Transforming Institutions: Participatory Municipal Politics in the Age of Insecurity
The Research for Social Change Lab is excited to announce our new project: “Transforming Institutions: Participatory Municipal Politics in the Age of Insecurity” (TIPMPAI). This is a project about insecurity, shaped by rising inequality, climate instability, and shifting dynamics of privilege and marginalization.
In this project, we propose to:
Build knowledge about how the shifting dynamics of privilege and marginalization play out;
Investigate how they are experienced and understood by everyday local people; and
Mobilize these findings through public dialogue and community planning.
Our work will focus on four inter-related causes and manifestations of insecurity:
Housing, income and food insecurity;
Felt insecurity in shared public space (e.g., public bathrooms, libraries, transit, parks/ greenspace);
Public health precarity, exacerbated by climate change, substance use and abuse, and unmet needs associated with physical disability, illness and mental health; and
Shifting population dynamics (e.g., age, immigration, race and ethnicity, culture, family).
We want to know what people's experiences with these manifestations of insecurity are and what is common and different among them, how policy and media influence these experiences, and what tangible actions can be taken to address these experiences of insecurity.
This is a five year project that will involve conducting focus groups on the four issue areas, training community researchers in the methodology of Institutional Ethnography, and host a series of structured community dialogues in an effort to build bridges in the community across complex and difficult issues.
For more information, please contact Dr. Collin Chepeka, Manager - Research for Social Change Lab: cchepeka@trentu.ca.