Participatory Research Methods – Communicative Research Forums and Social Self-Clarification

1. Participatory Research Methods – Communicative Research Forums and Social Self-Clarification

2. Participation – Beyond Research? • Participation as an epistemological means of and a methodological tool for fulfilling central claims of qualitative inquiry Stefan Thomas

3. 1. A Participatory Research Project Stefan Thomas

4. St. Ursulaheim - Social Services for Homeless People Residential Housing offering "wrap around" services Key-features of St.Ursula-Services Drop-in Centre (Wärmestube) Ambulant Medical Treatment (Pflasterstube) 6 1/2 of 18 positions staffed with ex-clients/inhabitants Institutional platform for a grassroots organization of homeless people Rules of the house democratically set up by clients A culture of institutional participation and political engagement Open access to all institutional committees Stefan Thomas

5. The Research Project • We established a participatory research approach over the last 3 years • Everyone who works and lives in the St. Ursula Shelter can participate Stefan Thomas

6. 1. Workshop • Formation of the research team consisting ofclients - professionals - researchers • Joined construction of the research question

7. Results of the first workshop:Research Question Stefan Thomas

8. 2. Workshop: Collecting narratives about “the road to St. Ursula” • Invitation to an open discussion to all inhabitants of the residential home • First interviews about the “road to St. Ursula”

9. 3. to 6. Workshop • Training in scientific methodsUnderstanding scientific methods • Introduction in interview construction • Interview training • Joint interviews • Developing an digital archive about the history of the institution • Training in methods of data analysis • Collaborative interpretation workshops Stefan Thomas

10. 2. Theses for Participatory Research Methods Stefan Thomas

11. PRM and Qualitative Research • openness towards the research topic • communication as a central means of the research process • importance of socio-cultural meaning and subjective interpretations • Theorization based on the everyday understanding/notions of everyday life Stefan Thomas

12. Communicative research forums • from belief to intersubjectivity to discursive truth • communicative research forums as a tool to build up spheres of (counter) public • The research participants do research on the contradictions and restrictions of their daily practices. The research forum starts with the articulation of the individual’s perspective on a subject/problem but it may become a deliberation of general interests prevalent among the participants trough the public discourse Stefan Thomas

13. Social Self-Clarification • The project on social self-clarification aims on initiating a self-reflexive discourse on the psychosocial conditions of good living, satisfaction and prosperity. This includes the question on the societal restrictions of individual and social wellbeing and development caused by unjust, unequal, irrational living conditions Stefan Thomas

14. Science and social self-clarification • The task of science: Initiating public spheres of social self-clarification: • Scientific theory stays in touch with the definitions, notions and problems of everyday practices • Theory and method becomes scientific tools to get in a reflexive distance to everyday practices • Science makes explicit what everyday practices already knows implicitly • Science fosters the claims of an open discourse by its self-reflexive and rational standards in the course of deliberate reasoning • (Critical) Science refuses personalization of social problems by focusing on social structures and the societal intermediation of individual existence Stefan Thomas

15. Thanks for your attention!