scholarly journals A Relational Approach to Transforming Power in a Community-University Partnership

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Penn Loh ◽  
Zoë Ackerman ◽  
Joceline Fidalgo
Keyword(s):  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Cross Flow ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relational Ethic ◽  
Policy And Planning

We use a relational understanding of power to analyze power dynamics at the institutional and interpersonal levels in our multi-year Co-Education/Co-Research (CORE) partnership between Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI). Power in community-university partnerships is often examined only at the institutional level, conceiving of power as a resource to be balanced and shared. Indeed, CORE has advanced institutional shifts through co-governance, equitable funding, co-production of curriculum and cross-flow of people. While institutional policies and practices are critical, they alone do not transform deep-seated hierarchies that value university knowledge, practices and people over community. To understand how intertwined interpersonal and institutional practices can reproduce or transform these cultural and ideological dynamics, we use a relational approach, understanding that power flows in and through all relations. As community members, students and faculty, we reflect on the contradictions we have encountered in CORE. We examine how we reinforce the dominance of academic over community knowledge, even as we leverage institutional power to further community goals. These tensions can be opportunities for shifting, disrupting and transforming towards more equitable relations, but they can also reproduce and reinforce the status quo. Through reflective practice and a relational ethic of care, we can try to recognize when we might be shifting power relations and when we might be reproducing them. This is messy work that requires a lot of communication, trust, reflection and time. A relational approach to power provides hope that we can be part of the change we seek in all of our relations, every day. And it reminds us that no matter what we have institutionalised or encoded, our individual beings, organizations and communities are always in a process of becoming.  

scholarly journals The Interlocking Processes Constraining the Struggle for Sanctuary in the Trump Era: The Case of La Puente, CA

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Gilda L. Ochoa
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
City Council ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Community Members ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
The Status ◽  
The City

By 10 January 2017, activists in the predominately Latina/o working class city of La Puente, California had lobbied the council to declare the city a sanctuary supporting immigrants, people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. The same community members urged the school district to declare itself a sanctuary. While community members rejoiced in pushing elected officials to pass these inclusive resolutions, there were multiple roadblocks reducing the potential for more substantive change. Drawing on city council and school board meetings, resolutions and my own involvement in this sanctuary struggle, I focus on a continuum of three overlapping and interlocking manifestations of white supremacist heteronormative patriarchy: neoliberal diversity discourses, institutionalized policies, and a re-emergence of high-profiled white supremacist activities. Together, these dynamics minimized, contained and absorbed community activism and possibilities of change. They reinforced the status quo by maintaining limits on who belongs and sustaining intersecting hierarchies of race, immigration status, gender, and sexuality. This extended case adds to the scant scholarship on the current sanctuary struggles, including among immigration scholars. It also illustrates how the state co-opts and marginalizes movement language, ideas, and people, providing a cautionary tale about the forces that restrict more transformative change.

Understanding stakeholder positionalities and relationships to reimagine asylum at the US–Mexico border: Observations from McAllen, TX

2020 ◽  
pp. 194277862097931
Author(s):  
Halley L. Glier ◽  
Temperance Staples ◽  
Megan Martínez ◽  
Anita Fábos ◽  
S.E.D. Mitchell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Observational Research ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
Major Stakeholder ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
The Government

This paper draws on observational research conducted in McAllen, Texas, during the summer of 2019, of three major stakeholder groups involved in asylum management: Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center (HRC); federal government agencies; and the McAllen community. Each group holds a unique, pluralistic perspective on migration, informing intra-group relations and exposing uneven power dynamics between them. Our analysis is contextualized by a local voice, a former long-term volunteer at the HRC, who speaks of the evolution of the McAllen border in her lifetime, as well as federal authority over McAllen and the HRC to process asylees. We dissect how this power dynamic produces a highly violent, detention-dominant immigration landscape in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), antithetical to the practiced intersectional culture of voces locales. We reimagine how the US responds to asylum seekers by offering a community action-based framework, where these pluralistic perspectives are equitably valued. Based on interactions and conversations had with each group, we advocate a paradigm shift reflective of La Frontera’s (The Border’s) intersectional identity. This can be achieved by prioritizing voces locales and building capacity for the humanitarian sector, which is already doing critical work at the southern border. We look to contemporary movements like “Defund the Police” as examples, where divesting from the status-quo system of oppression can nurture reparative justice and empowerment to the RGV. In reimagining a more adaptive, asylum justice-oriented paradigm shift, we also recognize the need to abandon the government-controlled deterrence paradigm, which repeatedly causes tremendous harm.

