Minding a mendacious methodology: Community-based research in a transition town

This paper sets out a conversation concerning some of the methodological and ethical issues we have encountered as part of our participation in, and research of, a prominent contemporary movement for community change and relocalization. In discussing the ethnographic methods we use to research the Transition Town movement¹ we feel both duty-bound and inspired to write as
candid an account as we are able. This candour leads us to argue here in support of the ethical imperatives associated with participatory research, but for more attention to be given, and greater openness displayed, towards the practical challenges that such work presents to academic studies of various kinds. To these ends, we build upon existing scholarship within geography (Maxey, 1999), feminist studies (Roseneil, 1993) and action research (Stringer, 2003) on the practises and inevitable compromises of embedded research, and consider its implications for academics embroiled in transition communities. More specially, we consider how the forms of the Transition Movement itself present specific challenges to academic engagements.