Primarily focused on undergraduate education, this session seeks to elicit new ways to help our students understand and redress public silence and quiescence around the issue of food insecurity. Garry Leonard Running IV Department of Geography and Anthropology UW-Eau Claire Ruth Cronje English and Honors UW-Eau Claire Mike Huggins Eau Claire Clear Vision UW-Eau Claire Honors

1. Transforming the Service-
Learning and Civic
Engagement Curriculum with
Gaventa’s Power Theory
Garry Running, Ruth Cronje, Mike Huggins
University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire

2. Beyond a “volunteerism”
model of service-learning
•Challenge our students to include
issues of equality and justice in their
civic engagement experiences
•Volunteering  mutual
empowerment
•Challenge students to a richer sense
of what it means to live in a
democracy

3. Understanding Power
Structures
• We’ve been experimenting with introducing
power studies into our curriculum
• We’ve been helped by the work of John Gaventa
• Our goals for this workshop:
• Explain what we’ve been up to and why
• Elicit additional insights and ideas from all of
you about how to integrate understanding
power structures in a civic engagement course

4. Our Hero Says…
• “If we want to change power relationships,
e.g., to make them more inclusive, just, or
pro-poor, we must understand more about
where and how to engage” (Gaventa
2006)
• Gaventa urges us to “put an understanding
of power back in the centre of our
understanding of the concept and
practices of participation” (Gaventa 2006)

5. Positions our curriculum as an
element of “Democracy”
•demos = the people
•kratia = rule or leadership
• The purpose of public education is to foster the
development of students as self-actualized
participants in a democratic society
• Democracy both authorizes and requires “the
people” – all of us! – to participate in conducting
public work

6. John Gaventa’s (1980) Three
Dimensions of Power
• First dimension
• Observable
decision-making
• Easy-peasy

7. John Gaventa’s second
dimension
• Hidden power
• “controlling who gets to sit at the
decision-making table and what gets
on the agenda”
• Encoded in laws and reinforced in the
media

8. “I Had No Idea”: The Silencing
of Food Insecurity and the Role
of Undergraduate Civic
Engagement in Unsilencing the
Silent
Garry Running, Mike Huggins, Ruth Cronje

9. Description of class (structure)
• Readings to do with equitability and
justice
• Survey
• Power plate assignment/ Gordy’s trip
• Trip to the Community Table
• Self-reflection
• Final projects (backpack, community
resources database)

10. Results: Students reflect
• The most memorable moment was quite
honestly the power mapping exercise. I had
no idea that half of the entities existed, and
were somehow related to another! It was
amazing to put on a board all of the different
groups dedicated to fighting inequality and
seeking justice. I loved the early days of
sitting around, building rapport and engaging
in discussions that were aimed at
consciousness raising. It was definitely
essential in providing the framework for the
rest of the class.

11. Reflection, cont’d
• This course really opened my eyes to the
number of low-income people in Eau Claire,
the hardships they face, and how it affects
their health. Actually doing a project to help
the issue makes me feel empowered.
• My expectations for this course were not only
met, but exceeded. I feel much more
confident as a civic agent in my community.

12. Results: Students recognize
their own ignorance
I feel this class really opened my eyes to a
real problem that I had never really
thought about or had any previous
experience with. Actually doing something
to help the problem made me feel
empowered.
[and yet, the real story is that the
astounding level of food insecurity in Eau
Claire is not common knowledge]

13. Data from course post-survey
•Understanding of poverty in
our community = 3.92 (of a
possible 4)
•Ability to reflect on my own
biases and prejudices = 3.77

14. Conclusion
•Students in our civic engagement
course recognize Gaventa’s 2nd
dimension of power with regard to
food insecurity in their community
•They recognize that the prevalence of
food insecurity in Eau Claire is not “on
the agenda”

15. Low-Income Civic
Agency: What Does
It Take to Take Civic
Action?
Kali Boldt, Ruth Cronje. Greg Neson, Gabrielle Schmidt

16. John Gaventa’s third dimension
• Invisible power
• “shapes the psychological and ideological
boundaries of participation”
• “significant problems and issues are not only kept
from the decision-making table but also from the
minds and consciousness of the different players
involved, even those directly affected by the
problem. By influencing how individuals think
about their place in the world, this level of power
shapes peoples beliefs, sense of self, and
acceptance of the status-quo-even their own
superiority or inferiority.”

