Springer Participatory Activist Research in the Globalised World: Social Change Through the Cultural Professions: 26 (Explorations of Educational Purpose, 26)

Action research was conceived as a method of collaborative, self-reflective problem-solving in a community context. Yet many believe it has evolved too far away from its original, directly activist roots. As a direct response to calls for a rejuvenation of the social agenda of ‘action research’, this volume provides an all-inclusive road map to generating and implementing politically active grass-roots research activities. It is a priceless practical guide for the newly minted researcher wanting to make a tangible difference in their profession and in the world. Where some action research models have been criticized for losing focus on the participatory and social justice roots of this type of research, this book puts social justice activism squarely center stage, guiding the researcher through the theoretical, methodological and practical considerations and constraints of developing, implementing and sustaining research in the cultural professions.Lcating and contextualizing the history and theory of action research, critical theory and other related methodologies and concepts, this volume takes the reader on a journey that begins with the formation of a question, puzzle or research idea right through to the publication of a report on your finished project. Including discrete sections on every stage in the process, from generating a social justice activism agenda, through forming a team and empowering participants, to ensuring the implementation of your agenda and publishing and disseminating your work. Engaging their readers with a fresh acronym, PAtR―Participatory Activist Research―the authors give fresh impetus to those looking for a systematic way to understand and shape practice in their daily work, their profession and their world.This is an outstanding book that represents a critical research process  sorely needed in the academy today. Any researcher interested in making an intervention into the egregious social conditions wrought by neoliberal capitalism would do well to read this book. An important contribution to the literature on research methodology.Peter McLaren, Professor, School of Critical Studies in Education, University of AucklandThis is an outstanding book that represents a critical research process  sorely needed in the academy today. Any researcher interested in making an intervention into the egregious social conditions wrought by neoliberal capitalism would do well to read this book. An important contribution to the literature on research methodology.Peter McLaren, Professor, School of Critical Studies in Education, University of Auckland Review Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, The Graduate Center - City University of New York I love this manuscript. As I was packing a car filled with tents and sleeping bags, food and money for Occupy protestors on Wall Street, I received lisahunter's email asking me to review the book. This text is the perfect cup of activist tea for critical researchers and activist professionals haunted by the question of how to "be of use," as we engage with, and pick up the pieces of lives shrewn about by grotesque inequality gaps in these revolting times. PAtR takes on both definitions of revolting. Theoretically Participatory Activist Research is positioned critically in relation to histories and practices of oppression, dispossession and structural violence that are, indeed, revolting; politically, at the same time, Participatory Activist Research floats on the winds of protest that dot the globe, incited by the 99% who insist on a different tomorrow. The volume offers a queer geneology on the history and praxis of critical participatory work that is at core critical, activist, and folded into professional identities.  The authors write as they would expect a PAR project to unravel -- they democratize knowledge, offer clear definitions which then get muddy, and hold the hands of the novice researcher, asking him/her only