Co-production and Reconsidering Knowledge Hierarchies: how can we enable meaningful collaborations?


If we define academia as an institutionalised pursuit towards producing and propagating knowledge, how do we set up standards for our hands-on academic end-result? How does our research become useful and what does this utility represent in the first place? Should we strive to inspire policy-making, ameliorate social conflict, develop new generation technology? When justifying the need for their research, academics often argue for the exploration of a perceived literature gap, the necessity to look at certain topics from a different perspective, using new methods and up-to-date information. But what happens if we try to step back from our scholastic perspective and seek to get some insights from local stakeholders? 

Sarah Banks et al, in their 2013 article Everyday ethics in community-based participatory research, proposes an interesting paradigm change towards collaboration and cooperation between people with varying degrees of education and experience, between laypeople and representatives of the more institutionalised aspects of knowledge, between various institutions, making steps into legitimising the co-production paradigm. Co-production commits to ensuring a dialogue on equal terms between the researcher and the community who houses the research.

Co-production seems to be an exciting, new-ish paradigm that proposes a more ethically-grounded and mindful approach in social sciences, and I had the great pleasure to talk more about it with Russell Andrews, professor in the Anthropology Department, Brett Smith, Director of Research in the Department of Sport and Exercise Studies and Neil Heckels, Senior Policy Engagement and Impact Manager in the Research and Innovation Services, which I would like to thank for taking time from their schedules to have a chat with me!

One of the most intriguing aspects of co-production is how it facilitates a turn towards action-based and activism-driven research. Through the aid of community facilitators, activists, trainers and social workers, co-production hopes to uplift voices that have previously been unheard or not listened to, as for example, voices from indigenous communities and disabled voices. This is where the trouble and the questions begin: co-production encompasses an organisational dilemma and methodological controversies. And, to answer each bureaucratic enquiry, we need to get specific and adopt a strategy that is tailored to our needs when planning our research.

First thing to keep in mind is that most, if not all academic institutions, have fossilised bureaucratic apparatuses and avoid breaking away from them because they have benefitted for decades or even centuries from this very type of institutionalised, elitist access to knowledge. Universities thrive and build their reputation on producing and publishing knowledge that has to rely on an academic standard. On one hand, the recent growing interest in changing the paradigm towards research that is inclusive and useful for the local community pushes towards the need to co-produce, to be involved locally, to form bonds, to listen and to make knowledge accessible. On the other hand, a researcher’s reputation and reach is determined by publishing their findings in high-impact journals, where only a small number of people can engage with their content- those who are lucky enough to afford passing through the paywall.

It quickly becomes clear that co-production goes hand in hand with the open access movement, first and foremost, because it ensures open dialogue with the community. Research can now be conducted and judged by non-academics, with the end goal of facilitating social progress and ameliorating conflict. As academics, our role here is contested- we are no longer the only force in charge. How can we change our methods? How should we publish our results- if there is any palpable end result in our research anyway? After all, a big chunk of research is publicly funded- does it mean it always has to be accessible to the public and benefit the public directly? Is co-production going to de-legitimise traditional academic research or will the paradigm change so much in the future that the current co-production model will soon become obsolete? Is our final article going to be read in 10 years?

What I personally think is that we should have already had these questions in our minds, as academics, when doing any kind of research, no matter which paradigm and methods we choose. I would argue that the most difficult questions early career researchers can ask, is which method is the most suited, why and what is the probability that the end result will be wasteful. We should be critical of our own academic traditions and paradigms, while at the same time, admit that we are, ultimately, building our ivory towers using an imperfect tool: human knowledge.

Although, it might help if we think of co-production as an idealised framework rather than a viable methodology, exactly how Sarah Banks would have later, in a 2018 guide, rephrased her team’s reasoning from their 2013 article. It must be mentioned that co-production is relatively new, and we have plenty of time to get better at it in the future. In many ways, practising co-production resembles being mindful of the conflicts that exist in the community, deconstructing them and bridging all the parties to the table, enabling a democratic debate in order to reconcile and find solutions. But organising and acquiring conflict-solving skills and experience takes time, and most young researchers lack both of those when they start their academic journey.

Luckily, various other methods inspired by the participatory paradigm have been described and standardised in the literature, such as the PAR (participatory action research)- all of them suited for a diverse range of aims and situations. In order to attempt useful research, we need, at first, to gain an in-depth expertise of our methods and tools- and co-production seems especially vague for anyone not familiar with extensive fieldwork. Going off the beaten path and being innovative does not need to mean jumping directly into the dangerous territory of trying methods that are not in our area of competence yet. Young researchers and PhD students need to push governing bodies and universities to have realist expectations regarding what we are able to do at this stage of our academic career.

In order for the shift towards the participatory paradigm to happen, I strongly believe that we need to introduce institutional reform within academia - starting with questioning our place in the power apparatus of knowledge production and our relationships with the local communities that we inhabit. We must ask ourselves the question of whether our research is in any way parasitising for the community that paid for it, and how can we become more involved with local stakeholders - how to become better listeners and how to collaborate with other institutions.

Every now and then, we need to acknowledge that there are people and places we cannot fully reach. But, even accepting that that research does not always have to equate or compete with activism, we must remind ourselves of the ideal that got us into the scholarly world in the first place - to do research keeping the hope for a better future.

 

This post expresses the author's views in light of the research methods conversation.

 

Sorina Avadanei is a MSc candidate in Sustainability, Energy and Development in the Anthropology Department, working on a dissertation on the post-industrial phenomenon in Eastern Europe. You can find her on Twitter @sorina_avadanei.

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