Tami Moore, OK tami.moore@okstate.edu Lorilee Sandmann, GA sandmann@uga.edu Jocey Quinn, UK

1. Center and Periphery in International Civic Engagement:Postcolonial Approachor 21st Century East India Co? Tami Moore, OK tami.moore@okstate.edu Lorilee Sandmann, GA sandmann@uga.edu Jocey Quinn, UK UKjocey.quinn@plymouth.ac.uk.

2. Critical Perspectives on Engagement • Relationships between universities and communities are highly complex • Relations of power and by discourse that privilege university-based knowledge • Question the nature of university-community partnerships: claims of mutual benefit and reciprocity

3. Explore Questions…. • Is there a “western” approach to community engagement? If so what are its characteristics? • To what extent is does such an approach exist elsewhere, to what extent is it applicable or desirable across international contexts? • How can theory assist?

4. Answers—Postcolonial Concepts • Postcolonial theory “To abolish all distinctions between center and periphery as well as other ‘binarisms’ that are allegedly a legacy of colonial(ist) ways of thinking” (Dirlik, 1994) • Colonizer (center) • Colonized (periphery) • Spivak, 1985, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c—experience beyond the center

5. Binary Ways of Looking at Community Engagement • University and Community • Researchers and Community Partners • Town and Gown • Needs-based Asset-based Community Development • Academic and Indigenous Ways of Knowing • Others?

6. Communities and community leaders positioned as peripheral • Privileged students or academics working with disadvantaged communities • Universities as center of knowledge production & communities that surround them as empty vessels wait to be filled with expert knowledge • Socializations of academics

7. Research Design • Critical discussion on dataset collected through purposive sampling from Australia, Columbia, South Africa, UK, and the US • The mosaic of examples and contexts provide partial view through the experiences of participating scholar-practitioner-researchers • Theorizing on the basis of these dataset • Moore, Quinn, & Sandmann, 2009; Moore, Sandmann, & Quinn, 2008

8. Mutual Learning Across International Contexts • From a distance you can see more clearly • Quinn, 2003 • InterView • Kvale, 1996

9. British 19 C. India—”meshing of image and reality” makes it difficult to “know” India by Indians without post-colonial lens • British India—cultural commodity Is anything similar happening to “community” in community-university partnerships?

10. “the Other” • “othering”—a process establishing the binary separation of the colonizer (center) and the colonized (periphery) and asserting the naturalness and primacy of the colonizing (center’s) culture and world view • Aschcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 1998, p. 169 • “ assumption of the uninscribed earth” or nothing was there before the arrival of the colonizer • Spivak, 1985 • Disconnects the peripheral from their culture by making another central

11. “…in spite of the large Federal grants many of these scholars received to [confront serious urban problems], . . . many city residents and municipal officials view[ed] such individuals as little more than highly credentialed, self-serving carpetbaggers and ambulance chasers” Reardon, 2000, p. 62

12. UK, the national government is promoting community engagement as a means of regenerating economically deprived areas, positioning universities as a means of rejuvenating a ‘barren’ landscape South Africa exhibits a blurring of the line between colonizing and mutually beneficial engagement in service learning Such instances serve to remind researchers of the importance of probing to uncover the motivation and behavior within community engagement initiatives of all types to understand more fully the exact nature of the relationships, and to clarify the degree of marginalization experienced by community participants

13. Colonial India may be an extreme example of the impulse to treat communities as “uninscribed earth” and seem far removed from current community-campus partnerships… However… Within universities and the prevailing structure of higher education scholarship, community members are relatively quiet and more often than not play a secondary role in conceiving and implementing community engagement initiatives.

14. Also…not the periphery’s ability to speak, but the center’s willingness to listen and to hear what is being said

15. Some universities are listening • Columbia—participatory designs, NGOs and community activists

16. Your Turn…Postcolonial Hat • Opportunity for deeper thinking • Identify elements of western-influenced ethos around engagement? • Where does postcolonial theory fit? • Where are there misfits? • How do we move forward?

17. Selected References • Dirlik, A. (1994, Winter) ‘The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism’, Critical Inquiry, Vol 20, pp 328-356 • Moore, T., Quinn, J., & Sandmann, L. (2009, June) ‘A Comparative Analysis of Knowledge Construction in Community Engagement’, Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Lifelong Learning, Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning, University of Stirling, Scotland • Moore, T., Sandmann, L., & Quinn, J. (2008, Nov.). ‘International Engagement: A Critical Discussion’ Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Jacksonville, FL • Reardon, K. (2000). ‘An Experiential Approach to Creating an Effective Community-Uuniversity Partnership: The East St. Louis Action Research Project’, Cityscape, Vol 5, No. 1, p. 59-74 • Spivak, G. (1985) ‘The Rani of Simur’, in Barker, F, P. Hulme, M. Iversen, and D. Loxley (eds), Europe and its others, Colchester, University of Essex • Spivak, G. (1988a) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Nelson, C. and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Chicago, University of Illinois Press • Spivak, G. (1988b) In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, New York, Routledge. • Spivak, G. (1990) Criticism, Feminism, and the Institution’, In: S. Harasym (Ed.), The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, New York, Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, Inc (Reprinted from Thesis Eleven, 10/11, pp. 175-187, 1984-5, November/March)