The promises and tensions of socio-legal participatory action research

Abstract Socio-legal scholarship has long been driven by a commitment to social change. Yet scholars continue to debate how best to pursue politically engaged empirical research – especially in relation to the elite audiences that influence the production of socio-legal knowledge. Increasingly, researchers are turning to participatory action research (PAR) as a strategy of scholar-activism. PAR centres the knowledge and agency of marginalised communities by involving them as collaborators in the research process, with the aim of producing knowledge that supports their struggles for justice. As socio-legal scholars experiment with PAR, they may encounter tensions both with their research participants and within the broader scholarly community, particularly over the role of ‘law’ in their work. Drawing on my experience using participatory methods to study data governance in Kenya, I explore the challenges and possibilities of integrating PAR into socio-legal inquiry. I suggest that when socio-legal scholars adopt PAR, they are likely to fall short of PAR’s radical participatory ideals and the conventional framing of socio-legal research. Yet, as I argue, this friction is generative. Adopting PAR can transform socio-legal inquiry to be more responsive to contemporary political struggles.