How to practice “Response-able” participatory action research : co-creating communicative spaces for inclusive inquiry and impactful change / Jana Kerssies, Elena Bendien, Tineke A. Abma.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kerssies, Jana, author.

Bendien, Elena, author.

Abma, Tineke A., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Older people--Sexual behavior--Research--Methodology.

Older people.

Action research--Methodology.

Action research.

Participant observation--Methodology.

Participant observation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

London : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2026.

Summary:

Not only is research a means of generating knowledge, but it also can become a situated practice that shapes realities—thereby making researchers responsible for the realities their research helps enact. This How-to Guide examines what such responsibility entails for inclusive inquiry, with a particular focus on participatory action research (PAR). Drawing on the concept of “response-ability,” we conceptualize PAR as an ethico-onto-epistemological practice in which knowing, being, and doing are entangled. Response-ability is understood as a relational capacity that emerges with/in communicative spaces and requires accountability for the meanings and matterings that research practices enact. This guide is grounded in a PAR project on sexuality in later life, conducted with 53 older adults between March 2023 and June 2024. Sexuality in later life is a topic marked by social taboo and normative expectations, making it a particularly instructive case for exploring how inclusive research can reproduce or reconfigure dominant meanings. Using this project as an empirical lens, this guide reflects on three interrelated processes of response-able PAR: (a) preparing for inquiry by entering with curiosity and indeterminacy, (b) practicing response-ability through “care-full” facilitation of communicative spaces, and (c) attending to what changes response-able PAR produces. Through ethnodramatic vignettes and analytic reflection, we show that response-able PAR generate reorientations instead of fixed answers: shifts in how participants and researchers relate to the issue at hand and to one another. These reorientations are material-discursive effects of the research methodology and constitute forms of worldmaking for which researchers are accountable. This guide offers theoretically grounded, practice-oriented insights for researchers seeking to conduct inclusive PAR on sensitive or normatively charged topics.

Notes:

Description based on XML content.

ISBN:

9781036251611

OCLC:

1594889494

Publisher Number:

T302751