Abstract
Participatory action research aims to reduce power differentials in research. In this chapter we problematise the blurred boundaries when a participant becomes a researcher. We reflect on a PhD undertaken by the first author who was a member of a social enterprise in the UK that provided user-led research and training with a diversity of communities. Experiences of ten members of the collective were gathered through creative arts-based methodologies designed to be inclusive. We describe three tensions that arose when trialling participatory video production, when data analysis could not be undertaken collaboratively, and when reflecting on the solitary nature of PhD thesis writing. We outline the ways these tensions were worked through and explore ways of writing about participatory research in a PhD thesis.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, ‘I’ indicates the voice of the first author. ‘Our’ and ‘we’ are used to indicate the voices of both authors and to refer to our research partnership.
- 2.
This remains a key policy objective of the current government.
- 3.
Social enterprises are similar to charities and not-for-profit organisations in that they trade goods and services that have a social betterment purpose. Unlike charities and not-for-profit organisations that rely on grants or donations, social enterprises are income generating and are expected to become financially self-sufficient.
- 4.
Ethical approval for this project was granted by the York St John University Research Ethics Committee on 15 February 2011 (UC/15/2/11/JL).
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Lovell, J., Akhurst, J. (2018). Whose PARty Was This? The Dilemmas of a Participatory Action Research Process of Evaluating a Social Enterprise. In: Macleod, C., Marx, J., Mnyaka, P., Treharne, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethics in Critical Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74721-7_24
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