One of the interesting debates within the family of methods which we call action researchco-operative inquiry, participatory action research, action science, action inquiry, appreciative inquiryhas concerned what we mean by validity. Positivist science is (relatively) clear that validity is about epistemology, about truth in some sense, a correspondence between theory and empirical evidence. However, in action research, as we have explored these questions, we have realized that validity, or a better term may be quality, is a rather different, and more multidimensional, notion.
There is clearly an epistemological dimension to quality in action research. Action research is an approach to the generation of knowing which aims to bring ideas and knowledge and action together, to produce practical knowing. There is a huge debate, to which I have contributed, about the nature of such practical knowing, and the epistemological changes that the action research perspective brings to the academy (Heron & Reason, 1997). Action research has over the years also addressed political questions.
The argument from the PAR community is that the processes of knowledge creation have been monopolized by those who have power, and thus they create knowledge in the service of their own interests. What is the point of findings that are true if they have been produced in circumstances that disempower people, that distort social relations, and add to the monopoly power of dominant groups? So validity or quality in action research is also about political relations, it is fundamentally about democratizing ways of creating practical knowing (Chambers, 1997; Fals Borda, 1995; Fals Borda & Rahman, 1991; Gaventa & Cornwall, 2001; Selener, 1997).
And action research has also asked pragmatic questions concerning whether the outcomes of action research projects are useful whether they work in practice (Greenwood & Levin, 1998). And of course, part of the postmodernist contribution has been to emphasize the links between power and knowledge (Foucault, 1975). Today I want to explore another dimension of quality in action research: action research aims, I think, to develop practical knowing in the service of worthwhile human purposes.
In the Introduction to the Handbook (Reason & Bradbury, 2001a) we placed a set of quotes which showed that while action research practitioners suggest slightly different emphases in their workquest for life, make the world better, loving, freerthere is broad agreement that the purpose of human inquiry is the flourishing of life, the life of human persons, of human communities, and increasingly of the more-than-human world of which we are a part.
However, Hilary Bradbury and I were struck we are struck that while all contributors are concerned to address questions they believe to be a significant worth, few pay explicit attention to inquiring into what is worthy of attention, how we chose what is worthwhile. We wondered if action researchers espouse high values without having relevant disciplines to inquire into this process of valuing?
So today I want to play with the idea that we can see action research as spiritual practice, for as Matthew Fox tells us, the questions we address in our practice tell us what matters (Fox, 1991a). Now, when I speak of spiritual practice, I want to be taken as speaking of an everyday spirituality. For just as it is widely argued that action research is a way of lifefor example in Judi Marshalls recent paper Living Life as Inquiry (Marshall, 1999)so to for the mystic and prophet spiritual practice is not esoteric and otherworldly, but is similarly part of everyday life.
Meister Eckhart said that God is at home, it is we who have gone out for a walkspiritual practice is about returning home, coming back to now; Jesus said the Kingdom/Queendom of Heaven is among you; or as the Buddhists say, Nirvana is here, we are all Buddhas, we have to learn to recognize this truth! As John Heron put it simple openness to everyday participative experience, feeling that subject and object are in an inseparable seamless field of imaging and resonancea field with infinite horizonsis itself a spiritual experience (Personal communication, 1997).
I asked Wolf Storm (Storm, 1972, 1994) to tell me what he, as a Medicine Wheel teacher, meant by prayer. I understood from his reply was to pray was to approach life as sacred, to call to living things, to feel ones relation to them, from the four great directions, as spirit, body, emotions, and mind. When the Lokota people end their prayers, they say, All our relations: spirituality is about all our relations, as Thomas Aquinas, said, spirit is the capacity to relate to the totality of things.
If we see action research as spiritual practice, we may thereby discover ways in which we can inquire together into worthwhile purposes. We may also come to understand action research in a deeper and more profound manner. Spirituality is a life-filled path, a spirit-filled way of living A path is not goal oriented. A path is the way itself, and every moment on it is a holy moment; a sacred seeing goes on there (Fox, 1991a:11-12, original emphasis)
I have argued before that one of the great tasks of action research is to heal the splits that characterize western experience [Reason, 1994 #30;(Reason & Bradbury, 2001a)]. One of the great splits, which can be seen as taking place just 400 years ago with the burning of Giordano Bruno (de Quincey, 1999b), has been between inquiry and religion: science got to study things material and religion things spiritual, splitting up the world into different packages which is the root, I would argue, of our current predicament.
