challenging hegemonies_advancing collaboration in community-based

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Challenging Hegemonies: Advancing Collaboration in Community-Based

Participatory Action Research

Jean J. Schensul

Marlene J. Berg

Ken M. Williamson

Collaborative Anthropologies, Volume 1, 2008, pp. 102-137 (Article)

Published by University of Nebraska Press

DOI: 10.1353/cla.0.0009

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cgg hgmoAdvancing Collaboration in Community-Based Participatory Action Research

jean j. schensul, Institute or Community Research

marlene j. berg, Institute or Community Research

ken m. williamson,University o South Florida

Cultivated on the spikes o social injustice, participatory action research

projects are designed to ampliy demands and critique rom the margins

and the bottom. . . . Legitimating democratic inquiry, PAR signifes a

undamental right to ask, investigate, dissent and demand what could be.

M F d M to, im D:

poy ao r po

The classroom with all its limitations remains a location o possibility.

In that feld o possibility we have the opportunity to labor or reedom,

to demand o ourselves and our comrades, an openness o mind and heart

that allows us to ace reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move

beyond boundaries, to transgress.

ook, Teaching to Transgress:

Education as the Practice of Freedom

ioduo d Dfo

In participatory action research (PAR), community residents (commu-

nity action researchers) and university-trained researchers (acilitators)

collaborate in research that supports personal growth, group solidarity,

and social action. The approach marries group-implemented social sci-

ence research methods and resident-generated local knowledge and so-

cial and cultural capital. Critical byproducts are methodological inno-

vations avoring collaboration, and locally driven theories and models


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su, bg, d Wmo cgg hgmo 103

or change. The intent is to use the tools o social science to give valid-

ity to local knowledge, thus reversing elitist structures that dominate

the production o scientic knowledge and its uses. We have ound this

orm o collaboration to be highly meaningul, both personally and

proessionally, and at the same time raught with challenges and con-

tradictions. As university-trained research acilitators and scholar ac-

tivists, we have struggled with our tendencies to privilege our orms o

knowledge and knowledge acquisition and our own personal and insti-

tutional needs and goals or community change. At the same time our

community counterparts have been challenged to learn, adapt, and in-

vent new research methods; to go beyond their own experiential knowl-

edge; to engage with dierence within their communities; and to con-

ront external barriers to change.

Our essay ocuses on a specic orm o PAR, the goal o which is to

place both the research process and use o the results in the hands o

community residentsin other words, to transer the undamentals

o ethnographic inquiry to lay research activists in a process o mutual

learning and knowledge co-construction so that both the process and

the outcome are transormational. We (the authors) are applied anthro-

pologists rom working and middle-class backgrounds who live andwork in the city o Hartord, Connecticut. Our community collaborators

are groups that have been marginalized, whose voices oten are exclud-

ed rom the decision-making table (Kincheloe and McLaren 2000),

and who have not had the opportunity to record, conserve, document,

control, or represent their historical experiences, cultural capital, their

interpretations o causality, or the utures to which they aspire. This

orm o PAR has an international history, supported by sociologists

(Brydon-Miller et al. 2008; Hall 2005), eminist theorists (Harding1998, 2004, 2006; Maguire 2001), popular educators (Duncan-Andrade

2007; Freire 1970, 1995, 1998; Tandon 2003, 2005), anthropologists

(Berg and Schensul 2004; Fals-Borda 1987; Gaventa 1991, 1993; Hale

2006; Park et al. 1993; Reason and Bradbury 2001; J. Schensul and S.

Schensul 1992; S. Schensul and J. Schensul 1978) and activists in many

countries around the world.

The eld o PAR has advanced signicantly, especially as a result o

the commitment o these social scientists to addressing health and oth-

er disparities by bringing communities into the process. Nevertheless,

there remain topics that should be addressed to move the eld ahead.


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collaborative anthropologies volume 1 2008104

For example, how do PAR acilitators, who may themselves dier in

values, class background, theoretical perspectives, and approaches

to methodology build trusting relationships with each other and with

community residents? What actors come into play when these same

dierences characterize community residents? What needs to be inplace to ensure that PAR methodology builds on and strengthens rather

than undermines collaboration among all partners? How do power im-

balances within a PAR group aect relationships, research, and subse-

quent action? How and with whom can collaborative action be concep-

tualized in PAR projects to address the inevitable constraints o time,

resources, and unsupportive political landscapes? These are gaps in the

PAR record that leave researchers (both resident and university trained)

to reinvent PAR methodology over and over again. We will use our per-

sonal experiences in two case studies to address these questions.

We state rom the outset that we write rom the research acilitator

perspective. The PAR experiences we describe took place some time

ago, our PAR acilitator teams are geographically dispersed, and we

have lost touch with many o our more than 150 local community part-

ners over the years. Our goal is to use this opportunity to refect on our

own experiences with collaboration, both in terms o building relation-

ships and constructing knowledge and action. Wherever possible, we

present the words and experiences o our community colleagues, based

on external evaluation and process documentation.

t sg

hartford, connecticut

The location o our case studies is the Hartord, Connecticut, area.Hartord is the still-impoverished, gentriying state capital o 124,000

people, located in one o the wealthiest states in the country. It is typical

o other ormer manuacturing and industrial urban areas o the north-

eastern United States. The demography o the city is approximately 50

percent Latino, 40 percent Arican American and West Indian/Caribbe-

an, and 10 percent Euro-American ethnic in origin. There are also small

Southeast Asian, Polish, and Bosnian immigrant populations as well as

a growing Arican immigrant community o Somalians, Liberians, and

Nigerians. Services (nancial, insurance, health, education, and ood)

are the economic underpinning o the city and the region.


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Manuacturing, at one point an important source o livable wages,

has been exported to other countries, and that which remains uses the

threat o globalization to defate wages as well as union infuence in

this sector. The citys institutions (hospitals and schools) are margin-

ally responsive to the needs o urban residents but are pressed by ed-

eral legislation and private insurance and pharmaceutical interests to

reduce costs and achieve unreasonable treatment outcome goals with

limited resources. Similarly schools suer under ederal legislation.

The school system has magnetized, in an eort to move toward priva-

tization and to blur the established boundaries and ences between the

city and the suburbs under the voluntary desegregation and school-im-

provement program set into motion by the lawsuitSche v. ONeill. This

has let core city schools to struggle under the burden o No Child Let

Behind, with insucient counseling, teaching, and support resources,

while economically stressed amilies stretch to survive in a job-scarce

environment.

The history o the city and the area as well as national social welare,

economic, educational, housing, and migration policies have all con-

spired to make it very dicult or urban low income and working class

amilies to achieve and maintain economic stability. Resident voices,once expressed through avenues created by community organizing,

have been silenced as these general organizing entities have been re-

placed by advocacy-oriented nonprots with specic agendas, such as

changing punitive drug policies or environmental justice. In the ace o

these structural problems, however, Hartords communities are rich in

historical, social, relational, cultural, and experiential capital displayed

in the orm o voluntary neighborhood community-based organiza-

tions (CBOs), social service, and cultural presentation/production or-ganizations and centers, and activists, commissions, and other advo-

cacy bodies working on local issues. In cities like Hartord, there is a

signicant need or strong well-organized resident groups that have a

critical perspective and can mobilize to advocate or their own interests

rather than being manipulated by others.

the institute for community research

In 1987, the year o its ounding as a community-based research or-

ganization, the Institute or Community Research (ICR) established a

collaborative research mission: to work with community groups and


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other supportive institutions to use the tools o research to promote

justice and equity in a multi-ethnic world. This mission statement was

important on multiple levels. First and oremost, we lived in an urban

environment in which poverty is concentrated and neighborhood de-

velopment has stagnated. We wanted to challenge the hegemony o tra-

ditional research structures by basing a research organization outside

the academy with the fexibility to hire community researchers to work

in an environment that was sel-conscious about reducing hierarchy

and bridging political, social, and racial distinctions. Hiring commu-

nity researchers and collaborating with community organizations en-

abled these partnerships to bring local knowledge, experience, and so-

cial and cultural capital to bear upon applied social science projects and

development perspectives that refected and resonated with community

perspectives. Principles o equity and balance in power guided ICR to

develop procedures and actions to ensure shared research processes,

methods, and resources, and to privilege the importance o the work in

and with the community over other ends.

