Building Community Grassroots

Things we would like you to think about in these reflections include the differences between studying a community (ethnography), providing services to a community, organizing a community, and being part of a community. Think about how these manifest in the readings and in you project.

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I waited a little longer to make my post in order to go to the Amherst Survival Center for lunch on a typical day. And I am glad that I did. The four methods (ethnography, services, organizing, and being part of a community) of engaging in the community that many people see as connected, which ideally I wish they were, I am finding to be more and more distinct. Breaking down ethnographies, I think that they are a good way to build relationships within a community. Timothy Black's When a Heart Turns Rock Solid is a great example of how his experiences in Springfield shaped his relationship with the Riveras and other members of the community on "the block". However, the limitations of the ethnography are even spelled out in Black's own introduction. I am not trying to diminish the work Black did, but after 18 years, he was unable to make sustainable grassroots change. He was able to record and vividly depict situations over his time in Springfield, but was always able to return to his home in Connecticut. He questions his own reasons for writing and developing his relationships. That being said, how can students with far fewer resources in academic settings make sustainable change? Part of the hardship for students is that their limited time in an undergraduate setting limits their ability to make sustainable grassroots change. This point is eloquently made in Building Communities From the Inside Out, where students cannot properly get acclimated to culture in a community.

Building Communities From the Inside Out allows us to infer that service work seems more practical than trying to make systemic, grassroots changes. However, the limitations of service work are also incredibly distinct from the other forms of engaging in community. I consider the work that I am doing for the Amherst Survival Center to be that of "service". However, eating lunch with members of the Amherst community was a way of building relationships and being a part of the community. My service-work was very different because I am working with Hannah and Junsuk primarily on a college campus, not dealing with the people themselves. The element of eating lunch with many of the local population allowed me to develop relationships with two men (and I have documented some notes on the interaction- much like Black), but they welcomed me as if I were a member of their community (being part of a community). 

Lastly, Maria, Rory and Diego's panel illustrated some tension among the organizers of a community. They disagreed about who are/should be considered members of the community (being a part of a community), which is very disheartening in terms of building community. Furthermore, I doubt they would consider my participation at the Survival Center as me being part of a community. 

Despite my negativity, I believe that if these four elements can come together, I think grassroots change becomes a real possibility. I think that we need to, instead of looking at the differences, look at the assets of all of these four methods and dynamically integrate them to make sustainable change. I look to my fellow students to help answer the following: how can we make these four methods of community engagement more interconnected and less contentious? 

It seems to me that when these four concepts are approached from an academic standpoint, they appear to be distinct entities occupying separate spheres of community. In practice, however, it seems to me that studying, providing services to, organizing, and being part of a community are experiences that often overlap. I’ve found, both from my personal experiences with community engagement and Timothy Black’s account of his relationships with and study of Springfield residents, involvement in one area of a community often leads to engagement in other factions, and this dynamic association, fostering profound connection, is necessary for any effort at community involvement.

If one were to examine Timothy Black’s writing through a purely scholastic lens, she would label his work an ethnography and describe how he studied a group of three brothers, and some recurring characters, through a considerable duration of their lives. Following them through their troubles with school, work, life on the street, family loyalty, and the rest of life’s challenges, Black did indeed document their experiences, compiling his observations into a book notable for realism and attention to nuance in depicting the individual’s lives, as well as its ability to illuminate larger social forces at work, pointing out the influence of race, class, and institutions in shaping the lives of the subjects he studied. Although this description is correct, it is nowhere near complete, for saying Black merely studied his subjects drastically underestimates his involvement. The truth is that over the course of his eighteen-year study, he formed significant and meaningful relationships with the individuals he chose to study, leaving the distinctions of ethnographer and student behind as he became a confidant, tutor, basketball teammate, and friend to the Rivera brothers. Instead of limiting his interactions to specifically defined and pre-planned interviews, Black became a presence in the many different parts of the brothers’ lives. He didn’t just talk to them one on one in the classroom, but rather, went with them to the streets, the courts, their homes, and the clubs. Black was not simply conducting a study of a community, he was becoming a part of the community. The relationships he developed fostered a sense of trust, propelling more truthful conversations, as well as making his observations more accurate and insightful, stemming from a deeper understanding of the neighborhood and its residents.  Although his incorporation did have its limits—his age, race, and status restricted his fitting in—over time he did maintain a considerable level of commitment and connection to the community, and it was this engagement on a social and personal level that allowed him to write such a powerful ethnography. While it may be perceived as counterintuitive, Black’s becoming part of the community was absolutely crucial to his study of the community. 