Maybe this consideration of action research as spiritual practice will contribute to healing of that rift and allow spirit into our science and inquiry into our spiritual practice! The Four Paths of Creation Spirituality In this paper I draw heavily on the teachings of Matthew Fox on creation spiritualityfor it was listening to him in Bath earlier this year that the original ideas for this talk came to me.
Most of us brought up within a Christian tradition (and for those of us who would not see ourselves as Christian, let us not forget how much Christian teaching has influenced our world, the practice of capitalism and thus of the context of our lives, as Weber and Tawney pointed out long ago) were brought up broadly within the fall/redemption tradition, which starts with original sin and identifies a threefold path to salvationpurgation, illumination and union. We have to radically clean up our sin, see the light, and then we will have union with a transcendent divinity.
Fox says It is a dualistic model and a patriarchal one; it begins its theology with sin and original sin, and it generally ends with redemption. Fall/redemption spirituality does not teach believers about the New Creation or creativity, about justice making and social transformation, or about Eros, play, pleasure, and the God of Delight. It fails to teach love of the earth or care for the cosmos, and it is so frightened of passion that it fails to listen to the impassioned please of the anawim, the little ones, of human history (Fox, 1983b:11)
The creation spirituality traditions start with original blessing of life, rather than the original sin of fall/redemption (and Fox argues that creation spirituality is a much older tradition, reaching back through the history of the Judaism and Christianity to the wisdom books of the Old Testament , and reaching through Christian and Jewish mystics, the ecstatic Sufis of Islam, romantic poets, to contemporary deep ecologists). And in contrast to the three paths of fall/redemption, Matthew Fox identifies four paths of creation spirituality The Four Paths of creation spirituality tell us what matters.
We are told in Path One that awe and delight matter; in Path Two that darkness, suffering and letting go matter; in Path Three that creativity and imagination matter; and in Path Four that justice and celebration, which add up to compassion, matter. (Fox, 1991a:12) So what then of sin, indeed of original sin? The creation-centred tradition, while it does not begin with original sin but with original blessing, does indeed have an understanding of original sin or the sin behind sin. From Meister Eckhart to Mary Daly, the sin behind all sin is seen as dualism. Separation. Subject/object relationships. Fractures and fissure in our relationships.
Take any sin: war, burglary, rape, thievery. Every such action is treating another as an object outside oneself. This is dualism. This is the sin behind sin. (1991:49) Fox points out that this understanding of sin is found in Eastern spiritualities as well, in the idea of separateness. I dont want to take the comparison too far, but there are clearly parallels here with the positivist worldview and the methodologies of scientism. The Western enterprise since Descartes has been based on dualism. Indeed, it is interesting to note Brian Goodwin describes Dawkins theory of the Selfish Gene (Goodwin, 1994) as paralleling the Fall/Redemption myth.
So we can see that from this perspective we urgently need a form of inquiry which doesnt rely on the separateness and divisiveness of dualism, on the separation of subject and object in the western scientific view. The Four Paths The Via Positiva reminds us that we begin in original blessing rather than original sin, in the awe, wonder and mystery of nature and of all beings, each of whom is a “word of God” (1991:18) The Via Positiva tells us to fall in love at least three times a day (1991:19)in love with the cosmos, in love with a wildflower, in love with a symphony, in love with another person.
The Via Positiva tells us that awe, wonder, and falling in love matter. Blessing is about abundance, about joy, about passion; about being part of the earth, part of the cosmos; about beauty and harmony and balance. Meretta Hart, who has just completed our MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice chose as the core aspect of her life inquiry how to be a blessing in the world. The Via Negativa reminds us that darkness and nothingness, silence and emptying, letting go and letting be, pain and suffering, also constitute a real part of our spiritual journey.
