Making Sense of Multiple Conversations: Research, Teaching, and Activism in and with Communities in South African Cities

Abstract

In the South African context, our research is produced in multiple conversations that include conventional academic disciplinary communities, but extends beyond the university, engaging with a range of social and political institutions and actors. As a result, the relationship between research, theory and politics frames our research in explicit and implicit ways. I draw here on my own practice as a researcher, teacher, and activist to examine the ways in which my engagement with community organizations articulates into conventional university activities of research and teaching; but, as importantly, the ways in which it is shaped by community-based agenda that not only inform the research but sustain the relationships critical to my research. I conclude that the overlapping nature of research, teaching and activism is more than a political and contextual imperative, potentially it is a theoretical strength that adds depth, reflexivity, and, in the relationships built, the construction of robust urban knowledge