"Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a subset of action research; it is critical research guided by an emancipatory interest. Critical PAR is committed to social transformation for justice. It is a heuristic approach, which incorporates a praxis that involves social and political action. PAR is committed to recapturing and empowering the knowledges of the subaltern through appropriate political and social action informed by a praxis involving local knowledge generation, debate, reflection, and social/political action. In this chapter, we present the scholarship in PAR within the broad field of communication and development studies by tracing its evolution since the mid-20th Century. We will undertake a detailed discussion of PAR and its praxis within the empowerment paradigm in devcom studies. We will explicate the PAR methodology and praxis, outline guiding tenets for PAR, describe the roles of development communication workers in empowerment/PAR process and provide examples of participatory action research." (Abstract)