Power,Privilege,and the Process of Community-Based Participatory Research: Critical Reflections on Forging an Empowered Partnership for Environmental Justice in West Oakland,California

a. Purpose

Participatory research is commonly defined as research that involves those directly affected by the issues being studied in making decisions about the research process.1 These decisions include what will be researched, how data will be collected and analyzed, and how research results will be used. This approach to research democratizes a process of producing knowledge that has historically consolidated power into the hands of an academically trained expert elite.2 Participatory research politicizes the power relations between communities that have historically been subjects rather than agents of research and the researchers who make a living studying them.3 Participatory research goes beyond researchers facilitating community participation in a given research project. Ultimately, it is about re-centering the authority that is usually granted to researchers to define what is factual and true towards politically disenfranchised communities.4

Though the concepts of power and privilege are central to participatory research, relatively little work on participatory research has documented how this approach challenges, reinforces, or changes power relations between actual researchers and community groups. Though practitioners of participatory research routinely draw on the concept that knowledge is power, they seldom publicly share how power dynamics between researchers and community partners have played out in particular partnerships.5 Therefore, we have few detailed examples of the power dynamics involved in decentralizing control over the research process in academic literature;6 notable exceptions include contributions from feminist research scholars.^7,8,9,10 The research for this article is part of a broader institutional ethnography that combines participant observation, interviews, and group dialogues to examine the everyday relational practices of researchers working in partnership with environmental justice activists. As a feminist methodology, institutional ethnography appraises power relations via a process of co-investigation with those working in the social settings under study in order to generate both shared analysis and institutional change.11 The research for this article also draws from the field of autoethnography in that the co-authors are staff members of the organizations under study that are critically appraising their collaborative practices in order to gain a greater understanding of how power dynamics shape interactions between self and others.12

This article examines how social relations of power and privilege have operated in a long-term partnership in Oakland, CA between a community-based environmental justice organization (West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project or WOEIP) and a nonprofit research institute (Pacific Institute or PI). In April and May 2011, co-author Catalina Garzón conducted a series of one-on-one interviews with three WOEIP staff members and three PI staff members as part of her dissertation research. Garzón then facilitated two group dialogues in June 2011 to discuss the results of the interviews and create a draft of the article. Interview and discussion questions drafted by Garzón were reviewed by co-authors prior to one-on-ones and group dialogues. Categories of questions included defining power and privilege, personal experiences with how power and privilege played out in the partnership, and lessons learned from working together on past projects. The research process applied a grounded theory and action research approach in that it focused on documenting and reflecting on the experiences that both researchers and community leaders have had in their partnership in order to improve future work together.^13,14 The process also used participatory research tools such as shared decision making and co-authorship as a means of obtaining informed consent throughout the research process.15

b. Partnership history

West Oakland CA is a predominantly low-income black and Latino neighborhood with a prominent history of social justice activism, from the creation of the Pullman Porters' Union16 and the Black Panther Party17 to the redevelopment of the former Oakland Army Base adjacent to the Port of Oakland. West Oakland residents contend with toxic air pollution from this major seaport, several major freeways, and industrial facilities in the area as well as poor health outcomes like one of the county's highest asthma hospitalization rates.^18,19 The partnership under study consists of a series of collaborative projects between the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP), an environmental justice group based in West Oakland known for its advocacy on port accountability issues, and the Pacific Institute (PI).

The Pacific Institute is a nonprofit research institute located in downtown Oakland across a major freeway corridor from West Oakland. Founded in 1987, PI largely established its reputation based on conventional environmental research at a statewide and national scale. Over the past decade, PI's Community Strategies for Sustainability and Justice (CSSJ) Program has built a reputation for the research institute among environmental justice organizations through a series of joint projects with community-based groups in West Oakland and greater Richmond, CA. The formative legacy of the relationship between WOEIP and PI, for both organizations, is reflected in the reference to research in WOEIP's name and the fact that WOEIP was the first major partnership to establish PI's reputation as a participatory research partner to local groups.

