PRIA-logue-Past Present and Future of Participatory Research: A Feminist Perspective

On the second edition of PRIA-logues¹ Dr. Patricia Maguire and Dr Rajesh Tandon had a dialogue on the feminist perspective of participatory research. The dialogue was facilitated by Dr. Martha Farrell who also added her valuable thoughts at various points of the conversation.

Dr. Maguire started the conversation by sharing what triggered her to write a book on participatory research with a feminist perspective. Our lived experiences trigger various questions and her experience in early research, her days in Center for International Education led her to question where are the women in the research? The womenâs knowledge and their standpoint were missing. Dr. Tandon recalled that although people like him were part of the womenâs movement but they have not really connected the lived experience with the larger framework of participatory research until they read Dr. Maguireâs critique.

"As researcher we come to our work with our identities, our biases, rationalizations, class gender these are like baggages or glasses we wear and I have to understand how my identity influence my work before I understand yours. So it important that male researcher question how their work is influenced by their identity by the privileges they have as male,” Said Dr. Magurire while explaining the importance of womenâs inclusion in international development  and participatory research.

Both the experts agreed that participatory research with the feminist approach didnât make much progress in the beginning but eventually made some progress. However we have to keep pushing for it. Dr. Farrell said, "If we are pushing participatory research we should do it in a holistic manner and include the feminist perspective along the line, otherwise few years later we would feel we missed it and now we have to run faster with it.”

Members of the audience also asked some very pertinent questions that led to even more rich discussion on questions like does feminist perspective also reflect an inherent bias? Rather than feminist or male/female perspectives shouldnât we first talk about a ‘human perspectiveâ?

"Feminism or feminist perspectives have always asked questions about power privilege and dignity for all human not just women but humanism did not raise those same questions,” said Dr. Maguire. Dr. Tandon added that without putting the feminist lense we would not be able to unravel the specificity of lived experience (when doing poverty analysis for example).

A full video of the PRIA-Logue will soon be available on PRIAâs YouTube channel. Please follow this space.

 About the PRIA-logues experts:

Dr. Patricia Maguire is Professor Emeritus of Education and Counseling, and recently retired from near 25 years as the Chairperson of Western New Mexico University – Gallup Graduate Center. Dr. Maguireâs 1980âs participatory research with Navajo women in the south-western US, was a groundbreaking feminist critique of early Participatory Research. Her life of activism, teaching, research, and publication interests include the interface between feminisms and participatory research and teacher action research, building on her 1987 book, Doing participatory research: feminist approach (now in 4th edition) and Traveling Companions: feminism, teaching, and action research (2004), co-edited with Mary-Brydon Miller and Alice McIntyre.

Dr Rajesh Tandon is an internationally acclaimed leader and practitioner of participatory research and development. He founded the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), a professional development organization providing support to grassroots initiatives in South Asia and continues to be its Chief Functionary since 1982. He has recently been appointed Co-Chair of the prestigious UNESCO Chair on Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education.

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