"the Real Data Set": A Case Study on Challenging Power Dynamics and Questioning the Boundaries of Research Production

Background and Purpose: The co-production of knowledge is intended to be a reciprocally beneficial process that engages researchers from multiple perspectives. However, the history of research production is shaped by power dynamics that primarily benefit those within the academy. As academics, we must constantly reflect on the ways in which we intentionally or unintentionally uphold these power structures within engaged research. Using a case study of a community-based organization (CBO) with longstanding academic partnerships, this paper discusses examples of partnerships that oppose these power dynamics and how researchers can combat historically harmful habits within the Ivory Tower. This case shows how the shifting of power dynamics leads to a different form of knowledge production that centers community expertise, resulting in the “the real data set”.

Methods: This case is from a larger ethnographic study of two CBOs that combine community organizing and service provision within the city of Los Angeles. This paper focuses on one CBO, Los Angeles Community Action Network. Through data collection, LA CAN was identified as having a distinct approach to partnerships and language that emphasized community expertise. From its founding, LA CAN has been connected to the Black radical tradition, and this approach shapes their partnerships and language. Thus, we identified this case as illustrative of ways in which power dynamics can be challenged and different forms of knowledge that result from this shift. Ethnographic data for this paper includes participant observation between 2019-2020 and document review. Findings were refined through ongoing discussions among the research team. These ongoing discussions also included discussing our positionalities, epistemological frameworks, as well as our relationship to LA CAN.

Findings: In LA CAN’s discourse, we identified how they challenged ideas of academic expertise, and instead centered community members and their contributions. Instead of academics “telling us about community,” LA CAN emphasized the role of community members providing wisdom and knowledge validation. Through their discourses around expertise and power, LA CAN also described their long-standing relationships that are rooted in these commitments. We discuss these two themes, expertise and power and long-term mutual relationships, and how these two themes were shaped by LA CAN’s overarching commitment to Black liberation and abolitionist praxis.

Conclusion and Implications: While the idea of “learning from the community” or “asking the community” can be a hollow phrase at times, LA CAN provides a different way of approaching community knowledge and key principles for partnerships. As opposed to academics providing knowledge, they reframe partnerships where community members are “speaking truth” and create the “real data set.” The examples provided in this case, and that are guided by our collective epistemological frameworks, offer us a way to move forward in community-engaged research. This form of knowledge production uplifts CBOs as movement researchers who are central to creating and interpreting theory and offers lessons on how shifting power dynamics can strengthen knowledge co-creation and how universities can learn from the ethics, politics, and praxis of CBOs.