Rachel Pain

Bio: Rachel Pain is an academic researcher from Newcastle University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Participatory action research & Domestic violence. The author has an hindex of 44, co-authored 100 publications receiving 8227 citations. Previous affiliations of Rachel Pain include Northumbria University & University of Edinburgh.

Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation and Place

Abstract: Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches and methods have seen an explosion of recent interest in the social and environmental sciences. PAR involves collaborative research, education and action which is oriented towards social change, representing a major epistemological challenge to mainstream research traditions. It has recently been the subject of heated critique and debate and rapid theoretical and methodological development. This book captures these developments, exploring the justification, theorisation, practice and implications of PAR. It offers a critical introduction to understanding and working with PAR in different social, spatial and institutional contexts. The authors engage with PAR’s radical potential, while maintaining a critical awareness of its challenges and dangers. The book is divided into three parts. The first part explores the intellectual, ethical and pragmatic contexts of PAR; the development and diversity of approaches to PAR; recent poststructuralist perspectives on PAR as a form of power; the ethic of participation; and issues of safety and well-being. Part two is a critical exploration of the politics, places and practices of PAR. Contributors draw on diverse research experiences with differently situated groups and issues including environmentally sustainable practices, family livelihoods, sexual health, gendered experiences of employment, and specific communities such as people with disabilities, migrant groups, and young people. The principles, dilemmas and strategies associated with participatory approaches and methods including diagramming, cartographies, art, theatre, photovoice, video and geographical information systems are also discussed. Part three reflects on how effective PAR is, including the analysis of its products and processes, participatory learning, representation and dissemination, institutional benefits and challenges, and working between research, action, activism and change. The authors find that a spatial perspective and an attention to scale offer helpful means of negotiating the potentials and paradoxes of PAR. This approach responds to critiques of PAR by highlighting how the spatial politics of practising participation can be mobilised to create more effective and just research processes and outcomes. The book adds significant weight to the recent critical reappraisal of PAR, suggesting why, when, where and how we might take forward PAR’s commitment to enabling collaborative social transformation. It will be particularly useful to researchers and students of Human Geography, Development Studies and Sociology.

Social geography: participatory research

Abstract: This second of three reviews of action-orientated research in social geography focuses on one area of this work which is thriving. Moving, like many good ideas, from the field conventionally viewed as ‘development’ to wider application, participatory research (PR) has seen rapid expansion in recent years (see Breitbart, 2003; Kesby et al., 2004; Pratt, 2000). It has particular attractions for social geographers, who are beginning to contribute to wider debates and critiques around its philosophies, theories and practices. They face, too, all of the problems involved in getting academic geography ‘onto the streets’ (Fuller and Kitchin, 2004).

Place, social relations and the fear of crime: a review

Abstract: This article reviews the literature on fear of crime of interest to the geographical and environmental disciplines After discussing definitional and methodological issues, the article focuses on accounts which link fear with the physical environment, and then on fear, social identity and exclusion It considers the significance of one area of recent research that attempts to link place and social relations through developing local ethnographies of fear The review concludes with some suggestions for building upon this work, and highlights the relevance of the geographical themes discussed to current policy debates

Geographies of age: thinking relationally

Abstract: In contrast to recent treatment of other social identities, geographers' work on age still focuses disproportionately on the social-chronological margins -- the very young and (to a far lesser extent) the very old -- and rarely connects them directly. We outline the benefits of creating relational geographies of age, in order to build out from the recent explosion of children's geographies, and discuss three helpful concepts: intergenerationality, intersectionality and lifecourse. We suggest that participation provides one epistemological vehicle for getting beyond geographies which are mainly adults'.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.