New Orleans VideoVoice Project: Challenges Defining Community & Recruitment
March 1st, 2008
Map of Central City, New Orleans
Tons of community-based participatory research (CBPR) authors and practitioners raise the issue of defining community in CBPR. Several authors in Minkler’s edited book Community-Based Participatory Research for Health speak to the centrality of recognizing and defining community (2003). In Lawrence Green and colleagues’ “Guidelines for Participatory Research in Health Promotion”, they argue that the first question that must be asked of CBPR practitioners is: “Is the community of interest clearly described or defined?” Israel and colleagues write that the first key principle of CBPR is “CBPR recognizes community as a unit of identity”. So, what is community in the New Orleans VideoVoice project? Sometimes I know and sometimes I don’t.
As we walk through the process of recruitment for our project, I realize just how complex the idea of community really is. For example, when we began, it seemed as if this was a pretty cut and dry case of neighborhood = community. In fact, one of the rare pleasures of doing CBPR work in New Orleans, as far as I’ve experienced it, is that many people really do identify strongly with the neighborhoods where they live. Many have lived in the same home, some for several generations. People seem to know the people who live around them, to go to church with them, to have attended high school with them, and many even attend regular neighborhood committee meetings. Well, that was, until Katrina. So, it’s complicated.
When we began recruitment, we decided that “community” meant people who live and work in Central City. We have a map of the general boundaries, so we were looking for folks inside of these boundaries. As we made contact with more and more people, we began to realize that there are many people who have significant relationships with the Central City community but do not actually live or work there right now. Here are several examples of how the definition of community is simple on paper, but challenging in action.
After the city was evacuated and after enormous stretches of housing, particularly low-income housing, were destroyed, many of the neighborhood’s residents were forced to scatter across the Gulf States and even across the United States. Trusted institutions, community centers, and places of communion like parks and streets have been ruined and abandoned. So, our definition is time sensitive because so many were forced to leave and are still unable to come back. Do we include people who were a part of the neighborhood before? If so, how do we find these folks?
At Larry’s Church, Israelite Baptist Church, there are a lot of people in the congregation that have been long-time members of the community, but neither live nor work here. Some have ancient connections to the neighborhood. This is where they’ve been going to church since they were kids. This is where many generations of their family grew up, but they do not actually live or work in the neighborhood now and have not for a while. So, what do you do?
There is a high school just beyond the border of Central City. A small group, including a teacher and a few students that are 18 years plus, would like to join our effort. Seems to make sense, but it is outside the boarders and high schools tend to be discrete communities. But, so far, it has been hard for us to recruit young people, given our age requirements, and introducing this diversity to our group could be a significant addition. Maybe this is an opportunity to link these high school students to the community and although they may or may not have a significant relationship with Central City now, they probably will by the end of the project.
To Larry, the answer seemed obvious: he just knows. He has a sense for identifying people with a significant relationship to the neighborhood. It reminds me of the concept Malcolm Gladwell brings up in Blink. Sometimes our instincts are made up of an infinitely complex set of knowledge, much of it unconscious, which tells us in an instant what we are dealing with. This sense is so refined that we don’t even need to consciously or verbally delibaerate about it, we just know. Larry just knows because he has spent most of his life working and residing and organizing in the neighborhood. He knows nearly automatically, what it looks and seems and sounds like when someone has a significant relationship with the community. But, for me, an outside researcher, I can’t tell where this new boundary lies. Does it include the high school students or not? Does it include the guy that cooks at a bordering restaurant that seemed really interested in participating? It would be hard for me to explain this recruitment choice to academic colleagues, particularly when so much of this decision is based on the judgment of people who just know.
So, what does the literature tell us that might be helpful? Isreal and colleagues write that “Community is characterized by a sense of identification and emotional connection to other members, common symbol systems, shared values and norms, mutual (although not necessarily equal) influence, common interests, and commitment to meeting shared needs” (Isreal et al, In: Minkler Ed, 2003, pp 55). To me, a key aspect of this very very inclusive definition of community is the term “emotional connection”. I agree. But, how do we determine if this emotional connection exists? Is the Larry Campbell test ok? Or, is there some way that a person with less intimate understanding of the community can also make this determination? My gut tells me that there isn’t. That as I work and live and play more in Central City, maybe I too can develop a little bit of Larry-sense. Until then, I will have to rely on our community partners to know.