The Problematic of Participation: Back to the Future

Abstract

The past two decades have seen a rapid growth in community-based research (CBR) as a response to the need for new types of knowledge in the face of complex health issues and socio-ecological crises. At both institutional and civil society levels, there are increasing calls for (1) more democratized, participatory knowledge to inform environmental and social policy (UNEP, 2009; Calheiros et al., 2000); (2) higher education (HE) institutions to become more engaged with the real and urgent social problems (Bawden, 2004); and (3) synergies with the transformations occurring in how people are using technology to create, share, and use knowledge for social change. A core driver behind these calls is the realization that current research methods, particularly those based in the positivist scientific method, are ill suited to addressing complex problems (Lidskog, 2008), are removed from the rapid pace of social change, and restrict understanding where multiple sources and types of knowledge are required for problem-solving (Levin, 1999).