with this historical reality of crisis and to a greater acknowledgement of Action Research in current academic society. However, at the same time, as the authors point out, this requires overcoming its internal deficits, such as the conceptualisation of this research methodology, of the meanings of democracy in the relationship with a democratic research in the context of disputes present in the field of Action Research.This is the horizon of the experiences discussed in two books, the first one published in 2013 (Phillips, Kristiansen, Vehvilainen, & Gunnarson, 2013) and the one that is reviewed here, published in 2016, whose ultimate objective is to reflect on the purpose of research, highlighting its social role and function. For this they emphasise two dimensions: elucidating the new challenges in updating the idea of democracy from the republican perspective; and discerning among the, sometimes contradictory and even conflicting, tendencies of the practice of Action Research in understanding its raison d'etre and action at the present historical moment, in view of the new requirements to renew natural and societal living conditions.In this sense the book proposes that the starting point should be the recognition of the deficits of democracy, which have their source both in the insufficient involvement of citizens in the sphere of political culture and in the triumphant march of neoliberalism. Capitalist restructuring in Scandinavia and elsewhere in the world has predominated since the beginning of the 1980s. Even in the countries considered developed, the austerity policies that were justified by referring to the economic crises resulted in totalitarian tendencies that are tremendously dangerous and restrict democratisation to the conditions imposed by the neoliberal logic. There are two possible paths to exit the crisis: the capitalist accumulation that is to be renewed by innovation through technologies and competencies, whose logic includes green capitalism as regards the ecological dimension of the crisis; or radical questioning of the possibility for capitalism to overcome this crisis, whose argument is based on the critique of Karl Polanyi, who considers that the base of the problem is the dichotomy between economy and society. …
Publication Year: 2017
Publication Date: 2017-01-16
Language: en
Type: article
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