Understanding mechanisms of knowledge co-production in peace research projects supported by international cooperation

ABSTRACT

Although critical studies on peace and conflict studies have addressed the topic of knowledge production and peacebuilding, this is not a highly discussed issue in the literature. There is no unique or unambiguous conceptual framework to analyze this topic. This article shows conceptual elements that must be considered to understand the interaction between local and scientific knowledge in research projects on peace and peacebuilding; and reflects on what types of problems emerge when local and expert knowledge interact within the context of international cooperation projects. Based on the evidence collected during one workshop with Colombian researchers and the analysis of fifty research proposals funded by the German Colombian Peace Institute (CAPAZ) between 2017 and 2021, this article identifies topics, methodologies and products that suggest the existence of hybridization and co-production practices of knowledge when research on peacebuilding and conflict is designed and conceived.

RESUMO

Embora estudos críticos no campo da paz e estudos de conflitos tenham abordado a questão da produção de conhecimento, esta não é uma questão comummente discutida na literatura. Não existe um quadro conceptual único e unívoco para analisar as formas como a produção de conhecimento afeta a investigação sobre a paz. Este artigo apresenta elementos conceptuais para a compreensão da interação entre o conhecimento local e científico no contexto de projetos de construção da paz e de investigação de conflitos, e reflete sobre os problemas que surgem quando estes dois tipos de conhecimento interagem no contexto de projetos financiados pela cooperação internacional. Com base em evidências recolhidas durante um workshop com investigadores colombianos e na análise de 50 propostas de investigação financiadas pelo Instituto Colombiano-Alemão para a Paz (CAPAZ) entre 2017 e 2021, este artigo identifica temas, metodologias e produtos que sugerem a existência de práticas de hibridização e coprodução de conhecimento ao conceber e conceber investigação sobre construção da paz e conflito.

RESUMEN

A pesar de que los estudios críticos en el campo de los estudios de paz y conflicto han abordado el tema de la producción de conocimiento, este no es un asunto discutido normalmente en la literatura sobre el tema. No existe un marco conceptual único y unívoco para analizar las formas en que la producción de conocimiento incide sobre la investigación que se hace sobre la paz. Este artículo presenta elementos conceptuales para entender la interacción entre el conocimiento local y científico en el marco de proyectos de investigación sobre construcción de paz y conflicto, y reflexiona sobre los problemas que emergen cuando estos dos tipos de conocimiento interactúan en el contexto de proyectos financiados por la cooperación internacional. Basado en la evidencia recolectada durante un taller realizado con investigadores colombianos y el análisis de 50 propuestas de investigación financiadas por el Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz (CAPAZ) entre 2017 y 2021, el presente artículo identifica temas, metodologías y productos que sugieren la existencia de prácticas de hibridación y co-producción del conocimiento cuando se diseña y concibe la investigación sobre construcción de paz y conflicto.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge co-production
• exchange of local and expert knowledge
• peacebuilding and knowledge production
• research cooperation in peace studies

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:

• Coprodução de conhecimento
• intercâmbio de conhecimento local e especializado
• construção da paz e produção de conhecimento
• cooperação académica em estudos de paz

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Coproducción de conocimiento
• intercambio de conocimiento local y experto
• construcción de paz y producción de conocimiento
• cooperación académica en estudios de paz

1. Introduction

After almost 50 years of intense conflict between the parties, in 2015, the Colombian government signed a peace agreement (PA) with the guerrillas of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). It raised complex challenges such as the reintegration of almost 11,000 ex-combatants into society, the administration of a new and temporal justice system based on the principle of “reparation” to satisfy the rights of victims of the armed conflict, the construction of new mechanisms to heal the wounds of the conflict and establish the victims’ trust in a democratic system, and the reorganization of a system of land property to transform rural life on the basis of fairness, equality, and democracy.

In examining the challenges inherent to a society transitioning to peace, Colombia’s academia was asked about its contribution to this new era, and the role of science, research, and knowledge was no exception. Different positions enriched the public policy debate that was not at all new for Colombia’s academics and universities (Corcione-Nieto, Fernández-Osorio, and Cabrera-Cabrera 2021; Facio Lince 2019; Ordonez-Matamoros et al. 2018).

