Participatory action research as political education

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I discuss participatory action research (PAR) as a way to support social and political engagement and develop civil society. After a short overview of my personal journey to participatory action research, I describe a general structure that I have developed for organizing PAR projects and a short introduction to the state of civil society in Hungary. I then summarize three PAR projects in Budapest between 2011 and 2018. All three revolved around the issue of affordable and adequate housing and were designed as part of the movement for the right to housing in Hungary. The paper concludes with some of the most important implications I drew from this work regarding the development of civil society and critical consciousness.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory action research
• housing
• citizenship
• political education
• civil society

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Éva Tessza Udvarhelyi is the co-founder of the grassroots housing advocacy group The City is for All and the director of the School of Public Life, a Budapest-based political education organization.