Reflecting on my own experiences with community engagement, I’ve noticed a similar theme. I’ve found that strictly delineated categories of involvement—I’m here to serve, not to be served, to help those in need—quickly fall away as I dig in and get involved. The concepts of giver/receiver, worker/wanting, helper/helped, are revealed to be more of imposed constructs than reality. To me, community engagement is hindered by hiding behind a limited role (I’m the tutor, I’m here to teach, not to learn; I’m the community organizer, I’m here to guide these people, I know what’s best, not them), and in order to effectively engage in any aspect of community one must recognize the superficiality of these identities. Once the idea of community is taken outside the classroom, I’ve found that roles overlap, and it is commonalities, not distinctions that are most salient in effecting desired outcomes. Perhaps this notion is cliché and overwrought, but it seems to me an important thought to remember as we move forward with our community engagement projects. 

While I agree with some of my classmates that there are lots of connections between studying a community, providing services to a community, organizing a community, and being part of a community, I actually think the four ways of interacting with a community are very distinct.  The readings show plenty of examples of community interactions that only incorporate one or two of these methods and not any more.  This, of course, comes to the community’s detriment, because a truly effective community organization would be best served to incorporate all four of these things into its mission, values, and daily operations.  The strongest assets to the community are the ones that organize, evaluate, and serve – without letting anything or anyone slip through the cracks – and ultimately, those that become deeply and meaningfully a part of it.

In Timothy Black’s When a Heart Turns Rock Solid, he talks about several institutions that fail to elevate the position of their members.  “The Block,” a place for Puerto Rican-Americans to congregate and celebrate without much interference from “outsiders,” is very much a part of the community.  In some ways it provides services to the community: a loyal support group, the occasional opportunity for jobs or networking, protection and security.  In some ways it organizes the community: it brings people together with some similar interests and identities, and the mere existence of “The Block” makes them stronger self-advocates than they would be without it.  But “The Block” cannot come close to providing all the services that this community needs, and it focuses not enough attention on evaluating and organizing the community to become an organically-produced grassroots institution that rallies its members and produces tangible results.  On the other hand, Black shows how a whole host of social service organizations fall short of fulfilling their calling as well.  In his chapter on schools, he illustrates how the public schools fail to do much more than provide services to the community.  Fausto feels coldly disconnected from the faculty and the administration because of simple gestures like failing to provide a translator for his mother in conferences, and this disconnect breeds contempt for them and contempt for school.  The services that the schools and other organizations are ultimately quite limited, but this is at least in part due to the fact they focus too heavily on one single element of their role – providing services – and ignore the other three.

These four ways of interacting with a community are distinct but they feed off one another.  Not every organization can be expected to accomplish all four, but their contributions will be most meaningful if they can partner with other complimentary organizations.  My project with the Springfield Institute on voter turnout in Holyoke will emphasize the studying community component, but we will both help and be helped by organizations that emphasize the other three.  Conversations with city planners, campaign workers, elected officials, community leaders, and others will inform our work; our work will (hopefully) inform theirs.  In that sense, we are becoming a part of the Holyoke community.

The general sense I got from the readings was the challenge of incorporating all of these elements of community-building together, either within one organization or between partnering organizations.  If it’s within one organization, they often fall victim to trying to accomplish too much.  Partnering organizations can have difficulty building or maintaining their relationships, often letting slightly different organizational goals or personalities interfere with their greater commonalities.  The best solution for this seemed to arise from Kennedy et al’s idea of “transformative populism,” acknowledging a community’s key differences and all of its member’s different contributions, and then coming together to build something whose whole is even greater than the sum of its parts.

