The Value of Building Community Power Through Research
“Interrogating power dynamics in research means re-imagining the relationship between researchers and communities.”
At Beloved Community, we believe that disrupting existing power structures in research requires centering the lives of those historically excluded at every stage in research design. Interrogating power dynamics in research means re-imagining the relationship between researchers and communities. We recently joined with Anti-Racism Daily to discuss how we use participatory action research to disrupt existing power structures.
Disrupting existing power structures in research requires centering the lives of those historically excluded at every stage in research design.
Since research produces data that informs organizational and policy decisions, it is crucial that we understand the ways in which the people producing and participating in research shape its outcomes. The people who have the power to design, implement, and fund research play a key role in deciding which populations get studied, how those populations get studied, and how findings are interpreted and presented.
Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a research framework that emphasizes ‘power with’ and shared power. PAR encourages equitable collaboration between researchers and participants and is founded on the assumption that community members most impacted by an issue are best placed to design and implement that research. PAR also helps build the collective power necessary in the broader fight for equity and social justice. For this reason, we leverage PAR to uplift the expertise of BIPOC and historically excluded communities to uphold our pro-Black, pro-queer, pro-womxn values and build ‘power with’ communities.
In our NOLA CARES project, community members (known at Beloved as ‘PARticipants’) design research questions, learn research methods, and conduct surveys and focus groups to elicit the wisdom that lies in their own communities. This challenges traditional hierarchies of knowledge production, shifts power to community members, and designates them as experts of their own experience.
Research is a powerful tool that can harm and exclude. However, with intentional approaches, including PAR, researchers and community participants can build the collective power needed to advance liberatory futures of social justice and equity.
Read more about ‘The Value of Building Community Power Through Research’ on Anti-Racism Daily.
