Navigating the Boundaries of Youth Violence Prevention and Reduction: Reflections on Power in Community Engaged Scholarship
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Abstract
Community-engaged scholars grapple with power asymmetries in community-university partnerships, generally working from the assumption that deliberate practices are required to moderate the researchers’ power vis-a-vis that of the community. In this article, we suggest that this dyadic framing masks the complexity of power dynamics within communities, of which the university is just one part, and examine how power is negotiated in the boundary zones of a partnership. We use Third Generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a conceptual framework to analyse the structural and cultural dimensions of the boundary zone in which research, learning and action in our partnership occurred (Engeström 1996). A brief story sheds light on our boundary work which uses research and data to span, broker and shake institutional boundaries for the purpose of youth violence prevention and intervention. Our analysis illuminates the potential and limitations of our power to foster transformational change. It also allows us to show that underestimating power differentials and the diversity of values and cultures within an organisation and between a university and a community partner, and certainly across multiple institutions in the case of a cross-sector partnership, can slow down and even thwart work to address societal problems.
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