While reading Black’s book, I couldn’t help but think about his role as a researcher and participant in the lives of the people he studies.  Last semester, in my White Identity class with Professor Basler, we read the story of an ethnographer who assisted a student at a school she was studying.  The ethnographer was white, the student was black, and the ethnographer helped the student navigate her school’s predominantly white front office and administration.  Later, in her article, the ethnographer wondered whether by helping the student she had in fact reified white privilege, by demonstrating the power and confidence bestowed by her white skin.  Could Black’s role as a participant researcher have had similar consequences?  He acknowledges that he inserted himself into situations, but could there have been negative sociological implications to these actions?  How much did he affect the lives of the family he studied, and how did that impact his research?

I really enjoyed Ganz’s short and sweet piece.  My conceptions of leadership derive from sports and business realms, and Ganz’s piece demonstrated the similarities in all of these types of leadership.  I found the piece broad and inspiring, but specific enough that I genuinely learned more about organizers’ responsibilities. 

I enjoyed reading about Pastor’s research at schools in the New York City area.  During the high school track season my team would attend meets at a high school similar to the ones the researchers visited, with metal detectors at the doors.  As a visitor, I had to pass through metal detectors, and I felt violated.  I remember feeling, “man, what a scary place to go to school, these kids must all be in gangs.” Five years removed, I know that my instincts were wrong, and “Makin’ Homes” laid out why.  It’s clear that many (if not all) of the school’s students  did not need to be subject to a security search each day before class.  Many of the kids “inherited” a world where being treated as a threat was an everyday occurrence, while I inherited a suburban, comfortable upper middle class existence.  

Daniel and I had a great meeting last week with Aron Goldman, the leader of the Springfield Institute.  We'll be joining Holyoke's community, meeting with officials at city hall and talking to people involved with the mayoral election.  I'm not sure if we'll do very much interpersonal organizing, but we'll definitely be able to provide a service to the community, in the form of a detailed breakdown of voting patterns based on geographical and census data.

I really enjoyed the sociological and ethnographic focus of these readings, I hope that we continue to look at case studies!

I've really enjoyed the readings so far because they tell true stories. Timothy Black exercised great caution in straddling the fence between being an ethnographer and being an active member of the community about which he was writing. Still, his work is not unbiased. To kitschily paraphrase a quote from the show Community: documentarians are supposed to be unbiased, yet they have the most bias, since they are the ones who choose to tell the story.

I've been very interested in mediums of story-telling this semester, as it relates directly to my thesis - a novella in the environmental studies department that deals in part with how portrayal of individual and collective histories can affect the outcome of environmental crises. Therefore, I've been soaking up the storytelling lenses and tools used by each of the authors in our readings.

I especially loved Tomas Rivera's depiction of exploitation of individuals to discuss hatred on a meta level. He traversed the rift between merely studying and merely being a participant in a community through his fiction. Fiction is an excellent medium through which to return voice to those whose voices have been altered or quieted through some other medium, e.g. misrepresentation, violence, lack of representation, etc.

Transition Amherst also attempts to bridge that gap. On one level, it has no leadership, and is made up of volunteers offering their time "after hours." It also offers both workshops open to the public, as well as more intimate meetings through which they discuss items of business, including our big April event: the Great Unleashing! (Dun dun dun.) Unlike many of the other groups, Transition Amherst doesn't seem to encounter the same struggles of being a "part" of the community while really being composed of outsiders studying the workings of this community. It is comprised of community members working for the betterment of the community. It capitalizes on assets rather than needs by utilizing people's abilities to spring up workshops and lead different components of the Great Unleashing. I almost wish, in some strange way, that I had to wrestle with these issues during my community-based project time, just so that I could make greater sense of this insider-outsider struggle during my short time in this class. Alas, I've encountered it before and am bound to encounter it again.

The relation of all of these roles (ethnographer, service-giver, organizer, community member) is interesting for me to think about especially in the context of the work I will be doing with the Youth Action Coalition (YAC). This semester, Adaora, Gabriel, and I will be working on documenting YAC’s goals, the work the organization has done and is doing, and the outcomes of its work. Each of us will be attending weekly meetings with one of YAC’s Arts-for-Change programs in order to get a better sense of what it means to be a part of the YAC community. But what will be connecting us to the people within the YAC community is the documentation process. So while we will be interacting with many of the youth and staff through interviews, the relationships we form may be influenced by the façade of pre-thought-of questions and the lid of a laptop.