Since 1999, WOEIP and PI have partnered on community-based research, leadership development, and capacity-building projects that built the working relationship between the two organizations. A neighborhood-level environmental indicators project between PI and a community-building initiative in West Oakland led to the formation of WOEIP as an independent community-based organization that grew out of the community advisory committee for that project.20 During this transitional period, staff from PI's CSSJ Program provided some capacity building and organizational development support to WOEIP, including a failed attempt to establish WOEIP as a program of an existing community-based organization in West Oakland. Once WOEIP decided to pursue nonprofit status, PI served as a fiscal sponsor for the organization for several years, administering several government grants for joint projects including a community-based diesel truck traffic study and a leadership development institute for West Oakland residents on freight transport and community health issues.

At the time this article was written (Summer 2011), both WOEIP and PI's CSSJ Program had a shared leadership structure in which a woman of color and a white man shared co-directorship responsibilities. PI had 20 staff people and a $1.7 million dollar annual budget derived primarily from private foundation and government grants. The CSSJ Program was the smallest of PI's core programs with a $260000 annual budget and three staff members (two program co-directors with masters degrees and a research associate with a bachelor's degree). WOEIP had three staff members (two co-directors and an administrative/research assistant) with varying levels of post-secondary education who together managed over a dozen volunteers and themselves did a lot of unpaid work on behalf of the organization. WOEIP's revenue streams had included several large government grants shared with and administered by PI that have funded joint projects between the two organizations in the past. PI and WOEIP had continued to collaborate in several local and regional coalitions though WOEIP was no longer fiscally sponsored by PI and did not have active grants that resourced joint work with PI.

a. Power paradigms and paradoxes

Individual and group interviews indicated that both WOEIP and CSSJ staff perceived power and privilege as relational, as depending on social context and position, and as operating at individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels. Power was broadly defined as the authority or ability to influence decisions or outcomes, while privilege was defined as closely tied to markers of social identity including race, class, age, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, manner of speaking, and academic credentials. In the words of a WOEIP staffer, the relationship between power and privilege is that “power is a resource and privilege is the possession of that resource.” Privilege, or the possession of automatically conferred power, can be granted to someone based on their position within hierarchies of social identity like racism, classism, sexism, or ageism that benefit one social group at the expense of another. Privilege can also be granted via access to financial resources, professional or educational credentials, or prestige associated with one's position within a particular institutional hierarchy, such as a leadership position within an organization like a director or board member role.

According to a WOEIP staffer, the distribution of power can also be based on situational context or “time, place, and condition,” rather than being solely pre-determined by one's social identity or position. The WOEIP staffer also distinguished between privilege that is unearned, or automatically granted to someone based on social identity or position, and earned privilege based on “time, dedication, and commitment over the long-term.” This nuanced and flexible understanding of how power and privilege operate allows for the possibility of shifting power relationships by leveraging the privilege that one possesses by virtue of existing hierarchies of social identity or position. A CSSJ staffer remarked:

Experiences with differential treatment also reflected an awareness of how the authority that one carries as a “community leader” or as a “researcher” get inflected in different contexts through hierarchies of social identity and position along race, class, gender, or other lines. A CSSJ staffer shared that, although she had a graduate degree from a prestigious university, she felt affected by racialized and gendered stereotypes in having to be “twice as good as my white male counterpart at [CSSJ] to get the same level of respect and recognition for the type of work that we do. It throws people off when the researcher in the room is not a white male, because the expectation is that women of color should be the recipients and not the providers of services.”

In contrast, a WOEIP staffer shared that he had arrived at his understanding of differential treatment by working closely with a woman of color colleague that was “deferred to as an information source and leader.” Despite his identity as a white male, he felt that “I do not carry the weight that she carries” in their community work. Yet he also recalled how his awareness of his own power, as the capacity to influence an outcome, changed when he moved to West Oakland from a primarily white affluent neighborhood:

The power differentials created when hierarchies of social identity along race, class, and gender lines shape the roles of “researcher” or “community leader” pose challenging constraints for the leadership structures of both WOEIP and PI's CSSJ Program. Both institutions employ a co-directorship model premised on sharing decision-making power between individuals who believe that they are not seen as wielding the same level of authority with the audiences they aim to influence. When unaddressed, the presence of these power differentials within the trappings of an institutional structure whose intent is to share power between equals can undermine both interpersonal and institutional working relationships.21 A CSSJ staffer shared: “It affects CSSJ's shared leadership model that we're treated differently. It affects our relationship [as co-directors] and as a team to the rest of the organization.”

