Activating Transformative Potential

This is an article justifying a transformative-oriented research agendaIn this article, I expand on Mertens’ advocacy of the transformative paradigm for social research, where research is consciously geared to the advancement of social justice. I indicate certain links with Indigenous paradigmatic approaches to “knowing,” where legitimate knowing is rooted in a quest to enhance relationality in the web of relations in which we as knowers and actors are enmeshed. In considering how we might justify associating knowing with transformative-directed (interventionist) intent, I suggest that the justification rests on us recognising that the research enterprise is always more or less consciously implicated in the continuing unfolding of the worlds of which it is a part. I spell out what is involved in recognising that research is world shaping. I furthermore propose that taking a transformative perspective on the research enterprise allows us to reinterpret other paradigmatic positions (e.g., constructivism, and critical realism, and even some renditions of postpositivism) by looking at their potential to cater for an inquiry process that enables participants, concerned stakeholders, and wider audiences to participate in envisioning and enacting possibilities for enhancing the quality of our existence. I provide some examples from the educational arena.Adult Basic Education (ABET

Reflections Upon our Way of Invoking an Indigenous Paradigm to Co-Explore Community Mobilization against Irresponsible Practices of Foreign-Owned Companies in Nwoya District, Uganda

This article offers our reflections upon how we invoked an Indigenous paradigm in undertaking/facilitating qualitative research in a setting in Northern Uganda (2020/2021). The research was aimed at co-exploring with participants how they mobilized as a community against social and environmental injustices attendant with the entry of certain foreign enterprises into their community. We set up four focus group sessions in three villages to generate discussion in regard to how they had built up a community protest (with some success) against the operations of two enterprises who had been operational in the community. In our article we do not concentrate so much on the content of the focus group sessions (or the ensuing dissemination/discussion workshop), but rather, on how we enacted our understanding of an Indigenous paradigm in this research initiative. In this way we share possibilities for activating an Indigenous paradigm in the doing of research. We do this in order to help strengthen and further credentialize this paradigm in academic paradigmatic discourses and help secure its respected place on the paradigmatic “dance floor” (to use a metaphor offered by Chilisa, 2020)

African Youth’s Visioning for Re-inventing Democracy in the Digital Era: A Case of Use of Structured Dialogical Design

This article discusses the African cohort’s contribution to the “re-inventing democracy in the digital era” project, funded by a UN Democracy Fund. The project involved almost 100 youth from five regions of the globe in deliberating upon the future of democracy, using a methodology called structured dialogical design. We explain the utility of this methodology for aiding processes of deliberative democracy. We focus on the Africa cohort’s (collective) identification of current challenges and envisioning of corrective actions for democracy in the digital age; we justify our choice and point out that many of their suggestions apply to other regions too.UN Democracy Fund [Project Number: UDF-13-532-GLO], in combination with the Future Worlds Centre (FWC)

Covid-19: Perspectives Across Africa

This book emanated from the Society for the Advancement of Science in Africa's (SASA) Seventh Annual International (digital) Conference: Joint SASA and Ugandan Ministry of Health October 15, 2020 – January 14, 2021, Kampala, Uganda. The chapters in this book were solicited from presenters and also from other authors familiar with the impact of Covid-19 in Africa. There are 21 chapters, all together offering a range of perspectives from a variety of angles.SASA (Society for the Advancement of Science in Africa

Structured dialogical design as a problem structuring method illustrated in a Re-invent democracy project

This article made a case for regarding Structured Democratic Dialogue as a methodology to be included in the repertoire of approaches for Operational Researchers, including Community Operational Researchers, to deploy.This article proposes the importance of admitting into the repertoire of Problem Structuring Methods for (Community) Operational Research, the methodology called Structured Dialogical Design (SDD). Problem Structuring Methods are described in the literature as facilitating transparent and participative ways of formulating and systemically modelling problems with a view to participants’ co-defining alternative futures. We reflect upon the contribution of SDD as lying in its appreciation of “third phase science” and discuss links to other deliberative processes. We indicate why SDD can be classed as “problem structuring” despite the near absence of publicisation in the Operational Research (OR) literature to date. We discuss distinct contributions that the SDD offers to the OR world and indicate how it strengthens and extends Community OR, contributes to Critical Systems Thinking in OR, and offers new mathematical approaches that the Community OR practitioners may wish to consider using. By way of illustration, we showcase the “European Initiative” as an aspect of a large-scale project across five geographical regions funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund, in conjunction with the Future Worlds centre (2016–2018). It engaged as stakeholders five cohorts of youth pioneers concerned with formulating options for Re-inventing democracy in the digital age.United Nations Democracy Fund; Future Worlds Cente