NN41, December 2008
The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?
Whose Knowledge, What Expertise? Cross-National Partnerships between Universities In Europe And Andean America [1]
By Rosemary Preston, University of Warwick
Email: r.a.preston@warwick.ac.ukKeywords
Partnership, Latin America, Europe
Summary
This article examines the partnership experience of the Environmental Research Capacity Building Project (1998-2000) which linked three universities in Andean America to three in Europe.
The Environmental Research Capacity Building Project (ERCB) (1998-2000) was one of three in-depth case studies (supplemented by information from 15 others) in a CfBT funded study on the implications of the complexity of educational aid partnerships for communications, management and programme achievements.
With EU funding, six universities took part, one in each of six countries (three in Western Europe, three in Andean America). Interaction between cross-national teams was to enhance capacities to integrate interdisciplinary physical and social science approaches to environmental enquiry. Members of the six institutions were to work across disciplines at research sites in remote farming areas of the Andean countries. Interviews were held with 30 of the 40 people involved. They included funding agency representatives, team leaders, members of faculty, temporary junior staff, graduate and undergraduate students, short-term local consultants and community members. There was expertise in anthropology, botany, cartography, farming, geography, geomorphology, GIS, politics, soils, sociology, and so forth.
Achievements
There was considerable movement of people and finance between continents, countries institutions and field sites. Formal inter-team events included an inception meeting, an interim review and a large concluding conference. Policy makers were involved throughout. Progress was recorded in nearly 100 documents, among which were books and papers since published and a number of theses. Significant personal and intellectual development was noted, with enhanced skill in comparative method, global planning and financial management. There was pleasure at working with esteemed colleagues from different countries. Modestly perceived success was noted in integrating the social and scientific objectives and developing policy as well. The Andean universities succeeded in creating new structures to manage international finance, while the project website was hailed as a key communications and teaching resource, profiling the studies and disseminating findings.
Challenges
Failure to anticipate swinging funding agency procedures, the scheme was implemented under severe financial pressure, following a pre-inception cut and a later reduction for delayed expenditure. Unable to cut teams, there was no elasticity and constant stress.
There was intra-team harmony, but historical departmental strife also replayed itself, with gendered tensions over pay and status between junior and more senior participants, and the loss of enthusiasm and eventual withdrawal of those unpaid. Inter-organisational relations revealed fundamental trust between those who had previously co-operated and sometimes open hostility towards the two new teams, thought ill-prepared at required levels. Such attitudes were reflected in imbalanced patterns of site visits and marked discrepancies in working conditions, disadvantaging vulnerable team members. Differing academic cultures caused transcontinental friction in styles of research, technological sophistication, responses to electronic communications and commentary on draft reports. A predilection for English angered non-fluent speakers, since all the Anglophones knew Spanish. An examination of publications reveals half to have been by single authors, mostly team leaders, mostly European. Very limited inter-team and interdisciplinary work appears, seemingly associated with the lack of time and money to build alliances and plan co-operatively. Anger was palpable as junior Andean researchers (mostly women) told of acting as tour guides for uninterested European undergraduates and contributing to the glory of established European scholars, without equivalent opportunity or esteem for their own research. The neo-colonialist suggestion that Europeans should coordinate the post-project publications left transatlantic colleagues speechless.
Reaching the poor
No informants mentioned how researcher presence affected local economies, through material and knowledge transfers. European postgraduates prioritised theses. Their Andean peers were demoralised at the lack of commitment to improving the well-being of the people who had given essential support, in communities, local universities and government offices and at the inattention to feed back findings. Although those more senior were acculturated to this systemic neglect, one used his team?s observations as the basis of a nationally distributed secondary school text book.
Footnote
[1] From: Preston, R (2001) Researching environmental sustainability: knowledge, expertise and cross-national university partnerships in Europe and Latin America, Birmingham, paper presented to the annual conference of the Society for Latin American Studies, pp21, March. Copies are available from r.a.preston@warwick.ac.uk
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