Facing Power: A Personal Journey through the Politics of Community Engagement at Universities

Luke Sinwell

doi:10.25159/1947-9417/19927

Authors

Luke Sinwell University of Johannesburg https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2126-6647

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/19927

Keywords:

scholar-activism, participatory action research, Participation: The New Tyranny?, decolonial research methods

Abstract

In South African higher education institutions, “community engagement” and the politics of knowledge production are highly contested. Intrinsic to the notion of “community engagement” is an ethical commitment to our participants (as co-producers of knowledge), although this does not necessarily mean that we should bow to communities and students at all costs. This article draws from my research and teaching and learning practices as these relate to my attempts at community outreach in Marikana in the North West province and in Thembelihle (an informal settlement in the Gauteng province). This approach is geared towards challenging top-down methods whereby scholars mainly extract from the people and write up their stories in publishing fora that are relatively inaccessible. The article argues that “community engagement” is never an exclusively one-way process even if researchers with relative access to resources seem at face value to define the terms of engagement with both students and research subjects.

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