Transformative methods or methods transformed? Following the social life of a participatory method

In this paper, we will argue that following the social life of participatory methods is useful to both trace out their transformative potentials across different social contexts and to deepen our understanding of social dynamics. There has been increasing political and sociological interest in the potential of participatory methods to facilitate societal transformations and empower people, however, there is much uncertainty about the implications of using these methods. We seek to contribute to our understanding of participatory methods by drawing on approaches to the social life of methods (Law et al., 2011; Savage, 2013) that highlight how methods are both constituted by and constitute social worlds. Furthermore to understand how methods can travel and transform we engage with multi-sited ethnographic methods that follow materials, concepts and relationships to trace out connections and transformations across temporal, spatial, and social constellations (Marcus, 1995; Tsing, 2005). We will examine the potential of following the social life of methods by drawing on findings from a project on social acceptance of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS). We will illustrate how a conversation game method that sought to empower and understand community members perspectives transformed and took on different meanings as it travelled, interacted, and got rejected across different organisational, cultural and social contexts in 4 different European countries (Denmark, Greece, Netherlands and the UK). We will argue that these transformations both tell us something about the method and the social, temporal and spatial dynamics it travelled through.