The Via Negativa instructs us Thou shalt dare the dark (1991:19) In the pathway that is the Via Negativa, we enter the shadow, the hidden or covered-up parts of ourselves and our society. In doing so, we confront the cover-up that often accompanies evil in self and society. It is part of an unjust society to cover up the pain of its victims notes theologian Dorothy Solee. This commandment requires that spiritual voyagers not only let go of cover-up and denial, but that they actually enter into the darkness that pain is all about.
Since both despair and apathy arise from the cover-up of anger, this journey of letting go is also one of going deeper that the despair, apathy, bitterness, and cynicism that can create such resentment in our souls and society. (Fox, 1991b:20) The Via Negativa is what mystics describe as the dark night of the soul. The creation spirituality path reclaims mysticism, telling us we are actually all mystics, able to undergo deep darkness It is when the heart is broken that compassion can begin to flow through it. (Fox, 1991a:20)
Paths One and Two lead to Path Three, the Via Creativa, which is about our generativity, our imagination, our ability to co-create: We trust our images enough to birth them and ride them into existence. The basic spiritual discipline in the creation tradition is decidedly not asceticism, but is the development of the aesthetic. Beauty, and our role in co-creating it, lie at the heart of the spiritual journey. In Path Three we learn what Eckhart meant when he said we are heirs of the fearful creative power of God.
Creativity is not about painting a picture or producing an object; it is about wrestling with the demons and angels in the depths of our psyches and daring to name them, to put them where they can breath and have space and we can look at them. This process of listening to our images and birthing them allows us to embrace our enemiesthat is, the shadow side of ourselvesas well as to embrace our biggest visions and dreams (Fox, 1991a:18-21) But creativity is not enough, for we are also called to the relief of suffering to combating injustice, to the struggle for balance in society and history.
We are called to work together in community with others who are also struggling for justice. This is the Via Transformativa. The creation spirituality journey culminates in compassionthe combination of justice making and celebration. Justice and joy equally make up the experience that compassion is about. The capacity to experience our interconnectedness concerns both the joy and the sorrow that we undergo with others… Compassion is about the actions that flow from us as a result of our interdependence (1991:22)
Fox uses the term prophecy here: we are all prophets (just as we are all mystics), and the prophet is one who interferes: To be compassionate is also to be prophetic… The prophet interferes with the injustice, the unnecessary pain, that rains on the earth and its creatures when humans neglect justice and compassion. That prophetic call to interfere with injustice resides in all of us. (1991:23) These four paths of creation spirituality can be seen as a journey from the joy of original blessing, through the darkness of pain and suffering into creativity and on to working for justice in the world.
In this sense, each path negates, grows out of, and builds on the previous. The four paths can also be seen as a spiral or sacred hoop in that … the Via Positiva and the Via Creativa are related in a special way because they are both about awe and wonder, delight and beauty… and the Via Negativa and the Via Transformativa are also related in a special way because we cannot enter compassion if we have not entered the darkness of suffering and pain… Path Four in many respects is a response to the suffering of the world and of the self that we undergo in Path Two.
But by the time we arrive at Path Four we are more fully equippedthanks to the awakened imagination and creativity of Path Threeto respond to the suffering not just with anger but with creative, effective works that truly heal. (1991:25) The Four Paths as Action Research I make the assumption here that most of you are familiar with the orientations of experiential and participative research. Hilary Bradbury and I wrote There is no short answer to the question What is action research?
But let us say as a working definition that action research is a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview… It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities. (Reason & Bradbury, 2001a)
Further, drawing on work I have done with Judi Marshall and Bill Torbert, we identify three broad strategies of research/practice: First-person action research/practice skills and methods address the ability of the researcher to foster an inquiring approach to his or her own life, to act awarely and choicefully, and to assess effects in the outside world while acting. First person research practice brings inquiry into more and more of our moments of actionnot as outside researchers but in the whole range of everyday activities.
Second-person action research/practice addresses our ability to inquire face-to-face with others into issues of mutual concernfor example in the service of improving our personal and professional practice both individually and separately. Second person inquiry starts with interpersonal dialogue and includes the development of communities of inquiry and learning organizations. Third-person research/practice aims to extend these relatively small scale projects so that rather than being defined exclusively as scientific happenings they (are) also defined as “political events”(Toulmin & Gustavsen, 1996).
