Caring in action research

Abstract

It is a humble verb: “To care.” We say we care when we see the devastation of megastorms and wildfires, and Pacific islands disappearing in a rising ocean. We care about Black lives, about Afghan women, about indigenous people, all dispossessed and done violence to by the same world-historical processes that create great wealth and wellbeing for some. We care about our families, friends, and ourselves. The small and the huge are connected. Action researchers, committed to praxis and shifting oppressive power relationships, care about all these things, and about methodologies that foster conditions for collaborative knowledge creation that responds to what we care about. We are also asking: is this form of caring sufficient? How can we make caring actionable?