Collaboration in a ‘North–South’ Context: The Role of Power Relations and the Various Context-Based Conditions

Abstract

This response is focusing on the various power structures influencing research–practice–collaborations, transdisciplinary projects, and participation. It will be discussed how power asymmetries globally as well as locally influence and structure collaborations and participation between the involved actors and, thus, the expected transformative potential of the produced knowledge. Based on experiences and challenges encountered during a North–South capacity building project, it will be shown how funding schemes as well as the positionalities of the involved actors produce and reproduce historical, social, or cultural power structures which influence research–practice–collaborations. The main argument put forward is that instead of focusing in the current scientific as well as science-policy debates primarily on how research–practice–collaborations and/or participation could be improved ‘technically,’ the respective contexts and/or power structures and relations have to be considered and reflected in each phase of collaborative endeavors. This especially, but not exclusively, in the context of North–South collaborations.

Por la descolonización de la interprofesionalidad: ética y producción de lo común en la formación y el trabajo en salud

“…Ya la "colaboración" o "colaboração", por lo general entendida como ayuda que se proporciona a alguien, son términos comprendidos en el sentido etimológico, como co-laborare, producción conjunta de servicios, un co-trabajo, que tiende a ser un acto voluntario y no un mandato establecido por un modelo, como bien destacó Marina Peduzzi 1 . No obstante, la colaboración debe ser pensada más allá de sus dimensiones técnicas y discutir los respectivos contextos, desigualdades estructurales y relaciones de poder que influyen en todos los tipos de colaboración, desde su conceptualización hasta sus formas de implementación, especialmente cuando se trabaja con actores no académicos 9 .…”