Participatory Practice: Community-based Action for Transformative Change

✍ Scribed by Margaret Ledwith; Jane Springett

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 314
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In this second edition of a bestselling book, the authors’ unique, holistic and radical perspective on participatory practice has been updated to reflect advances in thought made in the past decade, the impact of neoliberalism and austerity and the challenge of climate change. Their innovative approach bridges the divide between community development ideas and practice to offer a critical praxis. The authors argue that transformative practice begins with everyday stories about people’s lives and that practical theory generated from these narratives is the best way to inform both policy and practice. The book will be of interest to academics and community-based practitioners working in a range of settings, including health and education.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
List of figures and tables
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Our stories
Jane’s story
Margaret’s story
Our joint story
Note on terminology
Note on icons
Part I: A Participatory paradigm
1. Participatory practice
What is Participation?
Theme 1: Participatory practice as social justice in action
Theme 2: Participatory practice as a worldview
Theme 3: Participatory practice as the embodiment of values and principles
Theme 4: Participatory practice as a relational process
Theme 5: Participatory practice as interdependence and interbeing
Theme 6: Participatory practice as inner and outer transformation
Theme 7: Participatory practice as living the questions and critical thinking
Theme 8: Participatory practice as an ecological imperative
Towards collective health and well-being through Participatory practice
What is to come in this book
2. Troubled times
Values lie at the heart of the matter
We are living through an epoch in world history
Critique of the political context is the catalyst for transformative practice
Question contradictions!
Values change the way we see the world
The British welfare state: a social justice revolution
The Beveridge Report: a common good embedded in policy
The invention of neoliberalism
The year of the barricades that heralded an opportunity for change
A missed opportunity
Explore the question ‘Who gets to eat?’
Big electoral change from Right to Left (or so we thought)
A decade of ‘austerity’ Britain
At last, a critical analysis from a human rights perspective!
Values, critical consciousness and change
How did they pull it off?
Whose lives matter?
What do we care about? What are our values?
Kindness and kinship: a different lens for a decent future
3. The Participatory worldview
The Western mind
Indigenous ways of knowing
The medicine wheel
Ecological and complex systems as Participatory thinking
Western Participatory worldviews: ecological ways of thinking
Characteristics of a living system that help us to think Participatively
The Relational: cooperation, co-evolution and co-creation/co-production
Consciousness, the self and the spiritual
Putting it all together: reframing our view of the world to change our practice
So, what does thinking Participatively really mean for our practice?
4. Participatory practice in a non-Participatory world
Participatory practice over the last decade
Participatory practice in the arts
Community arts in health as a case study
Participatory practice in health research
Participatory practice in local government
Participatory practice in food and resource management systems
Reflections on Participatory practice in a non-Participatory world
The embodiment of values
Part II: Participatory praxis
5. Storytelling praxis
The relevance of story to Participatory practice
The personal is political
The importance of voicing values
The use of story to critique the dominant narrative
Counternarratives
Be curious!
Emancipatory action research as a unity of praxis
Change the story!
Listening from the heart
Slowing the mind and reaching inside to the spirit
Imagination in the art of storytelling
Imagination in the art of poetry
‘Transformation of silence into language and action’
6. The role of dialogue
So, what is dialogue?
Going deeper: deconstructing the essence of dialogue
Creating a collective identity
Creating the conditions for dialogue: understanding your context and preparing people
The conditions for dialogue: circle as a safe dialogical space
Creating dialogical/rhetorical/communicative spaces: some examples from practice
Dialogue and social change
The dynamic of dialogue as a key to transformation
7. Critical reflection and reflexivity
Being critical
Understanding reflection as the key to learning and transformation
Opening up space for reflection in a non-Participatory world
Towards critical reflexivity
Becoming critically reflexive: drawing on critical theorists
Reflecting on power
Antonio Gramsci
Jürgen Habermas
Pierre Bourdieu
Michel Foucault
Moving critique further
Taking critical reflection forward
8. Transformative practice
How to make Participatory practice transformative
What sort of world do we want to live in?
Paulo Freire and transformative practice
Values are the bedrock of change
Radical empathy
Empathy in action
Getting familiar with Freire
Digging deeper into Freire
Extending Freire into intersectionality
Acting on Freire
9. Becoming whole
Crisis is a chance for change
Critique is essential for change
Storytelling is great at raising questions
Digging deeper
A Participatory ideology
A counternarrative of change
A Participatory paradigm shift
An ecological framework for a Participatory worldview
From Ego to Eco
Paradigm wars
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report 2021
Neoliberal paradigm vs an indigenous paradigm
Practising Participatory values
Gramsci: the old is dying and the new cannot be born
Gramsci and feminism
Freire and intersectionality: reconceptualising power
Education for critical consciousness
Storytelling as problematising
Critical connections in Participatory practice
Participatory action research as a unity of praxis
Ideas are the basis of change – but are we asking the right questions?
Changing love of POWER to the power of LOVE!
Notes
References
Index
Back Cover