Despite this evidence, knowledge production in relation to peace is not a highly discussed topic in the mainstream literature of peace and conflict studies. There is no single and unambiguous conceptual framework through which to analyze it. The difference between producing knowledge “on peace” or “for peace” (Balanzó, Nupia, and Centeno 2020) seems to be an important starting point to better understand this complex relationship, especially given that, from a theoretical perspective, peace is an elusive object of study consisting of different levels of analysis.

The purpose of this article is to answer the following questions: which conceptual elements should be considered to understand the interaction between local and scientific knowledge in research projects on peace and peacebuilding? What types of problems emerge when local and expert knowledge interact within the context of international cooperation projects? We use evidence provided by the analysis of fifty collaborative research proposals funded by the German Colombian Peace Institute (CAPAZ) between 2017 and 2021.

The first section presents a preliminary conceptual framework of the nature of knowledge production in the liberal peace paradigm and the critique from the perspective of decolonial studies. The second section summarizes some inputs on the role of knowledge from the academic perspective of peace and conflict studies and ecological studies. The third section reflects on the relationship between peace, knowledge, and international cooperation and provides information about the German-Colombian Peace Institute (CAPAZ) as a platform of collaborative knowledge production. The fourth section explains a heuristic model to approach the science-peace relationship. And the fifth section reflects on the conceptual elements and challenges to understand knowledge co-production in cooperative research projects between Colombia and Germany.

2. Knowledge and the local turn in peacebuilding

2.1. The turning point of considering the local

The failures of international efforts to create liberal governments in different countries raise the question about the degree to which liberal peace is imposed on post-conflict and transitional states through peacebuilding interventions (Campbell, Chandler, and Sabaratnam 2011). Critical scholars propose alternative models to study hybrid and more democratic variants of peacebuilding (Wolff 2015, 280; Zürcher 2018, 284) claiming for a “local turn,” as a necessary exercise to understand the nature of resistant agencies from a subaltern view of peace (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013, 764).

According to Joshi et al., liberalism claims such as the principles of individual sovereignty, tolerance, diversity, and equal opportunities; the pursuit of freedom; people’s trust in institutions; the rationality of individuals and collectives, and individual property. This conception influenced seminal documents on liberal peacebuilding adopted by international organizations through the definition of five policy areas: promotion of democracy, rule of law, emphasis on human rights, security sector reform, and governance reforms (Joshi, Lee, and Mac Ginty 2014, 366).

But what role does knowledge play in the liberal conception of peace? According to Mac Ginty and Richmond, the problem-solving approach has influenced the peace-related research that informs states, international organizations, and financial institutions (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013, 767). In this sense, expertise in peacebuilding is a kind of spearhead of the liberal peacebuilding model, working on common practices, habits, and narratives that are “free-floating” and transportable to any conflict and post-conflict context (Autesserre 2017, 120) and that influence policy-relevant knowledge production on material and ideological practices of neoliberalism (Bliesemann de Guevara and Kostic 2017, 4).

Cosmopolitanism affects the culture of peacebuilding and defines a neutral stand-point from which peacebuilders intervene post-conflict societies under principles of good governance, neglecting even their own identity (Goetze and Bliesemann de Guevara 2014, 777). But the local turn contradicts the universalism at the heart of liberalism and interferes with the legitimacy of universal projects such as peacebuilding (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013, 778). Critiques of this neutral and absolute epistemological position, that eliminates all the possible sources of uncertainty, are part of the foundations of decolonial literature where it is referred to as “the hubris of the zero-point” (Castro-Gómez 2010, 25).

Alternative visions recognize other forms of knowledge embedded in the local circuits that do not really fit with Western modes of thinking. Mac Ginty and Richmond call for a more expansive epistemology that overcomes the artificial boundaries imposed by the notion of state sovereignty and that recognizes the existence of hybrid forms of peace and politics (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013, 778). De Guevara and Kostic criticize the influence of neoliberalism on the structures of knowledge production in Western societies and invite scholars to ask more radical questions about their object of study (Bliesemann de Guevara and Kostic 2017, 15).