These relational and situational ways of defining power and privilege are consistent with a model of social change based on the premise that the political empowerment of historically disadvantaged groups will lead to more just decision-making processes, institutions, and outcomes. One CSSJ staffer characterized the partnership between WOEIP and CSSJ as having a “very blended power and privilege dynamic” in which CSSJ staff included women of color with graduate school degrees and WOEIP staff included white men with privilege based on social identity. A CSSJ staffer pointed out that “in the partnerships we create, [WOEIP] has decision-making privilege that we don't have…[CSSJ] won't do anything in West Oakland if WOEIP doesn't think it should be done, is affected by it, or isn't interested in it.”

b. Collaborative credibility and communicative power

For several CSSJ staff, the power that CSSJ and WOEIP wielded in their partnership was constituted through the credibility they derived from working together. However, the power associated with collaborative credibility was not always equally distributed because CSSJ staff were conferred with automatic forms of credibility, like institutional affiliations and academic credentials, that WOEIP staff didn't readily have access to.22 The ability to communicate effectively, whether in written or verbal form, was also raised as a key means of gaining or maintaining the power associated with credibility. A CSSJ staffer explained the tensions generated by power differentials within the collaboration related to credibility: “Researchers have credibility among decision makers, but I think community groups have more credibility with the affected community. They can act as gate-keepers in that they have access to the community relationships, and can grant [researchers] access if it serves community groups, but they can also withhold access.”

The act of translation across community and decision-maker audiences was a common role that CSSJ and WOEIP staff played for each other in the partnership. A frequent practice in community meeting settings was for WOEIP staff to elaborate on what CSSJ staff said by using less formal and more emotive language. In contrast, when drafting technical documents, CSSJ staff would often wordsmith what WOEIP staff said in order to conform to a scientific writing style by editing statements that could be interpreted as anecdotal or emotional.

Translating across audiences can be interpreted as a response to power dynamics that are activated differently depending on the social context and whose effectiveness hinges on lending credibility to the other partner. These instances of translation for external audiences embodied the added value of partnering together and “backing each other up” as an expression of the solidarity inherent in a trusting working relationship. At times this practice also challenged partners to consider whether they were effective in communicating across multiple audiences. A CSSJ staffer shared:

Combining the power of emotions with that of reasoning by sharing personal testimony supported by factual information is often lauded as a unique strength of participatory research.23 Yet the actual task of combining an emotional communication style with factual reasoning is often one that falls on the community partner rather than on the researcher, whose credibility often hinges on being perceived as objective and rational. A WOEIP staffer recalled how she reconciled these different ways of expressing herself:

This WOEIP staffer further recounted how she changed her communication style when she was appointed to the Port of Oakland Commission in order to command authority with her peers. As the first community activist from West Oakland to become a port commissioner in the city's history, she learned to navigate the entrenched institutional culture of one of the city's most powerful decision-making bodies. Below she elaborates on how her communication tactics at Commission meetings advanced an agenda of institutional change:

When either party overlooks how the power to communicate in particular ways shapes their expectations of the other partner, this oversight can create tensions in the partnership.24 For example, the capacity to communicate technical information, particularly in writing, is associated with privilege in the form of level of formal education or academic credentialing. A WOEIP staffer noted that “the ability to have technical skills to write…gives power to research groups.” For this staffer, the power dynamics between CSSJ and WOEIP involved “not having the ability to put things into print, reports, or responding to email,” and then having to deal with “how [CSSJ] gets disappointed on not getting deliverables in a timely manner.”

