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In her editorial to the 2009 Special Edition of TSR Brenda Gainer stated that the primary interest of ISTR is the promotion of international conversations among scholars. Gainer urges researchers ‘to examine critically many of our beliefs about the third sector ...[because] ...theoretical breakthroughs will take place [only] as the international research community becomes pluralist not only in its membership but in its ideas and basic beliefs about the sector’ . Pluralist spaces where critical reflection of ideas and beliefs about the Third Sector can take place are generated within conversations between practice and theory. Gainer positions practice and theory as the necessary twin strands of Third Sector research in what she terms ‘a social-value perspective on research’. We will report on our attempts to bring Gainer’s ‘activist’ ideal into a research praxis from conversations generated out of a critical organisation studies perspective in relation to issues of political economy; the links between the changing shape of the third sector and issues of poverty and power; conflicts of interest within society; and the proper role of the state.

Gainer, B. (2009). The Connections between Regional and International Research in, with and for the Third Sector. Third Sector Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 pp 7-16, (p15).