This shaking up of the very epistemic nature of peacebuilding has posed, in the words of Danielsson, two new features of contemporary knowledge production: the involvement of multiple issues and plural knowledges, and the recognition of knowledge as a socially distributed process that transcends professional and geographical boundaries. Accordingly, there is a fundamental need to understand the different local knowledges in transnational circulation and the battles over epistemic authority unleashed by transnationalized agents (Danielsson 2020, 116).

New epistemic perspectives such as the local turn open, at least, two entrance points: the geo-politics of knowledge that understands contemporary peacebuilding as an international apparatus locally challenged in its enunciation, with the privilege of creating meanings and inventing classifications (Mignolo 2009, 2), and the need to give voice to local knowledge producers who have a kind of hybrid agency to adapt or modify meanings enunciated by international actors (Jabri 2016, 159). In this respect, the local turn advocates for locally based agencies in conflict and post-conflict environments (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013, 769) and recognizes the experiential knowledge about conflict that has people living in violent and conflict-ridden places.

Despite the openness of the local turn approach, the ontological nature of the peacebuilding apparatus raises some analytical challenges to address the integration of local, expert, and scientific knowledge. Integrating local knowledge into scientific and academic perspectives of peace studies may offer the possibility to recognize the plurality of knowledge; however, it is not enough to explain new forms of emerging knowledge. It fails to understand more structural differences based on a local conception.

2.2. Decolonial critiques of knowledge production for peacebuilding

It is important to highlight two points that are crucial to our analysis of scientific/expert and local knowledge interaction. The first is related to the structural paradox of the liberal peace model. While peacebuilding recognizes the importance of local knowledge for reaching sustainable peace, it is also a “machinery of government” (Jabri 2016, 160) that does not escape the neoliberal global order. Producing knowledge about the nature of violent conflicts, their impacts, and their possible solutions should consider the interaction between expert and local knowledge. This interaction is mediated by traditional, hierarchical relations of power constitutive of Western modernity (Mignolo 2009, 20) that require an expert movement from a posture of “studying about” to “thinking with” (Walsh 2018, 28) local communities affected by violence.

The second contribution is the confrontation between the Western conception of scientific knowledge production and the decolonial conception of a relational form of knowledge production. The Western conception establishes a clear division between subject (who produces the knowledge) and object (what is studied) under the principles of objectivity and neutrality. In contrast, decolonial conceptions denounce the hierarchical nature of knowledge production in liberal societies and its inability to capture non-liberal relations coming from different geographical areas (Escobar 2014, 35). In terms of knowledge production “on” and “for” peace (Balanzó, Nupia, and Centeno 2020), understanding this structural difference is fundamental in identifying all the possible formats in which knowledge can be materialized and evinced.

From a decolonial perspective, knowledge production is normally associated to forms of resistance with a highly transformative power to challenge the development paradigm (Escobar 2014, 293–294). It is also a way to claim social global justice (de Sousa Santos 2009, 12) necessary to compensate the epistemic expropriation that condemned the knowledge produced in the former colonies to be the “past” of the modern science (Castro-Gómez 2010, 47). But decoloniality is also concerned with the validation of cognitive practices of historically victimized groups. Thus, from an analytical perspective, it raises the question about methods of local knowledge versus those that validate the predictable order of the scientific method.

Criticisms of liberal and positivist knowledge include questions about what counts as rational and objective knowledge and how it creates new forms of exclusion. Harding argues that the traditional conception of knowledge is rooted in patriarchal and Eurocentric norms and that this can lead to the exclusion of diverse knowledges (Harding 1998). In a similar vein, Spivak argues that the traditional conception of knowledge is a product of colonialism and that it reinforces power structures that perpetuate oppression (Spivak, 1988).

From the Latin American perspective, authors such as Quijano, Maldonado, and Dussel among others, have provided significant contributions to understand the role of knowledge production as an alternative to the Western model. Quijano and Maldonado argue that colonialism shaped the production, circulation, and validation of knowledge, and that it is therefore necessary to decolonize knowledge to create just and equitable societies. They also recognize that knowledge production is not neutral as it is always embedded in structures of power and domination (Maldonado-Torres 2008; Quijano 2000; 2007). Furthermore, Dussel’s (2012) concept of “transmodernity,” demands a new form of knowledge production that is grounded in the experiences of marginalized and oppressed communities that demand social transformation. These authors remind us of the urgency to situate Latin America to contest the Western concept of “universal civilization.”

