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Abstract
This article illustrates how “global/local” community engagement, a particular form of experiential learning and political work that draws upon geography conceptually, pedagogically, and programmatically, is well suited to advance integrative learning and invite students into social action. Through specific examples from Mount Holyoke College, we argue that “global/local” community engagement helps students cultivate the skills and dispositions of reciprocity, reflexivity, and place-based and interdependent knowledge production. These are habits of mind and patterns of praxis necessary for enacting “situated solidarity,” a practice with great potential for grappling with the complex challenges and marked divisiveness of the twenty-first century. As our empirical examples demonstrate, the geographic concept of contour lines matched with the pedagogies of accompaniment and co-labor guide “global/local” community engagement. We conclude with a set of recommendations for implementing “global/local” community engagement in other institutions of higher education to reveal the context-specificity of our examples and the possibilities for application elsewhere.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers and editors from the Journal of Geography in Higher Education for thoughtful and helpful comments. We extend our appreciation to members of the spring 2015 “Global and Local Synergies” faculty and staff seminar at Mount Holyoke College for stimulating conversations and collaborations that pushed our work forward. We also offer special thanks to Alan Bloomgarden, Sara Tower, and Mika Kie Weissbuch for helping cultivate and sustain the community engagement discussed here. Finally, we express deep gratitude to the students, alums, and community partners who make this work possible. All errors are our own.
Notes
1. As many scholars have noted (Bednarz et al., Citation2008; Klein et al., Citation2011; Rose, Citation1990), “community” is a contested and ubiquitous term. In our context, we understand community to refer to collectivities that have material and/or virtual presences, that can have extensive geographic reach, and that may be long-standing or newly formed. We also understand membership within communities as often multiple and overlapping. We conceive of MHC as comprised of many different communities and interacting with additional others. The notion of the “communiversity” (mrs kinpaisby, Citation2008, p. 295) helps us understand how communities and universities and colleges are mutually constituted. Academics bring their non-academic and community identities and interests into their work and communities are comprised of many different people, including academics. This textured understanding of community informs our discussion of “community engagement” in the context of the “global/local.”
2. While some advocate for the shorter portmanteau of “glocal,” we find that most usages of glocal collapse scales and processes and tend to be pre-occupied with the global constitution of the local, particularly with regards to market logics, micromarketing, and local adaptations for consumer preferences (Robertson, Citation1995). Over the last two decades, the widest deployment of the term “glocal” has remained primarily focused on marketing, and it appears only a few educators are using “glocal” for purposes similar to ours (i.e. Rice & Lauren, Citation2013; Sklad, Friedman, Park, & Oomen, Citation2015). Of course, Swyngedouw’s work (Citation1997, 2004) to recast globalization as “glocalization” has helped geographers consider new scalar configurations for certain economic processes and (potential) political mobilizations. However, because here too the focus is chiefly on production processes, commodities, inter-firm networks, and the behavior of finance (and secondarily on attendant shifts in regulatory governance), we aim to open up a much wider terrain for analysis using “global/local.”
3. In West Springfield, over 30 families farmed plots, which ranged from 1000 square feet up to a quarter of an acre. About half of the farmers aggregated their produce and sold it to restaurants and ethnic grocery stores and through farmers markets and a Go Fresh Mobile Market. In 2015, New Lands Farm staff estimated that farmers grew over 25,000 pounds of food for personal consumption and retail (personal communication, January, 2016).
4. Glass (Citation2014) concludes that there are limits to the level of reflexivity that may be achieved in a short-term immersive experience. See also arguments by Langdon and Agyeyomah (Citation2014) for a “critical hyper-reflexivity” that examines not only individual positionality, but also attends to flows of power.
5. See http://www.podcastsforpeace.org/.
6. AAC&U, Campus Compact, Imagining America and other major higher education networks in the US are promoting conversations, best practices, and national initiatives that value community engagement in tenure and promotion.