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Action Research
Volume 1(2): 153–164: 038146[1476-7503(200310)1:2]
Copyright© 2003 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi
www.sagepublications.co.uk
SHAPING
THE
FUTURE
New forms of knowledge
production and the role of
action research
Work Research Institute, Oslo
ABSTRACT
In efforts to combine theory and practice, action research con-
fronts a challenge that pertains to all kinds of research. It is,
consequently, a challenge that is subject to much discussion,
not least in fields like epistemology. These discussions provide
valuable points and insights but they cannot be converted
directly into research positions, which also demand considera-
tion of practical issues. When research sets out to learn from
practices a new challenge emerges: how is this learning to take
place? Can the single researcher understand the world or is there
a need for social relationships between (many) actors to develop
this learning? This contribution discusses the theory-practice
challenge and the need for new forms of social relationships
within the research community itself.
KEY WORDS
•
action research
•
critical theory
•
networking
•
phenomenology
•
pragmatism
•
social capital
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Action Research 1(2)
Introduction
In 1997, the political authorities in Sweden introduced development as a ‘third
task’ for the universities and other institutions of higher learning, in addition
to research and education (Brulin, 2001). The third task has given rise to several
discussions, to some extent of a controversial nature: first, concerning the legiti-
macy of the task itself; second, if the task is found legitimate, how to live up to it.
In this context action research has made its appearance, or rather, reappearance,
since from the 1960s there have been several projects and programmes that
correspond to the idea of action research. Action research, as it emerges as a part
of the history of social research, is not, however, automatically embraced by all
as the most adequate response. Partly it is seen by many conventional academics
as an esoteric kind of research, which generally has difficulty gaining academic
acceptance. Even those who may look more favourably upon action research,
often find it difficult to relate to. Actual, ongoing projects, be they in Sweden or
elsewhere, seem strongly linked to their local contexts and, consequently, to show
a lot of variation. What, then, does action research really mean? What should the
person who would like to join the ranks of action researchers actually do?
The purpose of this contribution is not to try to answer the basic questions.
The purpose is more modest: to look at the way in which the questions are
approached. When we want to develop an answer to a question, how do we set
about doing it? Do we, for instance, try to find one single project that is thought
to represent all good things about action research or do we look at a number of
projects simultaneously, to compare, to add, or to learn from differences?
Throughout most of its history action research has been project-bound.
Single cases have tended to form the focal points for most of the discussions. Each
researcher has had the expectation that ‘the project that I am doing just now’ is the
project that will answer, if not all questions, at least the most burning ones. Each
project has tended to be its own island of understanding, meaning and action.
Against this there have been some broader programmes where projects have been
grouped, or clustered, in such a way that interaction between projects has been
possible (Gustavsen, 1992, 2001). Even these, however, have been linked to
contexts that are not particularly broad when seen in a global perspective.
The emergence of the
Handbook of Action Research
(Reason and Brad-
bury, 2001) has changed this picture in the sense that for the first time there is a
broad overview available. This overview prepares the ground for a discourse
where the relationships between action research projects are placed in focus.
This is, in itself, a many-sided issue. Some of the issues have been dealt with
by this contributor in other contexts; in particular the use of a programatic
approach (Gustavsen, 1992, 2001, 2003). This topic will be bypassed here in
favour of two others. First I will touch, however, briefly upon the theory-
practice problem in general as it has appeared in theory of science, partly to
Gustavsen
New forms of knowledge production
•
155
remind ourselves that this is a general problem that has to be confronted by all
kinds of research, partly to point out that we cannot deal with operational
research challenges purely by developing theoretical arguments. Second, I will
discuss a theme that is seldom commented on in research: the broader social rela-
tionships among researchers. If we want to develop arguments based on linking
experience from a broad range of projects, there is a need for certain kinds of
social relationships between the researchers who work in the different projects.
Theory and practice
Through performing not only research but also action, action research has always
existed in a field of tension between theory and practice. In its most pointed form
the tension amounts to the thesis that if research becomes involved in practical
action the ability to perform good research is lost. For those who, this notwith-
standing, have wanted to combine research and action, the question has been to
what extent this tension can be overcome: is it possible to find ways in which
theory and practice can be combined without the ability to perform good research
being lost?
A number of reasons from theory of science can be mobilized in this con-
text. Here only a very brief overview of some of the main positions can be given.
First, it is important to note that the distinction between theory and prac-
tice in its most radical form is in itself a historical product. Starting with
Descartes, the distinction has been linked to the specific conditions prevailing in
17th-century Europe, in particular a growth in the size and strength of the
bourgeois class. This class did, it is often argued, not only launch a struggle for
political and economic hegemony, but also one for new forms of reason. The core
thrust of this new form was to decouple reason from its previous links to religion,
as in the Middle Ages, or to practice, as during the Renaissance, and make it
stand on its own feet. However, others, such as Toulmin (1990), have pointed less
at bourgeois reason than at bourgeois unreason, in particular in the form of all
the conflicts and wars that characterized the 17th century. The 30-years war, in
particular, implied a breakdown of relationships, organization and stability that
may have been surpassed only during the first half of the 20th century. Reason
could survive only in the mind, not in human practices.
