Dialogue as inquiry and intervention

Abstract

The notion of inquiry as intervention in social systems has emerged only recently in the respectable academic circles. Action research has been the forerunner of such an approach to integrate inquiry and intervention (Lewin, 1947b). However, there is beginning to emerge some consensus among the action researchers (L. D. Brown, 1972) and participatory researchers (Hall, 1975; Tandon, 1979) that inquiry can be conceptualized and practised as an intervention process. Some illustrations of such a perspective have also appeared in recent years (Brown and Tandon, 1978). Dialogue as inquiry and intervention was first described by Freire (1970) and it has since been used by Freire himself and his colleagues. Dialogue presents a potent method of integrating inquiry and intervention, and it can contribute to the intermingled processes of knowing and changing. This chapter presents a case from the two-year field work by the author where dialogue was used as inquiry and intervention simultaneously. Small and marginal farmers in a region of Western India were the participants in this effort. The next section presents an account of this inquiry.