In my paid work, I strive to
- To keep questions about social change and power alive in my/our teaching, research, and service agendas (for over a decade I was core faculty in International Development and Social Change Program in the Department of International Development, Community, and the Environment at Clark University)
- To disrupt the idea that social change can be brought about through “quick fixes” to intractable problems. Put differently, development, environmental (including GIS), and community work is NOT, and CANNOT, be merely technical or practical. It is not free of or beyond social relations, history, and power.
- To insist that working to “fix” developmental, environmental and community issues requires engaging history, politics, and social theory. That this work is linked to struggles for social change and requires hard work across time and space and comes “without guarantees.”
- To critically engage “difference” (disciplinary, socio-cultural, politico-ideological, of race, gender and sexual orientation), build coalitions and be in solidarity with colleagues, students, and allies beyond the Department, University, and US academe
- To recognize that there are different kinds of work linked to the above (academic knowledge production, program and institution building, activism, advocacy), and while they are interconnected they are not the same. Confusing them or assuming that one can do them all simultaneously and effectively is a fallacy I want to guard against.
