Enhancing Participatory Strategies With Designerly Ways for Sociolegal Impact: Lessons From Research Aimed at Making Hate Crime Visible
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Amanda Perry- Kessaris,Joanna Perry |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663920949736 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Enhancing Participatory
Strategies With Designerly
Ways for Sociolegal
Impact: Lessons From
Research Aimed at
Making Hate Crime Visible
Amanda Perry-Kessaris
University of Kent, UK
Joanna Perry
Independent Consultant, UK
Abstract
This paper draws the attention of impact-curious sociolegal researchers to the potential
of participatory research strategies; and proposes that the effectiveness of those stra-
tegies can be enhanced by the introduction of ‘designerly ways’. It explores and evi-
dences this proposition through the multi-country Facing All the Facts project which
aimed to support and accelerate the process of making hate crime conceptually and
empirically visible in Europe. The paper concludes that by pursuing the designerly
strategy of making experiences, perceptions and expectations around hate crime
reporting and recording visible and tangible in artefacts (formal graphics and colla-
borative prototypes), the project activities generated structured-yet-free spaces in
which publics/stakeholders could more effectively participate in practical, critical and
imaginative discussion about how things are, and how they might be; and that this has
improved the relevance and rigour of the research, and its ability to generate meaningful
change (‘impact’).
Keywords
Hate crime, impact, legal design, socio-legal research methods, participatory research,
participatory design
Corresponding author:
Amanda Perry-Kessaris, Kent Law School, Eliot College, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NS, UK.
Email: a.perry-kessaris@kent.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
2020, Vol. 29(6) 835–857
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663920949736
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Introduction
The idea that university-based researchers ought to engage with the non-academic world
is now commonplace in the UK and elsewhere. Funders such as the UK Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC), and assessors such as the UK Research Excellence
Framework (REF) increasingly require researchers to attend to the ‘impact’ or ‘demon-
strable contribution’ that their research ‘makes to society and the economy’ (ES RC
website). While this trend is part of a wider, often critiqued, neoliberal agenda across
the public sector, it is also:
part of a wider contemporary tendency toward participatory practices in areas ranging from
the arts, to industry, to “open” gove rnment in which users/publi cs/ patients/audiences/
communities are invited to take on more active roles in shaping the knowledge, policies
and practices of the world around them. (Facer and Enright, 2016: 144 quoted in McDer-
mond, 2018: 160)
Of the many existing approaches to leg al research, those that are sociologica lly-
informed or ‘sociolegal’ are best placed to answer the impact/participation call. At
minimum, a sociolegal approach to law denotes a core commitment to ‘consistently and
permanently address the need to reinterpret law systematically and empirically as a
social phenomenon’ (Cotterrell, 1998: 183). But Roger Cotterrell argues that if their
work is to be meaningful, sociolegal researchers must make two additional ‘juristic’
commitments: firstly, to approach law as a ‘practical’, as opposed to purely abstract or
technical, ‘idea’; and, secondly, to seek to protect and ‘promote’ its ‘well-being’, rather
than merely to exploit, ‘unmask or debunk it’ (Cotterr ell, 2018: 31–33). To do this
sociolegal researchers must, and generally do, engage con ceptually, empirically and
normatively with the non-academic world.
Most academic research is produced in ‘Mode 1’ – that is, ‘within academic institu-
tions’ and verified by peer review’. ‘Mode 2’ research sees knowledge produced ‘in the
context of its application, being ...verified by its social worth and applicability’. In its
most developed form, it is ‘co-produced’ by academics and publics/stakeholders in a
way that ‘assumes no hierarchy of knowledge forms’, and that sees ‘disciplinary and
professional boundaries’ as ‘fluid’ (Campbell and Vanderhoven, 2016: 12–13 citing
Gibbons et al., 1994 and Nowotny et al., 2001). While Mode 1 research ‘is produced
in ways that are not deeply oriented to shaping or informing future change’, Mode 2
research focuses on the ‘overlaps between actualities and potentialities’ and is therefore
more oriented towards producing change (Julier and Kimbell, 2016: 41).
To the extent that it engages with the perceptions, experiences and expectations of
non-academics via, for example, interviews, surveys, archival analysis, content analysis
or ethnographic observation (See Creutzfeld et al., 2019), sociolegal research can be seen
as operating at the border between Mode 1 and Mode 2. But if the aim is for sociolegal
research to produce meaningful change (‘impact’), ‘it will almost certainly be necessary
– but not sufficient – for researchers to interact’ with publics/stakeholders
1
in their field
(McNamara, 2018: 440). This entails a methodological shift towards ‘Mode 2’ research.
836 Social & Legal Studies 29(6)
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