Researching at the community-university borderlands: Using public science to study policing in the South Bronx

Abstract

This article is a case study of the Morris Justice Project (MJP), a participatory action research (PAR) study in a South Bronx neighborhood of New York City (NYC) designed to understand residents’ experiences with and attitudes towards the New York Police Department (NYPD). An illustration of public science, the research was conducted in solidarity with an emerging police reform movement and in response to an ongoing and particularly aggressive set of policing policies that most heavily impacts poor communities and communities of color. The case study describes a set of ongoing participatory, research-action, “sidewalk science” strategies, developed in 42 square blocks of the South Bronx, designed to better understand and challenge the ongoing structural violence of the carceral state. Collaboratively written with members of the Morris Justice collective, we tell our story across three sections that outline the genesis of the project, describe our major commitments, and offers PAR and public science as a possible “intervention” in traditional university practice.

Promise and Provocation: Humble Reflections on Critical Participatory Action Research for Social Policy

“…MJP is committed to having both community and university members of the research team present at academic conferences, like the American Psychological Association (APA) Annual Convention (Stoudt & Torre, 2014; Stoudt et al, 2015). And yet, when the majority Black research team arrived to speak at APA—dressed in t-shirts reading “WHY DO I ALWAYS FIT THE DESCRIPTION?”—they were stopped and interrogated by hotel security (Stoudt et al, in press). Brett and María then leveraged their academic privilege, including ties to the renowned psychologist William Cross who had invited the group; the MJP team soon received apologies from hotel security and the CEO of the APA.…”

WITHDRAWN – Administrative Duplicate Publication: Critical political geographies of slow violence and resistance

“…Elsewhere, we have argued for arts-based approaches that produce representations of violence that go beyond language, capable of a deeper articulation and alerting audiences through emotional and embodied registers (Cahill and Pain, 2019;Cahill et al, 2019b;Nagar, 2019). In addition, participatory epistemologies and communitybased research attend to the urgent questions as defined by those most impacted by slow violence, and take action towards responding, resisting, and repairing (Cahill and Pain, 2019;Jones, 2019;Murrey, 2015;Nagar, 2014Nagar, , 2019Ritterbusch, 2019;Sandwick et al, 2018;Stoudt et al, 2019;Torre et al, 2017).…”

Critical political geographies of slow violence and resistance

“…Elsewhere, we have argued for arts-based approaches that produce representations of violence that go beyond language, capable of a deeper articulation and alerting audiences through emotional and embodied registers (Cahill et al, 2019b; Cahill and Pain, 2019; Nagar, 2019). In addition, participatory epistemologies and community-based research attend to the urgent questions as defined by those most impacted by slow violence, and takes action towards responding, resisting and repairing (Cahill and Pain, 2019; Jones, 2019; Murrey 2015; Nagar, 2014, 2019; Ritterbusch, 2019; Sandwick et al, 2018; Stoudt et al, 2019; Torre et al, 2017).…”