Rutgers University Press Collaborating for Change: A Participatory Action Research Casebook

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. Review "Pedagogy in Participatory Action Research," by Prentice Zinn-- "Footnotes""Collaborating for Change is an invigorating how-to on forging solidarity across activist and academic divides, a blueprint for turning visions of a better world into reality with a step-by-step accounting of what works on the frontlines in the struggle for social justice. In a new twist on "thinking global, acting local," this powerful and instructive volume illustrates the magic that happens when committed, thoughtful people bring their special knowledge and expertise to bear on a common goal."--Alisse Waterston "author with illustrator Charlotte Hollands, of the forthcoming graphic book, Light in Dark Times: Th""Collaborating for Change: A Participatory Action Research Casebook is a particularly timely publication considering the influx in momentum for social justice movements during 2020....[A] quality overview of PAR as an epistemology and method, but its true value lies in the real world examples of how collaborating for change has played out and created co- benefits for researchers, activists, organizations, and communities."-- "Rural Sociology""Each part of Collaborating for Change presents participatory action research from different communities and with different goals. What connects them is a shared rejection of the notion that academic research and community organizing are separate, and in fact, they show that blurring the lines between these practices strengthens each....While the findings they present are supported by the data and, while every research project led to significant policy changes, [some] succeeded beyond this [and] most clearly captured the power of praxis in language new researchers can absorb."-- "AnthroSource""The greatest strength of this casebook is that it includes numerous rich, detailed examples that illustrate PAR processes, including their strengths and contributions as well as challenges and obstacles. Each chapter is co-authored and focuses on a PAR process funded by the SIF. For those hungry for examples, this casebook is a feast."-- "Contemporary Sociology""The dismantling of the public sector over the past three decades has meant that even as universities proclaimed their commitment to civic engagement, community-based courses often ended up trying to compensate for the loss of essential services, rather than challenging the status quo. Now comes this collection, which demonstrates that when academics collaborate with grassroots activists who are committed to progressive social change, and when they embrace egalitarian research methods, genuine transformation is possible. I highly recommend it for anyone who is involved in university-community partnerships." --Susan B. Hyatt "co-editor of Learning Under Neoliberalism: Ethnographies of Governance in Higher Education" About the Author Susan Greenbaum is a retired professor of anthropology and member of