Critical appreciative processes as a methodology for studying the production of consciousness

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was developed as an approach to organization development that involves groups of people in discovering the 'best of what is' to drive social change. Several researchers, however, found that an exclusive focus on 'positive stories' is not tenable in practice. This paper explores their advocacy of ‘critical appreciative processes’ by reporting findings from a Big Lottery Research Project on the lives of Pakistani women living in Sheffield (England). Our findings track transformative learning amongst six Pakistani research assistants who ran AI workshops, Open Space events and conducted 1-to-1 interviews with thirty-nine other Pakistani women. They collectively deconstructed and reconstructed the meaning of social practices within their community, triggering both personal and collective processes of change. The paper’s value lies in the way Appreciative Inquiry, Critical Theory and Grounded Theory have been combined to theorise how critical appreciative process can advance study of the production of consciousness within a community.