YAC is a perfect example of a group in which the roles of community organizers, service-providers, and community members are intermixed. About half of the board of the YAC staff is youth, so youth are working for other youth, providing their input on what changes they want and what changes they believe their peers want. These same youth are also participating in the activities organized by YAC and thus providing services to the community through YAC.

As I think about the relation among these roles, I’m reminded of my roles as a teacher and counselor last summer at Upward Bound, a program for low-income, first-generation high school students. As a counselor, I was expected to integrate myself into the community of students, but as a teacher, I felt strange interacting with my students in the same way that I did outside of class. I felt a barrier as I tried to remain as objective as possible while grading or commenting on their work. This goes to show how fluid these roles can become in different circumstances.   

Finally, I thought the part of the article “Urban Girls Revisited: Building Strengths” that discusses collective versus individual identity was interesting. I agree that for members within a community, while it is important to recognize and come to terms with their own strengths, weaknesses, and identities, collective action is often necessary to address injustice within schools and communities. In these cases, community members may need to come under a collective identity in order to resist oppression.

I think it almost comes naturally to many of us to draw very rigid distinctions between these different ways of getting involved in a community. Ethnographers are observers. Regardless of the close relationships they may form with members of a community, their ultimate goal is to produce a body of research. While such research may inform the general public about the community’s circumstances, it is no way guaranteed to serve the community in a positive way. The ethnographer’s role in building community is thus rather limited. Those who provide services to a community play a more significant role in this regard. They do not only observe; they act. They are social workers, non-profit organizations, and volunteers. Their overt goal is to serve a community and in endeavoring to do so, they contribute towards building community. But service-providers take a needs-based rather than an assets-based approach. They often come from outside the community, and their involvement is limited, temporary, and not guaranteed to empower community members to build community themselves. Those who organize a community make more significant contributions to empowering community members. Instead of providing services, they might take an assets-based approach and sort out how individuals in the community can take care of these services themselves.  They might also put individuals in contact with organizations and institutions and find a way to collectively act for change. 4.) As for those who are part of a community, they are simply there. They may or may not take an interest in working with community organizers; they may or may not try to foster strong social ties with fellow community members. They may focus on their needs and wait for service to come, or they may take a proactive approach in building community. It is harder to identify the role of an individual community member, as each individual is different.

So studying, providing services to, organizing, and being part of a community can clearly signify very different roles and very different levels of community involvement. But I think that instead of pointing out the distinctions between them, what we need to recognize is that they are all equally necessary components of the community-building process. I imagine that the Rivera boys’ community in When A Heart Turns Rock Solid could have made very significant progress if all these components were at play. Timothy Black was the ethnographer; he studied the community. He identified all the individual decisions and structural forces that had combined to create the community’s circumstances. Imagine if, in addition to his contribution, a non-profit organization had provided the service of free bilingual education to all the boys on ‘the block’. Imagine if someone in the community had stepped up to organize a neighborhood sports team to encourage the boys to stay off the streets. Then combine all of these elements of community-building with the strong bonds of friendship and loyalty that already existed between the boys who were a part of the community. If all these factors had come into play together, there could have been a possibility for positive change at the community level. So what I’m trying to say is that studying a community, providing services to a community, organizing a community, and being an active part of a community all need to happen in order to truly build community and create change.

As far as my particular project goes, reflecting on these different ways of getting involved in a community has helped me clarify my role. My group will be writing up a curriculum for the Youth Action Coalition’s arts program and in so doing we will be both studying a community (observing the students, teachers, and projects involved in the arts program) and providing services for it (writing up a standardized curriculum, which they do not yet have). We will not, however, be organizing the members of the YAC community, and I don’t think we will truly become members of the community either. In these ways our role in the community will be limited. But at the same time, this is the role that has been given to us, and combined with the organizing and the active community membership that is already happening at YAC, I think that it will contribute to the continuous process of building community. 

Between the literature and the projects that form this course, the differences between the methodologies are clear.  Each role, from observer to full member of a community, plays a part in a comprehensive movement to effect change, but it's important to understand the privileges, risks, and responsibilities of the place that those roles assume.

