Author/Editor:
David Cooperrider
Language:
English
Organization:
Case Western Reserve University
Downloadable Files:
Resource Type
Unpublished Paper
This chapter illustrates how appreciative inquiry can be used as a positive mode of action research to dislodge reified vocabularies of human deficit and liberate the socially constructive potential of organizations and human communities. It begins by demonstrating the ways in which critical forms of action research unwittingly diminish the generative potential of human communities by favoring problem-focused modes of inquiry.
Two case illustrations are offered to show how appreciative inquiry uses the power of the positive question to overturn the tyranny of deficit-based vocabularies and open up new alternatives for conversation and action.