Fals Borda deserves special attention in the Colombian case because he consolidated the methodology of participatory action research (PAR) in Latin America. PAR assumes that the gap between “learned” and “learner” generates a distance with surrounding communities, missing knowledge multidimensionality and ignoring the accumulated experience of common people (Fals Borda 2008, 360). PAR was developed during the seventies when Latin American intellectuals proposed to decolonize the social science disciplines, rejecting the positivist and functionalist models coming from North America and Western Academia¹ (Robles Lomeli and Rappaport 2018, 600).

The work of Fals Borda established the grounds for an “activist researcher” that combines academic erudition with common existence, giving voice to the most excluded people (Fals Borda 2008, 360). PAR responds to people’s desire to address practical issues in their lives and to open new communicative spaces in which dialogue can flourish. It is also concerned with human ecology, in a living process that cannot be predetermined but in which the capacity of people as co-inquirers is developed (Reason and Bradbury 2008).

Decolonial literature provides a more complex understanding of tensions, negotiations, and inequalities inherent to knowledge production in contemporary societies. This broadens the analytical framework by which to study interactions between expert, academic, and local knowledge. Looking for connections, Walsh seems to establish a bridge when she affirms that the project of pluriversal and interversal decoloniality does not mean a rejection or negation of Western thought, as it is also part of the pluriverse. However, she also acknowledges that the pluriversal option does not imply that we have to surrender to North Atlantic fictions (Walsh 2018). In the following section, we will see how the interaction between scientific and local knowledge is considered by academics inspired by the “local turn” literature.

3. Knowledge practices under the perspective of the “local turn” literature

3.1. Epistemic authority on peacebuilding and the local level

Literature on peacebuilding has advanced in the analysis of topics such as the epistemic authority of experts in peacebuilding interventions (Bliesemann de Guevara and Kostic 2017; Danielsson 2020), collaboration between researchers and local organizations (Bliesemann de Guevara, Furnari, and Julian 2020; van der Haar, Heijmans, and Hilhorst 2013a) and methodologies to implement hybrid forms of knowledge (Millar 2014a; 2018). From a Bourdieusian perspective, Danielsson considers epistemic authority on peacebuilding an object and struggle conditioned by distinct fields of practices that go beyond peacebuilding itself. Using the concepts of plurality (different forms of epistemic authority) and transgressiveness (transcending of professional and geographical boundaries), Danielsson incorporates an object-centred approach to explain the governance of peacebuilding as a hybrid entity comprised of ideas, artifacts, physical phenomena, and practices that made it distinct from other objects (Danielsson 2020, 117, 120).

Julian et al. highlight the epistemic problem that emerges when the knowledge of people living in the middle of the conflict is not significant enough to inform international peacebuilding organizations. The general vision of experts limits the inclusion of “the local” avoiding the diversity and intersectionality of the experience of conflict. Looking for research methods that recognize the power of agency and local everyday experience, Julian et al. highlight the importance of local research associates in the design of fieldwork (Julian, Bliesemann de Guevara, and Redhead 2019, 214).

Focusing on the role of local researchers as “research brokers,” Bliesemann de Guevara et al. analyze how structures and dynamics of power and trust-building shape data interpretation (Bliesemann de Guevara, Furnari, and Julian 2020). Through methods in which local research associates play a central and relatively autonomous role in research design, they reflect on the impact of power structures mediating between external/international and local researchers when conflict and violence is studied by academics. In short, academic literature on peacebuilding recognizes the importance of local knowledge and its inclusion in research projects. However, it does not provide a comprehensive conceptualization on the actors’ micro level performance.

