Feminist geographies and participatory action research: co-producing narratives with people and place

Abstract

This review offers thoughts, queries and hesitations regarding articles drawing on participatory action research (PAR) published over 25 years of Gender, Place and Culture. It foregrounds the interconnections and overlaps between PAR and feminist geographies, and considers a continuum of participations-collaborations-actions-knowledges co-produced across a range of interrelated feminist methodologies. I emphasise epistemological commitment as central to PAR, pointing to work in GPC that evidences critical approaches to research process, embedded in feminist perspectives regarding how scholars re-produce the world and/as act/ing in the world, particularly in attending to shifting, situated and complex subjectivities and power inequalities. Working together with participants is vital, through an ethic that centres participants’ voices, as actors in their own lives. Highlighting the emotional and embodied geographies that weave through such research and writing, this review suggests deepening and strengthening interdependences and a feminist ethos of care as researchers, to further foreground diverse stories and voices, work towards social and spatial justice, and co-produce progressive changes with people and place.

Keywords:

• Action
• collaborative research
• emotions
• feminist methodology
• participatory action research

Acknowledgements

Heartfelt gratitude goes to all authors cited here, and multiple others, who have inspired and enriched my academic journey through PAR. Across many pages, and in person, I’ve been so fortunate to learn from and with co-researchers, participants, colleagues and students. My thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their generous and supportive reading and reflections on the first draft, which significantly helped hone this review. I used to acknowledge ‘all omissions and errors as my own’ – I now lean more towards conceiving of such omissions/errors as less a ‘failing’, rather as opportunities to further open up debate.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kye Askins

I am a human geographer with research interests focusing on identity, belonging, citizenship, emotions and everyday geographies of resistance and agency. My approach is actively engaged research that, theoretically and methodologically, challenges dominant discourses and emphasises participants as co-producers of knowledge. Current research explores how mundane geographies dis/enable 'meaningful' encounters between long term residents and newcomers to inner city areas.