Constructing a Tree for Community Leaders: Contexts and Processes in Collaborative Inquiry

This paper presents collaborative research between a university-based team and a grass roots community organization on the south side of Chicago. The purpose of the work is to document the nature of community leadership as expressed by members of the host organization. Using a semistructured interview, 77 community members nominated by the host organization were asked about various aspects of their community work. Qualitative analyses of interview text generated a set of 56 codes concerning different aspects of community leadership as reported by grassroots leaders. These codes were subsequently grouped together into five conceptually linked dimensions of community leadership. A leadership tree that simultaneously analyzes and visually displays each of these five dimensions of community leadership was created. Implications of the methodology used to create the leadership tree are discussed for the salience of qualitative methods in community research.     

On Community Leadership: Stories About Collaboration in Action Research

This article provides an account of a 10-year collaborative documentation of community leadership in an African American community on the South side of Chicago. The stories are oriented to several critical incidents in the life course of the collaboration. They are told from the perspectives of one university professor, four graduate students, and one community leader. Together they provide an account of how this research was shaped by the interactions of the research team with members of the community, how research questions emerged, methodologies were developed, ways of gathering data were tried and tested, and interpretations of data unfolded. Special attention is given to the ways in which the process and products of this research contributed to the community's own process of leadership development. The stories also discuss the various roles participants in this collaboration played both in the academic arena and in the community, and how they experienced gender, race, nationality, and social status.