The power of process: a story of collaboration and community change

Abstract

Based on a year-long ethnographic study, this narrative chronicles the planning year of the West Virginia Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being—a collaborative effort to develop a comprehensive statewide substance abuse prevention system. The study provides evidence that the WV Partnership's focus on people- and relationship-oriented processes, rather than only outcomes, was key to its success in obtaining a State Incentive Grant1 and laid a foundation for creating a comprehensive statewide prevention system. The essay explores the sustainability and replicability of the WV Partnership in relation to the high human and organizational costs of the ambitious, collaborative endeavor. Using a critical theory framework, the project is discussed as a site of social transformation in the context of economic and social circumstances in central Appalachia at the turn of the twenty-first century. Transformative elements include: (1) countering within-state community imbalances between levels of need and availability of resources; (2) featuring inclusive, community-based, capacity-building approaches to social reform; and (3) challenging recent trends to legislate narrow, quantitative definitions of social science.