Transcript No Slide Title

Understanding and tackling ethnic inequalities in health
An ESRC Research Seminar Series: 5
Monday April 24th 2006
‘Cultural Competence in Health & Social Research:
Emic and Etic Perspectives (My View or Their View)’
Involving Users,
Empowering Communities,
Verifying Results
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Structure
- Theoretical model
- Overview of RAPAR
- Researching in action: intervening, interrogating,
organising…
- Reactions ….
- Current situation
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (1)
All research
communicated and interpreted
is
through language-based
Text……
Aims
Methods
Results
Analyses
1+2=3
(Moran and Butler 2001:61)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (2)
The importance of language in the research process,
its impact upon the
•
•
•
•
•
Formation of research questions
Methods adopted
Resultant findings
Analysis
Dissemination
is rarely recognised or explored
(Moran and Butler 2001:61)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
- Critical purpose of language is to communicate
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
- Critical purpose of language is to communicate
- Reality is both objective and intersubjective
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
- Critical purpose of language is to communicate
- Reality is both objective and intersubjective
- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally
affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
- Critical purpose of language is to communicate
- Reality is both objective and intersubjective
- Intersubjective reality is fundamentally affected by
socioeconomic(cultural) position
- Competing views of reality held by different population
groups co-exist in space and time
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
- Critical purpose of language is to communicate
- Reality is both objective and intersubjective
- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally
affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position
- Competing views of reality held by different population
groups co-exist in space and time
- Continual process of struggle, ‘contest’, over what the
dominant meaning of reality is, and over means of
communicating reality
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
- Critical purpose of language is to communicate
- Reality is both objective and intersubjective
- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally
affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position
- Competing views of reality held by different population
groups co-exist in space and time
- Continual process of struggle, ‘contest’, over what the
dominant meaning of reality is, and over means of
communicating reality
- What comes to prominence results from the contest: it
is a refraction, not reflection, of reality
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)
Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:
- Experience of human reality is communicated through
language
- Critical purpose of language is to communicate
- Reality is both objective and intersubjective
- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally
affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position
- Competing views of reality held by different population
groups co-exist in space and time
- Continual process of struggle, ‘contest’, over what the
dominant meaning of reality is, and over means of
communicating reality
- What comes to prominence results from the contest: it
is a refraction, not reflection, of reality
- How has this approach helped to shape the participatory
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
action research process?
Physical Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
Physical Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
Dominant Ideologies
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Super-ordinate, refracted views
about health/asylum seeking
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
Physical Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
Dominant Ideologies
Communicative action between
people about health/asylum
Super-ordinate, refracted views
about health/asylum seeking
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Contests over who is the
person seeking asylum & why are they
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
Physical Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
Dominant Ideologies
PERSON SEEKING ASYLUM
The ‘inner speech’
deriving from their lived experience
RESEARCHER/PRACTITIONER
Communicative action between
people about health/asylum
Super-ordinate, refracted views
about health/asylum seeking
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Contests over who is the
person seeking asylum & why are they
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
Physical Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
Dominant Ideologies
PAR
Action/Language
PERSON SEEKING ASYLUM
Their ‘inner speech’,
deriving from their lived experience
RESEARCHER/PRACTITIONER
Communicative action between
people about health/asylum
Super-ordinate, refracted views
bout health/asylum seeking
PAR
Language/Action
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Contests over who is the
person seeking asylum & why are they
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
RAPAR is:
 Spring 2001 - RAPAR network forms in response to
introduction of forced dispersal, seedcorn funding follows
(Moran et al, 2002)
 A collection of organisations and individuals well placed to
create evidence bases about the needs of communities
in the North West of England where people fleeing persecution
have been dispersed by central government
 An action network that begins to inductively develop
constructive responses to evidence bases about need that
derive from the lived experience of asylum
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
An acronym for Refugee and Asylum seeker Participatory
Action Research
Traditional maintenance of separation of researcher from
both subject and subjects being studied…
Explicit
role/
position
Researcher
Practitioner
Skills
Experience
(work)
Objectivity
(about
research
issue)
Objectivity
(about client)
Subjectivity
(about practice)
Community member/
client/user
Experience
(life)
Subjectivity
(about service/life)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Community
Member/
Client/
User
E.g. Public or
private
space
Practitioner
Specific
places/spaces/sites
Researcher
E.g. service
delivery
setting
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Material Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
Community
Member/
Client/
User
E.g. Public or
private
space
Interaction
Researcher
Practitioner
E.g. service
delivery
setting
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Material Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
Material Context: Social- economic- cultural- political
E.g. Public or
private
space
Practitioner
RAPAR
Researcher
E.g. service
delivery
setting
Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:
e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Community
Member/
Client/
User
What is PAR?