Third person strategies aim to create a wider community of inquiry involving persons who, because they cannot be known to each other face-to-face (say, in a large, geographically dispersed corporation), have an impersonal quality. Writing and other reporting of the process and outcomes of inquiries can also be an important form of third person inquiry. (Reason & Bradbury, 2001b; Reason & Torbert, 2001) Action Research and the Via Positiva Positivist research starts in skepticism, in doubt. It mistrusts the pragmatics of everyday human knowledge-making and places trust instead in timeless, universal, usually mathematical truths.
According to Stephen Toulmin (Toulmin, 1990) this philosophical perspective arose out of the particular political circumstances of the Enlightenment period, in particular the devastation caused by the 30 years war and the religious dogmas which had caused so much misery: he Cartesian program for philosophy swept aside the reasonable uncertainties and hesitations of 16th-century skeptics, in favor of new, mathematical kinds of rational certainty and proof [F]or the time being, that change of attitudethe devaluation of the oral, the particular, the local, the timely, and the practicalappeared a small price to pay for a formally rational theory grounded on abstract, universal, timeless concepts Soon enough, the flight from the particular, concrete, transitory, and practical aspects of human experience became a feature of cultural life in general. Toulmin, 1990:75-76) In contrast, action research strategies start with acknowledgement and celebration of the human capacity for self-direction and meaning making in everyday life. As Budd Hall points out (Hall, 2001), action research, in the sense of people and communities using their inventiveness to address problems of everyday life, is as old as humanity and probably older. As Orlando Fals Borda writes
The general concept of authentic participation is rooted in cultural traditions of the common people and their real history which are resplendent with feelings and attitudes of an altruistic, cooperative and communal nature and which are genuinely democratic [Fals-Borda, 1991 #23:5] Similarly in co-operative inquiry we start from the view that: a person is a fundamental spiritual entity, a distinct presence in the world, who has the potential to be the cause of his or her own actions. To actualize this capacity and become fully a person is an achievement of education and self-development. It involves learning to integrate individualizing characteristics with a deeper communion with others and the world. Heron, 1992:Chapter 2; Reason & Heron, 1995:123)
Action research leads us to an exuberant possibility of knowledge making: not to a search for one truth, but for multiple expressions of our understanding, expression and creative action. If human inquiry is not exciting, life enhancing, even pleasurable, then what is it worth? Action research also leads us, I believe, to a participatory worldview, toward a conception of the cosmos as intelligent, self-ordering and self transcending cosmos, of which one dimension is the life forms and ecology of planet earth. our world does not consist of separate things but of relationships which we co-author. We participate in our world, so that the reality we experience is a co-creation that involves the primal givenness of the cosmos and human feeling and construing.
The participative metaphor is particularly apt for action research, because as we participate in creating our world we are already embodied and breathing beings who are necessarily actingand this draws us to consider how to judge the quality of our acting. (Reason & Bradbury, 2001a) Just as creation spirituality points to a wider cosmology, so too action research points toward a cosmology in which matter is not dead as in the Cartesian worldview, but inherently sentient: no matter without mind, no mind without matter (attrib Goethe). Thus action research fits within what can be called a pan-psychic or panexperiential philosophy (de Quincey, 1999a, 1999b; Griffin, 1998; see also Table 1 for a summary) Fox also points out that a theology of blessing is about a different kind of power (1991:53). It is about power with and for people rather than power of control or power over.
His view is that the doctrine of original sin (which as above I have linked strongly to a dualist worldview and thus to modernist science) has held such a sway in western cultures because it has supported those who hold power n exaggerated doctrine of original sin, one that is employed as the starting point for spirituality, plays kindly into the hands of the empire-builders, slave masters, and patriarchal society in general. It divides and thereby conquers, pitting ones thoughts against ones feelings, ones body against ones spirit, ones political vocation against ones personal needs, people against earth, animals and nature in general. By doing this it convolutes people, so confuses and pre-occupies them, that deeper questions of community, justice and celebration never come to the fore. Blessing is politically dangerous…. (1991:54) The Enlightenment tradition makes almost no link between knowledge and power: except for Bacons assertion that knowledge is power, the political consequences of knowledge making were subsumed under the epistemological.