3.2. Integration of local knowledge, interactive research, and ecological interventions

Conceptual contributions from social studies of science (STI), transition studies, and environmental and ecological management complement those made by peace and conflict studies to understand knowledge co-production (Danielsen et al. 2014; Failing, Gregory, and Harstone 2007; Parra-Romero 2020; Pohl et al. 2010; Rau, Goggins, and Fahy 2018; Raymond et al. 2010; Rosengren 2018; van der Haar, Heijmans, and Hilhorst 2013a; Yang 2015; 2018). In the following, we describe four aspects from this literature that must be analyzed in-depth to understand knowledge co-production in academic projects “on” or “for” peace.

The first aspect is the existence of different models to characterize local knowledge. Raymond et al. propose three classes of knowledge (experiential/local, scientific, and hybrid) that are generated through different mechanisms and that produce diverse types of knowledges (see Table 1).

Table 1. Dimensions of knowledge identified in the management literature.

Dimensions	Knowledge type
Local vs. generalized	Local		Generalized
Level of formal processes used to generate knowledge	Informal		Formal
Extent of expertise	Novice		Expert
Extent to which knowledge is articulated or accessible to others	Tacit (cannot be articulated)	Implicit (not yet articulated)	and Explicit (articulates)
Extent to which knowledge is embedded in and reflects traditional cultural rules and norms derived from many generations of past human-environment relationships.	Traditional ecological	Local ecological	Scientific

Source: Raymond et al. (2010, 1769).

A second aspect is the integration of local and scientific knowledge in development projects to achieve more robust research results. Alessa et al. affirm that indigenous knowledge comprises a set of holistic practices that can be described in the same way as the Western scientific method. Since indigenous science requires long periods of observation so that it can be used practically, it could be said that indigenous science is the original sustainability science (Alessa et al., 2016, 93).

The role of researchers that implement projects involving local knowledge is the third aspect. Pohl et al., identify three different roles in knowledge coproduction for sustainability science: reflective scientist, intermediary, and facilitator (Pohl et al. 2010). However, researchers’ political involvement raises a more radical category: “the activist researcher.” Calling for an activist anthropology, Rappaport affirms that the mix of academic research and activism allows co-theorization and the construction of alternative agendas. The activist or “militant researcher” (Parra-Romero 2020, 44) draws on knowledge production through collective action networks. This activism is transnational and fights against capitalism in its current phase of neoliberal globalization (Leyva Solano 2018, 202).

Last but not least, we identified new evaluation trends experimented by international development agencies under the concept of sustainability science. Rau et al. state that academic understanding of research quality ignores non-academics’ views that can be relevant in impacting society, and prioritizes conventional performance indicators such as publications. They affirm that it is necessary to capture the less tangible outcomes of scientific research such as knowledge co-production, outreach, policy advice, and action research involving communities affected by sustainability challenges (Rau, Goggins, and Fahy 2018, 269). Other authors include local knowledge as a fundamental subdimension of research legitimacy, considering factors such as the process of making choices, how information is produced, vetted and disseminated, and how well knowledge is localized (McLean and Sen 2019, 126).

4. Peace process, knowledge production, and international cooperation

After more than 50 years of armed conflict, the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) signed a comprehensive peace agreement (CPA)² on 24 November 2016. The agreement states that the protection of rights of historically marginalized groups (indigenous, Afro, peasants, women) is essential to achieving equality and peace. It also recognized the conflict’s territorial scale and the inclusion of the victims of the conflict as fundamental actors in reaching sustainable peace (United Nations Security Council 2017).

The Colombian CPA created an institutional system to guarantee the rights of victims to truth, justice, reparation, and non-repetition. This system is comprised of the Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition Commission (CEV), the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), and the Unit for the Search of Disappeared Persons (UBPD). By articulating experts, academics, and victims of the armed conflict, these institutions have produced knowledge which is pertinent to understanding its causes. The potential of this accumulated knowledge has yet to be explored.³

Official development assistance (ODA) has helped to connect various actors in the Colombian CPA (García Duque and Casadiego 2021; Puyo 2018). Especially during the implementation phase, cooperation agencies supported academic projects with local participation implemented by universities, research centers, and NGOs.⁴ Peace and conflict have successfully entered the mainstreaming agenda of development donors and they are highly institutionalized (Paffenholz 2005). This suggests that international cooperation programs have the potential to diffuse concepts related to the liberal peace model. The power of international organizations to classify information and knowledge, fix meanings, and diffuse expertise in the form of models of “good” political behavior (Barnett & Finnemore 1999; Stone 2008) means that international cooperation plays an important role not only in providing financial support but in creating meanings in the framework of the liberal peace model.⁵

