The Role of Action Research (AR) in environmental research: Learning from a local organic food and farming research project

Abstract

We expand on the FMA model of inquiry elucidated by Checkland and Holwell (Syst Pract Act Res 11:9, 1998) and identify three kinds of research: interactive Action Research (AR), extractive participatory research, and traditional science, that were integrated into an interdisciplinary agro-environmental research project involving researchers from eight countries around the Baltic Sea. The research project held the goal of creating scientific understanding of the ecological, economic and social effects of the sustainable development of local food systems, while also having the explicit goal of implementing change in the studied systems. Based on our experience working as action researchers in the project, we highlight the role that normative goals and facilitation process competence play in complex interdisciplinary research projects. Our reflections focus on project design, including the relation between AR and other kinds of research when employed in a single project, and includes reflections on preconditions for stakeholder participation in AR projects.

Keywords

action research; participation; local food systems; organic farming; research project design

Published in

Systemic Practice and Action Research
2008, volume: 21, number: 2, pages: 105-131
Publisher: SPRINGER/PLENUM PUBLISHERS

SLU Authors

• Haden, Andrew

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Ljung, Magnus

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Management

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-007-9088-y

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/77995