Collaborating for Change: A Participatory Action Research Casebook

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 220
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Across the U.S. immigrants, laborers, domestic workers, low-income tenants, indigenous communities, and people experiencing homelessness are conducting research to fight for justice. Collaborating for Change: A Participatory Action Research Casebook documents the stories of a dozen community-based research projects. Academics and their partners share authorship about the importance of gathering credible evidence, both for organizing and persuading. The emphasis is on community organizations involved in struggles for equality and justice. Research projects directly engage community partners in all phases of the research process. Finally, the stories capture how the research changes the roles of researchers and those being researched. The book is designed for students, but also for community organizers, social justice activists, and their research allies; it offers real stories and real projects that show how democratizing research supports social change and heightens our understanding of complex social issues.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
1 Introduction
2 The Epistemology and Hybridity of Participatory Action Research: What and Whose Truth Is It?
Part I Social Justice Organizing
3 The Activist Class Cultures Project: Helping Activists Become More Class Inclusive
4 Fighting Antihomeless Laws and the Criminalization of Poverty through Participatory Action Research
5 Organizers and Academics Together: The Household Energy Security Crisis and Utility Justice Organizing
Part II Worker Rights Activism
6 Shaping Organizing Strategy and Public Policy for an Invisible Workforce: Restaurant Opportunities Center
7 Worker-Led Research Makes the Case for Labor Justice for Massachusetts Domestic Workers: Social Research and Social Change at the Grassroots
8 Power Sharing through Participatory Action Research with a Latino Forest Worker Community
9 Making Injustice Visible: National Day Laborer Organizing Network’s Research and Action
10 Milking Research for Social Change: Immigrant Dairy Farmworkers in Upstate New York
11 Building a Better Texas: Participatory Research Wins for Texas Workers
Part III Language, Literacy, and Heritage
12 Mobilizing and Organizing Nimiipuu to Protect the Environment: Fighting to Protect Ancestral Lands in Idaho
13 Building Future Language Leaders in a Participatory Action Research Model
14 Conclusion: Linking Research to Social Action
Notes on Contributors
About the Foundation
Index