Open AccessTHROUGH A FEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALIST LENS: EMBODIED SUBJECTIVITES AND PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH
Author(s) -
Catherine Chesnay
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the canadian journal of action research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1925-7147
DOI - 10.33524/cjar.v17i3.286
Subject(s) - participatory action research , transformative learning , embodied cognition , subjectivity , action research , sociology , action (physics) , citizen journalism , power (physics) , epistemology , engineering ethics , political science , pedagogy , engineering , anthropology , law , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
An emerging literature has been building bridges between poststructuralism and participatory action research, highlighting the latter’s potential for transformative action. Using examples from participative action research projects with incarcerated or previously incarcerated women, this article discusses how participatory action research is a methodology that can be enabling and restraining, with the effect of destabilising or maintaining or existing relations of power. Theorizing embodied subjectivity as a vehicle and an effect of power, this article explores how participation and action can have normalizing and disciplinary effects, as well as be sites in which participants can interrogate and frame subjectivities in new and alternative ways.