Reassembling Grassroots Methodologies: What Matters in Participatory Fieldwork?
Location
DeSantis Room 3031
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
16-1-2020 2:15 PM
End Date
16-1-2020 2:35 PM
Abstract
Drawing on data from a youth participatory action research project that took place in the southeastern United States, this paper explores the challenges and possibilities of engaging in participatory fieldwork from a post-qualitative perspective. By reconceptualizing participation as a “relation with the outside” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 9), it argues that the conditions of possibility for participation emerge and develop in concert with external forces that open new vistas of thought. Thus, to adopt a relational ontology when carrying out participatory work with youth, the with needs to be extended to include the material and discursive entities that enable a tightly constrained space to turn into an open field of exploration. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) notion of “unnatural participations” as a point of entry, I therefore illustrate how the field becomes less of an object of study and more of an active participant in addressing issues youth deemed relevant in a semester-long YPAR project. In particular, I highlight three encounters with the field that provoked a change in direction or thought. I end with a discussion of how this redefinition of participation not only changes how fieldwork is conceived, but also how it redefines the associated notion of action that characterizes participatory methodologies. My overarching claim is that post-qualitative researchers could open up PAR by “[seeing] the grass” (p. 23) amongst the roots that have traditionally composed its in enactment in educational research.
Keywords
youth participatory action research; fieldwork; post-qualitative inquiry; Deleuze and Guattari
Reassembling Grassroots Methodologies: What Matters in Participatory Fieldwork?
DeSantis Room 3031
Drawing on data from a youth participatory action research project that took place in the southeastern United States, this paper explores the challenges and possibilities of engaging in participatory fieldwork from a post-qualitative perspective. By reconceptualizing participation as a “relation with the outside” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 9), it argues that the conditions of possibility for participation emerge and develop in concert with external forces that open new vistas of thought. Thus, to adopt a relational ontology when carrying out participatory work with youth, the with needs to be extended to include the material and discursive entities that enable a tightly constrained space to turn into an open field of exploration. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) notion of “unnatural participations” as a point of entry, I therefore illustrate how the field becomes less of an object of study and more of an active participant in addressing issues youth deemed relevant in a semester-long YPAR project. In particular, I highlight three encounters with the field that provoked a change in direction or thought. I end with a discussion of how this redefinition of participation not only changes how fieldwork is conceived, but also how it redefines the associated notion of action that characterizes participatory methodologies. My overarching claim is that post-qualitative researchers could open up PAR by “[seeing] the grass” (p. 23) amongst the roots that have traditionally composed its in enactment in educational research.