{"id":4155,"date":"2003-02-28T16:00:04","date_gmt":"2003-02-28T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4155"},"modified":"2003-02-28T16:00:04","modified_gmt":"2003-02-28T16:00:04","slug":"community-based-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4155","title":{"rendered":"community-based discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent almost all of today at a good Democracy<\/p>\n

Collaborative <\/a>conference on "engaged," or "collaborative,"<\/p>\n

or "community-based" research (i.e., research in which academics<\/p>\n

and members of a community work together, at least to frame a common research<\/p>\n

agenda and sometimes to conduct the whole project.) There was a lot of<\/p>\n

talk about potential research involving University of Maryland faculty<\/p>\n

in our own community, Prince George’s County, although many of the speakers<\/p>\n

came from elsewhere. (One of the best was Gary Cunningham, who runs the<\/p>\n

Hennepin<\/p>\n

County African American Men Project <\/a>in and around Minneapolis, MN.)<\/p>\n

I was generally impressed and inspired, although a couple of worries stick<\/p>\n

with me.<\/p>\n

First, this was the kind of conference in which everyone quickly feels<\/p>\n

comfortable with one another and starts to talk as "we." For<\/p>\n

example: "We need to convince young people to work in the World Bank,<\/p>\n

so that they can bring our perspective inside that place." But no<\/p>\n

one ever exactly says what defines "us." I suspect this is partly<\/p>\n

because everyone in the room is on the left, and that’s their most fundamental<\/p>\n

identity. That’s why they all feel confortable with one another. But the<\/p>\n

agenda and purpose of the meeting are officially non-partisan and non-ideological:<\/p>\n

we’re supposed to be talking about research in partnership with communities.<\/p>\n

The fact that everyone is on the left is an unacknowledged but crucial<\/p>\n

fact.<\/p>\n

Second, one graduate student gave a presentation on an extremely disadvantaged<\/p>\n

group that she had studied. No one asked the kind of questions that would<\/p>\n

routinely arise after a presentation at a regular academic event. For<\/p>\n

example, individuals had volunteered to participate in her focus groups,<\/p>\n

and no one asked whether these volunteers were representative of the whole<\/p>\n

population being studied. Also, many of the individuals claimed to have<\/p>\n

given up drugs, but no one asked whether this claim was tested or credible.<\/p>\n

I wondered why these questions didn’t come up. (I didn’t ask them, either).<\/p>\n

Here are three guesses:<\/p>\n