Epistemic injustice and dissidence: A bibliometric analysis of the literature on Participatory Action Research hosted on the Web of Science

Abstract

For decades, Participatory Action Research (PAR) has been extended as a scientific praxis applied in different contexts, characterised by the involvement of participating groups and oriented towards social transformation. However, there is a certain dialectical tension between those approaches that emphasise the method versus those that emphasise the pursuit of social change from a decolonial perspective. This article questions how this praxis is reflected in scientific transfer, analysing not only the development and scope of scientific production in PAR, but also how the academy may reproduce relations inherent to coloniality in this transfer. To this end, the production on PAR hosted on the Web of Science (WoS) is collected, and a bibliometric analysis is performed by applying descriptive and relational techniques using VosViewer software. The study concludes that scientific production has not stopped growing and that the areas of knowledge where it is applied have diversified. However, it also points out how the knowledge production model reproduces the power relations of coloniality, affecting PAR’s transfer. This analysis can contribute to the debate on a scientific approach oriented to improve processes of social transformation.

Life stories: Unraveling the academic configuration of a multifaceted and multidisciplinary field of knowledge

“…Proposed by De Solla Price (1956) , this law identifies behavioral patterns over time by distributing the frequency of publication per year to observe behavior by applying statistical adjustment functions ( Kastrin and Hristovski, 2021 ; Delgado-Baena et al, 2022 ). This law postulates that the growth of scientific information is exponential and occurs at such a rapid rate that every 10–15 years, global information doubles.…”

“…For authors, this discrete probability distribution is expected to be uneven, with most of the articles produced by a small number of very productive authors. The number of authors who contribute to a particular number of works is inversely proportional to the number of works contributed ( Kushairi and Ahmi, 2021 ; Delgado-Baena et al, 2022 ). Productivity in life stories is shown in Figure 2 .…”

“…We did not find references among the most prominent researchers to those who approach their studies from fields such as sociology, anthropology, or social work, which displaces their work to a more residual position. However, it is possible that the knowledge produced by sociologists or anthropologists will be transferred in other spaces and in other forms ( Delgado-Baena et al, 2022 ).…”

La Fundación ETEA en Honduras entre el cambio y la continuidad

“…Se trata de comunidades que han sido históricamente discriminadas y que siguen viviendo en una situación de empobrecimiento y marginalización. Por esta razón, estamos conduciendo una Investigación Acción Participativa, que es un método de estudio dirigido a desarrollar, junto con la misma comunidad en cuanto sujeta de la investigación, estrategias de acción orientadas a la transformación social (Delgado-Baena et al, 2022). Bajo la coordinación de la Fundación ETEA, se han sumado a esta iniciativa investigadores de los Departamentos de Humanidades y Educación y del Instituto de Investigación en Políticas para la Transformación Social.…”

Action Research Pedagogy in Educational Institutions: Emancipatory, Relational, Critical and Contextual

“…A recent bibliometric analysis (Delgado-Baena et al, 2022) noted that not all action research is squarely focused on the challenges of emancipation. There is a tension between the decolonial origins of participatory action research and a methodological discourse that is more interested in participatory knowledge production than emancipation.…”