PAR has constituted a central ocus o the organizations work in

transorming social science or social justice purposes. PAR with youth

and community residents is explicitly intended to enable communityresidents to gain control over and to use the tools o research to en-

hance their knowledge base, and use it or their own political and social

change ends. In its approach, it responds to an interdisciplinary call

to recognize that marginalized and oten voiceless communities have

critical knowledge and intellectual and cultural capital and that ethical

social scientists must engage with them to move rom margins to cen-

trality in research that denes issues and sets policies aecting their

lives (see Fals-Borda 1987; Gaventa 1991, 1993; Park et al. 1993; Reasonand Bradbury, 2001; J. Schensul and S. Schensul, 1992; S. Schensul and

J. Schensul, 1978).

We relate to this paradigm by describing why we ourselves have cho-

sen to do this work. We believe in the transormative power o PAR as

one very important approach to building community in an environ-

ment ragmented by class, ethnicity, and race by creating possibilities

or all partners to analyze critically and address together the structur-

al actors that impede equitable development. PAR is emotionally and

socially as well as intellectually healthy because it allows us to inte-

grate the personal and the political, thus moving us toward personal


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as well as social cohesion and synthesis. We believe that mutual learn-

ing, based on local and technical knowledge, is possible. We agree with

John Gaventa that knowledge is power and that PAR can counteract and

resist the hegemony o the established research disciplines and meth-

odologies, especially when it is embedded in larger eorts to create

alternative voices or social change (1991, 1993). We believe that social

scientists, taking the standpoint o people who have been intentionally

marginalized rom decision-making dialogues, have a responsibility

to use their technical tools and other resources to create openings or

communities to join existing dialogues or to create new dialogues with

leadership grounded in indigenous theory and new local knowledge.

Research-based knowledge, which drives policy and intervention, does

not belong to the academy only; social scientists have a responsibility

to demystiy research theory, method, and results (i.e., to democratize

research) (Schensul 2002) and make knowledge available to disenran-

chised people who wish to infuence policy locally and now, more than

ever, globally.

adu par icr

The history o adult PAR at ICR began in 1988. Our rst PAR project,

the Rapid Sociodemographic Assessment (RSA) Project, was a three-

year cost-sharing partnership among more than eighty organizations,

thirteen residential neighborhoods o Hartord, and six regional mu-

nicipalities. The RSA engaged people in a critique o the census de-

mographic short orm and the orced ethnic and racial designators

in the 1980 census. Working in partnership with researcher-activists,

they built locally meaningul surveys and neighborhood histories. Theproject established ICRs reputation as an organization committed to

negotiating, sharing, and co-creating rigorous research methods rath-

er than dictating them. The process also provided communities with

experience about how to use research to address their own develop-

ment agendas, modeled ways they could argue with technical research-

ers about their methodological and substantive concerns, and set the

stage or the two PAR projects that serve as our examples, the Urban

Womens Development Project (198992)(Schensul 2002) and the

Resident Engagement Project (20025).

These projects engaged a orm o PAR that involves a group process


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in which all participants aected by and struggling with social, politi-

cal, or environmental inequities use all the tools o research to identiy,

learn about, understand, interpret, and act upon multilevel causes and

community responses to a social problem. They had much in common,

although they took place nearly ten years apart. They both involved mul-

tiethnic interdisciplinary teams o acilitators, including anthropolo-

gists and social workers, working over a period o three to our years

with groups o between ten and twenty-ve community residents or

approximately ten months on issues that aected them. In each case,

using slightly dierent means, acilitators, most o whom lived in the

city or had a long history o experience in the city, developed intimate

personal relationships with group members and their amilies, and

played an active role in their neighborhoods. In both cases, intragroup

collaboration was aected by language preerences, personal style,

educational level, and advocacy experience. We introduced the use o

Freirian empowerment theory, principles o cooperative and experien-

tial education, and group acilitation techniques in the rst project, and

theorized and implemented them more deeply in the second. During

the rst project, we learned together how to refect upon and engage

personal, historical, cultural, and political dynamics into the researchprocess. We experimented together with group activities to select re-

search issues, to develop causal modelsgroup explanations or

social disparitiesand to identiy structural problems that needed to be

better understood and addressed. Facilitators introduced and together

we worked on interviewing skills and data collection debriengs. In

the second, we introduced new methods based on critical theory, such

as juxtaposing personal timelines on co-constructed community time-

lines. The use o ecological modeling, group construction o data-col-lection techniques, paired pile sorting, and thematic analysis linked

research and group solidarity. Both projects involved balancing and

supporting personal development, group cohesion, and activist goals

and outcomes. Both projects were successul in developing individual

voice, and group understanding and cohesion around a signicant so-

cioeconomic problem that aected them, their amilies, and the com-

munity. And in both cases, though the achievements at the individual

and group levels were signicant, or very dierent reasons, they ell

short o hoped-or results in terms o translating research outcomes

into action and long-term sustainability. On the ollowing pages, we


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describe the projects, compare collaborative processes across projects,

raise issues in collaboration, and suggest directions or adult PAR in

the uture.

coog w commuy rd

par poj: c sud

In this section, we will briefy describe our two case studies and turn to

a discussion o steps taken to build collaborative relationships within

PAR groups and through PAR activities.

a. the urban womens development project

The Urban Womens Development Project (UWDP)(198892) part-

nered with women rom the thirteen Hartord neighborhoods to bridge

ethnic and racial, cultural, age, and class dierences, and build leader-

ship and voice through engagement in women-driven PAR projects. The

idea or the project arose when the director o the Hartord Permanent

Commission on the Status o Women (HPCSW), a woman o color,

suggested that ICR join orces with the commission to ll a signicant

gap in current inormation on the status o women, especially womeno color, in the city. Together we saw this as an opportunity to build a

collective o urban women who could dene and collect data represent-

ing their own views and who could advocate along with the HPCSW on

behal o other women in the city.

Our organizational partners were gender- and ethnic-based organi-

zations dedicated to the same mission, including the Black Womens

Education and Legal Fund, the Hispanic Health Council, and the State

Permanent Commission on the Status o Women. This coalition pro-vided women rom the community with leadership role models, ave-

nues or use o their data, and opportunities or advocacy. The involve-

ment o the Permanent Commission made possible a broader vision o

statewide dissemination o the UWDP, and national links with larger

advocacy movements, especially those refecting the issues o women

o color. With our years o public and private unding, each organi-

zation hired one ull-time or part-time acilitator. Together we ormed

a team that recruited, supported, trained, learned rom, and promoted

the advocacy eorts o a truly diverse group o eighty women recruited

rom every residential neighborhood o the city. Each year, teen to


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twenty women met once or twice weekly, orging group identity, situat-

ing themselves in history and community, and nding commonality in

gender-based experiences.

