La recherche-action participative SPINCOOP : récit de la coopération entre maraîchers et chercheurs dans l’adaptation du modèle SPIN Farming à Bruxelles

Participatory action research (PAR) provides an epistemological framework to apprehend complex transversal problems that require one to work with local stakeholders. Drawing on the description and analysis of the SPINCOOP project, this paper seeks to provide insight into the processes involved in building the partnership and in producing knowledge, as well as insight into ways to translate these in a PAR study. SPINCOOP was implemented between 2015 and 2018 with two urban neo-farmers. The project addresses the viability of urban market gardening initiatives by contrasting the aspirations of neo-farmers and the modalities of their implementation in the context of Brussels. The paper thus tells the co-creative research story of SPINCOOP in three phases: (i) the co-creation of
partnership and the problem around a systemic vision of viability; (ii) the co-production of knowledge through the continuous adaptation of methodological frameworks, illustrated with strategies to access land; and (iii) the appropriation of the knowledge co-produced by stakeholders both within and beyond the project. This paper thus details a reflexive look at the difficulties of PAR and the delicate balance between research and action and on the influences of the institutional context that is embedded in any PAR project. In the case of PAR aiming at a long-term
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transition towards sustainability in an urban setting, the SPINCOOP experience underlines the necessary change of attitude. This change of attitude not only concerns the co-researchers but is also required for research funding agencies to rise above the inherent paradoxes of the short-term nature and constraining conditions of project funding.