In the case of international cooperation research projects, the evaluation of collaborative North–South partnerships is an unexplored source of information to understand knowledge co-production. There are different kinds of tensions when partnerships are funded by purely scientific cooperation sources (science academies, institutions for the promotion of disciplinary research) or development cooperation agencies (bilateral and multilateral organizations). The increasing quality of research partnerships does not necessary imply that conflicts and knowledge asymmetries disappear. Whether because the source of funding requires highly disciplinary criteria for cooperation or because it favors interdisciplinarity and applied knowledge, variations in the agendas, methodologies, and products of academics of the Global North and South continue to play a decisive role.

In the case of research on peace and conflict, the scenario is even more complex since conflict-affected communities are incorporated as co-producers of knowledge in ongoing research. The contribution of new conceptual frameworks such as epistemic justice (Fricker 2013), epistemologies of the South (de Sousa Santos 2009), transcultural knowledge dialogue (Castro-Gómez 2010), sustainability research (Spoelstra 2013), transnational science cooperation (Schwachula 2021), and transformative science (Schneidewind et al. 2016) offer a conceptual framework by which to tackle the traditional approach of scientific cooperation.

In 2016, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded a proposal, led by the Justus-Liebig University Giessen (JLU) and the Colombian Alliance of Universities for Peace, to create the German-Colombian Peace Institute (CAPAZ). Today, CAPAZ is a platform of academic cooperation of 29 academic institutions from Colombia and Germany.⁶ It promotes research, teaching, and consultancy. In this sense, CAPAZ might be understood as an international cooperation platform that produces knowledge on the Colombian conflict.

CAPAZ focuses on three research areas: peacebuilding practices; transitional justice and humanitarian international law; and peace, conflict, and territorial reconfigurations. The first deals with practical actions implemented by institutional and civil society actors, especially education for peace and historical memory. The second area focuses on the design, implementation, and monitoring of legal and institutional mechanisms to end of the Colombian armed conflict. And the third area analyzes power relations and struggles in territories affected by violence due to conflicts caused by socio-economic inequalities.

Between 2017 and 2021, CAPAZ funded fifty cooperation projects through five calls open to networks led by Colombian and German universities. In order to identify practices of the co-production of knowledge when research in international cooperation projects occurs, we have drawn on the heuristic model proposed by Balanzo et al. We outline this in the next section.

5. Building a heuristic model to understand the relationship between science and peace

In 2018, the CAPAZ Institute together with the Universidad Externado de Colombia organized a workshop with researchers from Colombian universities, to reflect on the nature of the knowledge that they produced as scientists or experts on peace topics.⁷ The participants responded to three questions: (1) In which tangible products is the use of science and technology for peace manifested? (2) What tensions occur in the interaction between scientific and non-scientific knowledge, and to what extent is knowledge part of the conflict? (3) What methodological tools could be identified to link scientific and non-scientific knowledge in peacebuilding? Three mechanisms of knowledge interaction were identified: (i) research products, (ii) tensions in knowledge co-production, and (iii) methodological forms.

Most applications emphasized the results of their research without a conscious reflection on the nature of knowledge creation.⁸ Products derived from selected proposals did not present a pure scientific form (research papers, articles) but moved on a continuum between highly scientific and highly local forms.⁹ Similarly, products and methodologies worked on different levels of actors’ performance (macro, meso, micro) generating tensions in terms of production, use, and appropriation.

The conclusions reached on the workshop informed a heuristic model (Figure 1) based on the following assumptions: (1) any form of knowledge is subject to tensions that are visible when it is managed or governed; (2) in peace and conflict research there is a diverse range of products that are close to traditional standards of scientific production or to the validation of other forms of knowledge; (3) if any products mix standards of scientific knowledge and other forms of knowledge, it is because there is a meeting point where the concepts of both local and scientific knowledge converge.