Women were attracted to the program or dierent reasons. One

woman who had observed the program throughout its our years had

very insightul comments about empowerment as a motivation or

joining:

There were a bunch o women who I think were attracted to the word

empowerment. Some o those women translated that word in very

specic power terms and Im specically thinking o two o three or

our women in the group who were interested in political power on

some level or anothera couple who might be interested in runningor oce, even that specic. So, empowerment has that specic

sense to them. A couple who were interested in getting empowered

in terms o being involved in those kinds o organizations or agencies

or committees or commissions that make decisions largely because

they elt that they had been disempowered by not being able to be in

those kinds o organizations, which is true. And then there were a ew

o us who, I think see those institutions, whether theyre the political

system or the various agencies thereo, commissions or committees

or boards or whatever, as being so corrupted that theyre not worth

anything any more, and were interested in aspects o changing

those institutions and when we think o empowerment we think o

that kind o empowerment which is a social change approach that

some o us have come to over a long period o, you know, reading

and philosophical discussion and all that kind o stu, and were

not interested in personal power. There was some, there were someinteresting tensions between people as a result o that. . . . Tensions

may be giving it too much credit, but it was quite obvious that

there were people who were on dierent tracks, who had dierent

agendas.

The process varied each year, depending on the conguration o

women in the program and the composition o the sta. During the

rst year, women created a survey and administered it to a random

sample o 250 women residents in Hartord neighborhoods. One o the

organizations analyzed the data. The women discussed the results, and

several presented results to city and state commissions on the status o


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women. Topics during the second through ourth years included vio-

lence against women, reasons or a pattern o dropping out o school

among Latinas, and neighborhood conditions. Women were exposed

to research methods and chose rom among surveys, narrative inter-

views, and photo documentation. In the second year, women created

their own survey on abuse against women, administered it to personal

networks, analyzed the results, and became involved in advocacy net-

works addressing womens health issues and domestic violence. This

topic was a highly sensitive issue or women in the program, most o

whom had experienced or were experiencing abuse. They had to con-

ront their own situations to reach out to others. Doing so required

much group discussion, private counseling, and strong motivation to

use training sessions to resolve personal issues. During the third year,

they analyzed secondary data sources and interviewed Puerto Rican

women who had dropped out o school. The mission o the group

then became pregnancy prevention highlighting Puerto Rican young

women, and it called or linking with pregnancy prevention programs

around the city. A photo-documentation project on neighborhood con-

ditions was the ocus o the womens group the ourth year.

b. resident engagement project

The Resident Engagement (RE) Project was initiated nearly a decade

ater the UWDP as part o a twenty-two-site, ten-year multilevel initiative

o the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) entitled Making Connections

(MC). The primary community goal o MC was to engage residents

rom the poorest city neighborhoods in activities that would strength-

en amilies and involve them in neighborhood and economic planning

and development. The intent o the RE Project was to work directly withneighborhood residents, involve them in resident-driven PAR, and link

them with local agencies or advocacy and continued leadership devel-

opment. We saw this approach as critical to ensuring residents equita-

ble access to publicly available secondary databases to be accumulated

and used or local decision making (mainly by businesses and nonpro-

its) under the Casey initiative. We believed that developing resident re-

search capacity was a unique and powerul way o creating leadership

and community advocacy opportunities or unheard voices represent-

ing unutilized cultural capital in a city where community organizing

had been stifed.


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The AECF agreed to make a ve-year commitment to ICR to build

PAR coalitions that would produce strong neighborhood voices to take

leadership roles in neighborhood and broader MC development e-

orts. Although we oresaw risks involved in this approach, including

the potential or local interests to subvert the PAR mission with their

own agendas, we believed that the Casey Foundations stated commit-

ment to long-term investment with us and the city would allow us the

time to enable PAR groups to ulll their mission as strong research-

based, inormed neighborhood advocates.

Over a two-year period, acilitators worked with our PAR groups,

two in the northern area o the city (North End), which was mainly

Arican American, and two in the south-central area (South End), whichwas mainly Puerto Rican. With careul acilitation, residents developed

and used data collection instruments (pile sorts, time lines, narratives,

interviews, surveys, and photographic documentation), collected data,

analyzed it, presented to the public, and designed action strategies.

Each year, the groups met on a regular basis to discover and discuss

common concerns and issues in their neighborhoods and to present

the results o their work. The rst South End group used ocus groups

with parents and pile sorting to explore parents ideas about the eects

o school resources and how parental involvement aected student

perormance. The second South End group conducted a survey o par-

ents o school-aged children to determine the type o trainings people

desired, mapped key institutions that oer programs and trainings in

the neighborhood, and interviewed key inormants to explore how the

quality and quantity o trainings available in Spanish aected the eco-

nomic conditions o community residents. The rst North End groupexamined how home ownership and community involvement aected

neighborhood conditions. The group used participant observation,

mapping, photo documentation, interviewing, and secondary data

analysis rom the city assessors les to understand this issue. The sec-

ond North End group employed individual-level interviews and a survey

to explore how amily involvement aected student perormance. They

built action into the data collection phase o their research by preparing

a resource guide or parents and by holding group meetings or parents

to discuss school issues, distribute resource guides, and simultaneous-

ly conduct participant observation.


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coov par Modoogy

In these projects we addressed our issues related to collaboration:

training ourselves and our teams as PAR acilitators; building and

maintaining strong collaborative relationships among PAR members,including acilitators; creating and conducting research methods that

enhanced and reinorced group solidarity; and moving toward collab-

orative action.

a. developing collaborative instructional

capacity among par facilitators

PAR involves collaboration across class, ethnic, and other boundaries

and calls or personal and historical sel-refection and open discussiono class and other dierences, their meaning or interaction, and their

implications or building and sustaining trust. Critical collaboration re-

quires ormally trained research acilitators who have deep knowledge

o social science research methods, who recognize that there are multi-

ple knowledges and ways o knowing, or epistemologies (Aikenhead

1997; Brown 1992), and ways o learning (intelligences) (Gardner 1983),

and are dedicated to using and inventing research methods and tools to

acilitate the emergence o indigenous knowledge (Birmingham 2003;Butt 2006; Carper 2007; Diawara 2000; Howells 2002).

Facilitators must be willing to partner by taking the standpoint o and

standing with their PAR community partners to work toward a critical-

ly conscious purpose (Duncan-Andrade 2007). They are called upon to

come to terms with the idea that their identities (class, race or ethnicity,

education, perspectives) and the methods they suggest are in constant

dialogue with their community partners and can be challenged by them-

selves or their partners at any moment. They come to view themselves

as part o and being committed to the communities with which they are

working (whether they are members o the community or have earned

membership as outsiders through active participation in it). Perorming

these ethnographically and ethically rooted commitments build trust

among acilitators and between acilitators and PAR groups. Jerey

Duncan-Andrade (2007) reers to this as dutya orm o unques-

tioned ethical obligation to do whatever is necessary to solve the prob-

lemto live the work. This orm o collaboration between acilitators

and community residents involves conronting the contradictions stem-

ming rom obvious power imbalances (Minkler et al. 2002) through


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continuous sel/other refection and openness to criticism and eedback,

especially on the part o the acilitators, whose roles as insider/outsid-

ers involve the complex mix o acilitated instruction, joint learning, and

collaboration in change eorts (Hall 2005; Wallerstein 1999).

