On the Diversity of Action Research

When reading accounts of action research projects, we may now and then no-tice the use of the expression “as an action researcher I … ” or, in plural “as action researchers we…”. This expression is most often used as part of an explanation or justification of why some part of the project has been under-taken in a certain way, e.g. like this: “As action researchers, we have been careful to make everybody in the group [or organization, or community] have a voice in the change process”. However, we will hardly ever run into any similar kind of expression while reading reports from mainstream social re-search. Social researchers who undertake empirical studies of a descriptive kind, do not seem to need to refer to themselves as a “social researcher ” in the texts they write from their research projects. The main reason for this difference, I think, is this: Most social research-ers simply find the methods and ways of proceeding in doing social research as well established part(s) of the social sciences, and the very application of these methods and procedures by inquiring into some social phenomena i