About the Journal

Overview
Community Organizing is a new journal dedicated to advancing the scholarship and practice of community organizing around the globe. Reflecting the core commitments of community organizing at all levels, this journal has a special focus on the importance of democratic and relational work that enables leadership development, community power, and structural change. We recognize that community organizing exists in many different contexts and settings around the world, taking on a wide variety of forms. The journal therefore prioritizes careful reflection and critical analysis, grounded in a range of traditions and approaches.

The journal seeks to engage scholars and practitioners together in analyzing and reflecting on the diversity of approaches and definitions in the field. We aim to center less prominent and non-dominant perspectives, voices, and ways of knowing, emphasizing the importance of the voices of those most affected by oppression, injustice, and inequality. Specifically, we invite co-authorship between university-based scholars and community-based practitioners. Single-author publications from scholars and/or practitioners are, of course, welcome as well. As we encourage collaborations across the continuum of scholar-practitioners, we emphasize that knowledge and effective action emerge from a dialogue that includes ground-up, co-creative processes, and multidisciplinary theoretical and political perspectives.

Papers published in Community Organizing will come from a variety of practitioners, community experts, and academic writers. Contributors will examine contexts around the globe, and contributions will be grounded in an understanding of organizing as a locally rooted source of power. Community Organizing acknowledges that much writing about organizing has been U.S. centric, and we aim to expand the examples, contexts, applications, and analyses of organizing around the globe. We welcome submissions from organizers, leaders, funders, community partners and allies, academic and independent scholars, teachers, and others. We see community organizing as a place-based practice of building power that is occurring globally. We strive to provide insights into organizing throughout the world.

Defining Scope

The following core components of organizing are intended to guide authors in understanding the journal’s scope and the boundaries within which we envision authors will analyze and reflect on the traditions, histories, and contemporary practices of organizing. Given our commitment to acknowledging a diversity of approaches, many contributions will fit the mission of the journal without addressing all of these components:

• Organizing provides a pathway for building power through collective, community action.

• Organizing connects with enduring social movements, short-term mobilizations, electoral politics, community capacity building, and other forms of social and political work. It is distinct in its consistent emphasis on:

  • Developing durable, sustainable, democratic organizations that build and project power. This distinguishes organizing from short-term mobilizing.

  • Building a web of intentional relationships.

  • Identifying, training, and bringing together leaders rooted in communities, with a focus on leadership development.

  • Cutting concrete issues out of general problems, as identified by community members, and acting collectively to achieve substantive wins and changes.

  • Intentional and ongoing reorganization of existing communities as well as the development of new forms of community within and beyond organizations.