ActionResearchExtensions

=Action Research and Extensions in some Notable Organizations=

> We did make a terrible lot of mistakes... So we had a little self-criticism, and we said, what we know, the solutions we have, are for the problems that people don't have. And we're trying to solve their problems by saying they have the problems that we have the solutions for. That's academia, so it won't work.

> So what we've got to do is to unlearn much of what we've learned, and then try to learn how to learn from the people. Myles Horton (1983)

Action Research has been given many meanings. In this book we imagine an individual, such as a student, wanting "to do something to change the current situation, that is, to take action," and then building a constituency for that action. As mentioned in the inroduction to Part II, "constituency building happens when you draw people into reflection, dialogue, and other participatory processes that elicit ideas about the current situation, clarify objectives, and generate ideas and plans to take action to improve it; when people work together to implement actions; and when people see evaluations of how good the actions or changes were in achieving the objectives." Some texts on Action Research emphasize the last aspect of evaluation (or data collection and analysis), as if research (or "evidence") is key to achieving change. But there are too many research reports that gather dust and too many researchers who lament that policy-makers and leaders have ignored the results of research. To emphasize constituency building throughout the Action Research cycle and epicycles, as we do here, is to imagine that individuals take their ideas for change seriously enough to want others to adopt or adapt them.

The emphasis on constituency building is informed and inspired by Participatory Action Research (PAR), in which social scientists shape their inquiries through on-going work with and empowerment of the people most affected by some aspect of economic or social change. Greenwood and Levin (1998, 173-185) review various approaches to PAR (see also Park et al. 1993; Selener 1993), but the power of participation is better conveyed by accounts of the struggles of local peoples to influence science and politics, e.g., Adams (1975); Gibbs (1982); Brown and Mikklesen (1990). PAR or its cognates are most widely promoted in rural development in poor areas of the world, from which cases are often drawn to illustrate the rise of citizen participation and of new institutions of civil society (Burbidge 1997). The following example of PAR is drawn from Taylor (2005, 204ff).

In the mid-1980s CARE, an international aid and development organization, decided to respond to the excessive removal of trees in agricultural areas in western Kenya. They embarked on a project to establish an extension system that would promote and provide support for tree planting by farmers on their holdings. CARE sought to overcome the shortcomings of previous agro-forestry projects in the Sahelian region of Africa, which had largely failed—one estimate of the average cost those projects had incurred for each surviving tree was $500. At the same time, CARE wanted a research component built in to analyze systems of farm production, not only of crops, but also of things necessary to basic household needs, such as for energy, shelter, and water. The research aimed to tease out the trade-offs, constraints and benefits in growing trees within those systems (Vonk 1987).
 * Whose trees are these?**
 * Whose trees are these?**

The leaders of this development project, agroforesters Remko Vonk and Louise Buck, identified that one reason for previous failures was that the community-based nurseries and plantations of previous projects had left the beneficiaries of the tree products and timber ill-defined (Vonk 1987). Many of the local participants saw the tree planting as someone else's project, and thought the benefits would not likely come their way. Vonk and Buck reasoned that if trees were planted on individual farms, the ownership would be clearer; the local Kenyans implementing the project would also be the ones reaping the benefits. Moreover, the project leaders aimed to facilitate local participation in the design and evaluation stages of the project. In pursuing this, they drew upon their experience in a pilot project and upon the experience of others in previous health care extension projects.

This combination of local and outside influence characterized the project as it developed. First, CARE only entered only the farming communities that invited them. Initial interviews were conducted to learn about the existing use of trees on and off the farms: Which trees are being used; which had been used; which could be used? What are the reasons for not planting trees? Much of the interviewing was conducted by extension workers who CARE directors trained not to transmit information, but instead to "Respect, Encourage, Ask, and Listen." In response to information emerging from the interviews, CARE’s preliminary plan of planting four species was modified to allow for selections from a menu of forty-eight species. The techniques of cultivation that the researchers adopted, using indigenous systems as a starting point, were understandable to the farmers and could be managed by them within their labor and other seasonal constraints. In turn, the extension agents' connection with farmers helped them plan, monitor, collect data on, and analyze the different tree-planting arrangements.

The resulting agro-forestry practices and results differed markedly from those of previous systems and from the approaches of CARE's agro-forestry specialists, which had been on trees that would directly serve agriculture, for example, by fixing nitrogen and making it available in the soil. The case of Markhamia platyclayx is illustrative. This species, virtually unmentioned in the agro-forestry literature, was the most commonly found species in cropland in the district. The tree did not enhance crop growth, but, as interviews with the farmers revealed, M. platyclayx grew quickly and so was used to demarcate family compounds and plots. Reduction in crop production because of shading and root competition could be minimized if the trees were pruned regularly. The leaves became a source of mulch and compost, and scattered trees contributed to soil conservation and had a windbreak effect that protected the crops in the fields. The trees could be cut for poles when cash income was needed. They could be used to provide timber or shade. Finally, the leaves were used in preparing food and in medicines. CARE research confirmed that farmers generally knew how to manage the species well for these different uses. At the same time, CARE was able to help the farmers by contributing research results on the optimal time for harvesting of trees to be used for poles and on possible causes of seedling death.

