Voices of Change: Participatory Research in the United States and Canada

(Hardback)

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This volume describes a grass-roots approach to empowering people for democratic social change. It explains participatory research using exemplary case studies on community organizing, feminist theory, and ecological movements from a wide range of locations in North America. The first collection of essays on participatory research in Canada and the United States, the book is an eloquent demonstration that the same approach to social change is needed in industrialized countries as it is in underdeveloped countries. Challenging the relevance and validity of academic social science research, participatory research is an important tool for social activists, community workers, and adult educators working with oppressed peoples.

Author Bio

PETER PARK is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the board president of the Center for Community Education and Action, an organization devoted to participatory research. He also is on the faculty of the Fielding Institute. MARY BRYDON-MILLER is Associate Professor of Educational Foundations, and Graduate Program Coordinator of Urban Educational Leadership in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services at the University of Cincinnati. BUDD HALL teaches participatory research and adult education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He is the former Secretary-General of the International Participatory Research Network. His ideas on participatory research were developed first during his years as head of the Research Department of the Institute of Adult Education in Tanzania. His work over the years has dealt with how the ideas of those experiencing oppression can legitimate their knowledge and make it accessible to others in similar situations. TED JACKSON is adjunct research professor in the School of Public Administration at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he teaches development administration. A former staff member of the Participatory Research Group and the International Council for Adult Education in Toronto, he has taught participatory research and community economic development at Trent and Carleton universitiesand has served as an advisor to the Assembly of First Nations, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Dene Nation, and the Economic Council of Canada.