In PAR, research acilitators should have the methodological skills,relational abilities, and the capacity to model desired learning behav-

iors. Not all acilitators are researchers with advanced training, nor are

they necessarily amiliar with the communities in which they are work-

ing. Thus acilitators, as much as resident PAR groups, need training

in sel-refection, acilitation skills, research methods, and action plan-

ning. PAR acilitators will vary in their mastery o these skills, and thus

benet rom a team approach to instruction.

Moving toward this type o refexive cooperative-learning instruc-tional model was a ormidable challenge in our PAR work, requiring

that acilitators develop and use a theoretical approach to guided group

instruction, instructional skills, knowledge o the community, relation-

ships with the PAR groups, and amiliarity with ethnographic research

methods and action strategies. In the UWDP, our acilitator team o

trained emale anthropologists rom the United States and Egypt, a

psychologist, social workers, and community activists developed cur-

riculum together, striving or a balance o individual, small group, and

whole group exercises and activities. We team-taught sessions, which

allowed didactic acilitators and invited presenters to work together

with group acilitators. Resident engagement acilitators as well as an-

thropologists and social workers shared their methodological knowl-

edge and group-work skills. They received ormal training in group a-

cilitation skills useul in the co-construction o new knowledge, using

a ramework that included modeling, scaolding knowledge, explica-

tion (explanation) and refection on knowledge gained, and the learn-

ing process (Nastasi and DeZolt 1994; Schensul 1998). These acilita-

tion techniques were important to engaging groups through activities

that drew upon and validated the knowledge and experience that resi-

dents brought and ensured participant inclusion. They were also useul

in resolving idea, emotion, and personality conficts. Facilitators had

to undergo the same process o sel-situation and refection as partici-

pants and had to draw on their knowledge o the neighborhoods and

history or nd others who could.

In both programs, the acilitator team created the core training cur-

riculum together, ollowing a standard protocol that included the ol-


15/37


lowing core elements: sel-representation, history and identity, team-

building exercises, discussions about interethnic confict and cooper-

ation in the city, group issue identication, research modeling, intro-

duction to and selection o research methods, eld training, supervised

implementation, group discussion, analysis, presentation, and action

planning. Creating the curriculum involved a process o inormational

exchange and sel-instruction, providing a means o sharing and in-

tegrating research tools, local knowledge, organizing strategies, and

interactive exercises. Joint curriculum development provided acilita-

tors with an equal playing eld in which everyone learned together.

The UWDP curriculum placed more emphasis on gender and lived

experience. The RE curriculum, which was centered on neighborhood

strengthening, placed new emphasis on history and lived experience,

creating exercises that linked lived experience, inormation about the

status o the local communities, and larger historical economic and

socio-political trends in migration, immigration, and neighborhood

transormations.

b. collaborative research methods

PAR is always characterized by collective engagement in ethnograph-ic research methods. Methods texts including our own (Schensul and

LeCompte 1999) describe relationships with communities and re-

search ethics, but, with some recent exceptions on group ethnography,

they do not describe how these methods can be made participatory.

Collaboration in the social construction o knowledge and its appli-

cation to change requires methodological, social, and cognitive pro-

cesses including amiliarity and fexibility with ethnographic research

methods, joint problem solving, identication and negotiation o di-vergent perspectives, and persistence in generating joint ideas, norms,

and actions (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Nastasi and DeZolt 1994;

Rogo 2003; Vygotsky 1978). PAR acilitators should be dedicated to

using and inventing research methods and tools to acilitate the emer-

gence o indigenous knowledge (Birmingham 2003; Butt 2006; Carper

2007; Diawara 2000; Howells 2002; Yorks 2005). Cooperative educa-

tion guidelines maximize individual, small group, and whole group

exchanges and the centralized role o peer education in group learning.

Openness to methodological innovation stemming rom group sug-

gestions or ideas is critical to the PAR process.


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Ethnographic methods that encompass strategies drawn rom crit-

ical theory are central to the PAR endeavor. UWDP PAR groups were

exposed to gender-based critique through eminist presenters, includ-

ing Permanent Commission directors, ollowed by a power analysis in

which they dened power together and situated themselves along with

others in a power grid. RE PAR groups constructed and shared personal

narratives and inserted them into a jointly constructed historical time-

line. This process oered residents and acilitators an opportunity to

refect on meaningul junctures and experiences in their own lives, and

co-construct a joint history o the groups experience. Missing com-

ponents o local, national, and international history (civil rights and

migration) were lled in by inormed acilitators or invited speakers.

Narratives o lived experience also provided a basis or identiying im-

portant issues to be addressed.

Ecocritical modeling is a useul research-based technique or identi-

ying social entities at the macro, exo, meso, and micro levels that aect

individuals and groups, the connections among them, and their manner

o exerting power, using a concentric circle diagram (Bronenbrenner

1979, 1989; Trickett 1997; Trickett and Ryerson Espino 2004). Modeling

introduces important ideas related to problem and power analysis,data collection, and action. It illustrates to the group the act that so-

cial problems are structurally as well as individually situated, and are

oten complex, multilayered, and multilevel. The power analysis used

in the UWDP program evolved in the RE PAR groups into the use o a

jointly constructed ecological model that situated power and resistance

in each level o the model. Group discussion helped RE PAR groups

use their own knowledge base to identiy cultural, social, and political

assets, allies, risks, and sources o power both positive and negative ineach concentric ring in the model.

Both groups used a community organizing approach or identiying

issues by dividing into small groups, each o which came to agreement

on a topic by listing and discussing topics using a series o guiding

questions. Ater arriving at agreement, they presented their arguments

to the entire group, and the decision was made either by consensus or

voting. The issue then became the dependent variable domain in a

research action model (Schensul and LeCompte 1999). Obtaining con-

sensus on an issue without alienating and losing the participation o

PAR members was tricky and required considerable acilitation skills.


17/37


Facilitators used two main strategies to resolve dierences, enabling

the group to understand that everyone was aected by the issue that

only some thought was important, and showing how, in the develop-

ment o a research model, an issue that was not chosen could be in-

cluded in the model as an independent or causal variable.Collaborative research and action modeling was critical to the PAR

process. Creating research models together requires coming to consen-

sus on the problem that the group will tackle and sharing ideas about

the causes and solutions to the problem. This orm o social negotiation

requires listening, scaolding, and synthesizing skills, each o which is

needed in any collaborative eort. Drawing rom Rossis description o

theoretical and operational modeling and our own work we introduced

a group process o horizontal modeling to UWDP women in which

they worked in small or large groups to clariy the dependent vari-

able domain and identied causal actors or predictors and the links

between independent and dependent domains (Rossi 2003; Schensul

and LeCompte 1999, bk. 2, chap. 3). This negotiated model constituted

each groups indigenous theory o causality and change, which could

be checked with others. The acilitation process involved interrogating

the components o the domains and refecting on personal experience

in dening domains and discussing links among them (Schensul and

LeCompte 1999; Sydlo and Schensul 2000).

The modeling process begun in the UWDP PAR groups became more

elaborate in the RE PAR process. For example, ater deconstructing pre-

dictor domains, PAR members, through dialogue, generated explana-

tory hypotheses or the links among domains. Considering which do-

mains they might be able to change, and in what ways ocused attention

on identiying key inormants who could be allies in the change pro-cess, RE PAR groups also operationalized domains (vertical modeling)

by their meaning, brainstorming their content and considering relation-

ships among content subdomains. These exercises produced heated

discussion because the models represented their own emotional-laden

understandings o the actors that residents believed were responsible

or their most serious problems. In describing the process o coming to

consensus on an issue to research, one RE participant explained:

O all o the problems we presented we needed to choose one. Ater

each persons presentation based on exploratory research, we realized

that, although we had selected dierent issues, we were all talking


18/37


about the same thing: how these issues impacted our economic

condition. We also realized that there were other things that impacted

our economic condition such as education, the ability to speak

English, discrimination and services and trainings oered in Spanish.