Figure 1. Heuristic model of diverse knowledges and policies for peace. Source: Balanzó, Nupia, and Centeno (2020).

This model shows a scientific approach of the perception of knowledge interaction. It was built based on discussions among researchers from universities and research centers. Recognizing this bias, the model makes it possible to operationalize the interaction between knowledge produced by academic communities (scientific knowledge) and knowledge produced by people directly affected by conflict and violence (local knowledge). Although this approach seems to maintain the fundamental dichotomy criticized by epistemologies of the South and decolonial studies, it recognizes the existence of different types of products and actors involved in knowledge production and provides insights to identify earlier manifestations (intentional or not) of knowledge co-production in contexts in which scientific and academic logics prevail.

6. Agenda setting, methodologies, and research products: what they say about knowledge co-production

In order to understand some of the logic behind knowledge co-production in projects funded by CAPAZ, this section focuses on three factors identified in fifty research proposals presented to the call for projects organized by CAPAZ between 2017 and 2021. These are: agenda items, products, and methodologies. Although calls provided a description of the expected research products (scientific articles, research papers, policy briefs, information systems for public policy decision-making, training courses, and academic and cultural events), they welcomed other products, mainly academic, that denoted advances in collaborative research. The projects had to include the participation of at least one German university or research institution. A desirable requirement was the participation of actors such as universities located in areas affected by the armed conflict, local governments, and civil society organizations (i.e. peasant associations, women’s organizations, environmental collectives) and other international organizations that enhanced the quality of the interdisciplinary research.

For the following analysis, it is important to highlight that: (i) it is based on the projects’ research proposals and not on reports of finished projects, meaning that the evidence shows information about the initial stages of partnerships; (ii) the inclusion of local communities was considered as a “desirable” but not as a mandatory requirement; (iii) we decided to identify general trends on how manifestations of knowledge co-production appeared but not statistical occurrences of the observed factors.

The first factor we analyzed was agenda setting. The selection of research issues in the framework of a collaborative partnership is an initial indicator of whether knowledge production is equitable or not. It also shows tensions and inequalities inherent to collaborative research. Some topics seem to be more suitable to observe knowledge co-production, explain the performance of local knowledge, and trace research agendas in a bottom-up perspective. However, we also identified that the intention of “correcting democratic deficits” and “complying with international standards” of the liberal model was a significant driver (see Table 2).

Table 2. Topics in CAPAZ research proposals.

Topic	Brief description
Elections	Electoral constituencies for peace; elections in post-agreement settings. Impact of elections in reconfiguration of local territories; behavioral changes in electoral and pre-electoral times.
Transitional Justice (TJ)	Challenges and standards of international criminal law in contexts of TJ; rural TJ; reparative justice.
Reintegration	Perceptions of civil society about ex-combatants’ reintegration; political reintegration of ex-combatants; cooperation between ex-combatants and civil society.
Violence and security	Strategic resistance; causes of violence; security sector reform in post-conflict settings
Agriculture and environment	Popular consultation and environmental democracy; violence and environmental conflicts; sustainable alternatives to illicit crops; extractive economies; land ownership.
Historical memory and resistance	Post-memory (symbolic practices related to death, actor’s memory of conflict, memory through arts)
	Counter-narratives: social protests; discursive regimes of truth; traditional subordinated groups; political thought and autonomy; land conflict
Knowledge co-production	Recognition of women’s knowledge about war and specific topics (i.e. local fishing and ecotourism); religious communities in conflict zones; formal and informal ways to homologate knowledge; local and indigenous knowledge about medicinal plants; transformation of knowledge on war into knowledge on peace; social leaders’ knowledge about land restitution; integration of victims’ knowledge into public policy decisions and instruments.

A more detailed analysis suggests that topics such as elections, transitional justice, and reintegration address traditional issues in the liberal peace model (strengthening of government institutions), while topics such as historical memory and knowledge co-production are related with new approaches focused on territorial grounds (strengthening of people’s agency). This does not imply a clear-cut difference. Indeed, both community resistance strategies and reforms of traditional security institutions are addressed within the topic of violence and security. This means that traditional perspectives in which security is usually studied from the view of state institutions, are now challenged from bottom-up approaches interested in different forms of resistance and responses to the liberal peace model.

