Community-Based Research in Higher Education: Research Partnerships for the Common Good

This chapter sets out the context for the discussion of community-based research in this book. It explains the concept of community-based research and provides a rationale as to why the time is ripe for universities worldwide to engage in this research. It argues that recent worldwide developments and threats to humanity and the planet require a concerted approach to human development, to enable people to identify and embrace sustainable, positive responses to the changing demands of life. This calls for research paradigms and methodologies that create safe, inclusive spaces for engaged research partnerships between the university and the community around issues rooted in inequality. These include exclusion, marginalization, othering, the denial of dignity, privilege, impoverishment, racism, sexism and other ‘isms’ by which some people oppress and negate the humanity of many. Community-based research offers a pathway to reclaim humanity in and through research, to promote the peaceable coexistence of all human ways of being and knowing that are mindful of shared need and the limits of our finite planet. The core concepts of the book are explained in relation to how they are used in this publication. The chapter concludes with the outline of the structure and content of this book.