Social Status in an Open-Source Community

2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (5) ◽  
pp. 823-842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Natural Setting ◽  
Laboratory Setting ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Software Developers ◽  
Status Mobility ◽  
The Status

Despite a fair amount of conjecture regarding the circumstances that lead to the generation of status orders, most of the previous literature in this area typically has studied the effects of social cues within a laboratory setting. This article analyzes the evolution of the status hierarchy within a large-scale, natural setting. The results of empirical analyses assessing a large online community of software developers show that in the process of status attainment, community members tend to evaluate a focal actor's reputation according to publicly available social references. Ironically, these same social references also work to constrain an actor's status mobility.

scholarly journals Spaces In-between: Text Poems from Community Practice and Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Gerstenblatt ◽  
Diane Rhodes ◽  
Lida Holst
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Community Practice ◽  
Community Members ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teacher Researcher ◽  
Fellow Teacher ◽  
Artist Teacher

A commitment on the part of the academy to address social issues has increased over the past three decades, resulting in service learning courses, volunteering opportunities, and community-university partnerships. Faculty, staff, and community practitioners collaborating to lead these efforts often carry enormous responsibility and answer to often competing interests of students, community members, and universities. Using the experience of an scholar/artist/teacher in a university-community partnership founded by the first author in a racially polarized town, this article explores the potential of arts-based methods, specifically poetry and collage, to mitigate the consequence of this work. The format is a dialogue between two engaged teacher/researcher/practitioners and friends to clarify the hidden experience of the researcher with narrative truth to articulate and share not only experiences, but also lessons learned as a contribution to our fellow teacher/researcher/practitioners.

scholarly journals Teaching and Learning Within Inter-Institutional Spaces: An Example from a Community-Campus Partnership in Teacher Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Cher Hill ◽  
Paula Rosehart ◽  
Sue Montabello ◽  
Margaret MacDonald ◽  
Don Blazevich ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Graduate Program ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
University Communities ◽  
Dialogic Inquiry ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Institutional Space

This paper explores the potentiality inherent within a community-campus partnership in the area of inservice teacher education, and the inter-institutional space that has afforded creative and collaborative practices. Through this partnership, we endeavour to find innovative ways to better serve our students and create opportunities for smooth interactions and flow across school and university communities. Unlike other research that explores tensions and/or common ground within community-university partnerships, we seek to understand the potential that is created in the metaphorical space in-between institutions. Using dialogic inquiry, the diverse members of our teaching team, including members of the university community and the K-12 school system, as well as graduates of the program, reflected on the unique material, discursive and relational dimensions of our inter-institutional space. We came to see our graduate program as a hybrid place of connections, rhythms, and intersections in which usual institutional practices are ruptured. Together we identified powerful interrelated structural dimensions of our inter-institutionality, which we referred to as the gathering space, the inquiry space, the transformative space and the empowering space. These themes and the flow that has been created across and between institutions will be discussed in the following paper. 

scholarly journals Community-University Partnerships: Community Engagement for Transformative Learning

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fay Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
For Profit ◽  
University Continuing Education ◽  
Social Inequities ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
The Status

Recently, various scholars have remarked that university continuing education (UCE) is moving away from one of its original core foci, that of social justice. In this article, the possible causes of this are discussed, including current political environments, the role of universities and academics in perpetuating or disrupting the status quo, and increased reliance on cost recovery and for-profit programming. Community-based participatory research as a feasible strategy for promoting UCE’s role in social justice is also presented. An example of UCE that was developed in response to existing social inequities and driven by discussions with the community is offered to demonstrate that critical voices can have an impact and that institutions of higher education can be collaborative and foster networks of relationships for learning. Finally, key points for the successful development of a UCE program that responds to critical voices and returns to social justice are shared.

Combining local knowledge and field surveys to determine status and threats to Timneh Parrots Psittacus timneh in Guinea-Bissau

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (03) ◽  
pp. 400-412
Author(s):  
DANIEL C. LOPES ◽  
ROWAN O. MARTIN ◽  
MOHAMED HENRIQUES ◽  
HAMILTON MONTEIRO ◽  
PAULO CARDOSO ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Iucn Red List ◽  
Habitat Modification ◽  
Population Declines ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Pet Trade ◽  
Field Surveys ◽  
Guinea Bissau ◽  
The Status ◽  
Line Transects

