Collaboration as Resistance: Building Solidarity Through Participatory Action Research

• In Event: Participatory Action Research as Site of Student Agency, Social Transformation, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

Abstract

This presentation examines the collaborative relationship that occurs in participatory action research (PAR). I specifically explore the ways students, community partners, and a professor negotiate and make meaning of their collaborative relationship. PAR is both a research methodology and nonhierarchical form of knowledge production that brings together participants, from academia and outside communities, in a collaborative research partnership that seeks social transformation. Research on PAR, especially in its critical vein, consistently mentions collaboration, the naming of power dynamics, and the employment of dialogic techniques as central to the inquiry process (McTaggart, 1989, 1991; Genat, 2009; Cahill, 2016; Fox & Fine, 2016). Yet research is parse on the way the collaborative relationship develops and plays out. This study will engage in conversation with PAR scholars that value critical collaborative approaches to PAR and extend their work through an exploration of how precisely that relationship develops, in a particular place and context.

To examine the collaborative relationship among participants engaged in a PAR relationship, I employed a qualitative research design anchored in critical ethnography as well as autoethnography, in order to simultaneously study my own participation, positionality, and pedagogical practice during the research process. This study also incorporates feminist theories as well as feminist methods by taking a relational approach to the research, incorporating dialogue and reflection at every step of the process, and recognizing and challenging power dynamics among and between participants, including myself. I draw from social movement literature, decolonial perspectives, and Black and women of color theorizations of solidarity to analyze power and social differences among participants and theorize the practice of solidarity as a catalyst for collective action and transformation.

To understand the collaborative process among participants, I engaged in ethnographic and qualitative approaches which include: observing students and community partners as we work on the PAR projects, to conducting face-to-face structured interviews, as well as analyzing student assignments. Students’ classroom assignments were also analyzed. I also conducted interviews of students and community partners. These methods have yielded the necessary insights to the collaborative relationship development among participants and also allow me to continuously assess the intervention and make the appropriate adjustments that encourage an environment of participation, trust, reciprocity, and communication. I discuss some of the initial findings of my year-long study in this paper. These are: the ways in which participation, commitment, and collaboration were facilitated through pre-existing networks of solidarity; the pedagogical strategies that were successful in promoting collaboration and solidarity; and the ways in which PAR functions as a site of political participation.

This study also seeks to contribute to and expand research on participatory action research, community-university partnerships, and collaboration in community settings. This study also seeks to contribute to the theorizations and development of solidarity in participatory action research activities.

Author

• Aurora Santiago Ortiz, University of Kentucky