17. Our study addressed
“quiescence”
Quiescence: Why, when people live in
undesirable conditions, do they NOT
“rise up” and exert their democratic
power to replace their leaders?

18. Why study low-income
individuals?
•Low-income people can have self-
stigmatizing beliefs (Bullock 1999;
Corazelli 2001)
•Low-income people tend to be
civically quiescent (Gaventa 1982;
Croteau 1995;

19. Site: Community Table of Eau
Claire
• Location in Eau Claire where anyone is able to go and receive a
free hot meal
• Chosen because we could assume guests are low income or
food insecure

20. Participant-Observation “arm”
• Attended nine meals at Community Table; ate and sat with
guests
• Listened to and participated in conversations happening at the
tables
• Notes afterwards
• Co-witnessed for reliability
• Snow & Anderson themes to independently code
• Kappa agreement of 0.85 on our coding decisions

21. Associational distancing
“These kids who are on the
street, they keep coming
here year after year; they’re
on the street because they
want to be.”

22. Embellishment:
[One male guest stated] that although he had dislocated
his shoulder, broken his hand, and had bone-deep
lacerations in his arm, he had not received medical
attention due to lack of funds and sought to treat himself.
He did so by re-setting his own shoulder and making a
splint and super-gluing his wounds together to allow them
to heal. [A fellow guest] inquired about infections; the
younger man stated he had a strong immune system and
has never been “truly infected.” He indicated he did not like
taking drugs and could “handle pain.”

23. Ideological embracement:
•“I’m the Christian the devil warned
you about” tee shirt
•“Where do you have Jesus in your life?
… I’ve lost Jesus for long times in my
life. But, he’s always there for you if
you look to him.”

25. Ethnographic results gave evidence consistent
with self-stigmatizing attitudes

26. Methods: Survey “arm”
24-Item Survey

27. Then, CTEC Guests Invited to
Take Action
• Sign a petition
• Write a letter
• Both
We had petitions prepared for both supporting
and opposing the proposed cuts to the SNAP food
program – nonpartisan opportunity to participate

28. The vast majority of people collecting
food stamp benefits have which of the
following attributes?
67%
58%
53%
33%
21%
45%
41%
18% 18%
59%
49%
53% 53%
16%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%

29. Knowledgeable versus
Unknowledgeable Guests
Only 21 guests were considered knowledgeable about the
SNAP program
29%
71%
Knowledgable
Unknowledgable

30. Civic Action
A total of 48 respondents to the survey took action.
34%
37%
29%
None
Petition
Petition and Letter

31. Why,inyouropinion,aretherepeopleinthis
countrywho liveinneed?Herearetwo opinions:
Whichcomesclosestto yourview?
People are poor because they
are lazy.
People are poor because society treats
them unfairly.
35%
65%
Action No Action
70%
30%
Action No Action

32. What can we conclude?
• Ethnographic observations suggest Community Table guests
share (self-) stigmatizing attitudes and their “identity work”
discourse provides evidence that their ideologies have been
“colonized” by elite values
• Survey + Petition/Letters study provides evidence that
respondents with self-stigmatizing values were less willing to
take civic action
• Some guests with self-stigmatizing beliefs were nonetheless
willing to participate in the civic action we offered them

33. What is our responsibility as
educators in CE experiences
involving low-income citizens?
•Help our students understand the
dimensions of power: teach Gaventa
•Help our students realize that all
three of these dimensions impinge
on the ability of low-income citizens
to deploy their power
•????

34. Discussion
1. What community issues do you address in
your civic engagement courses?
2. To what extent does Gaventa’s third
dimension of power impinge upon the
civic agency of stakeholders for any of
these issues?
3. What kinds of assignments or learning
experiences highlighting the third
dimension of power could we integrate
into our civic engagement courses?

35. Acknowledgements
• Rachel Keniston and the Community Table of Eau Claire
• The UWEC Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, who
funded this research
• The UWEC Honors Program