Efforts to promote systems change frequently involve the creation of councils, coalitions, and other collaborative settings. However, research, to date, reports limited empirical evidence that they achieve desired outcomes (Roussos and Fawcett, Annu Rev Public Health 21:369-402, 2000). The precise nature of this evidence base has received less attention. In particular, formal investigations into council effectiveness (a) rarely highlight the specific nature of collaborative efforts; (b) emphasize fairly distal markers as the "gold standard" for effectiveness; (c) focus largely on formative "outcomes" (e.g., action plan quality); and (d) utilize primarily quantitative research approaches. The current study extends previous research by employing a qualitative approach to investigate the particular activities and proximal outcomes of 41 domestic violence coordinating councils. Study findings suggest that councils engage in six primary activities: discussing issues, sharing information, identifying weaknesses in the system's response, providing training for key stakeholders, engaging in public/community education, and lobbying key stakeholders who are not council members. Three proximal outcomes were consistently identified in council efforts: the promotion of knowledge, relationships, and institutionalized change. Attending more directly to proximal outcomes and concrete activities in our research has important implications for conceptualizing and researching the effectiveness of councils and collaborative settings.

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As a confluence of unique values and activities, the collective practice of community psychology is difficult to characterize in a simple way. Increasingly, however, professional contexts are laden with pressure to define any practice--from library work to medical interventions--in the orderly, compact language of traditional science. This trend has historically been resisted in the field by those sensing a fundamental lack of fit between the fluid, emergent aspects of community psychological practice and the fixed, precise language of classic science. In response to this "language-practice gap," some have attempted to adapt the traditional language of science to better fit the field's practice, while others have explored alternative languages of practice seemingly more indigenous to the messy "swamp" of actual communities. While the former effort leaves some theoretical contradictions intact, the latter tends to discount scientific identity entirely. This paper proposes a potential step forward by resituating questions of disciplinary language and identity within a current philosophical discourse where the nature of social science itself remains sharply contested. This suggests shifting attention away from "should we be a science?" to "what kind of science might we be after all?"; in turn, alternative languages may be re-cast as legitimate contributors to a kind of science more authentic to human communities--even a viable "science in the swamp." One such language-philosophical hermeneutics--is presented as a particularly valuable supplement to traditional science. Illustrations highlight ways that hermeneutics may advance the formal language of the field towards a closer fit of what actually happens in practice, while preserving and even bolstering the empirical rigor and scientific identity of the field.

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Given the polarization of the early 21st century political atmosphere in the U.S., intergroup dialogue has emerged as a unique alternative setting, with intentions of facilitating a more productive and thoughtful citizen engagement. Although cross-partisan dialogue efforts are underway in community contexts, they have been slower to reach academic settings. This paper is an exploratory study of our own liberal-conservative dialogue course at the University of Illinois-the first of its kind, to our knowledge. After describing basic features of the course, we identify themes from student journals and final evaluations suggesting both dialogue benefits and challenges. Finally, we discuss the growing literature around dialogue, questions of its long-term impact, and larger potential barriers to participation in liberal-conservative dialogue, specifically.