Editorial: Future perspectives on action research

Abstract

This is my first editorial as editor in chief of International Journal of Action Research (IJAR), and I am happy to open it by referring to the first contribution in this issue, a tribute to Danilo Streck, who has preceded me serving our journal for 12 years, from 2010 to 2021. The tribute is signed byWerner Fricke, who made the initial proposal and Olav Eikeland, Richard Ennals, Øyvind Palshaugen, Emil Albert Sobottka and me, who have had the pleasure to work with Danilo in the group of editors of IJAR in recent years. As part of the same transition process, Øyvind Palshaugen will not continue as editor in the future. It is thus a good moment to learn from his experience with action research, which we do through an interview entitled “40 years in 40 minutes” where Øyvind starts by sharing how he came to action research; reflects on relevant authors, organisations and traditions in his trajectory, and discusses the “use of words” and the relevance of action research cases as a mean to create knowledge of general value. These changes in IJAR take place in a moment when humanity is dealing, among others, with a pandemic, wars, and the imminent need to react to climate change. We need, thus, to continue asking ourselves what was, what is, and what can be the contribution of action research to social challenges. Werner Fricke, Davydd Greenwood, Danilo Streck and I have been writing about it since we met in the IJAR 2020 event. At that moment Werner Fricke posed the emergent challenges he saw for action research and invited the rest of us to develop a coherent argument about it without hiding our differences and diverse priorities. We believe we have come together with an article, “On Social Productivity and Future Perspectives on Action Research”, that manifests ways of making our differences count. Our exploration of common ground starts by acknowledging that the new forms of capitalism are fracturing individuals into apolitical wants and needs, neutralising the core of action research, which is the integrity of the individual and the social fabric. Based on the discussion of free market, disaster capitalism and surveillance capitalism, we have searched for positive deviants. These are action research related processes where participants aim at counteracting these trends in some way or other. Learning from these experiences, we discuss how action research can contribute to re-creating the citizen-actor, and to integrating individuals in society. Our aim with this paper is not to provide any definite answers, but to initiate a dialogue forum in IJAR on the future perspectives of action research, stimulating a discussion about the questions raised. Regarding the actual and historical strengths and weaknesses of action research and the social and economic changes that have occurred since the times of Kurt Lewin and Karl Polanyi we think the time has come to reflect on whether and how action research can meet the challenges of the more and more aggressive and destructive forms of modern capitalism. We insist in action researchers’ responsibility to foster and to build on the integrity and common decency of the individual, to enable active citizens to self-determination at work and to create democratic societies. Action research is about democratic and