Research and Stories (leadershipforchange.org)

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Ethnography

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Portraits of Leadership: Ethnography

Ethnographies offer in-depth and rich portraits of leadership within selected Leadership for a Changing World organizations and communities. Locally based ethnographers and awardees negotiate the research questions and design the research in ways that will contribute to the awardees' organizational objectives and leadership practices. Therefore, each ethnography is unique in its focus, method and writing style. Some incorporate creative forms, such as photography and video, which are non-traditional forms of representation in research. They all provide detailed information about the history of organizations, their leadership dynamics, collaborations, transformations and development.

Finished Ethnographies

Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers: An Ethnographic Study
Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers (AIM)
By Akinyele Umoja, NYU/LCW Ethnographer

In recent years scholars, authors, and activists have articulated the existence of a generation gap within the African-American community. In the context of the developing generational divide in contemporary African-American social life, this study examines the program Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers (AIM) and its successes and challenges in transitioning youth to leadership. This ethnography examines AIM’s organizational culture and its ability to transition youth, its staff, volunteers and clients into leadership in partnership with the adult leadership of the program. While the generation gap within the African-American community is a specific issue in the contemporary social context that AIM operates, other issues, particularly negative social forces that reinforce a cycle of incarceration and poverty and the educational and social economic gap between service providers and clients also challenge its goal of meeting the mission stated above.
Complete Ethnography: Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers: An Ethnographic Study (pdf)

Líderes Campesinas: Grassroots Gendered Leadership, Community Organizing, and Pedagogies of Empowerment Organización en California de Líderes Campesinas (OLC)
By Maylei Blackwell, Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies – University of California, Los Angeles

Co-Researchers: Mily Treviño Sauceda, Executive Director, Líderes Campesinas; Devra Weber, Professor of History, University of California, Riverside; and Carol Stack, Ph.D., Advisory Committee

The roots of Organización en California de Líderes Campesinas (Líderes Campesinas) are grounded in farm worker women who create a better future themselves and their communities. The organization is based on the idea that farm worker women are leaders that can be empowered to solve the problems of injustice in their own lives and communities. This ethnography addresses three areas of research, including Líderes Campesinas’s history; changes in terms of leadership, empowerment and community organization; and documenting the organization’s pedagogical model. The ethnography chronicles Latina farm workers in California who have developed programs recognizing campesina expertise, nurturing leadership among campesinas who organize their families, communities, and workplaces. These narratives speak to the new forms of empowerment created by Líderes Campesinas and new tools the women have obtained in creating new kinds of community by taking action in their twelve local site committees.
Complete Ethnography: Líderes Campesinas: Grassroots Gendered Leadership, Community Organizing, and Pedagogies of Empowerment (pdf)

Piecing Together the Fragments: An Ethnography of Leadership for Social Change in North Central Philadelphia 2004-2005
The Village of Arts & Humanities
By Mary Hufford, Director and Rosina Miller; Center for Folklore and Ethnography

The Village of Arts and Humanities has initiated a collaborative community planning process entitled Shared Prosperity in North Philadelphia. This initiative engages neighborhood residents, business owners, community groups, and other organizations in revitalizing North Central Philadelphia by recognizing and strengthening the communities existing assets and leadership. The Shared Prosperity model radically refigures the expert/client relationship. Professional planners drawn from the University placed their students in the position of having to learn from members of a steering committee drawn from the neighborhood. This ethnography explores the ways in which the resident-driven steering committee built community around the work of mentoring student planners and volunteers, reclaiming and beautifying neighborhood spaces, utilizing volunteers to survey the community, retrieving memories of community elders, and reinhabiting the public space of the streets. In this model, economic revitalization grows out of the revitalized life of the community, which leverages recognition and support from the larger polities of metropolis and state.
Practitioner Guide: Piecing Together the Fragments (pdf)
Complete ethnography (pdf)

Creating Economic Opportunities and Rebuilding Public Health, Through Reviving Tribal Traditions
Community Action, Naturally
Tohono O'odham Community Action (TOCA)

Co-researchers: Tristan Reader, Award Recipient; Terrol Johnson, Award Recipient; and Susan Lobo

Terrol Johnson and Tristan Reader of Tohono O'odham Community Action (TOCA) brought together grassroots leaders from a variety of Native American communities to define and document best practices, challenges and common agendas for grassroots community organizing and leadership development. The project's core element was a retreat for leaders from Native communities. They took part in story circles and in-depth discussions, guided by Wendy Wheeler of the Innovation Center for Youth and Community Development. They created a video documentary and a companion book with photojournalism, all based on the retreat. Tristan and Terrol also worked with selected Native leaders in their communities to deepen their understanding of the central themes that emerge. Dr. Susan Lobo, a cultural anthropologist and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Arizona, collaborated on this exciting project. This project was co-sponsored by NYU/Wagner and the Advocacy Institute's Individual Learning Accounts.

