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Introduction to Action Research
The Second Edition of Introduction to Action Research: Social Research for Social Change makes social science matter! It focuses on how it is possible to combine practical problem solving with generating new theoretical insights. Authors Davydd J. Greenwood and Morten Levin combine a thorough discussion of the epistemological foundations of action research with a broad overview of major contemporary trends in the field.
Introduction to Action Research
How do social researchers know how to select the action research (AR) approach most appropriate for their study? This book provides an overview of the different approaches. The authors introduce the history, philosophy, social change agenda, methodologies, ethical arguments for, and fieldwork tools of AR. They present an extensive range of cases, some from their own experience and, untypically, they rehearse failures as well as successes. The book will prove invaluable for both newcomers and experienced researchers and practitioners.
Action Research
Supported bilaterally by Sweden and Norway, the Scandinavian Action Research Development Program (ACRES Action Research in Scandinavia) emphasized conceptualizing research questions and self-conscious writing processes for experienced action researchers. Participants came from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States. A learning experiment in the tradition of Scandinavian industrial democracy, ACRES had both intellectual and organizational tensions common to action research projects. This book includes theoretical and historical overviews of action research, reflections on the writing process, narratives about the design and difficult internal processes of ACRES, and a selection of the participants' writings. A particularly unique feature of the book is the discussion of the problematic relationship between action research and conventional modes of research writing and an analysis of the complex social processes collaboratively managed projects create, in combination with a set of participant cases.
The Taming of Evolution
The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood offers a sustained critique of the nature/nurture debate, revealing the complexity of the relationship between science and ideology. He maintains that popular contemporary theories, most notably E. O. Wilson’s human sociobiology and Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism, represent pre-Darwinian notions overlaid by elaborate evolutionary terminology. Greenwood first details the humoral-environmental and Great Chain of Being theories that dominated Western thinking before Darwin. He systematically compares these ideas with those later influenced by Darwin’s theories, illuminating the surprising continuities between them. Greenwood suggests that it would be neither difficult nor socially dangerous to develop a genuinely evolutionary understanding of human beings, so long as we realized that we could not derive political and moral standards from the study of biological processes.
Creating a New Public University and Reviving Democracy
Public universities are in crisis, waning in their role as central institutions within democratic societies. Denunciations are abundant, but analyses of the causes and proposals to re-create public universities are not. Based on extensive experience with Action Research-based organizational change in universities and private sector organizations, Levin and Greenwood analyze the wreckage created by neoliberal academic administrators and policymakers. The authors argue that public universities must be democratically organized to perform their educational and societal functions. The book closes by laying out Action Research processes that can transform public universities back into institutions that promote academic freedom, integrity, and democracy.
Foundations for Inquiry
Most books about research address the ?how to” of inquiry, rather than the ?why.” Foundations for Inquiry enlightens readers about the variety of philosophic assumptions regarding inquiry and organizational phenomena; demonstrates how these assumptions shape subsequent choices about theories; and shows how theoretical and philosophic choices consequently shape and guide the research process.
Hosts and Guests
Tourism—one of the world's largest industries—has long been appreciated for its economic benefits, but in this volume tourism receives a unique systematic scrutiny as a medium for cultural exchange. Modern developments in technology and industry, together with masterful advertising, have created temporarily leisured people with the desire and the means to travel. They often in turn effect profound cultural change in the places they visit, and the contributors to this work all attend to the impact these "guests" have on their "hosts." In contrast to the dramatic economic transformations, the social repercussions of tourism are subtle and often recognized only by the indigenous peoples themselves and by the anthropologists who have studied them before and after the introduction of tourism. The case studies in Hosts and Guests examine the five types of tourism—historical, cultural, ethnic, environmental, and recreational—and their impact on diverse societies over a broad geographical range
River Science
River Science is a rapidly developing interdisciplinary field at the interface of the natural sciences, engineering and socio-political sciences. It recognises that the sustainable management of contemporary rivers will increasingly require new ways of characterising them to enable engagement with the diverse range of stakeholders. This volume represents the outcome of research by many of the authors and their colleagues over the last 40 years and demonstrates the integral role that River Science now plays in underpinning our understanding of the functioning of natural ecosystems, and how societal demands and historic changes have affected these systems. The book will inform academics, policy makers and society in general of the benefits of healthy functioning riverine systems, and will increase awareness of the wide range of ecosystem goods and services they provide.
Participatory Action Research
Through a rejection of the traditional separation between the researcher and the research setting, this volume discusses a philosophy in which the researcher is fully involved in the process of organizational learning and change. William Foote Whyte and his collaborators outline the theory and methods behind participatory action research, weigh up its strengths and weaknesses and then present cases where this research strategy has been used in both industry and agriculture from a variety of countries on four continents.
