CURE's mandate is a crucial foundation for the database and the research which stems from it. Our mandate is as follows:
- Broaden the kind of academic work that is available to students
- Give community organizations, specifically those which experience social and economic marginalization, access to the knowledge and resources circulating in the academic sphere
- Facilitate productive, mutually transformative interactions between students and activists that redefine the boundary between universities and the communities which surround them
This mandate is necessary for CURE to avoid the pitfalls associated with academic research, specifically with academic research that takes community organizing and activism as its object. Co-optation of grassroots knowledges and movements by the academic sphere is a widespread parasite which CURE aims to avoid by giving community organizations the autonomy to define their research needs. Nevertheless, the relationship between researcher and researched remains fraught, albeit in a potentially very productive way; a rich tradition of heterodox methodologies has arisen from the attempts to navigate this complicated relationship.
This article by Prof. Steven Jordan outlines a branch of research methodology called Participatory Action Research, tracing its problematic history and proposing an alternative method: Activist Ethnography. We include it here as a suggested reading for participants undertaking long-term projects with CURE.
In addition, CURE actively supports QPIRG's position on anti-oppression:
QPIRG is committed to being inclusive and accessible to all; we
recognize the links between various forms of oppression and are
actively opposed to discrimination on the basis of gender, race,
class, sexual orientation, dis/ability, health, size, citizenship
status, language and spiritual beliefs.