As many have said below, the ethnography -- not to mention the entire anthropological field -- has come under some scrutiny as it has been generalized to be a vehicle for privileged academics to enter a community and portray her or his view to the audience from a paternalistic perspective as objective fact.  This clearly does not describe all ethnographies, though I do agree that the entrance of a privileged individual into the community as an observer carries substantial risks.  For example, Timothy Black's 18 year stint in Springfield certainly built relationships that allowed him a window into the lives of his informants, but he still cannot claim to have highly generalizable or impartial data.  The challenges are to be able to read between the lines to determine how the role of the observer has impacted the recorded data and to report the data in terms acceptable to the participants and comprehensible to the audience.

The providing of services to a community is another risky endeavor.  To enter a community for the purpose of providing services is to assume that ability exists in the provider and is desired by the recipient.  While not all such efforts carry along paternalistic baggage, it is very easy to slip into that trap.  As Ivan Illich famously argued in his speech to North American volunteers heading to Mexico, good intentions do not make up for the potential harms of paternalistic 'help.'

Organizing a community, if done properly, is one way to provide a service to a community without the pretentiousness of building houses, teaching a dominant language, and other activities to 'develop' an area.  So long as the organizers recognizes their privileged role in the community and aim to facilitate rather than propose their own plan, organizing can accentuate a community's assets in a non-paternalistic way.

Lastly, we have already discussed the complexities of what it means to actually be in a community, so I won't rehash it here.  However, it should be recognized that community membership is often highly contested and, when imposed from the outside, can be highly problematic.

         In the reading over the past few weeks I kept thinking about the job of the ethnographer and how difficult it must be to remain impartial and unbiased to the lives of others.  Many times while reading When a Heart Turns Rock Solid I wanted Black to step out of his shoes as an ethnographer and help the lives of others.  However, I understand that in refraining from acting as a supportive link to these three brothers, he was able to accurately record his studies. The decision between helping those being studied and maintaining a certain distance in order to keep an unbiased documentation makes the work of the ethnographer more challenging.  By maintaining an unbiased report, Black is able to offer readers an accurate view of the Rivera brothers.  This detail to accurateness should hopefully inspire readers to sympathize for the characters and spark motivation to help in one’s community.

         Unlike researching as an ethnographer, I think community service more obviously thrusts workers into the lives of their subjects.  Rather than someone looking from the outside and learning what is going on, these members can offer their biased opinions to help change the lives of those that they are working with.  These members help build and foster community life while the ethnographer studies the community to tell others what is going on in various communities and what is or is not working.  Therefore, I suppose that one’s work helps the community at hand while the other’s can help other communities that learn the outcomes of ethnographic studies. 

         Organizing a community is quite different to the work of the community server and the ethnographer.  I would consider this work to be less intentional rather than necessary.  Organizing and building a community fosters the strength of individual community members thus promoting responsibility and engagement.  Though the ethnographer can study the buildings of a community and the server can help make the new community thrive, this effort needs an energy to keep action in motion.  There needs to be a common will of the people to work together and this work helps unite and strengthen a community and though this can be prompted by the ethnographer or the community server it cannot be created by them. 

         Finally, acting as a member of a community can vary along a range of activities.  I would consider that simply being present would enable one to be a member of a community.  However, one can go further to argue that there needs to be a deliberate intention to be involved and this would enable one to be a full member of a community.  Fusing these two ideas together indicates that all of us, whether involved or unconnected, do something to act as a member of a community (even if this includes simply being present).  This highlights the impact of every individual in each community as a member that contributes something, large or small. 

Throughout this unit, I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between service and academia.  To me, this relationship has always appeared naturally symbiotic; colleges provide numerous educated individuals who could employ their developing knowledge and skills to improve the community that they are a part of for four years.    But, reading John L. Mcknight’s Building Communities From the Inside Out, hearing from the Holyoke community leaders, and reading Michael Ganz’s What is Organizing have led me to question the potential impact that college students can have and what their role in the community should be.  

