From community participation to organizational therapy? World cafe and appreciative inquiry as research methods

Abstract

World Café (WC) and Appreciative Inquiry (AI) are two increasingly popular approaches to participatory research and policy-making that also frequently define themselves in relation to community development. They both seek to create environments in which participants' shared activity and inter-subjectivity enable positive responses to problems and challenges. WC and AI offer interesting and innovative approaches in research but present a number of problems within the field of community development. Several key issues are raised including the risk of imposing an interpretation of structural problems as ‘misperceptions’, a troubling and potentially stigmatizing interpretation of ‘empowerment’, and questionable assumptions about social change.