Restorative action research: Fostering wellbeing as a collective, relational, vital endeavor

Mark Egan, Victor Friedman, David Jones, Nicholas Rhew, Sarah Robinson and Linda Sama
Additional contact information
Mark Egan: University of York [York, UK]
David Jones: Newcastle University Business School
Nicholas Rhew: USI - University of Southern Indiana
Sarah Robinson: Rennes SB - Rennes School of Business
Linda Sama: St. John’s University

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper presents restorative action research - a relational, collective, vital approach to fostering wellbeing. It is based on cooperative inquiry carried out by six academics over three years, for the purpose of enhancing their own wellbeing in the increasingly precarious world of higher education, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the concept of "vital assemblages" as an analytical tool, the paper illustrates how restorative action research enhanced the participants' sense of feeling alive, active, and joyful at a time of great stress. This relational, collective, vital approach to wellbeing offers an alternative to the dominant individualistic, internal framing of wellbeing. It is relevant to organizations outside of academia, as echoed in the idea of "networked wellbeing" emerging from the Global South. Restorative action research is also a political act with transformational potential, because it creates social spaces that enable people to free themselves and resist, if only a little, the influence of organizations and other dominant fields that cause illbeing and threaten human society.

Keywords: fields; organizations; vitality; assemblages; action research; Wellbeing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11-29
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Action Research, 2024, 24 (2), pp.135-156. ⟨10.1177/14767503241303834⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05673273

DOI: 10.1177/14767503241303834

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().