Open University Workshop on CREPE, London, 29th September 2010

Reflections on experiences of research with, for and by people

by Michel Pimbert[1]

Summary

This presentation offers some reflections on how to give non-researchers more significant roles than before in the production and validation of knowledge for social equity and environmental sustainability. Reflections are based on ongoing experiences in West Africa, India, and Europe where research is done with, for and by people – rather than on people – to explore how diverse, locally controlled food systems can be sustained. I make the following points in particular:

  • Power equalizing action research involves both researchers and non-researchers in close cooperative engagement, jointly producing new knowledge, with mutual learning from the process. As such this form of cooperative inquiry is a significant reversal from dominant roles, locations, and ways of knowing.
  • Key moments or stages when non-researcher participation can occur throughout the research and development cycle are during:

i)evaluations of results and impacts of research, as well as risk assessments

ii)scientific and technological research

iii)the choice of upstream strategic priorities for research and development (R&D)

iv) the framing of overarching policies for environment and development

For each of these stages (i to iv) different methods and approaches are available to directly involve scientists, farmers and other actors. In all cases, different degrees of participation are possible and it is important to be clear about the level of ‘participation’ involved.

  • Ensuring ethical research. Too often, research programmes are imposed on rural people, adding to their already overwhelming burdens, causing harm and violating rights. It is vital to ensure first that non-researcher citizens have an opportunity to assess, on their own terms and in their own time, the desirability and relevance of engaging in cooperative research activities. The validity and quality of the research are usually enhanced when non-researchers are allowed to co-define the rules of engagement and codes of research ethics.
  • Power equalizing action research is all about ensuring greater cognitive justice between fundamentally different knowledge systems and ways of knowing. Claims that one tradition of knowledge and practice (local, vernacular systems versus external science-based systems) is always better than the other may ultimately restrict possibilities. The idea of cognitive justice emphasises the right for different forms of knowledge—and their associated practices, livelihoods and ways of being—to coexist. Claiming this right by and for hitherto excluded actors is a key challenge for all involved in power equalizing action research.
  • The formation of safe spaces for participatory learning and action is essential – safe spaces for communication and action need to be inclusive of gender and difference. It is more effective and just to build participatory research on the complementarity and uniqueness of the different evaluation criteria and indicators used by both farmers and scientists, as well as the needs of other resource users, such as women, the poor and the elderly. Linking together these safe spaces and local groups into broader federations can help farmers and other citizens capture some power back from centralised, top down agencies and corporations.
  • Farmers and other citizens engaged in cooperative inquiry rarely work alone. They are usuallyenthusiastic members of a collective of peers, an affinitygroup, a coalition or an association. People involved in thisway of knowing participate in the joint production ofcollective knowledge. Citizens are usually involved in a deeply sense-making activity, generating meaning both for themselves and for the knowledge they are co-creating. This peer group not only creates a space for meaningful exchanges of opinion, it also plays a key role in validating new knowledge. All members of such networks of knowledge producers and users effectively act as an “extended peer community”. This possibility of “extended peer review” is a formidable asset at a time when citizens and their communities are faced with the open-ended uncertainties of a fast changing world (environmental and climate change, spread of new diseases, unstable markets, political change….).
  • Transformation for cooperative research depends on simultaneously emphasising the possibilities of i) reforming and fundamentally re-orienting existing public research organisations and ii) de-institutionalizing research for autonomous learning and action. The whole process should lead to the democratization of research, diverse forms of co-inquiry based on specialist and non-specialist knowledge, an expansion of horizontal networks for autonomous learning and action, and more transparent oversight.
  • However, participatory processes of knowledge creation are often complicated and unpredictable, andrelationships and conflicts constantly need to beworked through to build the trust required for joint large scaletransformation. Patriarchal attitudes and lack of gender sensitivity on the part of members of civil society organizations (CSOs) are commonly encountered. Questions about theanalytical and deliberative competence of ‘ordinary’ farmers and other citizens also regularlysurface.

•Last, several emerging global trends are deeply problematic for cooperative inquiry/power equalizing research. If unchecked, these trends could largely inhibit direct citizen participation in the governance and the production of knowledge outside of the market and commodity relations. For example, there is a need to revise the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) system to ensure that knowledge, software, genetic resources and innovations remain accessible to all – the enclosure of knowledge through IPRs by powerful corporations undermines the possibilities for cooperative research.

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[1] Dr. Michel Pimbert, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DD, United Kingdom