2010 Malinowski Award Engaged Universities, Community Based Research Organizations and Third Sector Science in a Global System

Over the past three decades, since the civil rights era of the late 1960s and 70s, public science funding has shifted to support for military and industrial purposes and the health sciences. Most universities are now heavily subsidized through private sources, shifting the emphasis in research away from civic society engagement. Engaged scholarship and research conducted by, with and for communities are approaches that together have the potential to reinstate an emphasis on public scholarship that addresses structural inequities and social, health and cultural disparities. This paper argues that among various approaches to engaged social science, Action Research, endorsed by four generations of anthropologists in the United States, Canada and Latin America has the greatest potential to create knowledge that can be used to address social injustices at the local, national and international levels. Subsuming Action Research conducted by university centers, community based research organizations and other community partners under the rubric of Third Sector Science, the paper links third sector anthropologists with other national and global movements promoting action research to transform the nature of science and scientific knowledge production. It concludes with suggestions for new science and communication technology that can link people in communities with global social movements and the construction of new knowledge "from the ground up."