This space is not yet blank: anthropologies for a future action research¹

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the possibilities of new relationships between action research and a 'new' anthropology. It begins by considering its own anthropological acts as a kind of writing/riting. Employing in turn three overlapping metaphors (spoor, spook and spoof) it tries to work through to a notion of a reformulated action research as a kind of ethnography – with some stress on the 'graphic'. At the same time as trying to express that new relationship, the boxed commentary offers a pedagogical heuristic which may (or may not) make the meanings of the text both more apparent to the reader, and at the same time paradoxically more complex. Is there any point in such explorations and creations? The unsurprising answer from the author is 'yes': one possible contemporary purpose is to make light of the serious. Such seriousness is illustrated in the ways in which the audit culture has progressively swallowed up educational philosophy, as well as education research and evaluation.