Chapter 2: The Community Cooperative Project: Confronting Contradictions in the Use of Participatory Action Research

“Traditional” methods of schooling have long been critiqued for being a mechanism of bureaucratic and state control (Bourdieu, Wacquant, & Farage, 1994; Illich, 1971), reproducing capitalist relations of exploitation (Althusser, 1971; Bowles & Gintis, 1977), and stifling individual autonomy (Dewey, 1915). In response, critical educators have advocated democratic and nonhierarchical approaches to teaching and learning as a means for equalizing power relations in and outside the classroom (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 2011). At the same time, however, scholars have argued that because the production of space is already political, space is never neutral, but rather a manifestation of camouflaged power structures (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986). This leaves critical educators with a dilemma: How do we design for equity in a world already structured by systems of oppression (Smith, 2013)?