Affective Attachments: How "Doing and Being Good" Undermine the Liberatory Possibilities of Participatory Action Research

Abstract

Critical appraisals of participatory action research (PAR) tend to focus on better partnering practices among community and university collaborators with less attention to theorizing the material effects of our affective attachments and aspirations toward socially just outcomes and relationships. In this qualitative inquiry, I draw on interviews with 29 academics, community-based professionals, and peer researchers with extensive experiences of PAR. I use affect theory as an analytic entry point to explore how our commitments to socially just outcomes and relations act to paradoxically undermine PAR’s liberatory possibilities and displace the socially unjust conditions that PAR practitioners aim to transform.