Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

The Engaged University
II, academics were impressed (sometimes justifiably) by detached
and scientific methods, such as large-scale survey research and controlled
experiments.
By the 1990s, there were evident countertrends, among
them the growth of ethnographic methods. Ethnography had
been founded by anthropologists like Bronislaw Malinwoski and
Margaret Mead, who lived for substantial periods immersed in
distant cultures and used local people as informants. By the 1990s,
ethnographic methods were widely employed in American contexts,
even to understand the academy itself. A “hallmark” of “ethnography
is its commitment to accurate reflection of the views and
perspectives of the participants in the research”; this requires close
and respectful interaction with lay people. 21 In HEX, Scott Peters
described the Teen Assessment Project (TAP) in Wisconsin, which
“provides a means for communities to collaborate with extension
educators and university faculty in conducting their own research
on the needs and problems faced by adolescents.” 22 This was an
example of many such projects across the country. 23
Jay Rosen’s work with practical journalists represented a
different way of developing new knowledge and ideas in collaboration
with nonacademics: in this case, professionals. Rosen
explained that he began by thinking about Michael Sandel’s
famous line, “When politics goes well, we can know a good in
common that we cannot know alone.” But what does it mean for
politics to “go well”? “That’s a question that no scholar … can answer
alone, or in conversation with other academics.” The answer,
Rosen argued in HEX, “can only be found by creating a space for
21 Margaret D. LeCompte and Jean J. Schensul, Ethnographer’s Toolkit, vol. 1:
Designing & Conducting Ethnographic Research (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira/Sage
Publications, 1999), 12.
22 Scott J. Peters, “Public Scholarship and the Land-Grant Idea,” Higher Education
Exchange (1997): 55-56.
23 Cf. the University of Kentucky’s partnership with the Public Life Foundation
Organization, described by Douglas Scutchfield, Carol Ireson, and Laura Hall in
“Bringing Democracy to Health Care: A University-Community Partnership,”
Higher Education Exchange (2004): 55-63.
23