The working group “Participatory Processes and Methodologies” proposes as a field of study, reflection and intervention an area that is composed of two dimensions relevant to the work of Latin American social researchers: on the one hand, it will work on the processes of social and citizen participation (instituting and instituted) seeking to improve our understanding of their trajectories of change, their challenges and the conditions for their functioning in this continent, and on the other hand, the field of participatory methodologies that accompany the processes of action-reflection-action as an approach that supports the implementation of interventions.

DEMOCRATIC PROCESSES OF SOCIAL AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

Following Cunill (1997), four forms of participation can be identified: social, community, political, and civic. Based on this classification, we will focus primarily on two types: social participation, which refers to actions whose aims are located on the associative or social plane itself (not contemplating direct intervention in the public sphere beyond the fact that the public sphere may be affected by their actions), and therefore the main interlocutor is not the State, but rather the social organizations themselves and society in general; and civic participation, in which people become directly involved in public affairs, thus generating a particular type of interaction between citizens and the State for the definition of collective goals and the means to achieve them (Villarreal, 2009). Citizen participation, in turn, presents two analytical variants: one in which public institutions attempt to institutionally guide participation, and another in which organized or autonomous citizens seek to influence one of the levels of government outside of the stipulated institutional processes (Ziccardi, 1998).

On the one hand, established citizen participation will lead us to work with participatory instruments implemented in Latin American countries: neighborhood councils, participatory budgeting, municipal councils (accountability), participatory strategic plans, social advisory councils, participatory urban planning processes, prior consultations with indigenous communities, among others. On the other hand, the collective action of different social organizations operating outside of state-sponsored spaces can range from what we define as social participation to constituent citizen participation. The actions of Latin American social movements and networks, when they are not part of formal participation mechanisms, would be examples of one of these two variants of participation, such as the autonomous forms of territorial organization of indigenous communities in Mexico and Peru, or forms of militant research such as popular universities in several countries, the processes followed by the MST or the National Movement for the Struggle for Morality in Brazil, mass actions such as #NiUnaMenos, #OcupaWallStreet or #ConMisHijosNoTeMetas, the factories taken over in Argentina, etc.

These different forms of participation have been gaining importance in Latin America, coinciding with a representative democracy that has been questioned in recent decades in both political and academic circles. This is compounded by the rise of nationalist, neoliberal, and populist right-wing movements, with increasing militant support from evangelical churches that challenge many of the rights won through social struggles. One of the current challenges for democracies to overcome their shortcomings is to advance in terms of “quality,” that is, to “democratize democracy” through the active participation of citizens not only in free, fair, and frequent elections, but also in political decision-making and in demanding accountability from those in power (Levine and Molina, 2007; O’Donnell, 2004).

These proposals are associated with processes of decentralization and citizen empowerment (Noboa, 2012). In this sense, it can be stated that in Latin America, demands for participation have had an impact on national and local constitutions, resulting in an expansion of direct, participatory, and community-based democracy (Lissidini, Welp, and Zovatto, 2014), which must be critically analyzed in light of their practical application. To the increase in institutionalized mechanisms of participatory democracy (Welp, 2015), we must add the increase and diversification of constituent practices of participation (social protests, popular education, sociocultural animation, and other practices of social movements and organizations, community and self-managed organizations). In this sense, Calderón (2012) points out that these have shown different directions and intensities. On the one hand, we find demands aimed at improving basic levels of access to and quality of public services, and on the other hand, demands more oriented toward intercultural dynamics (Lissidini and Blasina, 2013). New actors have appeared on the scene (such as the Mapuche, Aymara, and other Indigenous peoples), and new issues have emerged (equal marriage, marijuana legalization in Uruguay, student demands in Chile, among others), demonstrating the overlap of a materialist agenda with a post-materialist one (Lissidini et al., 2014).

