How context affects transdisciplinary research: insights from Asia, Africa and Latin America

Abstract

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) has been developed to generate knowledge that effectively fosters the capabilities of various societal actors to realize sustainability transformations. The development of TDR theories, principles, and methods has been largely governed by researchers from the global North and has reflected their contextual conditions. To enable more context-sensitive TDR framing, we sought to identify which contextual characteristics affect the design and implementation of TDR in six case studies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and what this means for TDR as a scientific approach. To this end, we distinguished four TDR process elements and identified several associated context dimensions that appeared to influence them. Our analysis showed that contextual characteristics prevalent in many Southern research sites—such as highly volatile socio-political situations and relatively weak support infrastructure—can make TDR a challenging endeavour. However, we also observed a high degree of variation in the contextual characteristics of our sites in the global South, including regarding group deliberation, research freedom, and dominant perceptions of the appropriate relationship between science, society, and policy. We argue that TDR in these contexts requires pragmatic adaptations as well as more fundamental reflection on underlying epistemological concepts around what it means to conduct “good science”, as certain contextual characteristics may influence core epistemological values of TDR.

A Systematic Assessment for the Co-Design of Green Infrastructure Prototypes - A Case Study in Urban Costa Rica

“…A side effect of this trust-building practice was the emergence of a "hierarchy of knowledge", which influenced the inclusion and exclusion of actors. This dynamic has been highlighted in other contexts as a common practice deeply rooted in colonial relationships between locals and foreigners in Latin American studies [48]. Beyond the dependence created between specific partners in our case study, this traditional thinking to legitimize action reduced the chances for exploring alternative transformative processes or knowledge systems by favoring those actors holding more power.…”

A Systematic Assessment for the Co-Design of Green Infrastructure Prototypes - A Case Study in Urban Costa Rica

“…A side-effect of this trust-building practice was the emergence of a "hierarchy of knowledge", which influenced the inclusion and exclusion of actors. This dynamic has been highlighted in other contexts as a common practice deeply rooted from colonial relationships between locals and foreigners in Latin American studies [48]. Beyond the dependence created with specific partners in our case study, this traditional thinking to legitimize action reduced the chances for exploring alternative transformative processes or knowledge systems, by choosing those actors holding more power.…”

“…Moreover, researchers are usually external actors who need to interact with local actors to achieve meaningful impacts. In our case, the establishment of bilateral relations created close partnerships that ease the way through networking, which seems necessary to increase the legitimacy of external actors [48]. A side-effect of this trust-building practice was the emergence of a "hierarchy of knowledge", which influenced the inclusion and exclusion of actors.…”

“…Being aware of the systematic drivers presented previously might improve future planning strategies for approaching real-world scenarios more holistically. Contrasting to our initial desire to avoid conflict during practice, a pivotal intervention should rather acknowledge the participatory frontiers expected for the actors involved from joint development of capacities [51], and adopting TdR as a cognitive-emotional-relational process of social-learning [48] to increase the resilience of experiments challenging conventional practices towards sustainable development.…”

“…In addition, the effective transference of information and communication between local actors and researchers during the different phases of the project appeared as a major weakness of our experience. Communication is a difficult and main challenge of TdR [46], [48], [49]. In our case, the use of nature-related concepts such as GI or NbS based on academic terminologies combined with the unfamiliarity for local terms referring to environmental practices could have hindered the proper involvement of non-scientific actors.…”