Participatory action research as a tool in solving desert vernacular architecture problems in the Western Desert of Egypt

I would like to take you in a journey in a far desert spaces and places. A journey to know about  dwellings of ordinary people in desert towns and villages.  I need to tell you about inhabitants who think, design and build with the feeling that they are influencing the environment through the nature of their own homes. It is a journey about earth, mud, clay and local materials. In short it is about buildings we have come to call desert vernacular architecture.

The enthusiasm to work on my research started with an interest in vernacular architecture and a fascination with earth construction. As an architect it was always striking to learn how people designed and built vernacular settlements in the past without any technical education and how they produced spectacular complex architectural forms. Moreover their dwellings are still alive today and have managed to survive for centuries. The decision to study desert vernacular architecture in the Western Desert in Egypt was based on the personal belief that this strikingly vernacular work should be saved from the severe danger and acute risks it is now facing.

In the beginning of my work I was advised by senior colleagues not to tackle such problems in the Western Desert in Egypt. They claimed that I am swimming against the stream. I choose the little town of Balat as a location for my work application. During my four years working with Balat locals, I came to understand that Balat is a place that in addition to farming has harbored many traditional crafts for hundreds of years, including traditions of carpentry, blacksmithing, oil pressing, mud plastering, mud casting and pottery making. Inhabitants who lived harsh and ascetic lives were working and continue to work and build within ancient traditions that personified discipline, persistence, and insistence on perfection. I learned a great deal from these people during my work. I baked, cooked, plastered, cast mud brick and shared with them many social activities as well.

Along the periphery of the compact urban fabric of this little town of Balat there are contrasts and extremes. You feel there is another world with different patterns of identity and spirit, a world of modernity and buildings made of steel and cement instead of traditional materials. People who have built that new world within the vernacular one have created a contrast in which there are fundamental differences between vernacular and contemporary systems of building. Although the modern concrete built environment is to a large extent brutal to vernacular environments, it contains elements of human ambitions towards a dream for a better future that should be considered when using a vernacular approach. Desert vernacular settlements are a precious past that must be conserved and retained. However, I believe that understanding the past vernacular practice is also a tool for improving the present and future. This belief is the driving force that has kept me working with my research. 

I cannot deny that my project has encountered some problems along the way and has sometimes been a tiring process due to lack of accurate maps and at other times lack of documentation. Travelling long distances and staying for long periods in the desert seemed at times to be torture, but now looking back I perceive it as an enjoyable learning experience and a rare chance to get in touch with myself.

I look forward to continuing this discussion with you! Please feel free to offer comment or question. FREE access to this article for the next 30 days is available through this link.

Marwa  Dabaieh

Balancing Acts: Interactive researcher as a virtual participant

In many professional roles we struggle with how to balance our involvement in different relations and work tasks. For instance, for a manager it is sometimes difficult to know when to delegate and when to instruct the employees exactly what to do. For a school teacher, it is important to be aware of the responsibility that comes with the power to impact the minds of our youths. A teacher, thus, needs the ability to know when to empower the students to make their own judgement calls and when to provide the correct answers.

Similar balancing acts are also significant for researchers involved in different forms of action and interactive research. Should we as researchers tell practitioners exactly what to do to solve a problem, or should we perhaps assume a more objective and distant role? Naturally, both of these positions come with pros and cons and that is why we in our paper in Action Research try to find some middle ground by discussing the concept of the researcher as a virtual participant.

We argue that it is neither possible nor desirable for social scientific researchers to refrain entirely from participating in practice, but that such involvement must come with some restrictions. An action or interactive researcher should be able to participate in practice by supporting learning processes, voice critical issues, and encouraging practitioners to construct questions relevant for their development. However, researchers should not “go native” and end up taking responsibility for solving the problems that the practitioners are facing. This balancing act, between engaging in practice while still remaining an outsider, is what we in our paper refer to as acting as a virtual participant.

We hope this paper can stimulate a discussion in the field of action research, as well as in other related contexts that deal with similar issues. Are there for instance any virtual teachers or managers out there? Would virtual parenting be a suitable concept of use? Perhaps not, but we look forward to any comments on the topic of our paper!

You can access our paper FREE for the next 30 days by clicking THIS LINK.

Fredrik Sandberg and Andreas Wallo

BRIDGING THE GAP OF KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION: A CASE FOR PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH

Some researchers could be offended by the following questions: Is all research justifiable in resource poor countries?  Is it ethical to do research that is not linked to action?

“Why should I be responsible for action, I am a researcher”, said a colleague. “Is it ethical to curtail my freedom as a researcher?”, she continued.

The relationship between knowledge, which research produces, and action which activists love, is not easy to establish. All researchers do not often explore this relationship. Is this because they are driven by the desire ‘to know’?  Thus, knowledge acquisition and knowledge production is their priority; ensuring validity of knowledge and considering the rights and interests of the human subjects may be secondary.

Let’s reframe this concern for the relationship between knowledge and action. Let’s concede that some research can be absolved of the challenge to link it to action – example, research in mathematics, chemistry and physics, to name some disciplines. (Oops, even this could be problematic, as use of pure research of physics and mathematics led to the discovery of the atom bomb, and it got used to destroy cities and kills thousands of people. Were those mathematicians and physicists carried a moral responsibility on how their research was used?) BUT, call all research be so absolved of relating knowledge to action? For example, can empirical research around issues of women’s empowerment and subordinate status, be absolved from linking knowledge and action?

Concerns cited above arose as research on women’s empowerment  began to be planned by the research team of Community Health Sciences Department of Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. 

The research team decided to ensure that the processes of generating knowledge about factors that impede and facilitate women’s empowerment MUST be linked with action. This was taken as an imperative because the concern was phrased as an ethical concern.  It would be unethical, said the team, to gather data for constructing knowledge from women whose rights to shape their lives were constrained because of the social norms, if the women respondents do not get the opportunity to reflect on their own lives and examine the options they have. What choices they made would have to be theirs, and the research team was not to tell them what they should do. The research team was not to be didactic, instead would be facilitative in initiating a thinking and analysis process with the women. What they women would say would be the data of the research. Research thus became the pedagogy for generating action.

Participatory Action Research establishes the link between knowledge and action. It shows how the processes of knowledge production are as important as knowledge as the end-product of the process. It shows that the ‘tools’ used in the process of knowledge making play a critical role. The tools of  PRA (participatory reflection and analysis), shaped by the ideology of Paulo Freire  make a great difference in the research processes, as they  invite the research respondents to reflect and analyze.

The study on women’s empowerment used various PRA tools for facilitating women to be analysts of their lives. This was done in groups, so that the process of such analysis could give women the opportunities for collective actions. Social change, it was assumed, would come from collective action rather than individuals striving for personal gains only (emphasis on ‘only’).

This study on women’s empowerment has raised some issues:

1.    The ethics of linking knowledge and action.

2.     The moral responsibilities of researchers in developing countries which are also resource poor countries.

3.     What research methods are more likely to empower research subjects?

     We are interested in your thoughts on these issues and our article! You can access it for the next 30 days by clicking HERE.