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Your Point of View:
A Note on Partnerships & Collaboration

Recently, the topic of partnerships and collaborations has engaged the attention of writers in the feminist community. Specifically, the focus has been on partnerships between academic and community groups. Various writers have raised the issue of difference between groups, highlighting the unequal power and privilege that disparate groups bring to bear on partnerships under the pretext of accessing funding and/or accessing information about marginalized communities. Writing from the 'community perspective', authors have underlined how 'grassroots' groups differ from academics. The latter are often portrayed as being monolithic and as having access to institutional power, resources and status.

Partnerships and collaborations have been a topical issue in Anthropology for more than a decade where the more progressive academics have attempted to secure recognition, co-authorship and credibility for the communities with whom they have formed some kind of research relationship. This drive to recognize the expertise of community groups did not arise simply from the researchers' progressive politics but also from external pressure - that the group who is a willing participant in the research process also get something from that collaboration. More often, it is the credibility associated with the articulation of a particular world view and possibility that this might harness social change that propels groups to work with academics. And there have been many instances of success in diverse areas of advocacy.

Many academics were at one time activists in the movement to end violence. Many worked and continue to work as front-line workers. To pursue academic studies in the same are may be a natural outcome.

The most problematic element of the recent writing on partnerships and collaborations is the tendency to portray differences between groups in a manner that makes them appear unbridgeable and fixed. The analysis thus pits groups against each other without taking into consideration the overlapping nature of identities and negating the political ties and allegiances that actually bring groups together.

Take for instance, the issue of academics and community groups who are working in the area of violence against women and children. Many academics were at one time activists in the movement to end violence. Many worked and continue to work as front-line workers. To pursue academic studies in the same area may be a natural outcome. Similarly, many academics are deeply concerned about child welfare - both from a social and personal perspective. These individual motivations do play a role in how individuals relate to one another and to the groups with which they collaborate.

However, not only are groups constructed as being highly different, but it is also assumed that they embrace a certain kind of purity. How community is community? What defines the properties of a truly community group? Then again, what defines 'grassroots'? Is it lack of access to institutionalized power? Is it lack of access to funding? For to access funding in the first place, one needs to be seen as a legitimate group representing 'authentic' concerns. Since most community groups in the violence area are state-funded, where does this definition leave us? Further, what about activists who have turned into academics but who, given the current economic and political environment, are unemployed or underemployed?

To interpret community/academic differences in such a monolithic fashion is to dismiss the potential of very real and productive relationships. It serves to divide and fragment the potential for solidarity. Yes there are differences in power and privilege, and those differences exist for aboriginal women, women of colour, women with disabilities, lesbian women, poor women and older women. But all women are vulnerable to violence although the degree of their vulnerability and the expression it may take may differ. Thus, there is a very real common cause here.

For the women's movement, the call has always been to make the personal is political. Isn't time that we follow the call, as defined by feminist theorist Bonnie Thornton-Dill, of making the political personal? So that, instead of dividing ourselves even further, we actually come together to battle the cause of violence? Clearly we have to acknowledge the differences but we also have to use the strength of diversity to enhance solidarity.

Finally, while it is true that much of the impetus for partnerships has been state-driven, its motivations have been rooted in the politics of bureaucrats who realize the necessity of legitimizing the community voice. Without that kind of pressure, partnerships may exist but their potential to make credible the voices of marginalized communities is muted. An examination of the countless community-based research reports housed in different centres across the country is a case in point. That vital knowledge base is fragmented and inaccessible to even the most dedicated community researchers. Using the expertise of academics who are located in the centres of power (universities) and who are involved in knowledge production is then critical to furthering a cause.

Most importantly, the negative implications of failed partnerships between groups has allowed the state and powerful funding agencies to trivialize the contributions of front-line workers and activists. In such instances, communities have been the ones to suffer. Their expertise has been dismissed, and as a recent funding initiative demonstrates, their role has been reduced to being the 'beneficiaries' of academic research. Clearly, we need to work together if we are to make social change - whether it be in the context of local or national initiatives.

Yasmin Jiwani
Feminist, Research, Education, Development & Action (FREDA) Centre

FREDA will be convening a series of Roundtables to address recent policy changes in the Attorney General's Violence Against Women In Relationships (WAVIR) policy. For more information, contact Cailin Morrison at FREDA (604) 291-5197.