Reflections on the past of action research and its relevance today

Résumé 0

Despite its faults, the notion of action research, still alive today, is useful because it groups together critical positions regarding the dominant models of scientificity in the human sciences. From this point of view, this article takes up the hypotheses that Fred H. Blum proposed as early as the 1950s (in particular that action research was born of the dissent over the separation of research and action instituted in the nineteenth century). The relevance of action research, for example in agronomy, contributes to supporting these hypotheses, which are not only concerned with issues of method or epistemology but also ethical and political issues. Noting the anteriority of the phenomena that the expression “action research” designates over the invention of this notion, an attempt is made to reflect on the various ways of dating their origins.