Engaging the complexities of community: conflict and difference in community-engaged research

Abstract

This paper engages with the methodological and ethical complexities of conducting research across diverse sites of power and privilege, specifically by drawing upon twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork on the ecological restoration of the Ventura River in Southern California. The design of this project incorporates people from multiple, conflicting positions, including people who are homeless and living in riverbottom encampments, people in the environmental field working to restore the riverbottom, and people in social services working to house the homeless. Throughout my fieldwork various groups attempted to assert agency over my research methods and priorities, pulling me in multiple directions. However, despite this tension, this research design also afforded me the opportunity to develop trusting relationships across difference, which facilitated the opening of a new (and potentially more just) socio-ecological imaginary for the Ventura River. This paper demonstrates how one can create change across diverse positions of power, and the role community-engaged researchers can play in this process.