Reading Building Communities From the Inside Out helped identify one of the largest challenges that college students face in their communities: their inability to spearhead sustainable, grass-roots change movements.  This challenge stems from their transient role in the community, as well as their position in an academic institution.  Because the majority university students didn’t grow up in that community, they aren’t as attune to the culture, people, and structure of that community.  This lack of deeper community experience renders it far easier to glance at the community and identify its needs from a surface level.  In doing so, students approach the community from a need based—rather than asset based—perspective.  Additionally, McKnight explains that lasting community organizing must be rooted in leaders from the community themselves.  College students, then, could assist community organizers in this role, but because they are only part of the community for four years, would not be able to lead a community toward sustainable change.  Finally, Ganz points out that, as a result of their institutional structure, colleges are more likely to partner with non-profit organizations than local associations.  Doing so creates yet another barrier to sustainable change because it continues an outsider-imposed, need based approach to the community. 

 College students’ potential impact is also challenged by the nature of academia.  I noticed this challenge when reading about and discussing the drug trade in Timothy Black’s When a Heart Turns Rock Solid.  Black describes the obvious problems of the drug trade (illegality, unpredictability, violence) that most college students are familiar with.  But he also demonstrates that, for Julio and Fausto, the drug trade had economic and social benefits.  This perspective was eye opening for me; it contrasted the policy-oriented approach I would have taken to the drug trade in a different class.  Just as college students are more likely to take a need based approach to community service, the nature of our study of communities and the issues they face is more likely to be top-down as well. 

Identifying all of the challenges that college students face when trying to do service work does not mean that doing so is impossible.  To me, it means that we should simply rethink the kind of service we can do in our temporary communities.  Ethnography, particularly as it was conducted in the “Makin’ homes an urban girl thing” article, appears to be a potential service that students can do in our communities.   What I liked about this ethnography was that it wasn’t written from an entirely removed standpoint.  Instead, both the authors of the ethnography and the girls they wrote about collaborated its production.  This enabled both the authors to use their academic talents to construct the ethnography, and gave the ethnography’s subjects a prominent voice. 

I hope that working on my project at the survival center helps further my understanding of how students can support community work.  The Survival Center provides an excellent example of grass roots community organizing, because it is run by many of the community members who benefit it.  I am interested in how our work at the Survival Center will shape my understanding of the relationship between college students and service. 

Since I was unfamiliar with ethnography prior to this course, When a Heart Turns Rock Solid was my first exposure to the field, but it does not seem to be very representative therof.  Black himself acknowledges that his study was atypical as far as ethnographies go.  He writes, "Some may argue that I have become too close [to the Rivera brothers] and that I will err on the side of presenting them in a more positive light than may be warranted.  Perhaps.  But I believe it is vitally important that we see how social forces generally, and poverty and racism particularly, affect lives, and it is my closeness to the men and women in this book that as allowed me to gain an intimate understanding of their lives and to see the world that they encounter on a regular basis from their locations within it" (xxxii).  

Black's work could garner criticism from those who see ethnography in more strictly academic terms.  Convention necessitates a degree of separation from the subject that precludes active involvement in the community.  In order to be objective, an ethnographer must remain an outsider.  This, to me, seems problematic.  This is not to say that a distanced, objective study of a community is without its merits, but I feel like the best way to study a community is to participate in it, even to become a part of it to a certain (although likely partial) extent.  The studies I find most interesting and revelatory are those that keep both a broad and a narrow focus.  Without a focus on the larger institutional forces at play, individual stories, while compelling, lose some of their potential significance.  Likewise, to discuss only the institutions and political, economic, and societal movements is to fail to take advantage of the power of individual narratives, and to potentially lose sight of them.  The balance between the personal and the societal is one of the aspects of Black's book that most appealed to me.

Black writes, "All ethnographies are exploitative in nature, because they... advance professional careers and status on the backs of others, often the powerless.  Researchers are notorious for going into poor communities and taking but rarely giving back--or, as local activists sometimes say, for "cutting and running" (xxxiii).  Black becomes far more involved in the community that he studies and invested in its inhabitants than the typical ethnographer.  While he often plays the part of passive observer, where the Rivera brothers are concerned, he bridges the gap between studying a community and providing it with services.  Often, those who provide services to a community are outsiders like Black or large-scale nonprofits.  Local institutions like schools also provide services to a community, but are sometimes still detached and impersonal.  Services to a community, however well-intentioned, often fail to provide sustainable solutions to the community's problems.  This is not to say they are not valuable--for example, welfare is necessary even though it cannot pull people out of poverty.  Lasting change must come from top-down transformations of institutions or from grassroots change within the communities themselves.  The latter is the subject of the McKnight reading, which stressed an asset-based mindset over a needs-based one.  

