1173 - Community Engaged Scholarship in Sociology: The Urgency of Radical Resistance in Perilous Times

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

In an era of persistent, inflamed tensions around race, class, immigration, and citizenship, sociologists face growing calls to confront issues of oppression and social justice directly. ASA leaders have made steps toward a more engaged sociology – from Michael Burawoy’s 2005 call for public sociology to the recent formation of the Sociology Action Network.
Researchers, community members, and activists who conduct collaborative, community engaged scholarship (CCES) offer a compelling answer to this call by partnering to create knowledge in direct support of equity-oriented change agendas. This kind of scholarship challenges the hierarchy of expertise and the hegemony of academic knowledge, recognizing that communities have a need for and indeed a “right” to research, collaborate, and organize efforts to build power for change.
Unfortunately, while calls for more engagement emerge periodically, mainstream sociology creates numerous incentives that undermine the vitality and feasibility of such work.
In this session, we draw on the experience and work of scholars of the Urban Research Based Action Network (URBAN) Scholars – a coalition of 1,800+ scholars, activists, and artists committed to social change, and democratizing knowledge production. This session covers how to create institutional infrastructures that support this kind of scholarship and support the scholars who pursue it, as this work challenges entrenched inequality and oppression.
URBAN will work with ASA Sections to empower administrators, graduate apprentices, and credentialed scholars to pursue and promote acceptance and visibility of this model of accountability and collaboration in research, activism, mentoring and apprenticeship, in academic institutions and among peers.

Sub Unit

• Special Sessions

Session Organizers

• Sancha Doxilly Medwinter, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• John B. Diamond, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts-Boston

Individual Presentations

• Higher-education Organizing for an Uncertain Time: Cultivating Multi-racial Coalitions for Collaborative, Community-engaged Scholarship - Jose Zapata Calderon, Pitzer College

• Centering Community Voices and Experiences at the Margins: Immigrants Speak Back to the Academy, the Media, and the State - Thomas Pineros Shields, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

• We Minoritized and First-Generation Recruits of the Academy Reclaim Our Value: The “Diversity” Social Contract Renegotiated - Sancha Doxilly Medwinter, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• Activist Scholarship and Educational Justice: Intersectional Organizing in the Age of Trump - Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts-Boston

Discussant

• John B. Diamond, University of Wisconsin-Madison