Democratic encounters? Epistemic privilege, power, and community-based participatory action research

The literature suggests that community-based participatory research holds the potential to democratize and decolonize knowledge production by engaging communities and citizens in the research enterprise. Yet this approach, and its associated claims, remain under theorized, particularly as to how power circulates between and among academic and community knowledge work/ers. This paper puts forth a postcolonial analysis of participatory techniques that sustain academe’s epistemic privilege through producing, subordinating and assimilating difference; claiming authenticity and voice; and dislocating collaborative knowledge work from the historical, political, social and embodied conditions in which it unfolds. Postcolonial readings of community-based participatory action research offer a powerful theoretical framework for interrogating the divide between the discursive claims and material practices that undermine this democratic project. Drawing on critical reflections on two community-based participatory action research projects, this paper offers modest proposals toward (re)placing community-based knowledge work/ers in space, time and bodies. Although this paper presents a critique of community-based participatory action research, it is not in pursuit of revealing “bad” participatory praxis or recuperating a better practice, but rather seeks to open up dialogue on the circulation of power in the campus/community encounter.