Those who are part of a community are most capable of organizing it, for they are the ones who best understand it.  This is an important point to keep in mind in our work with Holyoke Unites, because as an outsider it is easy to barge in and try to suggest how the insiders should fix their problems.  We want to play an active part in community organization, but in the initial stages I feel like our most important job is to listen to the residents and to learn what they want for their community.  They are much more qualified to form a vision for their community, though we will certainly be able to make useful suggestions.  However, since we are not part of the community, I believe that our most important job right now is to facilitate.  I do not think that you have to be born into a community to be a part of it.  I believe that a deep connection to a community is one of the most important requisites for being a part of a community, and this is something that can form over time.  For me, belonging to a community is not black or white, in or out.  I think that there are varying levels of belonging.  Black is clearly not on the same level as the Springfield residents--while he grows to understand them, he does not have to live their lives.  After his time on the streets, he returns to a stable home and job.  Nonetheless, I feel like the depth of the connection he formed after eighteen years means that he belongs, at least somewhat, to the community.  Those who wish to help communities, to organize them, ideally even to provide them services, should strive towards such a connection, an honorary belonging of sorts.

Ethnography means to objectively portray a community where the authors attempt to refrain from impressing their own judgments and beliefs upon the studied community for academic study and/or personal insight. While I support the broader merit of the method, I find the literary framing of such research very limiting. Through Black’s book, and other ethnographical works I’ve read, I felt detached from the people described because of the purely objective standpoint. I would feel this way especially when reading the characters’ quoted text blocks. While the literary method provides insight into these worlds for the larger populace, the readers’ own cognitive resources (e.g., their judgments of the groups described, the vocal dialects and nuances they are accustomed to, their own imaginations of a physical person or space described based off their limited exposure to the population, etc..) can serve as a disservice. I came out of Timothy Black’s book with a stronger appreciation for documentary, ethnographical methods because it provides the images, sounds, and visible emotions within these communities the a strictly literary basis cannot truly convey because of its reliance on the reader’s past experiences.

These sentiments may partially derive from the fact that most ethnographical works I have read describe a community to which I have had a degree of cultural connection. This is where the differences between ethnographical work (I speak to the literary approach) and being part of a community deviate.  I have shared certain life experiences or have known people very close to me who have lived similar lives as these described marginalized groups ( in Black's book). For this reason, I could recall similar imagery and emotional details relevant within the ethnographical works’ stories, but felt those who couldn’t were at a disadvantage.

Being part of a community necessitates an emotional connection and sense of ownership to it. For example, while I was reading the fictional source “…y no lo trago la tierra,” I found myself very affected by Rivera’s work because it portrayed Mexican-American exploitation in Texas, a community I come from. From reading this, I began to feel almost territorial because I felt anyone who did not come from this community could not possibly read the cultural depiction correctly, diluting this community’s idenity and possibly missing the larger importance of the novel hinging upon this emotional connection. I found this strong feeling especially when I read it in Spanish – a defining factor in one of the many communities I come from and the one described. Reading the same words in its translated English would lose some of the emotional presence because this unique cultural tie to the community was absent. In this way, language itself can decide who’s “in” a community, and also affects an ethnographical account’s objective accuracy. Again, this demonstrates the limitations of ethnographical research.

