AO: The analysts argue that contemporary ethnography’s preferred collaboration is with “the expert” who is now a preferred subject because within the expert’s cultural milieu, cultural forms are being devised and enacted. (82).
AO: They authors give examples like George’s work with Mascarenhas where the roles of anthropologist and subject were unsettled and a game of mutual deferral and appropriation (88)
AO: The analysts are looking at “team science” which they note can be conducted within a single, focused discipline or can span multiple disciplines. They also describe transdisciplinary action research, which involves collab- orations among scientists and practitioners (S244) (and interprofessionalism to describe cross-disciplinary work that bridges the work of researchers with practitioners).
AO: The analysts look at a multi-partner consortia example of “Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA)” that sought to support policy and practice for climate change adaptation through a consortium model. CARIAA is a seven-year (2013–19), CAN $70 million, multi-partner collaborative research programme involving more than 450 individuals, 18 core member institutions, and over 40 implementing partners.
AO: The analysts are interested in collaboration at the level of synthesis which they say can be around a shared common theme of interest or it can also be a means of validating, triangulating, and amplifying reearch findings (to reach new audiences).
AO: Specifically the analysts looked at “hard and soft collaborative spaces, such as an intranet and working groups around common thematic interests; responsive additional funding mechanisms that could be secured to support emergent collaborative synthesis efforts; and annual “learning reviews” that brought together partners for face-to-face meetings. These processes were designed to enable diverse worldviews, knowledges, and perspectives to be shared, and to facilitate opportunities for novel collaborations and synthesis.” (4)
AO: The analysts do not expressly use the term collaboration. However, I have included this reading because I believe the analysts are in fact describing their version of what ideally scientific collaboration between natural or physical environmental scientists and a research community should look like. Their “collaboration” therefore is engagement with communities affected by scientific research “to give them the ability to determine whether research may cause them harm and be part of determining how knowledge should best circulate to reduce or eliminate that harm.” They are explicitly designing this for use by scientists in environmental science that do *not* have human subjects are part of their original research design. They propose this method as a way to extend ethics to areas not usually considered in scientific research (3)
AO: transnational medical research work between those in the global South and North.
AO: The analysts studied nine analyses of collaboration. They noted that at least 7 definitions of collaboration appeared (e.g. “collaboration as a process through which parties who see different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and explore their differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible”; “constructive management of difference”; “process of joint decision making among key stakeholders of a problem domain about the future of that domain”; “a group of key stakeholders who work together to make joint decisions about the future of their problem domain”; “an interactive process having a shared transmutational purpose and characterized by explicit voluntary membership, joint decision making, agreed-upon rules, and a temporary structure.)
AO: Analysts argued that they wanted a definition of collaboration that answers: Who is doing what, with what means, towards what ends? Eventually they came to a definition:
AO: “Collaboration occurs when a group of autonomous stakeholders of a problem domain engage in an interactive process, using shared rules, norms, and structures, to act or decide on issues related to that domain.”
AO: The analysts do not explicitly note this but as Somatosphere’s Editorial Collaborative, they write to discuss the collective work it takes to run and organize their online publishing initiative.
AO: The analyst looks at collaborative relationship anthropologists establish with indigenous intellectuals and activists, arguing that these relationships necessarily make anthropology political because the boundaries of knowledge are pushed to other milieus beyond the academy.
AO: The analyst also calls the relationship between engaged anthropology and indigenous studies a “collaboration” because it can produce a “multi-textual hermeneutics” and represents and embodies the different and at times contradictory positioning of actors (101).
AO: The analyst also looks at her own research collaboration with an indigenous activist Cristina Cucuri (107), who she calls her “research partner.” This term “research partner” was also used by Alev Coban (2018) but in that case, she did not name the person(s?) who remained anonymous (and thereby did not receive “credit” or acknowledgement for being partners). I am interested in what the term “research partner” entails or signals.
AO: The analysts describe collaboration as co-working (often simultaneously). They note that the work might be differentially priviledged, acknowledged or not acknowledged at all. The analysts focus on three kinds of interactions: human-human interactions; human-machine/material interactions; machine/material-machine/material interactions. They note that the third is least discussed. They note failure of collaboration and how it can fall apart and highlight that those are important cases to document and discuss.
AO: The analysts describe their own collaboration largely focused around co-authorship (of collective volume, book, grant proposal). They describe collaboration as in solidarity with each other and allied (in intellectual and political interests, cultural identification, and emotional responses).