In contrast, CSSJ staff conveyed unease with the power dynamics inherent in refraining from expressing themselves verbally in front of WOEIP staff. Within CSSJ's organizational culture, this form of deference to community partners was expected of researchers, yet it also created a silencing effect that could be problematic. A CSSJ staffer explains:

Choosing to be silent was a passive form of power that researchers often wielded in their role as facilitators or processers of information. If a CSSJ staffer didn't understand or agree with something shared by a WOEIP staffer, s/he would not necessarily integrate it into the writing of technical documents like public comment letters and planning documents. On the other hand, WOEIP staff would not have any way of knowing that disagreement or confusion was taking place unless the CSSJ staffer vocalized it. If an equal partnership is premised on authentic two-way communication, then refraining from expressing opinions or posing questions on either side can present a serious challenge to trusting working relationships. A WOEIP staffer elaborates:

c. Capacity-building and autonomy

Perceptions of the power dynamics in the partnership between CSSJ and WOEIP also reflect the tensions between recognizing how existing power differentials across institutions shape the partnership, while aspiring to equalize power and privilege within the partnership.25 Both WOEIP and CSSJ staff acknowledged that recognition of the mutual benefit of working together is key to a strong partnership. However, the way that the division of labor between community versus research partners were defined at times undermined the partnership, particularly when roles were redefined by CSSJ under the guise of building WOEIP's organizational capacity. A CSSJ staffer recalled an incident where his colleagues decided not to apply for an environmental justice grant that required a community partner organization because WOEIP staff were not able to draft the portions of the application that they had agreed to work on. He remarked:

CSSJ staff also noted the disconnect between the aspiration to equalize decision-making power in the partnership, and the reality that CSSJ at times wielded more power than WOEIP when it came to decisions about fundraising or project management due to its institutional structure and capacity.26 Though PI did not have development staff to assist with fundraising, PI had a separate administrative department that handled accounting and financial management for the organization's programs including its CSSJ Program. In contrast, WOEIP's three-person staff managed both the programmatic and administrative aspects of the organization, leaving little time for fundraising and organizational development activities. A WOEIP staffer recalled her experience when PI staff decided to not continue serving as WOEIP's fiscal sponsor:

In recent years, CSSJ staff had scaled back their organizational development work with WOEIP, citing their limited capacity to do so and invoking their organizational identity as a research institute ill-suited to leading this type of work. While CSSJ willingly shared ownership and recognition for the successes of joint projects with WOEIP, CSSJ staff did not seem as willing to take ownership for how CSSJ's decisions had contributed to shortcomings in WOEIP's capacity. A WOEIP staffer asserted that “capacity constraints to me is what you choose to do and not to do,” casting into question the idea that such limitations were imposed on CSSJ staff solely by external forces. A CSSJ staffer acknowledged that “[CSSJ] has to take responsibility for WOEIP treading down a certain path. There is a tension between building capacity without creating co-dependency. [CSSJ] and WOEIP dove into that without fully recognizing the challenges.”

Though learning by doing is central to participatory research, CSSJ and WOEIP staff realized the difficulties they had encountered in applying this principle within their partnership when it came to capacity-building. On several occasions, WOEIP staff pointed out that building the ability to manage a project or an organization had to be based on lived experience, not just on a textbook explanation of the steps involved. A WOEIP staffer introduced this issue in a group dialogue by noting that “[CSSJ staff] give us a lot of tools, and then we go on to another one and another one, but for a person like me that doesn't retain information, it doesn't help you keep it.” Another WOEIP staffer remarked:

The expectations of funders who brokered access to the resources needed to do partnership work also created another power dynamic that influenced the ability to build organizational capacity.27 In a group dialogue WOEIP staff recounted a recent experience where a foundation had offered them a capacity-building grant on the condition that they commit to doing that work in addition to continuing their ongoing program work: “It's like saying, you should be able to go to college, and you should be able to work full-time. You should be able to do it all.” A CSSJ staffer concluded that, “a take-away for researchers to consider is that we can't necessarily expect…a strong community-based organization to be a by-product of a strong research project. There need to be other dedicated streams of funding [for capacity-building].”

The lack of a shared understanding of what it takes to move through the stages of building capacity or power had created a bottleneck in the partnership, which the group dialogues allowed WOEIP and CSSJ to discuss together. A WOEIP staffer noted that, “in doing this work you start off as a seed, you sprout, you bloom. I think that's part of the privilege or the anointment of having empowerment, because you still have to go through these stages.” Another WOEIP staffer attested to the personal empowerment that her work with the organization has led to: