Liberation Sociology by Joe R. Feagin Hernan Vera Kimberly Ducey

Author:Joe R. Feagin, Hernan Vera, Kimberly Ducey [Joe R. Feagin, Hernan Vera, Kimberly Ducey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317264699
Google: MTPvCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-17T06:00:06+00:00

ACTION RESEARCH: THE WORK OF ORLANDO FALS-BORDA

We will now turn to some major examples of participatory action research (PAR) in the empowerment tradition. Orlando Fals-Borda, a leading Latin American sociologist, was one of the first to engage in participatory action research on behalf of the poor. He pioneered in action research strategies. His methods have sometimes been criticized by mainstream sociologists, and for a time his research alliances with peasant movements in Colombia even led the US Department of State to refuse him entry visas to the United States.8

In 1955 Fals-Borda published a pioneering book called Peasant Society in the Colombian Andes, a study that he completed without institutional sponsorship and that was the first major empirical sociological research done in Colombia.9 Over the next few decades, he honed new participatory research strategies working with poor Colombian farmers. For example, in an Andean study, Fals-Borda and his research team examined the development of a rural community. At the time, he was chair of a university sociology department and head of Colombia’s Ministry of Agriculture. This project involved community action in a rural Andean community of seventy poor families, a community whose younger generations were leaving. In the 1950s, the local school was in a dilapidated building with few windows. Since the municipal authorities did not respond to calls for repairs, the local people organized bazaars and gave the money collected to the authorities, who still did little. At the same time, urban growth and technologies were creating some new values and often undermining such traditional cooperative practices as “brazo prestado” (the borrowed arm), in which labor contributed to a neighbor’s project was repaid later. In his report on the research project, Fals-Borda commented, “The new values being adopted seemed to destroy the old social structure without offering any apparent compensation or alternatives to a new integration.”10 Under these conditions, the apparent apathy of the local people made it seem impossible to solve the problems of the community without outside agency.

After doing research in this rural community in the late 1950s, three change agents—a rural sociologist, a social worker, and an architect—decided to help the community meet its own defined goals. By providing the community with the results of the sociological research—which included a demonstration of the people’s concern for a better school—these researchers were able to spur a local community meeting. All residents attended, and the social worker and the sociologist helped to facilitate discussion. When the mayor came to understand the strong concerns of the people for a school, he offered to provide building materials if residents supplied the labor. A newly created community organization elected its own board of directors to represent the community. An important step was the appointment of a treasurer, who would keep the money collected within the community and thereby increase the confidence of the people. After the new school was completed, numerous community activities and organizations were developed, thereby strengthening the local community.11

A striking difference between Fals-Borda’s research report on the project and

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