As you can see in our model, our dependent variable is Economic

Conditions and our independent variables are: 1) Education, 2)

Language, 3) Discrimination, 4) Trainings oered in Spanish.

Ethnographic data-collection tools call or ace-to-ace engagement

with community members. Direct involvement in the lives o other com-

munity members produces new inormation that contributes to the

groups knowledge base. Further, conversations, surveys, pile sorts,

historical narratives, and photo selection may produce surprising, new,discrepant, or disconrming inormation that goes beyond personal ex-

perience (opinion) and must be addressed. Discussion o these dier-

ences broadens and deepens group perspectives and helps PAR groups

to understand the complexity o their communities and thus avoid in-

advertent stereotyping. Public presentation o results to an audience

that includes allies and study participants, using a variety o audiovisual

means (perormance, slide series, charts and graphs, and personal tes-

timony) reinorces group membership and resolve to take action steps.

Most ethnographic methods are readily transormed into activities

that reinorce group collaboration with careul advance consideration

o group dynamics and group learning and production goals. Both PAR

groups used an array o ethnographic tools. Groups learned about meth-

ods through presentation and practice through role play or through

learning stations at which acilitator resident teams illustrated the uses

o observation, interviewing, survey, photographic, pile sorting, map-ping, visual storytelling, and other methods (Berg and Schensul 2004;

Bernard 1995; Castleden, Garvin, and First Nation 2008; Rowley et al.

2004; Schensul and LeCompte 1999). Groups then chose one or more

methods depending on the issue to be addressed, applied and practiced

them with eedback, and implemented them in the community. As one

second-year UWDP participant told our evaluator:

Developing the questionnaire was . . . something that we enjoyed

because it, it gave us the opportunity to ask the questions that we

thought were appropriate because most o the women in the project

went through some kind o abusive relationship or struggle in their


19/37


relationships. So, that was good because we, you know, put in the

interview according to what we experienced. And it did work. Because

basically thats what happened when we did the interviews. . . . The

questions, yeah, they went well, and, it happened, the results was

what we expected it to be. All the abuses and all the things that we wentthrough, the majority o the women went through in the interviews.

A requirement in both programs was ace-to-ace interviewing to

hone communication skills, learn divergent viewpoints, build allies,

and expand knowledge o city political structures and decision mak-

ing. In both groups, the research process required studying up and

studying down, collecting and analyzing inormation, and collecting

and organizing allies, all at the same time. Role play to embody andimprove data collection techniques was an important way to improve

the quality o the data, and it also served to create opportunities or ex-

changes among PAR group members.

Engaging residents directly in the process o data analysis is perhaps

the most dicult as well as the most rewarding aspect o the PAR pro-

cess. One primary challenge is the amount o time required to enter or

transcribe, read, and summarize data; a second is discomort stemming

rom lack o amiliarity o PAR group members with technical dataentry and analysis procedures. These potential barriers required that

acilitators invent creative shortcuts. Level o involvement in analysis

varied across the two projects and even across groups. For example, in

the rst year o the UWDP, the ocus o the project on collecting data on

a large sample o women in the city produced too much data or a un-

damentally volunteer group. Women learned the data-entry process and

interpreted results but did not have time to learn how to analyze this

large amount o survey data. The group working on violence againstwomen shared the responsibility o entering survey data and analyzing

it with help rom acilitators.

RE PAR groups collected more varied qualitative data and ewer

surveys. Working in pairs or groups to color code transcribed inter-

views and discern patterns o agreement and disagreement, creating

and naming clusters that reveal cognitive maps showing associations

among items in a domain, or learning how to generate, read, and inter-

pret patterns in survey results, resident research-activists brought in-

sight to the analysis process.

Involvement in both data collection and analysis was very important


20/37


in preparing PAR groups to discuss and present the results. The abil-

ity to present data to an invited public audience, and then to smaller

public groups on request, enabled them to become more efcacious

as individuals and as members o advocacy groups. UWDP PAR groups

presented data using more traditional meanscharts, handouts, and

statements prepared by groups ater reviewing the results o their data.

A decade later, digital storytellingdramatic interpretations along

with projected visual results o analysisimproved impact and au-

dience reception. Several RE groups ound ways o perorming both

their own narratives and the results o their research, both o which

called or introspection and collaborative work. From observational

feld notes:

During one session participants created a dramatic improvisation to

describe their situation. In the scenario three community residents

meet each other in the park. Ater introducing themselves, they

remark on what a beautiul day it is. One woman remarks on how the

beautiul day reminds her o home. In this presentation, home or

these three women is Ecuador, Mexico and Puerto Rico. They discuss

what they miss about their homelands, what motivated them to come

to the United States, how long they have been here and what they

were hoping to nd when they got here. They also realize that despite

their dierent backgrounds, they have several things in common.

They have diculty getting jobs or accessing job trainings due to

language barriers. Although all three came to the U.S. to improve their

economic conditions, each has ound a harsh reality. Determined to

unite despite ethnic dierences they eel it is more important to stand

together to make change rather than to stand apart.Rigor is an issue in PAR. Rigor in PAR may be dened in relation to

learning and desired outcomes. In learning, achieving rigor calls or

making sure that the research design and data collection procedures

selected by PAR groups are implemented with care. Rigor in relation to

outcomes is linked to audience expectation. Both are important. Rigor

in our projects was ramed by the experience o acilitators, the nature

o the problem to be addressed, and the audience or the research. In

the rst year o the UWDP, or example, the groups goal was to pro-

duce survey data on women in the city that would withstand the scru-

tiny o policy analysts. Thus, attention to systematic sampling proto-


21/37


cols and survey administration were important to the outcome. In later

years, research rigor was balanced with skills development and group

process. For example, in the second year, women wanted to use data

collected via a survey they created on violence against women to advo-

cate on behal o abused women. Critical to their ability to obtain inor-

mation or testimony was the completion o all survey responses since

these data provided testimony or the UWDP PAR members as they

advocated with others against violence against women. The generaliz-

ability o the sample was less important to this group. For RE groups,

careul implementation techniques coupled with triangulation o data

produced both social validity and interpretational rigor that was highly

convincing to audiences.

c. building collaborative relationships

PAR collaboration requires relational eectiveness. Glcin Sengir and

colleagues identiy our components o relational eectiveness that are

useul guides: communication as measured by the requency and im-

portance o communication among partners; joint work as measured

by the requency and importance o joint activities; quality o interac-

tion measured by trust, cooperation, and confict or confict resolu-tion; and connectivity o social structure assessed in terms o clarity o

structure and roles (Sengir et al. 2004). Their work shows that relation-

al eectiveness is an aggregated outcome o these our components

along with their interaction eects and changes over time.

In PAR groups, in addition to work-related communication the

importance o continuous and personal involvement o acilitators and

PAR group members in each others lives and communities cannot be

underestimated. This orm o involvement calls or personal intimacyand a willingness to blur the lines between researcher/acilitator and

participant/community researcher, to blend the personal and the politi-

cal (Cahill 2007). Duncan-Andrade considers this orm o engagement,

which is inherent in all real ethnography, as duty (2007). Lived experi-

ence in PAR communities contributes to trust and mutual respect, both

critical in reinorcing group interaction, and builds on cultural capital

and understood political possibilities and barriers to action. In addi-

tion to constant re-equilibration o power and resources, confict reso-

lution depends on intimate understanding o root causes o confict in

communities and among PAR members (usually stemming rom im-


22/37


mediate, historical, political, or community divisions). These process-

es in PAR articulate the intersecting and mutually reinorcing roles o

acilitators and PAR members and serve to remove the boundaries es-

tablished by class, ethnic or racial dierences, and privilege, especially

when there is shared movement toward an overarching common goal.

