ABSTRACT
One common feature of different variants of Action Research and Interactive Research is the rejection of technocratic, undemocratic streaks in science and inquiry, particularly those emanating from different aspects of the still quite strong positivist and contemplative academic heritage (Toulmin 2001). Action Research was, from the Lewinian start, already seen as a form of research to further the democratic process. A basic impetus in Participatory Action Research and Interactive Research is bringing practitioners into the scientifi c research process (Fals-Borda & Rahman 1991; Nielsen & Svensson 2006). This chapter will focus on the explicit or implicit democratising ambitions and tendencies in many of these types of approaches. I believe most of us value democracy and would see science as in service to it. The point here is to take the argument a step further in line with a position of a leading researcher in the fi eld of Acton Research, who wrote, “Democracy does not only function as ‘something that is good’, but also as a theory of science point of departure-as the system of thought underlying the construction of the concept and-at a later stage-the survey of ‘facts’ and shaping of praxis” (Gustavsen 1990, p. 98). Democratising science raises the question of whether science will become more or less scientifi c? How can participatory democracy contribute to the scientifi c quality of inquiry? Or does it stifl e it? Will the democratising researcher lose scientifi c perspective and become a political activist or a consultant-be it of a managerial or emancipatory kind? How can the academic researcher be engaged, useful and democratic-as well as scientifi c-at the same time? The purpose of the chapter is to develop a number of different arguments for taking participatory democracy not only as an extra-scientifi c value that, however commendable, should not disturb the scientifi c process, but as a comparatively advantageous philosophy of science orientation for Action and Interactive Research (see, e.g. Novotny, Scott & Gibbons 2001; Toulmin & Gustavsen 1996). I develop fi ve types of arguments-empirical, epistemological, moral,
institutional and political-which commend participatory democracy as a philosophy of science point of departure.
