ABSTRACT
Although community partners are supposed to be equal partners with academics and program planners in community-engaged and participatory projects, there continues to be inequities related to power and positionality. We discuss power and positionality in the context of (1) the diversity and social mobility of community representatives and partners, (2) the equitable distribution of instrumental and material resources, and (3) how community-engaged and participatory projects fail to empower implicated actors. We end by recommending that the future of community-engaged work and participatory research include strategies to assess community partners’ positionality, share power, and mitigate inequities in community-academic partnerships.
