Theory work in the CCA is intricately tied to its method of working in the field, through participant observations, in-depth interviews, forming advisory groups, implementing advisory group meetings, and most vitally, co-creating solutions at the margins by working alongside those at the margins. The body of the academic is re-oriented to conversations in communities at the margins, guided by the intention of co-creating solutions that are meaningful to the lived experiences of community members. This re-orientation fundamentally transforms what we come to understand as academic labour and the performance of it.
First, and this is key, academics working in/on/with culture-centered interventions are held accountable to the communities at the margins we work with. That means that the power of decision-making turned into the hands of communities at the margins shapes the nature of academic work, from research to advocacy. The question, how does the academic labour translate into actual interventions, from building material resources to working toward changes in organizing structures, translates into academics needing to re-orient our anchors of accountability.
The usual form of academic labour, where the academic peer review process controls academic decisions is displaced by community-led reviews, with communities at the margins making decisions about whether the academic work mattered or not.
Second and relatedly, the question of impact therefore moves far beyond the counting of the citation counts of journal articles, into communities at the margins determining the terrains of evaluation. What criteria would academic labour be held up to? How did the academic work result in tangible changes that are meaningful to the community? The placing of the conversation on impact in the rhythms of community life calls for humility. Moreover, it calls for the academic to place her/his body in the field, amidst the everyday struggles of communities at the margins. To generate impact in ways that are meaningful to communities at the margins begins by placing our academic bodies amidst the struggles at the margins. The work of turning academic knowledge generation into a weapon against oppression must begin with humility, with those at the margins guiding the definition of what counts as knowledge and the processes through which that knowledge is generated.
Third, the placing of the body in the field also means the sharing of the risks emergent from the struggles for livelihood at the margins. The recognition that one's academic privilege is a vital resource in struggles at the margins means that academics not shield themselves from the everyday risks of struggling against structural oppressions.
This also means that academics interrogate the habits of extraction that define academic practices. The work of building theories from within culture-centered interventions begins with communities at the margins determining the scope, content, and timing of the theory work. There are times when academic publishing, the recognized form of labour of academic work, has to be held in abeyance because the community sees wisdom in waiting. There are other times where certain vital articulations emergent from the work are to be kept silent because the community sees value in silence. Yet, there are other times when the community sees the urgency of publishing the work because of the vitality of the transformative register. And in many other times, the solidarity work between academics and communities entirely fall outside the realms of theorizing.
The placing of the body in the field in culture-centered processes is often invisible to the academic community because the impure, unruly, undisciplined body doesn't lend itself to the norms of academic publishing. The grammars of everyday organizing are often too unruly for the disciplinary terrains of academic peer review. The grammars of everyday interventions that academics working with the CCA perform have to be kept invisible to retain their transformative registers. What might be presented as results of in-depth interviews in a manuscript is often a partial and incomplete window into the struggles for voice at the margins embodied in culture-centered solidarities.
That theory itself is often incomplete and contingent is a humbling and necessary ingredient in culture-centered journeys of solidarity with the margins.