Community-Based Research: Searching for Its Foundations

“Commuriity-based research” implies research that has a base in the commiinity, but what base might this be? The term base is ambiguous. It might be pointing to foundations of research having their place in the community such that there could be some kind of fixity of research in the community. For those who think in diagrammatic form, the image of the pyramid might appeal: here, the weight and larger portion of the shaping of research would lie in the community, the research itself being significantly influenced if not determined by the community. The suspicion could arise here that in community-based research, the community-as-base forms the real engine of research and the research itself is an epiphenomenon—a cognitive or even a mere cultural adornment of, and for, the community.