Our Future Environment

A couple of years ago I took a class on Participatory Action Research (PAR). At that time I was just interested in it as a research methodology and only heard about PAR being used in urban education settings. Lately, I have been wondering if PAR is used in other community settings (like environmental justice) and what literature exists describing the roadblocks inherit in community participation.

If I do push a social justice agenda in my research (and use PAR) who do I consider to be the “affected” and how do I justify my right to fight for their rights? When I think about who is affected by poor environmental planning I don’t just see a race/class division. But, even if there is such a division, Am I the right person to fight for “them”?

A possible answer is this: Water quality, air quality, access to green space: these are elements of our daily lives that, yes affect some more than others, but as a person with the position to research and gain access to policy institutions, I should use that skill to work with others to fight for environmental justice.

Filed under: observations and opinions, social justice on February 27th, 2008