Abstract
The literature suggests that community-based participatory research holds the potential
to democratize and decolonize knowledge production by engaging communities and
citizens in the research enterprise. Yet this approach, and its associated claims, remain
under theorized, particularly as to how power circulates between and among academic
and community knowledge work/ers. This paper puts forth a postcolonial analysis of
participatory techniques that sustain academe’s epistemic privilege through producing,
subordinating and assimilating difference; claiming authenticity and voice; and dislocating
collaborative knowledge work from the historical, political, social and embodied conditions
in which it unfolds. Postcolonial readings of community-based participatory
action research offer a powerful theoretical framework for interrogating the divide
between the discursive claims and material practices that undermine this democratic
project. Drawing on critical reflections on two community-based participatory action
research projects, this paper offers modest proposals toward (re)placing communitybased
knowledge work/ers in space, time and bodies. Although this paper presents a
critique of community-based participatory action research, it is not in pursuit of revealing
‘‘bad’’ participatory praxis or recuperating a better practice, but rather seeks to
open up dialogue on the circulation of power in the campus/community encounter