While I’ve described differences of being “in” a community and “the study” of it, these factors directly relate to community organization and providing services to it. I have a visceral negative, first reaction to the “providing services” to a community concept. I think of imperialism, the subjugation of more privileged populaces’ beliefs onto a less priveleged one, or debilitating the community through a means of giving that fails to promote self-sustainability.  Yet, I understand it doesn’t have to be like this. I fully support our project work to form around the asset-approach we have been reading about to promote self-sustenance and self-esteem within a community. This is facilitated through allocation of resources (resources, being an extremely broad term). “Community organization,” as Rachel said, overlaps with providing resources and I do find it difficult to draw a distinct line between the two.  When I think of community organization, I think more of working with people for them to provide themselves self-sustainability and a deeper understanding of the culture for a long-term, successful result. Both organization and resource allocation can be negative, yet it returns to the idea of what the organizers/providers’ motivations are within the community. Ethnography may be a means to aid provision and organization, yet these concepts would be meaningless without those “within” and those “outside” of the community – the intersect of the two is where creative solutions are born, if the right understanding and motivations are present. 

First, I think that the distinction between ethnography, providing services, organizing, and membership are porous at best, and maybe even arbitrary.  Not only could one person/group do all of them at the same time (as Greg mentioned), but in some cases the activities may be the same.  At the same time, it may be useful to draw them apart, and I think that intent or purpose is a productive way of doing that.  I see ethnography as intending to increase knowledge about a particular community, providing services as intending to meet a need, and organizing as intending to focus community assets and voices around a particular (or many) issue.  Membership seems tricky, since I don't think that "community" is an entity so much as it is a concept, and also because "membership" is caught up in our notions about what it means to "study", "provide" or "organize" a community.

There's been a lot of criticism of ethnography as reinforcing the privilege of the academy, or institutional power, and the privilege of the outsider in speaking for a community.  Black, I think, was extremely aware of that in his book, and that theme of his role as an outside voice is part of the narrative of his story.  While I do see an issue of taking advantage of the hospitality and generosity of others and profitting from their story, the larger issue that I see with this is that it positions what are often academic and otherwise priviledged voices as being those voices that will be heard, that will receive media attention, etc.  At the same time, I recognize the potential of knowledge-building to be really important to communities and to individuals, and also, that not all studies are conducted by outsiders.

I feel fairly similarly about the other two categories.  Providing services and organizing, are in concept just two different activities.  I would argue that every community organization does both of these, on some level.  The tension in these is that service providing is more often located in state/city governments, national non-profits, organizations etc.  In this way, they tend to replicate the "need-focused" vision, and also, I would argue, reproduce notions about who needs what and who provides what.  

I guess that ultimately, what I am trying to say, is that I feel that these categories are not the most useful way of thinking about engaging with communities.  Rather, I would forward position, voice and privilege as important.  For example, while "organizing" is, I feel, generally more empowering, there are plenty of organizing that actively reinforces various forms of privilege.  Finally, I don't mean to suggest that outsiders cannot productively engage in any of these activities.  Rather I feel that making new connections across difference is going to be essential to addressing structrual inequality and oppression, but that they must be made with as much awareness as possible.

I think that all of these actions can be performed by any single member of a community. I think that in class we began floating the idea that to do some of these activities (ie study) one removes themselves from the community. I'd like to forward the idea that community and the relationships formed within it are not entirely based off the actions that people within the community.

I'm no science person. At all. So, I apologize for the crude analogy, but I've been thinking about community as a cell, where individuals are organelles which have very different functions some more vital then others, and some more involved with the outside world. The ethnographer, then, would be like the golgi aparatus? - Processing and sending information out of the cell to interact with other things. I don't mean to geek-out so hard here, but my point is that I think we may have been misidentifying the line between who is in community, who is not, and how we decide where the line is drawn. I don't think that any of the actions above, alone or in combination, could exclude an individual from being part of a community. 

Timothy Black, seems the black sheep in the community that he studies for being white, educated, and there under his own volition. But as seperate from communtiy as he seems, and as detatched from the community as studying a community seems, he still perfromas an action for them, and by doing it well, necessarily makes him part of the community -- exemplified by the accepted position that Black attains in the group. To me, Black is a part of that community even if not as clearly so.

Dean's Bean's work has showed me this as well through the amazing amount of people and skills that Dean attracts to help his company succeed. From web analysts, to avian ecologists, to translators, filmmakers, farmers and cafe owners, his community varies widely. So widely that if common actions or goals were used to define community, he would have a very small one. Or a large community with a difiniton wide enough to match.

Maybe this is all to say  that communities are not brought together for what people are doing for one another, but brought together just by the simple fact that people are doing things for one another.