Fundamental to PAR projects were three types o relationships: with-

in the sta and acilitator group, between acilitators and PAR mem-

bers, and among the participants themselves.

Relationships among acilitators To be eective, PAR requires close collab-

orations among acilitators. In the UWDP, acilitators were all women

proessionals with degrees ranging rom BA to PhD. Our disciplines in-

cluded womens studies, anthropology, nutritional science, psychology,

economic development, social work, and business. Our ethnic or racial

identities were Puerto Rican, Arican American, West Indian, Egyptian,

Euro-American, and Jewish. All o us were working in the local com-

munity and had strong ties with ethnic and neighborhood communi-

ties as well as other community-oriented proessionals. A passionate

commitment to gender and development and to the idea o research as

empowerment united us. Operationalizing this commitment requiredus to conront dierences in our priorities. For example, social work-

ers highlighted group work and individual development and problem

solving in their work with women. Womens studies representatives

highlighted leadership development, and anthropologists and psy-

chologists were more concerned with research innovations and the

research process. These dierences in priorities resulted in many de-

bates about how to balance and integrate the three agendas into a PAR

program. Although the PAR process requires a cooperative learning ap-proach with acilitated instruction, in both groups acilitators had di-

erent instructional styles, varying in their ability to engage the groups.

One important way o resolving dierences was debrieng at length by

discussing group process, instructional content, participants personal

situations in relation to the group, and our own reactions to the group

and each other. With limited weekly meeting time in both programs,

balancing these themes was a weekly challenge.

Relationships between Facilitators and PAR Group Members Relationships be-

tween acilitators and PAR group members called or blurring the


23/37


boundaries between acilitation and learning. While this can happen in

any group, smaller size increased relational intimacy. The UWDP PAR

groups were large, twenty or more, making it challenging to develop

close relationships with every PAR member. As acilitators, we were ea-

ger to develop relationships with UWDP groups. We tended to gravitate

toward those women with whom we elt comortable. For example, those

o us who spoke Spanish and who had been working in the Puerto Rican

community shared more o our lives with women whose rst language

preerence was Spanish. However, we tried to avoid the appearance that

acilitators avored one group over another by dividing our time among

groups and sharing leadership in acilitation sessions. Some women

were outspoken, commanding attention, while others were more re-served. Most o us developed deep personal relationships with at least

one or two women and their amilies that endured over time.

On a number o occasions, crises and trauma within amilies or in

the community interrupted the lives o some group members and a-

ected the group. When these events occurred, everyone was aected,

group work stopped, and acilitators spent time discussing and help-

ing to make sense o these situations. These discussions built strong

bonds in all UWDP PAR groups, and women were anxious or more

such times, devoted to their emotional concerns. One second-year

UWDP participant commented:

We didnt really have a lot o opportunity to share like personal things,

like a group therapy thing or the women. Though we did need

it, because a lot o the women were going through a lot o dicult

issues. We needed it . . . but we did have some. And I think i we had

more, that would be helpulmore opportunities to share with each

other.

Even though bilingual community psychologists were available to

provide counseling sessions or each PAR group member, and some

took advantage o it, counseling sessions did not always satisy wom-

ens desire to share experiences in a group setting.

The RE PAR groups were smaller (ten to twelve people), which pro-

vided more time and opportunity or development o personal relation-

ships between acilitators and groups, during and between sessions.

Facilitators and resident researchers got to know each other well, at-


24/37


tended each others amily events, and visited each others homes. The

close relationships between acilitators and group members made

it possible to address personal or community crises. Facilitators also

were committed to supporting residents through the diculties they

aced with illnesses, job loss, and poverty.

Because personal relationships between acilitators and group

members were important in attributing meaning to the work, stang

changes were disruptive to neighborhood groups. It was inevitable that

groups that had worked with one acilitator were not as connected to

others who joined later, with the result that some disengaged and be-

came less involved in the work. Additionally, gender played a more sig-

nicant role in the South End, where the lead acilitator, a Latina witha background in marriage and amily counseling had developed strong

and empathic connections to the participants, some o whom elt aban-

doned when she let. They had less anity or her male Latino replace-

ment, who ocused on community organizing.

Facilitators continually emphasized and acted upon the undamen-

tal principle that the research was the residents work that they devel-

oped, owned, and had responsibility or using, unlike other projects

over which they had no control, and the results o which they neverobtained. This emphasis was especially important in the rst Arican

American group that consisted o activists who were quite suspicious o

research and its uses. The male Arican American anthropologist (co-

author Ken Williamson) who acilitated this group employed a patient

approach that acknowledged the groups historical distrust o research

and allowed its members to develop trust in him and the research pro-

cess slowly and through direct participation in and ownership o it.

Intragroup Collaboration Intragroup dynamics in both programs were

complicated by education, language, ethnic or racial identity, person-

al need, and advocacy stance o participants, but some women viewed

this as one o the positive aspects o the program. A rst-year partici-

pant commented:

I loved this [diversity]. . . . It was wonderul. Tensions arose but

we worked through them together, [and] became a tight knit

group especially those who stayed all the way through. Because

o this diversity, many issues arose when we were trying to dene


25/37


questions or investigation. I think this was important. Womens

issues are diverse. It is important to refect this. [The] best part was

this interaction with other women . . . . eisty women.

In the UWDP, women in the rst year constituted a tightly knit groupand saw themselves as advocates, working or the benet o other

women in the city. They were very ready to support a member o the

group who had allen behind in meeting her target survey numbers. In

the second year, the group was divided into those in avor o the topic

o violence against women, led by a well-known and very outspoken

Latina advocate, and those who were in disagreement but not unied in

selecting another topic. Eventually this confict was resolved when a-

cilitators helped the group recognize that nearly every member had ex-perienced some orm o abuse, and worked separately with those who

were in abusive relationships at the time to help them conront their

situations outside o the group setting and depersonalize their work on

the issue.

Language also impeded intragroup communication. In the UWDP,

especially in the second year, newer arrivals who were most comort-

able in Spanish could not communicate with other PAR group mem-

bers without translation. Facilitators and other PAR group memberswere bilingual, and small group work made it possible or the several

Spanish speakers to work on issues in Spanish, but it was dicult to

conduct a completely bilingual program. Nevertheless, Spanish speak-

ers remained in the second-year PAR group and were able to commu-

nicate the results o their work to others in Spanish, promoting PAR

activities in more isolated sectors o the Latino community. RE Latino

groups conducted their work in English and Spanish, depending on

the comort level o the participants with the topic being discussed

though primarily in Spanish. This enhanced trust between group

members and acilitators but called or patience and trust on the part

o English-speaking acilitators who could not participate and relin-

quished control over groups when only Spanish was spoken.

RE PAR groups were generally cohesive and demonstrated a great

willingness to work within and across city and ethnic lines. They di-

ered within group mainly in terms o advocacy experience, education,

employment experience, length o time in the city and country, and lan-

guage capacity. They diered across group by ethnic identication, lan-

guage, recency o arrival, and action research priorities. Relationships


26/37


between groups were aected by language use (Spanish dominant in

the south part o the city and English in the north end) and by residents

level o experience in promoting their own views in a public setting.

