Critical Community-Engaged Scholarship: Communities and Universities Striving for Racial Justice
SMC Affiliated Work
1
Status
Faculty
School
School of Liberal Arts
Department
Justice, Community, and Leadership
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2-2017
Publication / Conference / Sponsorship
Peabody Journal of Education
Description/Abstract
he goal of this article is to clarify how current dominant understandings of community-engaged scholarship (CES) can be strengthened to incorporate lessons from critical theory and to focus on justice more explicitly. A prior analysis of how CES is defined across multiple disciplinary literatures revealed that scholars define CES as partnerships between universities and communities that collaboratively develop and apply knowledge to address public issues. Six components of CES were frequently recommended for practice within this scholarship as well. However, neither the goal of CES—to support the “public good”—nor the six recommended CES components consistently included an explicit focus on justice and critical theory. By explicitly naming and defining the goal of justice—as opposed to the “public good” —I aim to highlight the importance of conducting routine analyses in CES of whose interests motivate conceptions of the public good and how dominant cultural structures, values, and traditions negatively impact minoritized community members' lives. Thus, this article employs teachings from critical theory—such as race-conscious analyses, asset-based understandings of community, and privileging subaltern experiences—to envision how critical CES could support university and community partnerships in producing knowledge that more effectively dismantles systemic sources of racial and social injustice.
DOI
10.1080/0161956X.2017.1324661
Volume
92
Issue
3
First Page
363
Last Page
384
Disciplines
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Original Citation
Gordon da Cruz, Cynthia. “Critical Community-Engaged Scholarship: Communities and Universities Striving for Racial Justice.” Peabody Journal of Education, 92:3, 363-384, DOI: 10.1080/0161956X.2017.1324661
Repository Citation
Gordon de Cruz, Cynthia. Critical Community-Engaged Scholarship: Communities and Universities Striving for Racial Justice (2017). Peabody Journal of Education. 92 (3), 363-384. 10.1080/0161956X.2017.1324661 [article]. https://digitalcommons.stmarys-ca.edu/school-liberal-arts-faculty-works/710
