COMMENTARY

A Potential New Role for Universities and Academics in the Sustainable Community Movement

Mark St. Pierre

When a ceremony starts on the Pine Ridge reservation, the spiritual leader always puts in a disclaimer at the beginning, admitting that he is a pitiful man who makes mistakes. With that said, this commentary provides only one person‘s opinions, but I start with some serious questions about the very concept of applied social sciences and the current hip, lingua franca. Can an effective bridge be made between the "academic life" of students and faculty, and "life in the trenches"? How can community development better be engaged? This essay, I admit, comes from a guy who until recently thought the much-discussed new paradigms referred to twenty cents in change.

The Applied Anthropologist, No. 1, Vol. 31, 2011, pp 42 - 48

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