By Roxana Roos.
What motivates researchers in choosing to work with local and indigenous communities? How do these motivations shape how much say local and indigenous people actually get in the research that affects them? What do researchers need to do to ensure that collaboration is equitable?
Here, I describe two clusters of motivations.
The first cluster revolves around verbs such as “understand,” “collect,” “study,” and “know.” Researchers in this group are largely driven by personal interest, curiosity, and a professional identity (“I am an anthropologist. It is my job to find out how people live”). Here, the researcher is the active party: they interview, observe, analyze, and publish. The local and indigenous people, on the other hand, play a more passive role; their practices and narratives are studied rather than being part of a partnership.
The second cluster revolves around verbs such as “exchange,” “develop,” and “collaborate.” Researchers in this cluster present the need for research as something that can only be met through collaboration, where local and indigenous communities contribute initiative, ideas, and relevant knowledge to define and solve a shared, complex problem. Such a perspective (and the resulting approach to collaboration) allows non-academic partners to take a more active role throughout the entire process, not just during data collection.
Most researchers alternate between these two approaches, usually depending on the project. This is not so much a fixed trait of individuals as a pattern that, on a project-by-project basis, shapes how the need for collaboration is perceived.
Why does this matter?
The distinction is not merely semantic; it has further implications both for the new knowledge that is produced and for the fairness of the collaboration.
When local and indigenous people play a passive role, the dialogue is usually limited to the data-collection phase: researchers ask questions, local and indigenous people answer, and the researchers then analyze, interpret, and document the findings largely on their own. This approach can distort local and indigenous narratives, suggestions, ideas, and knowledge through translation, interpretation, and the imposition of Western theoretical frameworks. For example, indigenous knowledge can lose its original meaning if it is filtered exclusively through Western concepts and methods.
When local and indigenous people play a more active role by helping to define the research question, discuss methods, and interpret the results, it becomes possible to achieve something closer to a genuine epistemic dialogue. This often requires that power hierarchies are set aside and that participants are prepared to leave their comfort zone and listen respectfully to other knowledge holders and – without judgement – ask questions to genuinely try to understand how they know what they claim to know.
In some cases, unintended consequences can result from research collaboration with local and indigenous people. For example, doing climate change research in the places where local and indigenous communities live can expand the influence and control of authorities and international institutions over places and people to whom they previously had little access. Good intentions do not automatically lead to just outcomes.
Reflexivity as a starting point, not a fix
A key way forward is to incorporate reflexivity into researchers’ practices when they collaborate with local and indigenous peoples. It is useful for researchers to question their own perceptions of why they are conducting this work, what knowledge they expect to gain, and who benefits from it. It is also important to do so collectively, in dialogue with the local and indigenous people and colleagues, rather than as a private exercise.
It is also important to clarify what reflexivity is not. For example, assigning local and indigenous people the role of “co-researchers” or inviting everyone you collaborate with to be co-authors on scientific articles may seem inclusive on paper, but, in reality, it can sideline other forms of expertise that people possess but that are not suitable to include in the genre of a scientific paper. Expertise of local and indigenous peoples that is not directly compatible with Western science traditions is often not recognized as relevant and gets implicitly sidelined and may be perceived as less valuable. This sometimes happens unintentionally, without the researcher realizing.
Perhaps the most useful measures are structural: systematize reflexivity, include researchers with proficiency in the local and indigenous language/s and knowledge of the local and indigenous context, and involve local and indigenous communities from the very beginning of formulating research questions, not after the questions have already been established by the researcher or by the funding agency’s call for proposals.
What do you think?
Do you recognize this passive/active distinction from your own collaborative work? Have you seen cases where a researcher’s stated motivation for engaging a community unintentionally shaped how much voice that community ended up having? And what practical steps have worked for you in making the shift from a passive to a genuinely dialogical collaboration?
To find out more:
Roos, R. (2024). Researchers’ perceptions of their collaboration with indigenous and local people in environmental change research. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 29, 79. (Online – open access) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-024-10174-w
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution or the work on which the contribution is based. (For i2Insights policy on artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Biography: Roxana Roos PhD is a Norwegian transdisciplinary researcher working in the field of environmental sustainability and knowledge equity. Her focus is on researchers’ practices of engagement with local communities and applying a social science approach to elicit potentially actionable ways of knowing within local and indigenous communities, especially in the Arctic. She is affiliated with the Cultures Environnements Arctique Représentations Climat (CEARC) research centre of Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), a constituent university of the federal Université Paris-Saclay, France and she is a visiting researcher at the University of Bergen in Norway.