Formality and Friendship: Research Ethics Review and Participatory Action Research

While Participatory Action Research (PAR) is gaining a foothold in geographical research practice, universities and major funding bodies are imposing ethics review procedures that are inherently contradictory to doing PAR. This paper examines these paradoxes paying particular attention to the way that research participants and researchers are constructed differently in PAR and ethics review. The implications of these differences are then examined in the context of an ongoing research project and some modifications to ethics review processes are suggested.