SummaryTimneh Parrots Psittacus timneh are a threatened species endemic to the moist forests of West Africa. In 2016, they were categorised as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List, due to suspected rapid population declines driven by habitat loss and heavy trapping for the pet trade. Systematic assessments of the status of populations are lacking for much of their range and addressing this knowledge shortfall has been identified as a priority action. We combined multiple research approaches to investigate the distribution, trends and threats to Timneh Parrots in Guinea Bissau, where the species is restricted to the islands of the Bijagós archipelago and Pecixe. Direct observational surveys were conducted along line transects on 19 islands. A total of 69 groups were observed on eight of these islands, with the majority (78%) seen on just two islands. Forty-two interviews were conducted with local community members on 24 islands. Interviewees reported the species to occur on 20 islands and that populations are generally perceived to have declined in recent decades. Based on these findings and existing data we conclude that Timneh Parrots occur on 22 of the 32 islands considered and estimate the national population in Guinea-Bissau to be in the order of several hundred individuals, with perhaps half of the parrots occurring on the islands of João Vieira and Meio. Investigations into the factors linked to inter-island variation in parrot densities indicate that densities are highest on the islands which are most remote from permanent human settlements. These findings suggest that human activities including habitat modification and trapping have been important in driving population declines in Guinea-Bissau. We consider the implications of these findings for the conservation of Timneh Parrots.

Grounded in Culture: Reflections on Sitting Outside the Circle in Community-Based Research With Indigenous Men

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (14) ◽  
pp. 2343-2350
Author(s):  
Candice M. Waddell ◽  
Rachel V. Herron ◽  
Jason Gobeil ◽  
Frank Tacan ◽  
Margaret De Jager ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Based Research ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Reflexive Practice

Research continues to be a dirty word for many Indigenous people. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a means to disrupt power dynamics by engaging community members within the research process. However, the majority of relationships between researcher and participants within CBPR are structured within Western research paradigms and they often reproduce imbalances of power. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the process of CBPR within a research project focused on Indigenous men’s masculinity and mental health. In doing so, we aim to contribute to reflexive practice in CBPR and flatten research hierarchies to facilitate more equitable knowledge sharing. Our reflections highlight the importance of prioritizing healing, centering cultural protocols, negotiating language, and creating space for Indigenous research partners to lead. These critical lessons challenge Western researchers to ground their practices in Indigenous culture while they “sit outside the circle” to facilitate more equitable and engaged partnerships.

scholarly journals Caught up in power: Exploring discursive frictions in community research

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Hanson ◽  
Adeyemi Ogunade
Keyword(s):  
Research Process ◽  
Community Research ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Based Research ◽  
Research Outcomes ◽  
Power Asymmetries ◽  
Research Relationships

This article outlines the debate around the emancipatory claims of community-based research (CBR) and identifies discursive frictions as a pivotal point upon which much of CBR practice revolves. Using a Foucauldian theoretical lens, we suggest that CBR is neither inherently emancipatory nor repressive, but that research outcomes are more often a product of power asymmetries in CBR relationships. To illustrate how power asymmetries in research relationships produce discursive frictions, several studies from our work and the literature are presented. The article provides examples of CBR relationships between the researcher and community members and relationships within the community to illustrate how power asymmetries and discursive frictions in these relationships dynamically influence research outcomes and thus alert researchers to the need to address power asymmetries not just before initiating CBR projects, but during CBR projects as well. We interrogate how power asymmetries and discursive frictions operate and are constructed in CBR in an attempt to highlight how research might be conducted more effectively and ethically. Finally, we indicate that some of the tensions and challenges associated with CBR might be ameliorated by the use of participatory facilitation methodologies, such as photo-voice and story circle discussion groups, that draw attention to power asymmetries and purposefully use more creative participatory tools to restructure power relationships and ultimately address the inequities that exist in the research process. Because CBR is continually caught up in power dynamics, we hope that highlighting some examples might offer an opportunity for increased dialogue and critical reflection on its claims of empowerment and emancipation.Keywords: discursive friction, Foucault, participatory methodologies, power asymmetries, research relationships, emancipatory research  

Communities, Cartography and GIS

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy L. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Members ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Real World Setting ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
Community Residents

This paper discusses an introductory cartography and GIS service learning course. The service learning experience, highlighted by a final mapping project and community presentation, resulted in 3,000 student-designed maps being distributed to community residents, a website of downloadable student maps, multiple student speaking engagements, and a sustained community-university collaboration. The course demonstrates the importance of applied geography in local communities and highlights the benefits of community-university partnerships for addressing social change. Such an applied geography experience offers an important twist on the conventional, introductory cartography course where students engage in pre-packaged lectures and labs, and are then asked to complete a final mapping project. Unlike the conventional approach, this service learning class experience allows students to use their creativity to demonstrate knowledge learned in the course and allows students to apply and present their geographic knowledge in a real-world setting to community members.

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