Until All of Us Are Home: The Process of Leadership at Project H.O.M.E.
Project H.O.M.E.
By Kathleen Hall, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Project H.O.M.E.'s co-founders, S. Mary Scullion and Joan Dawson McConnon together with members of the Project H.O.M.E. community explores the emergence of leadership through struggle in the fight to end homelessness in Philadelphia. It has been within struggles for recovery and family unification, fair housing and equality, human dignity and cohesion in diversity that leaders have arisen and flourished at every level of the organization. This ethnographic study documents the organization's history of leadership through struggle. Having looked back across time, the co-researchers gathered oral history interviews and documentary photographs to chronicle the stories of those who have shared in the struggles, the challenges, and the ultimate success of Project H.O.M.E.
Practitioner Guide: Until All of Us Are Home (pdf)
Complete ethnography (pdf)

Leadership Development for Community Action: An Ethnographic Inquiry
Northwest Federation of Community Organizations
By Lisa Weinberg, Organizational Consultant
Addendum by Meredith Herr, NYU/LCW, and Erica Gabrielle Foldy, NYU/LCW

Co-researchers: LeeAnn Hall, Award Recipient, Lisa Weinberg, Organizational Consultant

LeeAnn Hall directs the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations (NWFCO), a collaboration of four state-based community organizations engaged in the fight for social and economic justice. Leadership development is at the heart of the NWFCO mission and central to LeeAnn's own leadership style. Through training and issue-specific campaigns, NWFCO and its affiliated organizations build grassroots capacity to effect social change. The ethnography focuses on the very personal process by which people begin to self-identify and act as leaders. It explores what enables people to envision a different future, both in terms of what they can do and to what ends. The results of this research illuminate what it takes to foster and sustain a sense of efficacy and a commitment to action.
Complete Ethnography: Leadership Development for Community Action (pdf)
Addendum: The Political Project of Learning (pdf)

Building Alliances: An Ethnography of Collaboration between Rural Organizing Project (ROP) and CAUSA in Oregon
By Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon, in collaboration with Jan Lanier (PCUN), Ramón Ramírez, Award Recipient, and Marcy Westerling, Award Recipient

This ethnography examines the components that allow quality solidarity work to happen between organizations with leadership and constituencies that are primarily people of color and primarily white, respectively. PCUN and ROP of Oregon have developed a working relationship over ten years that has contributed to numerous victories for immigrant and farm worker rights, as well as greater consciousness among white, rural activists around what it means to provide support as anti-racist allies. Because Oregon has a relatively small population (3 million), and progressive organizations tend to know each other, the relationship provides an opportunity to study how such organizations manage power and historic inequalities in a manner suited for success. Ethnographer Lynn Stephen has conducted in-depth interviews with organizational leaders and members as a way to explore the history and lessons learned from the collaborative work between the two organizations. Key findings include the importance of in-depth and sustained dialogue around the key values of work, and staff training around the issues involved with connecting to the other organization. The organizations use these techniques build common ground. Hence, collaborative capacity can be mobilized quickly to support each other's actions as needed.
Practitioner Guide: Building Alliances (pdf)
Overview and highlights (pdf)
Complete ethnography (pdf)

Waging Democracy in the Kingdom of Coal
OVEC and the Movement for Social and Environmental Justice in Central Appalachia
By Mary Hufford, Center for Folklore and Ethnography – University of Pennsylvania

Co-Researchers: Janet Fout, Award Recipient; Dianne Bady, Award Recipient; Mary Hufford, Center for Folklore and Ethnography – University of Pennsylvania

This ethnography explores how Janet Fout, Dianne Bady and their original co-founder Laura Foreman built the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC). This diverse, grassroots effort in the coalfields of West Virginia focuses on stopping mountaintop removal, a practice in which mine companies literally blow the tops off mountains as a way of getting to the coal inside. This destroys mountains, forests, streams, wildlife habitat and communities. The ethnography also explores how OVEC builds political relationships that are spiritual, communitarian and democratic.
Complete Ethnography: Waging Democracy in the Kingdom of Coal (pdf)

Each One Teach One: Learning Leadership at TROSA
Triangle Residential Option for Substance Abusers (TROSA)
By Barbara Lau, Center for Documentary Studies – Duke University

Co-Researchers: Kevin McDonald, Award Recipient; Barbara Lau, Center for Documentary Studies – Duke University

Kevin McDonald knows that it will not be possible to replicate TROSA, which uses a social entrepreneurial model to provide services for substance abusers. But he wants to enable others to learn from both his successes and missteps. This ethnography outlines TROSA's unique vision and methods. It explores how the organization practices leadership development as part of everyday life. In addition, photographer Cedric N. Chatterley developed a photo exhibit, Each One Teach One: Learning Leadership at TROSA, and an archive of photographs for TROSA to use in their communications and marketing efforts. Kevin believes that this project allowed him to reflect on his organization's growth and maturity and hopes it will be a useful tool for teaching others.
Complete Ethnography: Each One Teach One: Learning Leadership at TROSA (pdf)
TROSA photo exhibit

Ethnographies in Progress

National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON)
The need to have representation and protection of day laborer rights gave rise to the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON). Day labor is a burgeoning market and serves an important niche for immigrant workers. Organizers who work with day laborers have begun to strategize and build a network of organizations and leaders who are undertaking impressive campaigns to transform the work and lives of day laborers. This ethnographic study documents and researches this adaptation vis-à-vis NDLON, focusing on leadership development under adverse circumstances. This study addresses NDLON's organizational goals, leadership development techniques, popular education, the role of culture in this process, and how to enhance the strategic value of day labor leaders. Additionally, the ethnography conceptualizes how individuals of different backgrounds have adapted their leadership development to life in America. This proposal outlines the leadership development activity occurring across the Network and explains how NDLON contributes to the development stages of organizers and day laborers at each level.
Available by Spring 2007