It is significant the Kuhns book on the structure of scientific revolutions (Kuhn, 1962), which was so influential in introducing the notion of paradigm to our thinking about science, made no connection between knowledge and power. It has been one of the important contributions of the postmodern movement to make this link, to show us the interested nature of knowledge-making that inquiry is a political process rather than merely a neutral, truth seeking operation (Cals & Smircich, 1999:651-2; see also Foucault, 1975; Gaventa & Cornwall, 2001; Lukes, 1974). So to start our inquiry with an assertion of the knowledge-making capacity of ordinary people is to reforge the link between democracy and epistemology (Park, 1999, 2001).
First- Second- and Third-person research/practice and the Via Positiva In first person research/practice we begin with our celebration of the self directing, self generating, self knowing and self transcending capabilities of the individual person as inquirer; we see inquiry not as a specialized professional realm, but as learning through risk taking in living. In second person research/practice, we conceive of the human community and organization not mechanistically, not in terms of control and command, but as a community of inquiry within a community of practice. And we glimpse the possibility of third person research practice as engaging with yet wider communities of regions, nations, the human community of the planet. A particular form of action research which is strongly based in the Via Positiva is appreciative inquiry….
In their original formulation of appreciative inquiry, Cooperrider and Srivastva (1987) argue that action research, especially in the guise of organizational development, has largely failed as an instrument social-organizational transformation because of its romance with critique at the expense of appreciation. To the extent that action research maintains a problem-oriented view of the world it diminishes the capacity of researchers and practitioners to produce innovative theory capable of inspiring the imagination, commitment, and passionate dialogue required for the consensual re-ordering of social conduct. If we devote our attention to what is wrong with organizations and communities, we lose the ability to see and understand what gives life to organizations and to discover ways to sustain and enhance that life-giving potential. (Ludema, Cooperrider, & Barrett, 2001)
In the terms I am using here, we make a mistake if our inquiry starts with the Via Negativaand the appreciative inquiry folk outline among the consequences of doing so the limiting of conversation, the maintenance of hierarchy, the silencing of minorities and the general enfeeblement of community and organizational processes More than a method or technique, the appreciative mode of inquiry engenders a reverence for life that draws the researcher to inquire beyond superficial appearances to deeper levels of the life-generating essentials and potentials of social existence. That is, the action-researcher is drawn to affirm, and thereby illuminate, the factors and forces involved in organizing that serve to nourish the human spirit (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987:131) Appreciative inquiry distinguishes itself by its deliberately affirmative assumptions about people, organizations, and relationships.
It focuses on asking the unconditional positive question to ignite transformative dialogue and action within human systems [A]ppreciative inquiry is an intentional posture of continuous discovery, search, and inquiry into conceptions of life, joy, beauty, excellence, innovation, and freedom. Ludema et al. , 2001) Selecting a positive topic to explore is an essential starting point. Appreciative inquiry is based on the premise that organizations move in the direction of what they study. For example, when groups study human problems and conflicts, they often find that both the number and severity of these problems grow. In the same manner, when groups study high human ideals and achievements, such as peak experiences, best practices, and noble accomplishments, these phenomena, too, tend to flourish.
In this sense, topic choice is a fateful act. (Ludema et al. , 2001) Appreciative inquiry teaches much about the power of the unconditional positive question, about searching for what gives life and creativity to situations rather than for problems to overcome. However, it is difficult not to conclude that in its emphasis on the positive appreciative inquiry is in danger of ignoring the shadow. When the Via Negativa is ignored, the prophetic voice is invariably silenced. Life becomes superficial, easily manipulated, and ultimately boring For while the Via Positiva teaches us the cosmic breadth of living, of our blessed bodiliness, the Via Negativa opens us to our divine depths. 1991:130)
While the Foxs warning may be a little extreme given the huge positive impact appreciative inquiry can have, nevertheless it speaks for me to the unease I feel about its relentless positiveness. The question we must ask is whether, in resisting the critical question, the problem-orientation of much action research, it avoids the depths of the human soul to which the Via Negative points us. … if we fail to let pain be pain… then pain will haunt us in nightmarish ways (1991:142) To this requires courage, a willingness to embrace pain to enter it, befriend it. So we can turn to the explore the Via Negativa as a dimension of action research.
