In the fourth ‘earth conversation’ Peter Reason (http://peterreason.net/) joins us to share his experience of co-operative inquiry, in particular his more recent work drawing on this approach to exploring what it means to live in a world recognized as sentient, drawing on panpsychist and animist perspectives.
Co-operative inquiry, like all aspects of action research, started with broadly humanistic values. Can we continue to draw on this approach as we attempt to de-centre the human, to see a ‘world of persons, only some of whom are human’ (Graham Harvey).
Peter is currently engaged in the fourth of a series of inquiries relation to Rivers as sentient. Early work has been described in Voicing Rivers Through Ontopoetics (with Jacqueline Kurio), part of the special issue Voicing Rivers of River Research and Applications.
As Director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice at the University of Bath, England, Peter Reason was an international leader in the development of participative approaches to action research.
Since retiring from full time academic work, Peter has focused on writing books and articles that link the tradition of nature writing with the ecological crisis of our times, drawing on scientific, ecological, philosophical and spiritual sources. His most recent publications (with artist Sarah Gillespie) are On Presence: Essays | Drawings and On Sentience: Essays | Drawings.
