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••• Maggie O’Neill •••

prevalent in countries of the South, North and South America, and India (see Laws
et al., 2003). Fals Borda (University of Columbia, Bogotá) and William Foote Whyte
(USA) are key proponents of PAR.
PAR is rooted in principles of inclusion (engaging people in the research design,
process and outcomes); participation; valuing all local voices; and community-driven
sustainable outcomes. PAR is a process and a practice directed towards social change
with the participants; it is interventionist, action-oriented and interpretive. PAR
involves a commitment to research that develops partnership responses to develop-
ing purposeful knowledge (praxis); includes all those involved where possible, thus
facilitating shared ownership of the development and outcomes of the research; uses
innovative ways of consulting and working with local people and facilitates change
with communities and groups.
Given the relative demise of action and activism over the past two decades and the
closing down of spaces for public resistance under the auspices of Thatcher, Major
and Blair governments, this research method provides a potentially powerful tool for
resistance and a platform for civic participation – a critical theory in practice. This is
akin to Smith’s thesis (drawing upon Laclau and Mouffe) that ‘radical democracy is
the best route towards social change for the Left Today’ (Smith, 1998: 6), and fosters
‘a democratic politics that aims at the articulation of the various different struggles
against oppression. What emerges is the possibility of a project of radical and plural
democracy’ (Smith, 1986: 328).
Fals Borda defines PAR (it emerged in the 1970s) as anticipating postmodernism for
PAR drew on a range of conceptual elements to guide fieldwork ‘Marxism, phenom-
enology, and classical theories of participation, including action’ (1999: 1) and yet
went beyond them. Fals Borda defines PAR as vivencia (life experience akin to
Husserl’s Erfahrung) ‘necessary for the achievement of progress and democracy and as
a complex of attitudes and values to give meaning to our praxis in the field’ (Fals
Borda, 1999: 17).

Interpretive Ethnography and Standpoint Epistemologies

In a recent paper (O’Neill et al., 2002), I argued that the self-reflexivity inherent in
the ethnographic process, alongside the crisis in ethnography and the ‘linguistic’ and
‘cultural turn’ in socio-cultural theory has led to demands for experimentation in the
representation of ethnographic data, especially in relation to gender and race (see
Trinh, 1991; Ugwu, 1995). Drawing upon the work of Adorno and Benjamin, I argued
that alternative re-presentations of ethnographic work can create multivocal, dialog-
ical texts that can make visible emotional structures and inner experiences which
may ‘move’ the audience through what can be described as ‘sensuous knowing’ or
mimesis (Taussig, 1993).
2
Ethno-mimesis as critical feminist praxis is reflexive and phenomenological but it
is also critical and looks to praxis, as in the theatre work of Boal (1979) and
Mienczakowski (1995); the socio-cultural research of Fals Borda (1988); or the filmic
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