In general, the trees that farmers favored turned out to have the following characteristics: They tended to require low management. They were intercropped with crops or even interspersed throughout the fields; they were not only planted as hedgerows. Their products, such as firewood and poles for building, sometimes compensated for the negative impact they had on the yields of adjacent crops. Over and above these characteristics, other factors influencing use of different tree species on particular farms or more generally included: the history of different farms, in particular, where family compounds had been abandoned leaving its trace in nutrients from feces and ashes, and how land had been subdivided among sons; the different needs of men and women; and the need for firewood in areas close to Lake Victoria in order to smoke or fry Nile perch (a species that, unlike the fish it has displaced since being introduced to the Lake in the 1950s, is too oily to be sun-dried).

CARE's project involved researchers’ collaboration not only with farmers, but also with community groups. For example, researchers worked with schools to establish seedling nurseries. When termite removal of seeds became a problem, the project leaders insisted that pesticides not be used near schoolchildren and sought non-toxic solutions. Some control schemes suggested by the community members failed, but success was eventually achieved following some farmers' recommendation that seeds be surrounded with ashes. Again, in the spirit of collaboration, one CARE official's innovation of using plastic to avoid dampening the ashes when watering the crops reduced the number of times the ashes had to be reapplied. This combination of local and outside influence occurred in many other varying ways. The extension workers CARE trained were young adults from the area, who would continue to live and work in the area after CARE withdrew. Yet, CARE deliberately chose to train women and men in equal numbers, which would not have occurred if selection had been left to the unequal gender norms of the community. CARE allowed local practices to form the focus of their research, but the CARE agro-foresters also made observations and conducted trials to relate seedling survival, growth rates, nutrient contributions, and cash values of products of different species to the soils, planting densities, and pruning and harvesting practices, and so on. The results of these investigations informed the advice they gave to the local farmers and to agro-foresters in other areas of the Sahelian region.

CARE's emphasis on achieving meaningful local participation stemmed from an awareness that a successful project would require a complex set of negotiations involving the organization funding the project and government bodies. Indeed, CARE deliberately located this project in an area without significant involvement by government forestry workers so that the project could become established and visibly successful before it incited bureaucratic interference. In retrospect, CARE officials concluded that if this project were to be taken as a model for other areas and if the extension networks they had established were to remain viable, they needed more government endorsement than they had sought. This reservation aside, the participatory approaches of subsequent CARE projects in agriculture, forestry, healthcare, and other areas drew heavily on the model of the Kenyan agro-forestry project. The success of the agro-forestry project was evident when, during the evaluation process, the farmers were asked: "Who decided which species to grow?  Who owns the production process?" The answer to both questions was clear; the farmers exclaimed: "These trees are ours!" ||

Participation in rural development projects is not always invoked with the sincerity or the success evident in the CARE project. Indeed, the mandate for participation can be wielded in disempowering ways by State or International agencies (Agrawal 2001; Ribot 1999; see also Peters 1996 for a review of the politics of participation and participation rhetoric). Nevertheless, in industrialized countries as well as in poor rural regions environmental planning and management increasingly builds in stakeholder collaboration, that is, explicit procedures for participation of representatives of community groups, government agencies, corporations, and private property owners.

Of course, participation, collaboration, constituency-building, and action research are not confined to rural development and environmental issues. One notable organization that has for several decades been "facilitating a culture of participation" in community and institutional development around the world is the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) (see earlier discussion of strategic participatory planning and focused conversations). Another notable organization is the Highlander Center, in Tennessee, which Myles Horton (quoted above) helped to start in the 1930s.

//to be continued//

Myles Horton recounts his response to a priest who, frustrated at his own attempts to implement the Highlander approach in a labor school back in the early CIO days, tried to get at the problem by learning what books that had influenced Horton's life the most. "I can tell you, but it won' help you because like all people I got my own track of development; my own background is part of it. I grew up in a religious family. Undoubtedly the first book that influenced my life was the bible.  No question about that…. He asked what particularly. OK.  There's the New Testament; there's the Old Testament.  In the New Testament you learn about love. You can't be a revolutionary, you can't want to change society unless you love people – there's no point in it.  OK, so you love people; that's right out of the bible. The other thing is the Old Testament tells us primarily about the creation.  God was a creator.  If people were born in God's image, you got to be creative; you can't be followers, puppets.  You got to be creative."