Arenas and Sources of Community-Based Conflicts
University-based research partners need to be aware of multiple factors involved in developing resources, interests, goals, and interactions for the community and community groups being engaged.
The focus on interest groups, often associated with pluralism in political thought (see, e.g., Dahl, 1985), is helpful. That focus lends itself to communication-centered analysis, especially in terms of what counts as interests in the public domain and how the very articulation of interests affects the course of one’s engagement of conflict or negotiations as well as the negotiations themselves (Mackenzie, 1978). Of course, what counts as genuine interests is in itself contested in theory and practice, given that what is observable and salient is part of a larger picture (Lukes, 1974). We define interests as s elf-identified and expressed common concerns that may have practical implications for community pursuits, including public policy formation. The interest-group emphasis lends itself to a communication-based analysis, particularly when the role of communication networks is brought in to sharpen the analysis or when the network analysis is used to reveal persistent patterns of segregation in a community (e.g., Safford, 2009).Interest groups may consist of tightly knit and well-recognized entities or loose coalitions or even emergent (or incipient) networks. Such groups are situated not only within a matrix of political, economic, and social forces but also within the flow of their own experiential histories. For example, community groups that have been partners in failed projects (e.g., related to urban renewal, school improvement, health care access for the poor, or environmental preservation) may subsequently be reluctant to work together. Their contemplated pursuits are understandably shadowed by the memories of problematic attempts at collaboration.
This may hinder future collaboration and further entrench the groups in their own accustomed networks and worldviews (see, e.g., Schein, 2010). In every city, a de facto hierarchy of neighborhood associations emerges (however formal or informal the structure may be). This hierarchy is rather quickly revealed with a well-established reputational methodology (i.e., identifying who are the most powerful players in this community/city/ area; see, e.g., Hunter, 1953). These differing resources and influences should be understood and taken into account by the researcher(s) from the start. Role and status factors not only implicate initial expectations about how a conflict or a set of negotiations will ensue but also affect interactions about an issue. Furthermore, both more established and informal types of power (see especially French & Raven, 1959) shape expectations that various parties have for outcomes of conflicts even as they are first engaged with one another.Attempts at transformation through dialogue must take into account “the playing field” at the beginning of the researcher’s involvement. Consider the experience of neighborhood coalitions in the East Side of Austin, Texas, a rapidly growing city with many established and reasonably close-knit neighborhoods, carrying a legacy of restructuring by race in the early 20th century and now being transformed by gentrification as well as some forms of integration (Smithson, 2009). Part of this geographic, economic, and cultural landscape is differential power related to the siting of environmental hazardous activities or waste materials. Given a history of battling toxic industrial companies in their community, from the early 1990s and with recent success in the late 2000s, the PODER (or power in Spanish) group rallied East Austinites and greater city residents to protest and raise awareness. In this case, a thorough knowledge of history, the parties, community governance, and informal as well as formal interest-group politics is foundational for effective practical research aimed at enlightenment, intervention, or both.
This same knowledge is relevant now on the East Side of Austin as new efforts at grassroots community economic development are being pursued, largely outside the auspices of local governments and necessarily dealing with geographic and social divisions within that part of the city and between that part of the city and the metropolitan area as a whole.The stakeholder perspective, an important and popular perspective on community conflict, takes into account the idea of broad representation and participation. It follows from the assumption that conflict among competing interests and groups is a given and carries an ethical stance that everyone who has a “stake” in an issue ought to be brought to the table (Deetz, 1995). However, the stakeholder perspective does not always presume that all interests are explicitly identified or articulated. Some interests may not even be nascent or strongly felt by consistently oppressed or underprivileged parts of a community (e.g., as may be seen in recent efforts to evoke class-based identities in the Occupy movement and associated conflicts). Thus, some versions of a stakeholder perspective involve an ethical-practical stance that argues for including even those groups who may not be fully aware of their stake in a problem. In this way, researchers who adopt a strong stakeholder perspective can try to take an interventionist stance up front, whereby they are, to some extent, admitting their roles as potential change agents by bringing together an array of groups where some may not yet be engaged.
In the environmental arena, for instance, what is called the multi-stakeholder framework for dialogue has emerged strongly and been applied to cases where the formal institutions and channels (e.g., environmental impact hearings) do not offer opportunities for what many would regard as authentic dialogue, as well as to cases where breakthroughs in integrative or nonzero-sum forms of bargaining are seen as desirable and possible (see, e.g., Callister, 2012; Peterson & Horton, 1995; Walker, 2004).
Stakeholder perspectives, as developed in fields ranging from philosophy to management, tend to take seriously both an ethic of “ownership” in a problem or an issue and commitment to widening and deepening participation beyond what may have been already functioning or assumed (within communication, see especially Deetz, 1995). Stakeholder perspectives on participation have been linked closely with dialogic perspectives on communication in projects related to race and ethnicity, class, health, the environment, and community economic development. For example, universities and colleges dealing with systemic binge drinking cultures are confronting not only the individual who abuses alcohol and the others that he or she harms. But they are also confronting subcultures that enable excessive drinking, administrators who are not doing enough to handle the problem, an overall university culture that encourages “letting loose” after a hard week of studying, and years during which the problem goes underground and seemingly “disappears.”Just as the origin and history of conflict within the community may have importance (e.g., to understanding the context), so too may the entry point of the research, service, or intervention, as well as the type of relationship between the investigator and the community (group, constituency, stakeholder, and party). Ultimately, then, we must consider both preexisting conflicts as a subject of investigation and conflicts, which may arise as a result of the investigations themselves. The latter is not the type of conflict to which most researchers want to admit or about which they ordinarily wish to comment; however, it is part of the reality of complex, sensitive, and perhaps even volatile community engagements.
Community ethnographic researchers have grappled with this issue in the form of c onse- quential presence, an embracing version of the concept referring to the seen and unseen effects of the researcher’s presence on participants and the community. Higher degrees of involvement, through assessment, intervention or actual participation, warrant extensive preparation and debriefing regarding potentially significant and lasting effects of the research on the community. Thus, community partners should be involved at some level in how problems are framed at the outset, and in some cases, even having input on methodological choices. Researchers should carry these initial conversations with them as they continue formulating the research.