Theme 1: Participatory practice as social justice in action

Social change begins with reframing and that reframing of a new way of being starts when we begin to surface our hidden and not-so-hidden frames through a critical inquiry process.

Participation therefore empowers people to take action through the telling of their stories, engaging in quality dialogue and deliberation about those stories and their meaning. Through critical reflection and questioning we change the way we see the world and consequently how we act in it. From those new frames and actions, we create the future.

So, having introduced participation, as we see it in this book, we will now explore the themes that we believe make up true participatory practice.

Theme 1: Participatory practice as social justice in action

The most general meaning of justice is parity of participation. According to this radical-democratic interpretation of the principle of equal moral worth, justice requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life. Overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalised obstacles that prevent some people from participating on a par with others, as full partners in social interaction. (Fraser, 2009: 16)

According to Nancy Fraser (2009), participatory parity is the backbone of social justice. It is not only about deciding together rather than one person or another deciding and others agreeing, but it is also about having structures and decisionmaking rules that encourage such involvement. Any participatory practice also involves engaging in an exploration of the bigger political issues and the underlying reasons for the day-to-day issues people face. It is through an analysis of prevailing social norms and assumptions that we start the process of transformation and contribute to pushing back the tide of neoliberalism (see Chapter 2 for more detail) that has created the current brain-fog concerning the collective and the essential goodness of human beings. By coming together and encouraging critical questioning of the status quo, we can together start to unpick the roots of injustice, making sure that all those affected by injustices have a say in resolving them. ‘Nothing about us without us’ became the slogan of the ‘dis’ability movement in the 1990s, but it applies to all those affected by social injustice.

To generate knowledge about persons without their full participation in deciding how to generate it, is to misrepresent their personhood and to abuse by neglect their capacity for autonomous intentionally. It is fundamentally unethical. (Heron, 1996: 21)

‘The worst thing about living in poverty is the way it gives others permission to treat you – as if you don’t matter, as if your opinions