Abstract
While substantial efforts are being made in some universities to democratize the production, ownership, and use of knowledge through partnership with the community, significant barriers to community-university partnership persist, maintained through inequitable research relations, reductionist definitions of knowledge, and disincentives for faculty who are interested in community-based scholarship. The perseverance of this disconnect, we argue, is indicative of an existential aversion to community that lies deep within the psyche of the university. We liken the aversion to that of a disgust response, a social response that creates distance from that which is perceived to be dangerous, which in this case serves to preserve the university’s privileged status as knowledge producer. In this paper we bring forward arguments for the importance of community-engaged scholarship to the university’s civic role, to the pursuit of knowledge, and to the principles of democracy. We highlight promising advances in how some universities are accommodating community partnership within their definitions of scholarship and academic production, and, drawing upon Gordon’s theory of structural transformation and Bourdieu’s conceptualization of agency and habitus, we consider how such changes might be brought about at a deeper, structural level within the university.
Highlights
While substantial efforts are being made in some universities to democratize the production, ownership, and use of knowledge through partnership with the community, significant barriers to community-university partnership persist, maintained through inequitable research relations, reductionist definitions of knowledge, and disincentives for faculty who are interested in community-based scholarship
We suggest that the distance that is maintained, the suspicion with which the knowledge and activities of the community are regarded, and the normative practices that form seemingly impenetrable walls around academia, are automatic and non-rational enough to comprise an institutionalized gesture of repugnance and fear—a disgust response
The division between the university and the community is tenacious, despite solid and persistent challenges to its existence. Such tenacity can be explained as being derived from a disgust response of the university towards the community and community involvement in knowledge production
Summary
While substantial efforts are being made in some universities to democratize the production, ownership, and use of knowledge through partnership with the community, significant barriers to community-university partnership persist, maintained through inequitable research relations, reductionist definitions of knowledge, and disincentives for faculty who are interested in community-based scholarship. Communityengaged scholarship introduces a method of validation for alternative epistemologies; it seeks to alter the relationships that traditionally are organized around scholarship; and it demands that engagement with the university bring about positive social change for the everyday lives impacted by research activities.
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