On Epistemological Politics: Working With Contested Knowledge Production in Action Research

Fundamental to action research in healthcare is the co-production of knowledge by researchers and participants, including professionals, patients and policymakers. Despite high expectations of co-produced knowledge, few scholars have reflected critically on how researchers navigate situations in which different kinds of knowledge are articulated and potentially clash both at the front- and backstage of research projects. Drawing on our own experiences in various healthcare action research projects, we analyze the ways in which action researchers can relate to the ‘epistemological politics’ of action research, i.e., the negotiations and tactics that include and exclude certain types of knowledge and knowers in the production of scientific and societal insights. To understand this ‘relating of researchers’ and its implications for knowledge production, we draw on the concept ‘sorting attachments’, which we conceptualize as the practical work of figuring out how to relate to particular individuals, agenda’s, institutions and organizations, while at the same time acknowledging the wider political, economic and cultural relations that shape the normativities of stakeholders in action research projects. We distinguish different dimensions of sorting attachments; latching attachments, extending attachments, balancing attachments and foregrounding and backgrounding attachments. By teasing out these forms of sorting attachments, as well as their implications for knowledge productions, we provide researchers with heuristics to navigate contested knowledge claims in action research projects.