This is the ninth report from the Reedley Peace
Center, where we have been holding a speakers series on people, land and water
in the San Joaquin Valley. Called “In
the Struggle,” it has featured individuals who have contributed to the human
ecology of this place in the face of its dehumanization from the
industrialization of agriculture.
How many of you have sat in an
audience somewhere and been presented with the uncomfortable fact that we live
in the region with the greatest agricultural productivity and the highest rates
of hunger in the United States? This
terrible human contradiction is usually a starting point for some program
hoping to shift that equation, most often an effort to reduce hunger, not lower
food productivity.
But if you believe, as I do, that
equation is a reflection of the wide distance between the extravagant haves
(particularly regarding large landownerships) and the landless, destitute
have-nots they depend on, with the modest, hard-working sorta-haves caught
dangerously but invisibly in the middle, you might be looking for a different
solution than good feeding programs.
Friday night’s speaker, Dr. Jonathan London from UCD’s Center for
Regional Change, might be offering one.
He is a charming young man,
uncharacteristically modest and good-humored for a full-fledged academic with
tenure. He described the process of
creating the Center for Regional Change within the frame of the land grant
universities’ historic purpose - to serve the nation’s public in both education
and research – and his enjoyment reminding his colleagues of that role. Moving from “rogue academic to institutional
actor,” London’s story is similar to many others we have heard over the last 3
months. Discovering a misfit between the
conventional research approaches then being taught and one’s own moral core,
the “rogue academic” who wants to be of use starts to carve a new and better
path, eventually causing a shift in the institution.
One of the Center’s main thrusts is
to promote “community-based participatory action research” (with the
unpronounceable acronym “CBPAR.”) This
form of research is centered in the community, grounded in respect for
knowledge that comes from experience as well as education. It engages community members in the act of
defining what research is needed and teaches the community members how to
conduct that research. In the process,
the academic researchers also learn valuable information they otherwise would not
have had, and are better able to apply their educations to real-world problems.
Another effort of the Center is to
build and maintain a data base of social/environmental conditions in the San
Joaquin Valley that is accessible by the public. As an example, Dr. London showed a map of
Reedley generated from that data base which clearly demarcated the areas of
greatest social vulnerabilities and environmental problems. He then asked members of the audience to
ponder the possible reasons for the location of those problems. Predictably, the older part of town had
accumulated the problems of aging infrastructure and poverty over time. But seeing the problems identified
geographically had an emboldening effect.
If public resources were going to be spent trying to even-out the
disparities of that community, one would know where they needed to be applied.
In showing us this example, Dr.
London easily demonstrated the importance of blending the community’s stories
with community science. Such mapping not
only provides important tools for community action, it also can engage
residents with a sense of place and their importance in it. The application of these tools to the
planning process was obvious; what also intrigued me, however, was its
usefulness in teaching new residents about the place they live and how to be
part of it. “It’s a way of putting youth
on the map,” London said, showing photos of children engaged with adults as
they lobbied for specific changes in their communities.
Community-based participatory action
research is intended to overcome the limitations of what Dr. London called
“helicopter science.” This is
university-based research in which the questions are developed within the ivory
tower, which then sends its researchers out to the community to gather data and then return to
that academic bastion for analysis and interpretation. Sometimes the results make it back to the
community that provided the data; more often, they don’t. Neither do the solutions to the problems
being studied, which understandably leaves people in the communities feeling disaffected
as well as leaving them unserved.
But if the power of the university
can be extended those on the short end of the economic stick in a way that
brings them (us) into more equal relation to those who hold that stick, it
could do a great deal to mend the enormous gap between rich and poor here, as
well as the gap between rural and urban people.
Working at the community level, it is a small bridge to build over a
small creek. But once the bridge is
built, many people can use it, not just the locals.
Visit the Center’s website at www.regionalchange.ucdavis.edu to view the
four program areas: Putting Youth on the
Map, California Civic Engagement Project, Regional Opportunity Index (data
base/mapping project) and Environmental Justice (CBPAR effort.) We can work toward greater regional peace no
matter who is in the White House.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trudy Wischemann is a land researcher and community builder who writes. You can send her your community stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there. Apologies to all for not covering Janaki Jaganath’s inspiring talk on Dec. 11th (which I hope to do next year) and deep gratitude to the Reedley Peace Center for hosting this empowering speakers series.
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