Facilitators worked with their groups to create a common meeting

agenda. In general, both acilitators as well as the project director went

to meetings o all groups, and in the process modeled intergroup com-

munication and cooperation. Latinos visited Arican American organi-

zations and met through Spanish/English and English/Spanish trans-

lation. When meeting together, groups were able to share stereotypes

and misunderstandings about their respective areas o the city; or ex-

ample, that the North End was more organized than the South End and

that the Latino mayor avored the Latino South End with more publicsupport, such as Christmas lights provided at the neighborhood level

only on the main South End thoroughare. The research helped them

recognize that they shared common concerns about their neighbor-

hoods, economic development, and the education o city children. The

logistical and emotional dimensions o bringing together groups with

dierent histories, ears, and concerns to share data, perspectives, and

a common advocacy strategy were challenging but rewarding as long-

standing prejudices across groups were overcome.

d. collaborative action, context, and power

We can think o PAR as transorming individual and group conscious-

ness and as organizing or transormational change. Judy Burgess

and others reer to these as rst-, second-, and third-person research

(Burgess 2006; Heen 2005; Reason and Bradbury 2001). Many PAR re-

searchers including Michelle Fine, Paulo Freire, Patricia Maguire and

others nd that the rst two levels are sucient to support resistance

and to negotiate and conront power (Fine and Torre 2006; Freire 2005;

Gatenby and Humphries 2000; Harding 2006). Some noted that it was

not possible to move toward broader action without coming to terms

with their own issues rst. A UWDP participant, when asked about the

importance o community activism, told us:

You gotta learn about yoursel more, what you can do to improve

yoursel, and to come up with solutions or your, you know, your

situation that youre in. And then, then you can have an open mind to

learn about the system, and how the system operates.


27/37


PAR groups along with their allies made modest inroads in initiat-

ing social change eorts, and some moved to leadership positions. The

UWDP was based in a politically dedicated, community research orga-

nization committed to long-term social change through resource and

power sharing and action research. It received support and endorse-

ment rom womens advocacy organizations, and it was widely popular

with a diverse group o community women, many o whom achieved

personal and political rewards through their participation. During its

lietime, it oered eighty women the experience o crossing sociogeo-

graphic boundaries, nding common ground, expressing common

rustrations, creating collective knowledge, sharing their experiences

and ndings with dierent publics, and entering into the political are-

na o policy making and advocacy. Some women who began as com-

mitted activists expressed disappointment with the collective organiz-

ing and mobilization capacity o the program. For others who were not

yet prepared to become independent activists, the program provided

the tools to express their views and to critique, and it encouraged many

women who had reservations about speaking English to do so in public

settings. As a rst-year UWDP participant said:

The reason I got involved is I saw mysel going through a lot o

struggles in my relationship with my marriage, so I got interested in

learning more about the issues o women, how, or my own benet,

too. I said this program is probably going to benet, is going to be a

start or me, to learn more, to get involved, to empower mysel. And

thats how I decided to, and I knew it was going to be a good program

because they oered credits, you know, rom the community college.

So, I knew it was going to be a good program.The program enabled some women to gain upward mobility in their

work, their education, and their political aspirations (several have run

or oce). And it provided a model or agencies with dierent mis-

sions, structures, members, and concerns to overcome their dierenc-

es and work together toward a common research and action goal.

The UWDP experience reramed our thinking about resident PAR

activist readiness, and we identied and recruited known activists in

the RE project by working with CBOs, block clubs, and statewide eth-

nically and racially based advocacy organizations, and through key in-

ormants and public community events including community health


28/37


airs, community events, and block club meetings. With identities as

advocates already established, group members could assist each other

in strengthening their resolve and could support growth in those less

advanced in their ability to advocate. A number o PAR activists elt that

undergoing the research process resulted in greater understanding o

their own history and attachment to their neighborhoods. As one RE

participant put it:

We introduced each other, we got to know each other, we said where

we come rom, where we are rom, we shared little stories rom each

one o our lives. That was what I liked the most because we are rom

dierent countries and I liked getting to know other peoples tradition

and to come to understand our shared experiences in coming hereand in our current situations.

Many experienced a sense o empowerment and agency in using

their knowledge o research to question the basis o the data and re-

ports that people introduced to justiy changes in their neighborhoods.

Residents gained skills, and acilitators both supported them and en-

couraged them to support each others group eorts as well as to devel-

op cross-city and cross-ethnic alliances. A number o resident researchactivists continued their work ater the training period and generated

small-scale action projects based on their research. One group devel-

oped a small grant program to support development o projects based

on their research. It allowed community parents to organize a school

store that engaged parents and provided an experiential learning envi-

ronment or students as well as a Spanish-language culinary arts pro-

gram. Other groups created a cross-city resident newsletter, resource

packets or parents o school children, and advocacy eorts to developa comprehensive community school learning center.

PAR groups in each o the programs encountered similar structur-

al problems that plagued eorts to accomplish real transormational

change. In the case o the UWDP, the program came into existence at

a time when gender-based advocacy was shiting rom widespread po-

litical mobilization around womens issues to institutionalization in

the academy. Recognizing that the national womens movement had

not taken into consideration the voices o women o color, and that the

academy was unlikely to address this issue, Washington-based national

advocacy organizations were enthusiastic about what they perceived to


29/37


be a community-based approach to joining the voices o white middle-

class women with those o low-income women o color. This position

was endorsed by state and city Commissions on the Status o Women,

both o which were headed and staed by women o color. Declines in

the national womens movement were matched with related declines in

the activity o local nonprot organizations to support gender-based ad-

vocacy. Despite the best eorts o the sta and partner organizations,

the UWDP was only partially successul in meeting the challenge o

bringing to ruition activism stemming rom PAR activities. Women in

the program elt empowered to speak both individually and as a group,

but there were not enough opportunities or them to express their voice,

so the social transormational ability o the UWDP model was only par-

tially realized. Nevertheless, this model o collaborative development

through PARi integrated into a larger gender-based and ethnically

based state or national movementhas considerable power to bring

about long-term changes in the health and welare o urban women.

A signicant challenge to RE PAR stemmed rom the contradiction

between the ICR PAR approach, which was based on empowerment

through independent issue identication and research development,

and the MC initiative, which planned to evaluate project outcomes insix main areas. The MC initiative wanted residents whose work was

aligned with national priorities, while PAR residents wanted to work

on and speak about their own concerns. This unresolved dierence be-

tween ICRs RE PAR approach and the MC working groups undermined

the newly evolving critical voice o residents. Residents who joined MC

groups were not ready to counter preexisting agendas with their own

perspectives and were actively discouraged rom doing so. This con-

fict undermined the emergence o real resident leadership, led to to-ken resident membership on MC committees, and interered with col-

laboration among the residents, ICR PAR acilitators, and the rest o

the initiative. In this case, the absence o strong local, state, and na-

tional movements linked to their interests impeded the ability o fedg-

ling activist groups to gain the support they needed to make signicant

changes through PAR in their own communities. To experience success

in transorming economic, political, and social issues required more

time to work with these groups and the ability to orm and sustain a

cross-city PAR alliance to provide more signicant support to resident

voices in mainstream decision-making arenas.


30/37


Duo

These case studies outline a specic collaborative approach to conduct-

ing PAR with adults in community settings based on the use o social

science research methods to support the development o individual-level critical consciousness, group identity and solidarity, collective

learning, and community analysis and social action. At its best, PAR

engages people who have been disenranchised or silenced in dening

issues rom their own lived experience and perspective, using group

ethnographic research methods to examine and contextualize the prob-

lem and its multiple causes and eects, and collectively taking action.

