Collaboration as Condition: Participatory Ethnography as an Opportunity for Action

Drawing on previous experiences of collaborative research carried out in Seville (Spain) by social activists and scholars, this paper presents contexts where collaboration emerges as a sine qua non condition for any research activity. In doing so, we analyse several notions of 'collaborative research' and the contexts for which they were designed and implemented, looking for similarities and differences with participatory action research methods. We propose the participatory action ethnography approach in order to make use of the analytic potential of ethnographic methods, creating a context for mutual, critic and horizontal dialogue with those who have traditionally been regarded as "research objects". This, at the same time, stimulates the co-development of situated knowledges, and incorporates the process-based approach and transforming action in collaborative research, overcoming the 'technocratic drift' which reduces participatory action research to the use of techniques, devices or procedures considered participatory.