The Potential of Participatory Social Economics: A Framework and Feminist Perspective

Recurrent economic, ecological and democratic crises provoke opportunities to critically examine previously unquestioned assumptions about economies, an effort which can include those people on which the theory and practice are usually designed and tested. This article claims that there is a role for participatory research (PR) approaches to play for social economists seeking to understand and support local problem-solving, especially in social economy activities and socioecological change processes. The objective of the article is twofold: first, a simple framework for understanding the different manifestations of PR will be presented based on the degree to which a project has (a) scientific or transformative goals, and (b) hierarchical or democratic decision-making. Second, this text will discuss the kind of PR that is ethically and epistemologically compatible with social economic scholarship. This theoretical argument is grounded in feminist, Black and Indigenous principles of (1) highlighting subjective and socially-embedded perspectives, (2) critically interrogating power dynamics within research contexts and processes, and (3) ethically engaging participants in collaborative research. Such an approach aims to dismantle the hierarchical binary between scientific and non-scientific knowledges, with social economists actively contributing to collective problem-solving efforts rather than acting as detached observers and planners.