'We Make Progress Because We are Lost': Critical Reflections on Co-producing Knowledge as a Methodology for Researching Non-Governmental Public Action
Jenny Pearce
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Researching non-governmental public action raises the question: are we researching 'on' such action; are we increasing understanding 'of' such action or are we researching 'with' those involved in such action? This paper will explore how in our research with non-governmental actors we approached these questions. The original proposal was based on certain premises: the research should be interactive rather than extractive and should involve 'co-producing knowledge'. These premises were based on a general familiarity with action research methods, but there was no clarity about how they could be applied to a large-scale multi-site and multi lingual research project. There is, however, a family of action research methodologies with a fairly long history and our research endeavour is related to this family. The first section of this paper outlines some of its key components and reviews how it has articulated its epistemological basis. Has this methodological field of inquiry managed to establish a credible basis in a theory of knowledge? The second part explores how far our own efforts at co-producing knowledge measures up to some of these premises.