Participatory Action Research (PAR) combines local experimentation, empirical research and action learning to co-produce solutions to complex problems. PAR projects tend to bring to the frontstage the collaborative process and promises of social change. Yet evidence for real change is sparse, and possible explanations are kept backstage: friction, conflict and power asymmetries. In our projects, we repeatedly encountered conflicts that could not be constructively addressed; we coined these Participation Shenanigans. They presented as high-drama, low-substance micropolitics such as emotional outbursts, ad hominem arguments and silent exclusions. Because they defy participatory logic, we unconsciously smoothed them over or ignored them. Drawing on Foucault’s philosophy of power and his notion of the dispositif, we analyzed three cases from PAR projects in Dutch urban neighborhoods. We used an abductive approach and Participation Shenanigans as a sensitizing concept to trace micropolitical conflict and power dynamics. Neighborhood Gossip, Schoolyard Politics and Property Drama show how legitimate concerns are classified as gossip, how critique of systemic asymmetry is empathically redirected to interpersonal drama, and how institutional norms are installed in physical locations determining who may speak and who is ignored or excluded. We demonstrate how Participation Shenanigans signal the working of a participation dispositif in which citizens’ concerns and critiques are defused, redirected and absorbed within public governance practices and made inactionable for local governments. The dispositif sorts “good” participatory residents from troublemakers, sets norms about who can participate and how, and bends participation to legitimize public governance. Participation Shenanigans, then, mark places where this dispositif destabilizes and harmony and dialogue falter. Rather than ignoring or smoothing them over, PAR researchers should engage with them as resistance and counter-conduct and meddle in micropolitics to support action; writing about our own shenanigans was our way of taking responsibility for our role in silencing and exclusion.
Schrevel et al. (Mon,) studied this question.