PARTICIPATORY METHODOLOGIES

This dimension is both independent of and complementary to the previous one, insofar as participatory research processes contribute to empowerment and social and civic participation. Latin America has been the scene of the emergence and development of participatory research methodologies (popular education, communication for social change, action research in social psychology, thematic research, participatory action research, systematization of experiences, collective recovery of memory and history, activist research), which have sought to contribute to the empowerment of popular sectors of the population that mobilize around collective demands and rights, forming organizations and social movements that are an alternative to the dominant models of the State and economy.

Indeed, with the thematic research incorporated by Paulo Freire into his educational proposal in the 1960s, and especially with the participatory action research developed by Orlando Fals Borda and his team of researchers at the beginning of the following decade (Gajardo, 1985), Latin American social sciences committed to emancipatory processes gained a methodological alternative to the prevailing positivism. Following the World Congress in Cartagena (1977), these emerging methodologies generated spaces for debate, interaction, and projection, becoming a dynamic research current that transcended the field of social sciences, impacting other areas such as planning, education, and social work.

The World Congress on Convergence (Cartagena, 1997) demonstrated that this rebellious methodology had achieved global reach and continued to expand its scope. The publication of anthologies and collaborative books on the subject (Brandao, 1987; Fals Borda and Anisur, 1991; Brandao and Streck, 2006; Streck, Sobokka, and Eggert, 2014), the creation of the International Journal of Action Research (IJAR) in 2008, and the Symposia on Participatory Methodologies held in Porto Alegre (2011), Copenhagen (2013), Bogotá (2015), Cartagena (2017), and Rosario (2018) confirm the continued relevance and vitality of this critical methodology.

Participatory methodologies have been a major contribution of Latin American social sciences to global knowledge, and in recent times there has been a renewed interest in these methodologies among new generations of professionals and students, who are also updating their content and proposals on the path to building truly sustainable participatory democracies. This is why today in Latin America, participatory research, in its different expressions, settings, and involving various actors, is an essential field of research and political practice for understanding the current reconfiguration of the social sciences and the increasingly close links between them and the political processes and social movements that promote participation.

On the one hand, we can say that beyond the praise and generic recognition of the virtues of participatory mechanisms and processes as potential generators of transformation, these are phenomena that can be greatly improved and need to be nourished by practice, research, and critique. For example, despite the proliferation of participatory public policies, it has not been shown that participation in these mechanisms, in and of itself, provides creative proposals for addressing social problems (Ford and Carné, 2009). The same could be said of processes that take place outside of institutionalized spaces. Therefore, the first axis, linked to the theoretical relevance of the topic, involves considering to what extent the research and intervention agendas of professionals dedicated to this area can contribute to strengthening (through knowledge) the instruments and the quality of the processes. This almost inevitably leads us to reflect on the very task of knowledge generation that we carry out in universities or other public organizations and in civil society organizations that conduct research. But above all, it challenges the paradigm that assumes that knowledge is generated in certain spaces without recognizing social practice as a builder of knowledge and new situated knowledge anchored in memory.

For their part, although we may not always see the link or programmatic unity between actions and movements, the various forms of participation challenge some of the contradictions that need to be reflected upon, such as the environmental, food, and labor contradictions associated with the capitalist model of goods production and exploitation of people and the environment; the gender and generational contradictions that challenge the patriarchal model based on sexist practices; and the cultural and intellectual coloniality questioned from the perspective of the decoloniality of knowledge and power. Identifying, valuing, and sharing the experiences of struggle built from prospective resistance is part of our challenge as a group. This involves rescuing memory, understanding the trajectories of change (Santandreu and Betancourt, 2019), and valuing previous struggles upon which new participatory processes could build further transformations.