• PAR is predicated on the democratic notion that
oppressed and marginalized people can transform
their social realities through education, research
and action, while forwarding their own value
system. People can empower themselves through
examining their own situations…
• Praxis as defined by Friere is a combination of
action and reflection:
Praxis without action is verbalism; while praxis
without reflection is activism
(Udas, 1998:603)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
RAPAR
 Feb- Mar 2002 - RAPAR limited company and charity in
process of development
 May 2002 - RAPAR’s bid to lead SRB5 project in Salford
approved:
“to develop evidence about needs and action in
services with refugee people seeking asylum”
(Private Eye 2005)
 Oct 2002 – First destitution presentation (Moran, 2003)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
RAPAR and the SALFORD RAPAR SRB5 PROJECT
 Oct 2002 – Destitute man imprisoned:
When people come to this country, applied for asylum,
been refused and have gone right through the appeals
system, they can end up in the situation of the man I
visited….without the right to work, without support
and without accommodation: i.e. destitute. It should
be no surprise that a person in such a situation resorts
to crime in order to live. My view is that in a civilized
society, no-one should be left in that situation:
support should be maintained until either the individual
leaves the country or his status here is resolved.”
Email correspondence from Reverend to author, 31.10.02 17:58:52
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
 Oct 2002 – Disseminates about destitution to
Accommodator
Learning Opportunity with RAPAR
hosted by the
Revans Institute for Action Learning and Research,
University of Salford, Thursday 5th June, 2003
Mother facing eviction into destitution:
“after everyone has tried to help me I am feeling better. My
GP visited me he told me he would try to help me. The
assessment people came and told me, 2 or 3 times ‘we
believe you’. I told them:
‘I have 2 arms and 2 eyes and think about me… what I
have left…think about me… I am not a piece of paper’.”
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Overview of case example:
All the persons involved in the case – service users, service
providers, community members – have been anonymised and
the real- time framework within which the events occurred has
been removed.
Our purpose being:
To create a constructive atmosphere, free from the drive to find
one – or some – to blame, within which we can all learn for the
future.
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
What is participatory action research?
Research that captures what is going on in the world and
understands what is happening to the selves involved in the
research as moments of intersection between their biography and
history within society.
(Building on from Wright Mills, 1959)
Research conducted by a mutually respectful collective
interested in ‘the practical application of ideas to material
reality so that incomplete and inexact knowledge becomes
more complete and more exact’
(Building on from Lenin, 1972: 111)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
What is the purpose of participatory action research?
To understand an idea one must be able to apply it in practice,
and to understand a situation one must be able to change it.
Verbal description is not command enough. [We describe
successful theory] as consistently replicated and successful
practice that distil[s] and concentrate[s] the knowledge.
(Building on from Revans 1982:494)
The process by which one is transformed into the other is the
scientific method and the essence of the scientific
method is the experimental test. (Revans 1982:494)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
The super-ordinate reaction to this experimental test has been to
seek to stop the experiment:
 Requisition the laboratory – occupy the place of safety (Private
Eye, January 2005)
 Silence the researching practitioners/clients inside of it (Miwanda
Bagenda, (2006))
 Dis-locate the researching practitioners/clients outside of it
(Greenham and Moran (2006), Temple and Moran (2006))
BUT
The outcome of the experimental test is - as yet - unknown….
(Baty, 2005: Times Higher Educational Supplement, 21st October)
(Asthana, 2006: Observer Newspaper, 19th February)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
The issues dealt with on a day-to-day basis included
people with compounded problems, many of which
arose from the forced dispersal programme. The
city had other support groups dotted about and
doing bits and pieces with people seeking asylum
but ours was the first project to operate at a
citywide level and in a very different way: by
including the refugee people seeking asylum in the
development of the project from the outset and by
seeking to understand, document and
communicate how the individual issues that
presented related to the wider social context and
networks within which they were located.
(Miwanda Bagenda, 2006)
Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006
Participatory action research with refugee and
asylum seeking people in Manchester
(Moran et al, 2006)
RAPAR, 2006
Contact details:
RAPAR
The Congolese Centre
Cobden House
Cobden Street
Salford
Greater Manchester
M6
Email: [email protected]
[email protected]
FREEPHONE: 0800 458 7598
Registered Charity 1095961
Company Limited by Guarantee 04387010