ERIC Number: EJ1436096
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1076-0180
EISSN: EISSN-1994-0219
'The Real Data Set': A Case of Challenging Power Dynamics and Questioning the Boundaries of Research Production
Rachel Wells; Victoria Copeland
Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, v30 n1 2024
While the co-production of knowledge through community-engaged research is intended to be a reciprocally beneficial process, academic institutions have often devalued community expertise by treating community organizations as subjects rather than co-creators of knowledge. Drawing from Black Feminist Epistemology, this ethnographic study examines how one community-based organization, Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), partners with academic researchers, including their discourse around partnerships and how they challenged power dynamics between community and their university partners. This paper discusses key themes from their partnerships, including centering community members' expertise through their lived experience and forming long-term mutual relationships rooted in abolition and the Black Radical Tradition. Drawing on an analysis of LA CAN's organizing and research processes with academic partners, we discuss how the centering of community expertise and forming relationships with academics aligned on these values can help to challenge the traditional power dynamics in community-university partnerships, resulting in different ways of knowing or what LA CAN referred to as "the real data set."
Descriptors: Community Organizations, Researchers, School Community Relationship, Power Structure, African Americans, Poverty, Activism, Research, Data, Homeless People
Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning, University of Michigan. 1024 Hill Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3310. Tel: 734-647-7402; Fax: 734-647-7464; Web site: https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/mjcsl/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: California (Los Angeles)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A