Bridging Knowledge Cultures: Rebalancing power and the co-construction of knowledge
Edited by Walter Lepore, Budd L Hall and Rajesh Tandon, Brill, Free download

WHOSE knowledge counts? And how can knowledge be democratised? History “from below” – including oral history – could bring the past to life, enriching, rather than superseding, other forms of knowledge and empowering communities in diverse ways.

Bridging Knowledge Cultures explores these issues, drawing on the experiences of a number of Unesco-supported initiatives, developing partnerships between academic institutions and communities, and developing participatory research in the pursuit of sustainable development and social justice agendas. 

While these Knowledge for Change Hubs had been producing valuable knowledge for the achievement of sustainable development, the partnerships themselves were too often characterised by significant inequalities of power. Community based knowledge tended to be undervalued, a view that was too often shared by community members themselves, lacking confidence in their own knowledge in the face of external expertise and traditional academic hierarchies.  

The first three chapters of Bridging Knowledge Cultures explain the importance of acknowledging and understanding the reasons for these inequalities in order to address them more effectively. 

Between them they set out the theoretical context for the promotion of dialogues between traditional forms of knowledge and “scientific knowledge,” providing the basis for moving towards more equal partnerships between academics and communities, working together in mutually respectful ways. 

These theoretical chapters are then followed by 10 case studies from across the globe, exploring experiences from India, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Colombia and Canada. 
 
Between them, the case studies provide illustrations of the inequalities that had too often been occurring, whatever the intentions of the partners concerned. Bridging processes were needed to identify ways of accepting the legitimacy of community knowledge, as well as valuing the contributions of university-based experts. 

Whilst most of the case studies focus on international development partnerships, the final case study explores the lessons from experiences in Western Canada. This focuses upon a university-based course to teach community-based participatory research, and contributing to decolonisation through strengthening indigenous people’s capacities to take up their rights for themselves, promoting their communities’ health and wellbeing, and pursuing goals of gender justice, reduced inequalities and effective climate action. 

The findings from this initiative were very similar to the findings from international development partnerships, emphasising the importance of building collaborative relationships of trust, promoting active listening (especially an issue for university partners who seemed to have found this particularly difficult) and safeguarding spaces for on-going reflection. 

Summarising the findings from the case studies overall, the editors draw out a number of similar lessons. Relationships of trust needed to be built up between partners over time — but this had been challenging when so many academic projects had been time-limited. Academics needed to learn to treat communities respectfully, rather than undermining their confidence in their own knowledge. And there needed to be shared decision-making structures, inviting communities into universities as well as inviting academics into communities, with boundary spanners playing important bridging roles, in these respects. 

In summary then, Bridging Knowledge Cultures provides a wealth of evidence demonstrating what can be achieved when academics succeed in working with communities in more equal partnerships. 
  
But these possibilities have to be set against the realities of the current context. Higher education in Britain is being undermined in such fundamentally destructive ways as a result of marketisation and cuts, forces that are wreaking havoc in so many other contexts too. 

Which makes these struggles over the democratisation of really useful knowledge all the more relevant, if all the more challenging.

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