The Sociological Initiatives Foundation has a broad mission but is particularly interested in supporting community-based research focused on the topic of violence and society.
It invites requests to support research and advocacy efforts that reach beyond the familiar conceptualizations of what violence is, how we experience it, how we talk about it, and how we advocate for freedom and safety.
Everyday violence in communities is a pressing reality that is often made invisible, individualized, or ignored as a form of structural oppression. It compels us to develop more imaginative and innovative ways to understand these complex realities and create new spaces to investigate, theorize, and take action.
Background
The Sociological Initiatives Foundation has supported a wide range of community-based research projects. Most of the activist-scholar projects have addressed structural race, class, and gender inequities. As the Foundation sharpened its emphasis on addressing systemic racism and racialized violence against Black people, however, it recognized a common but less-interrogated thread in many of the projects it has supported over the years. Many projects contend with the raw brutality of everyday violence in communities – a pressing reality that is often made invisible, individualized, or ignored as a form of structural oppression.
The scale and pervasiveness of this violence are staggering. With the rise of gun violence, gender-based violence, police brutality, the carceral state, religious extremism, hate crimes, and so on, there is an opportunity to develop more imaginative and innovative ways to understand these complex realities and create new spaces to investigate, theorize, and take action. More importantly, the various methodologies of community-based research present an opportunity to involve the people and communities most deeply affected by violence in shaping theory, narrative strategies, policies, and social movements.