This effort to decouple mind from matter, theory from practice, thought
from action, subject from object did not go unchallenged. One of the most
famous of all contributions to philosophy, Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
, is,
as the title indicates, a critique of the idea of a reason that is completely self-
sufficient and independent of any condition outside itself.
Of more significance to research was, perhaps, the position developed by
Kierkegaard, since it gave rise to phenomenology, and eventually also to more
156
•
Action Research 1(2)
specific research strategies. In its simplest form, the question raised by Kierke-
gaard is: do we understand the world better through the eyes of theory? Having
read Hegel, Kierkegaard found reason to voice skepticism. Theory – or other
forms of conceptual schemes that are thought in some way or other to exist and
be adopted prior to a confrontation with reality – can act as filters and screening
mechanisms that steer us in a wrong direction as much as in a right. The point is
to understand the world as it is by confronting it directly; by trying to grasp the
phenomena as they really are.
A somewhat different approach to the theory-practice problem was devel-
oped by the pragmatists. The ultimate purpose of any theory is to enable us to do
something better in the real world (Peirce, 1931–1958; see also Reason, 2003, on
the modern pragmatist Richard Rorty). The point is not to what extent the theory
resembles the world but to what extent it helps us perform rational action. A
theory can be anything, from a large text to a short formula; the point is that it
identifies action to be performed and levers to be pulled if we want to do some-
thing about reality.
What eventually came to be called critical theory has its roots in the 19th
century as well, in particular with Marx. Of the various efforts to convert Marx
into specific research positions it is perhaps those that were mediated by the
Frankfurt school that came to exert most influence in the period after the second
World War (Horkheimer, 1982). In brief, the core point here is that the world
can be understood only if it is understood that it could have been different. No
portrait of the world as it is will tell us much since it makes the world appear as
a metaphysical destiny and consequently hides the reasons why it is as it is.
Instead, whatever
is
must be seen against a background of what
might have been
.
The role of theory, then, is not only to help us make a picture of the world as it
is, but also – and of greater importance – actually to make us see how the world
could have been. Understanding is consequently something that plays itself out
between three reference points: theory, practices as they are and practices as they
could have been.
Research responses
The research positions to emerge out of these schools of thought are many and
varied, in particular since the relationship between theory on a philosophical level
and actual research practices is not a simple one. With this reservation, one may
point at some lines between the phenomenology of Kierkegaard and positions
such as anthropological field studies, participant observer methodologies, the
Chicago school (Whyte, 1955), the idea of ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1983) and
the kind of action research called ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967). Of inter-
est to note is that these forms of research, when they emerged, played important
Gustavsen
New forms of knowledge production
•
157
roles, developed new insights and rightfully attracted a lot of attention. It is also
clear that they are, if not gone, no longer core thrusts in contemporary research
activities. They provide inspiration, questions and concerns, but it is obvious that
another detailed study of the mores of a Pacific tribe will hardly exert the influ-
ence that the studies of Mead, Malinowski and other students of ‘the natives as
they really are’ once had.
In some ways, the research positions inspired by pragmatism may be more
strongly present in the contemporary landscape. There are links between prag-
matism and the idea of the experiment – in the laboratory and in the field – as
well as between pragmatism and practice-oriented pedagogics, action learning
and similar. However, there has been no simple solution to how to give ideas of
this kind expression in research terms. If we see at least some of the main streams
of Western action research as related to pragmatism, we also need to face the
point made by Greenwood (2002), that even though action research may have
enjoyed advances and even some elements of prestige in some contexts, the over-
all story of action research is far from one of linear success.
Critical theory has always had an ambivalent relationship to actual
research positions. There is a certain degree of skepticism running through most
of critical theory towards the kind of commitment to and contacts with society
necessary to perform research. The most famous effort of this school to enter the
field of empirical research, the authoritarian personality studies (Adorno,
Brunswick, Levinson & Sanford 1950), gave rise to a major debate carried on in
the form of the so-called positivist dispute in German sociology (Adorno, Albert,
Dahrendorf, Habermas, Pilot & Popper, 1976). In the relationship between crit-
ical theory and actual research much remained unsolved. Instead, critical
theory in the early Frankfurt school version reached its peak in the year 1968,
when students all over the world tried to put into practice the idea that we need
to understand how the world should be, before it is possible to understand how
it actually is.
However briefly and unjustly they have been presented here, certain points
emerge from these schools of thought and their various fates.
First, there is no simple answer to the theory-practice problem. None of the
perspectives on the relationship between theory and practice inherent in these
schools are particularly easy to convert into research positions. Action research,
with its claim to be able to transcend this division, consequently faces some major
challenges. But those who criticize action research on the basis of the Cartesian
argument have hardly considered the critique against this argument. The propo-
nents of purely descriptive-analytic research maintain their position simply by
overlooking this critique rather than responding to it.
However, the point that all the research positions to which these schools of
thought have given rise seem to have followed a rise-and-fall curve, indicates that
positions on a philosophical level cannot provide full answers to the challenges of
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