Another key aspect of the group's work involves discussing methodological contributions and advancing this field, particularly regarding participatory action research methodologies. These methodologies foster the co-creation of knowledge by recognizing, understanding, and valuing the trajectories of change and lived experiences within complex realities, and by connecting different perspectives and ways of knowing and existing (legal, economic, technical, spiritual, cultural, environmental, etc.). This point connects with the previous one, as participatory methodologies not only advance our understanding of processes but also empower both parties—researchers, citizens, and their organizations—to enhance their knowledge. Therefore, improving our understanding of experiences leads to improved participatory processes. The hypothesis behind these methodological innovations is that resolving vicious cycles in our knowledge construction involves recognizing and valuing trajectories of change rooted in social and collective memory (Torres, 2016; Barragán and Torres, 2017; Santandreu and Betancourt, 2019) and intervening in the process, thinking about solutions from within, and focusing on social creativity developed with the stakeholders themselves (Villasante, 2011) (Rodríguez-Villasante, 2006). The application of these tools, which involve different approaches to working with stakeholders, allows for the co-construction of knowledge anchored in the trajectories of change of organizations, communities, and individuals. This requires triangulation with other instruments (interviews, surveys, ARS, or others), generating situated and unique knowledge.

Participatory research (as a paradigm under construction) draws on participatory methodologies (initially Participatory Action Research) because its purpose is emancipation. In this sense, it understands Latin American social reality as a complex world with diverse contradictions, including those between nature and humanity, class, gender, ethnicity, and age. These contradictions, from Eurocentric ontological, epistemological, theoretical, and methodological perspectives, have not allowed, and still do not allow, adequate reflection, much less the pursuit of necessary transformations. Therefore, participatory research is not the implementation of an established discourse on reality, but rather an ongoing, emerging dialogue of knowledge, which is being built as a counter-hegemonic theory that empowers communities to construct their own history and become a source of power.

However, a certain naturalization and excessive instrumentalization of participatory methodologies could lead us to the paradox of having participatory methodologies that do not subvert the processes in which they intervene (Santandreu, 2019). Today, Participatory Action Research (PAR) is promoted by the World Bank, various governments around the world, countless universities, and even global corporations without a focus on social, political, and cultural transformation. Critical reflection on our practice and the theoretical development with which it engages should therefore be a central and ongoing aspect of the Working Group.

The democratic deficits in our sociopolitical reality, linked to its structural systems of inequality, demand approaches that promote the collective construction of knowledge, the articulation between knowledge and action, and an ecology of knowledges that propose postcolonial, post-development, and post-capitalist visions (Torres, 2014; Sousa Santos, 2010; Mignolo, 2005) openly oriented toward the search for creative local alternatives. The advancement of participatory methodologies is openly guided by these visions and, through their combination of reflection-action-reflection (Rodríguez-Villasante, 2015), already includes significant processes of co-construction of knowledge by and for communities. Furthermore, it is necessary to contribute, through participatory methodologies, to making disadvantaged groups (based on sex, ethnicity, economic status, etc.) visible from a political perspective and to combating these inequalities from a common ground that allows for analyzing how to understand differences. Denaturalizing discrimination and combating gender oppression, beyond the fact that women's inequalities of opportunity may be related to problems of other minorities or to broader socio-political issues, undoubtedly implies making visible the power relations between men and women (Fernández, 2009).

In summary, we can say that participatory methodologies provide innovative ways of understanding complex phenomena such as collective action and social and political participation, allowing us to enhance our knowledge of the experiences that have been developing in the countries of the region, and in turn, due to their own vocation to learn together with the subjects (Villasante, 2011), they allow us to improve the experiences at the same time as we learn.

Addressing these components could allow the GT to move towards a better understanding of the problems, building "common worldviews" and generating synergies and new proposals for action.

Strengths of the proposal in relation to the conditions of the call

The proposal comprehensively integrates knowledge generation and dissemination, the promotion of public accountability, and networking. Furthermore, this call incorporates a key theme, one that has received little attention in Latin American social sciences: the link between participatory methodologies and gender. The proposal is driven by over eighty members from various countries in Latin America and around the world, with a majority of women (50 out of 81). Members also come from three priority countries for this call, and include both experienced professionals (among them world-renowned experts in the field) and those currently in training. Additional resources will be made available to support the latter group's participation and development.