Through the learning and refection process that characterizes PAR, in-

dividuals develop the critical consciousness that enables them to resistrather than to internalize oppression and to bridge racial, ethnic, and

other social boundaries, linking their lived experience to larger orces.

We believe that participatory action research oers one o the strongest

approaches to inquiry intended to move groups o people rom the

margins to the center in seeking solutions to redress historical inequi-

ties and injustices.

We can think o PAR as representing rst-person (personal refec-

tion and development), second-person (group consciousness and mu-tual support), and third-person research (organizing or action on be-

hal o others) (Burgess 2006; Heen 2005; Reason and Bradbury 2001).

Our experience over the years, and refected in these two projects, has

shown us that our PAR model can be very successul in ostering rst

and second person research and in building the social and conceptual

inrastructure or signicant collective social action. Making the transi-

tion to third person research and structural transormations, however,

is very challenging. Why?

We explain the diculties as stemming rom several structural prob-

lems. First, project-based PAR is oten limited and constrained by und-

ing, sta resources or student schedules, and advocacy opportunities

created by other organizations or alliances. The process o moving rom

the margins to the mainstream in terms o voice is a long one, especial-

ly or those who do not initially view themselves as advocates. Funders,

acilitators, and communities need to recognize that PAR projects need

time, resources, and continuity to develop authentic activist voice and

strong alliances.

Second, advocacy inrastructure can be lacking. Both programs have


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shown that there are limitations to collaboration with sympathetic ac-

tivist organizations. All PAR eorts are assisted by external organiza-

tions, agencies, policy makers, and media representatives who are will-

ing to assume their mission and stand ready to support them (Maton

2000). As Gaventa has noted, collaboration with organizations com-

mitted to supporting the work, development, and proposed actions o

community research activists and to engaging in honest and open dia-

logue and negotiation can help to sustain and expand small-scale lo-

cal changes into more systemic processes and eects, especially when

linked to larger local, national, or international movements (Gaventa

1991, 1993).

Like community groups and researchers, however, organizational

partners have their own agency missions, goals, objectives, obliga-

tions, limitations, and unding sources, which may, intentionally or

otherwise, subvert, undermine, or co-opt the newly emergent positions

o community groups. The UWDP organizations that ormed an advo-

cacy alliance, and that had advocacy or action capacity themselves, were

weakened in the contemporary urban climate, and several shited their

priorities during the lie o the program. The RE PAR eort showed that

other organizations that could have engaged the work o PAR groupshad policy or advocacy agendas whose timelines or topical issues were

not synchronized with the interests o PAR groups.

Third, our commitment to making sure that PAR groups owned all

aspects o the research called or their own selection o the issue they

wanted to tackle. This was important or building group allegiance and

loyalty. Further, or us it symbolized a deeply rooted desire to reverse

elitist power structures in science and to address genuinely elt con-

cerns across neighborhoods and in the urban environment. Most PARgroups elt passionate about the issues they selected. More problem-

atic, however, was the act that each group chose a dierent specic

issue. These choices, though important at the PAR group level, made it

dicult to link eorts across neighborhoods or across program years,

thus reducing options or bringing about short-term transormational

change. The short-term challenges we aced in connecting groups and

individuals to external advocacy or social change organizations with

similar interests resulted in large part because o our own loyalty to PAR

ownership o the issue selection process. Linking PAR work to larger

social movements (some current examples are immigration policy and


32/37


prison reorm) or having time to build wider alliances would have gen-

erated broader collaboration or social transormation. But at the same

time it would have precluded the ormation o independent critique

stemming rom each groups social analysis and research eorts.

Constraints in stang and stang retention aect the quality o

partnerships both with organizations and PAR community groups.

Facilitators may not have the experience to model advocacy nor su-

cient political power and social capital to make a dierence in advo-

cacy settings. Committed community workers with research skills are

dicult to identiy. Minority researchers with graduate degrees remain

ew in number, and many Arican American, Latino, Native American,

and Southeast Asian researchers preer the status and prestige o larg-

er institutions or other settings. The community work required, and

the constant pressure o training, meetings, output, and evaluation by

unders can produce a high burnout rate. Building trust is a continuous

process, and researchers ace challenges to their identity, which can be

painul. Insider/outsiders also have to be open and expose themselves,

their histories, and stories i they are asking others to critically refect

upon sometimes painul individual and amilial histories. Research a-

cilitators have to believe in the legitimacy o local knowledge, even asthey introduce new knowledge that may change, alter, or expand exist-

ing knowledge, and they must do so in ways that build upon continual

co-construction rather than replacement with dominant knowledge

systems or rames o reerence. Insider/outsiders are expected to be

available to participants who have multiple needsmany beyond the

ability o insider/outsiders to respond toon an almost continual ba-

sis. In attempting to establish boundaries, they may at times become

less engaged than is ideal or eective partnership development. Theseare limitations to collaboration and to achieving both short-term and

long-term outcomes.

The case studies oer some important lessons or building collab-

orative PAR projects with marginalized communities in local and na-

tional systems: PAR requires good acilitation to ensure collaborative

relationships and methodology. To be eective, PAR requires constant

sel and group refection on process, methodology, context, and de-

sired outcomes. PAR requires privileging local knowledge while nd-

ing ways o integrating local and scientic tools to co-construct new

knowledge and social critique in a participatory process. Strong inter-


33/37


sectoral relationships are helpul in creating social capital that can ac-

cess resources, build alliances, and orge change. To accomplish short-

term transormational goals, PAR eorts should be linked to activist

networks rom the outset. And to accomplish long-term transorma-

tional goals, PAR eorts should be devoted to building strong commu-

nity-resident alliances that can move rom the ground up to engage

with local political and policy change eorts, and to social movements

o their choice (Dobson 2001).

We live in a time when civil liberties that we take or granted are be-

ing challenged and opportunities or voice and participation continue

to be eroded. Dissent is questioned as unpatriotic, and more central-

ized control o media and other channels o communication dene

truth rather than oering opportunities or critique. Anthropological

approaches can counter these trends by rendering voice to the unheard

and oering multiple ways o seeing and understanding. We started

these endeavors with a commitment to employing participatory ethno-

graphic action research partnerships with aected people and commit-

ted organizations or the purpose o challenging hegemonies through

the co-construction o transormational knowledge and action. Along

the path, we have encountered small-scale successes, primarily in theorm o individual growth and advocacy and the building o meaningul

relationships among acilitators and between and across groups. At the

same time, we have aced many barriers to eecting truly transorma-

tional change.

To move orward, we must study and negotiate more deeply and rig-

orously with partnering agencies. We must build in processes that en-

courage all collaborators, including ourselves, to examine our belies,

ways o operating, and willingness to challenge and reorm our priori-ties and policies as a way o responding to PAR community voices. We

need to advocate with unders or longer and broader commitment to

community knowledge development and associated authentic leader-

ship, and or the value o ecacy o local knowledge that brings the

standpoint and lived experiences o people on the margins into a sup-

portable and sustainable research agenda. Conducted in isolation rom

national movements, PAR projects constitute important exercises in

critiquing the present and envisioning the uture, in strengthening

community groups and community voices, and in identiying path-

ways to resisting discriminatory structures and removing barriers to


34/37


the achievement o social and political justice. To be strong and sus-

tainable, they must resonate both with local residents and commu-

nity groups, and emergent national and international social justice

movements.

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