Action Research, Democracy and (Global)Citizenship. Building bridges among traditions and practices

The theme of the 6th Symposium of the International Journal of Action Research invited participants to explore the role of Action Research on the edges that societies are facing today around the world.1 Among these edges, citizenship as a necessary socio-political process to the functioning of democracy is of special relevance, and in a sense connects with all the other edges, from poverty and migration to climate change. The paper is intended to be an initial exploration of how Action / Participatory Research in its different traditions implicitly or explicitly conceives its role in the promotion of citizenship. The argument is that there is an important democratising legacy sometimes lost or forgotten in favor of a more instrumental approach for organisational functioning and productivity. Listening to some selected voices from Europe and Latin America will lead to the proposal of a framework for comparative studies on the theme.