Ethics and Politics of Community Engagement in Global Health Research

<p>Drawing on a growing consensus about the importance of community representation and participation for ethical research community engagement has become a central component of scientific research policy-making ethical review and technology design. The diversity of actors involved in large-scale global health research collaborations and the broader ‘background conditions’ of global inequality and injustice that frame the field have led some researchers funders and policy-makers to conclude that community engagement is nothing less than a moral imperative in global health research.</p><p>Rather than taking community engagement as a given the contributions in this edited volume highlight how processes of community engagement are shaped by particular local histories and social and political dynamics and by the complex social relations between different actors involved in global public health research. By interrogating the everyday politics and practices of engagement across diverse contexts the book pushes conversations around engagement and participation beyond their conventional framings. In doing so it raises radical questions about knowledge power expertise authority representation inclusivity and ethics and to make recommendations for more transformative inclusive and meaningful community engagement. </p><p>This book was originally published as a special issue of the <i>Critical Public Health</i> journal.</p>