Democratizing the Science-Society Interface and envisioning multi-stakeholder knowledge production

The Te Ara Paerangi green paper states on page 8 as part of the scope of the document that this solicitation is “interested in improving the connectivity between businesses and other users of knowledge generated by our public research institutions, and the channels of knowledge exchange and transfer between research institutions, businesses and others to achieve greater impact”. While the document highlights the needs for more transparent, contextual and fluid movement of knowledge, a key concern is the focus on how this knowledge is produced. Questions of access and representation are important concerns and the recent focus on science communication in some institutions are attempting to address this.(1) But research does not have a one directional flow, emerging in certain institutions, produced by certain individuals/communities and communicated to others. Public research should involve the public, not just at the receiving end, but as an active element throughout the process of knowledge production. Stakeholders in the scientific process should not be identified mainly based on their financial and political clout. Engagement should be more democratically determined, actively addressing the historic exclusion of certain individuals/communities who could be inordinately impacted by the knowledge/scientific produced. Multi-stakeholder knowledge production, with adequate support structures in place to really compensate subjects for their time and energy is critical in envisioning a more equitable research community and space.

To better enable such a transformation, recent reports have highlighted the precarious nature of work within the tertiary education sector, with international students, Māori and Pasifika and students in general noting the significant impacts on their well being, lack of livelihood security, inadequate compensation and workplace harassment.(2) Such concerns combine to make a career in research/knowledge production quite impossible for many people. Other reports have highlighted the burgeoning initiatives which attempt to create culturally and intellectually plural spaces for knowledge production, especially in collaboration with Māori communities/practitioners.(3,4) However, many of these attempts suffer from proper representation along various parts of the knowledge production process, which are the empirical (when discrete data is identified/collected), the analytical (when the data is investigated and manipulated) and finally the representational (when the results are presented in different formats).(5) Ultimately, while citizen science is seen as part of the research ecosystem, proper methodology around transdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder, knowledge production, assessment and dissemination are still quite underdeveloped.(6)

Science is both a framework of knowledge production and a foundational tenet of society. The access of individuals/communities within a certain nation to the scientific ecosystem should not be determined by their intrinsic identities of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion etc. The citizen in citizen science, is more than just a worker following directives of a scientific chain of command. They are actual collaborators in the process of knowledge production. Unfortunately, the severe gatekeeping within the research space often does not foster or nurture such collaboration. If the research, science, and innovation sector of Aotearoa is to become more dynamic, productive, inclusive and effective then such an exclusionary culture will need to be challenged by a more reflexive, democratic and plural process of knowledge production. Additionally, ethics of labour and those around the management of ideas will need to provide a system of accountability, ensuring that the system functions for all and not just a few.(7)

References

Hash Tags

#CC0

#SubmissionSnippet

#Research

#KnowledgeProduction

#Democratisation

#GFANZ