Convenors: Angie Carter, Gabrielle Roesch-McNally, Ahna Kruzic Panelists: Heather Day, Community Alliance for Global Justice (Seattle, WA) Tomás Madrigal, Community to Community Development (Bellingham, WA) Jill M. Belsky,... [ view full abstract ]
Convenors: Angie Carter, Gabrielle Roesch-McNally, Ahna Kruzic
Panelists:
Heather Day, Community Alliance for Global Justice (Seattle, WA)
Tomás Madrigal, Community to Community Development (Bellingham, WA)
Jill M. Belsky, University of Montana
Claudia M. Prado-Meza, Universidad de Colima
This interactive panel invites a discussion to collectively examine engagement with praxis in rural sociology. We invite RSS members to join us in a facilitated discussion with researchers and community organizers on topics tied to notions of praxis, including knowledge co-production, participatory research, and community/place-based engagement. Rural sociologists have a long history of participatory research in partnership with rural and marginalized people and places. Today, increased tensions among political, public, and scientific communities inspire us to renew our commitment to this history. Communities leading change on the intersecting fronts of racial, gender, class, sexuality, and environmental justice are facilitating new understandings of power and social change. How can we best contribute to these efforts, working in collaboration with grassroots organizers and community organizations? How can we unlearn research approaches that have centered scientists as the “experts” while marginalizing the voices, perspectives, and needs of diverse communities? We will explore the privilege we occupy as social scientists by examining how intersecting identities shape our research agendas re-examining our role in conducting public science. Together with researchers and community organizers currently in active public science partnerships, we will participate in an active discussion about navigating participatory research in the contemporary moment across many different communities of place and of practice. We encourage people to bring practical and theoretical questions about how we continue to best partner with diverse communities through research, policy-making, and advocacy.
Praxis invites us to rethink notions of power and new relationalities to create opportunities for social change at community, institutional, and disciplinary levels. Now, more than ever, we need collaborative spaces for scientists, practitioners, and activists to share experiences, lessons learned, and challenges encountered in our efforts to engage in participatory research. This panel invites us all to re-imagine our discipline in service of putting science into action in ways that do not further marginalize the communities whose voices we seek to elevate. We hope participants and panelists alike will gain tangible tools and resources for rethinking how and with whom we do research.
