The Relational Method: How Community Organizing Can Reshape University Research

Crises of confidence in the relationship between academic research and broader society has led to an explosion in interest in community-led research methods, such as codesign, community-engaged research, and participatory action research. These methods are intended as a way of reconnecting scholarship and society during a period of intense polarization, but they remain far from mainstream. This reflection considers whether community organizing, and in particular the kind of approach initiated by Saul Alinsky that borrowed from a scholarly method at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and is now practiced in more than 99 cities around the world, can offer a practical guide for scholars keen to resolve this challenge. It outlines three elements of what is labeled the “relational method” that build on the philosophical and practical tools of community organizing: relationality, power, and uncertainty. It suggests that the principles and practices of the relational method can not only strengthen community-led research practice, but, if we take a lead from community organizing and recognize the importance of the relationship between the practice of social change and the institutions that seek to produce it, it can also help us to more clearly see how the diffusion of community-led research can align with the broader goal of creating more community-engaged universities.