This Handbook is a critical resource for carefully considering the possibilities and challenges of strategically integrating participatory action research (PAR) and community development (CD). Utilizing practical examples from diverse contexts across five continents, it looks at how communities are empowering themselves and bringing about systemic change.

Chapters provide models for sustainably integrating the two practices and explore the transformative potential of decolonizing innovations and incorporating community organizing. With contributions by leading scholars and practitioners from the global south and north, the Handbook explores ways to build infrastructure to bring PAR and CD together, how to use PAR and CD to build people's power and capacity, and how to integrate PAR and CD in relation to community and organizational capacity building. It further gives practical advice and academic analysis on youth PAR, how to use PAR and CD in crisis situations such as earthquakes and pandemics, and envisions radically alternative PAR and CD approaches.

This is a timely resource for social science scholars looking to better understand PAR as an important research method. It rethinks the theories underpinning both PAR and CD, offering important lessons for community development practitioners and non-profit professionals, as well as higher education professors interested in community engagement.

About the Author
Edited by Randy Stoecker, Professor and Director of the Applied Population Laboratory, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Adrienne Falcon, Professor and Director of the Masters of Advocacy and Political Leadership, Chair of the Public and Nonprofit Leadership Department, Metropolitan State University, US

Reviews
'The authors in this illuminating volume represent a diverse array of places, positions, and participatory initiatives. Their thoughtful analyses of their specific contexts and approaches to knowledge production and community change offer rich theoretical insights and examples that will be useful to students, faculty, and practitioners interested in collaborative research and action.' -- Julie L. Plaut, Brown University, US
'By combining PAR and Community Development, the editors frame each article's commitment to praxis for social change within the radical traditions of global south educators and activists such as Friere, Fals Borda, and Rahman. The various cases range from rural to urban, national to global, and cover issues from health and the environment to homelessness and community planning. For anyone studying or implementing community-based collaborations for research and action projects, this book offers a treasure trove of innovative case studies and inspirational possibilities. For anyone, like me, who still holds fast to the potential of engaged research for social justice, even in the face of neoliberal universities hell-bent on sucking the life blood out of faculty and students in search of a more just and humane world, this book is a lifeline.' -- Corey Dolgon, Stonehill College, US



Book Information
ISBN 9781839100963
Author Randy Stoecker
Format Hardback
Page Count 480
Imprint Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
Publisher Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd