Challenging and transforming power relations within community-based participatory research: the promise of a Foucauldian analysis

Abstract

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) advocates claim that by engaging community members to participate as equal partners in research that addresses issues relevant to the community, participatory methodologies can contribute to decreasing local health inequities and help build capacity for social change. There are, however, considerable concerns about the under-theorisation of power within CBPR approaches and the possibility of the marginalisation of research participants occurring in the very research processes that are meant to overcome such problems. Such critiques often engage with post-structuralist theories, notably the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and point towards the possible dominating effects of CBPR for marginalised communities. While these critiques offer valuable insights, they have not critically engage with Foucault’s understanding of power as productive; that is, while power acts as a constraint on action, its effects are never only repressive – the exercise of power always simultaneously both inhibits and enables action. Through examples of CBPR projects that have addressed new Canadians’ diverse health promotion needs, in this paper we argue that by attending to the ways in which power both inhibits and enables community members’ actions, we will be better positioned as researchers to recognise and minimise the potential dominating effects of CBPR.

Keywords:

• community-based participatory research
• Foucault
• power
• immigrants
• health promotion

Notes

1. In Canada, and in many other high-immigrant receiving countries such as the USA, the UK and Australia, the largest proportions of new permanent residents originate from non-Western countries. This contrasts Canadian immigration patterns before the 1970’s, when nearly all newcomers arrived from Western and Central Europe and the USA (Statistics Canada 2007).