Participatory design and action research: Notes on an unfinished agenda in design anthropology

This chapter provides a historical account situating participatory design (PD) relative to allied movements in the social sciences, notably participatory action research (PAR). The narrative encompasses the second half of the 20th century. A singular characteristic of PD and PAR is their reciprocal tendency to combine: PD pulls designers into social research, and PAR pulls social researchers into design. As points of contact between social research and design, PD and PAR have been foundational to design anthropology in ways that remain only partly recognized. As design and as action research, participatory movements are grounded in aspirational politics that are committed to participatory democracy as both method and objective. As a method, participatory democracy demands that design and social research alike be community led, a commitment that takes on a radical urgency when the objective is emancipatory change in marginalized and oppressed communities. But although the language and tools of PD and PAR have been broadly adopted, there is a visible anti-politics at work, and durable change that scales remains rare. The broad adoption of participatory tool kits is thus not necessarily evidence of a paradigm shift toward authentically democratic design and research practices.