Thomas R. Hilder

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Approx. 10 hrs of learning materials, including:

Introduction

Participatory Action Research - often abbreviated to PAR - developed as a methodology in order to promote social justice in research. The first conference focusing on this topic was in 1977 in Cartagena, very much supported by the Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda (1925-2008). Researchers who adopted PAR were very much inspired by the work of Brazilian pedagog and philosopher Paolo Freire (1921-1997), especially his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968). PAR critiques the power hierarchy between researcher and researched community in social science scholarship, questioning the elitism of the traditional researcher as a detached, apparently objective figure, and whose research rarely contribute to social change. Instead, PAR proposes to actively include communities in the design, carrying out, and reflection on the research project. Most importantly, PAR projects specifically aim to apply research leading to concrete action and amelioration of specific social, political, cultural or health challenges.

In the 1990s Linda Tuhiwai Smith advocated for Indigenous methodologies that in many ways draw on many principals of PAR. In her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999), she critiqued the history of research by non-Indigenous people on Indigenous communities, research that often led to problematic and harmful scholarship that excluded participation by and contributions to Indigenous communities. She advocated, instead, for Indigenous participation, collaboration, reciprocity and social justice in research by, and/or, with Indigenous communities.

Ethnomusicology has a long tradition of applied research, whereby researchers actively apply their knowledge, skills, and research within the contexts in which they work. Likewise, there is a emerging trend in public musicology, that responds to calls for social impact of humanities research. Nonetheless, these traditions are only more recently addressing the power imbalances between researcher and researched and actively contributing to community participation in designing and carrying out research.

These materials invite you to learn about key aspects of PAR and Indigenous research methodologies. In Part 1 you are asked to attend to the important work of ethnomusicologist Samuel Araújo and Grupo Musicultura in Rio de Janeiro, in order to appreciate one of the first examples of PAR in ethnomusicology research. Part 2 offers reflection on the founding principles and aims of PAR and the challenges in implementing these ideals in practice. Finally, Part 3 provides an opportunity to evaluate an award-winning article of ethnomusicology research within an Indigenous context on Turtle Island (North America) that draws heavily of Indigenous and PAR methodologies.

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The learning outcomes of this space are:

  1. To be able to understand what PAR and Indigenous methodologies are.
  2. To be able to appreciate the challenges and opportunities of implementing PAR and Indigenous methodologies.
  3. To be able to evaluate the ways in which PAR and Indigenous methodologies developed in music research can promote forms of social justice. </aside>

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Keywords: participation; social justice; activism; applied ethnomusicology; public humanities

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Part 1

Read Araújo & Grupo Musicultura (2010) and reflect on the following questions:

  1. What is the project about and what research methods were chosen?
  2. Why are those research methods chosen and developed?
  3. What are the intended and actual outcomes of the project? </aside>

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Part 2

Read Smith et al. (2010) and reflect on the following questions:

  1. What challenges did the authors find in attempting to implement a PAR methodology
  2. List three ways in which the authors found their ideals did not meet the reality </aside>

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Part 3

Read Ostashewski et al. (2020), watch the two videos, and reflect on the following questions:

  1. What is the project in the article and what stages does it consist of?
  2. What are the project aims and how does it live up to these aims?
  3. In what ways is “Songs and Stories” an example of PAR and is there something that surprises you about the project? </aside>

Resources

Key Readings

Araújo, Samuel, and Grupo Musicultura. 2010. "Sound Praxis: Music, politics, and violence in Brazil." In Music and Conflict, edited by John O’Connell and Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, 217-231. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Ostashewski, Marcia, Shaylene Johnson, Graham Marshall, and Clifford Paul. 2020. "Fostering reconciliation through collaborative research in Unama’ki: Engaging communities through Indigenous methodologies and Research-Creation." Yearbook for Traditional Music 52: 23-40.

Smith, Laura, Lucinda Bratini, Debbie-Ann Chambers, Russell Vance Jensen, and LeLaina Romero. 2010. "Between Idealism and Reality: Meeting the Challenges of Participatory Action Research." Action Research 8 (4): 407-425.

Additional Reading