It is worth mentioning that actors researching a topic may have confronting positions. The case of historical memory is a good example. Although it is a topic that is highly sensitive to local contexts, the Western interpretation of this issue (autobiography, colonial history, or revisionism) is still very influential. The understanding of historical memory of the conflict as a counter-narrative in which the reality of traditional subordinated groups emerges, suggests at least, that the issue is gaining visibility in international research agendas. We also believe that transitional justice could provide information about knowledge co-production: for the Colombian case, we observed that concepts such us “restorative justice” or “reparation” had different meanings under academic and local perspectives. The difference is more evident in cases in which Indigenous communities participate.

Negotiations between German and Colombian researchers must be examined in depth. Although research proposals could be submitted by partners alike, motivations to cooperate were variable. For example, we identified that it was not easy for Colombian researchers to find partners in Germany. Another way in which to explore negotiations and tensions is by analyzing the relationship between academic researchers and local communities. Research calls were designed to be submitted by academic researchers; however, there were some cases in which strong previous partnerships between local and academic communities lead the proposals. Theoretically, research coming from these partnerships should provide innovative results.

Methodology design is the second factor to be analyzed, as it reveals how different forms of knowledge validation interact and sheds light on the relationship between research subject and object. In our analysis, participatory techniques were reported as highly relevant to stimulate interaction between academics and local communities. But we also registered methodological designs based on mixed qualitative and quantitative methods. Participative cartography is a good example. It uses techniques such as geographical information systems (GIS) that combine structured sets of data (databases) with active participation of local people and powerful visualization methodologies to capture multilevel analysis on the territorial scale.

Obviously, qualitative methodologies facilitate the participation of local communities; however, a closer reading suggests that participation of local communities in projects’ workshops vary. They are used for knowledge validation in at least three instances: (i) when locals are invited to listen to academic findings as a strategy for the diffusion of the knowledge produced through projects; (ii) when locals give feedback about academic findings and these comments are considered relevant to adjust the following phases of the project; (iii) when locals are involved from the very beginning and actively define research methodologies and project products. Table 3 provides more detail on methodologies used in the reviewed proposals.

Table 3. Methodologies identified in CAPAZ-funded research proposals.

Methodological frameworks	Grounded theory; participative action research; dialogic methods; intersectionality; art, science, and society; transdisciplinary and plural memories
Scientific and academic techniques	Data collection and exhibition	Literature reviews; compilation and analysis of audio-visual material; georeferencing techniques.
	Comparative analysis	Territories and regions; experiences within a same country; experiences between different countries
	Quantitative analysis	Econometric techniques for causal relationship; descriptive and spatial statistics
	Qualitative analysis	Process tracing, video-ethnography, narrative analysis, Interviews (in-depth, structured, and semi-structured), documentary reviews (newspapers, testimonials, press and social media, etc.); symbolic and cultural analysis (festivals, exhibitions, gastronomic samples, etc.)
Participatory techniques	Joint research design with civil society organizations (data collection and instruments of knowledge validation); academic workshops to share research results with communities affected by violence; dialogue support workshops (civil society, cooperation agencies and academia); knowledge networks with local actors; writing of academic articles with the participation of communities affected by conflict; participatory techniques for data collection (participatory cartography, word circles, etc.).

Reported methodologies also suggest hybrid forms of knowledge production, characterized by the involvement of local communities and non-academic actors. Another form of situated knowledge is the implementation of dialogical processes (according to our evidence, highly associated to juridical research) that offer the opportunity to confront and rewrite international categories, concepts, and meanings (i.e. reparation measures, security, historical memory, truth). More research is needed to understand how these conceptual mixes function and how they are finally validated to be recognized as knowledge.

Finally, we organized a preliminary typology of research products (see Table 4). A more detailed analysis is needed to identify validation forms of knowledge in each product. This can shed light on how the different forms of knowledge involved interact with each other. We identified a tension based on the incentive system that promotes the production of scientific knowledge in academia. As might be expected, publication in indexed journals receives a high degree of recognition among academic researchers. However, for the local communities that serve as a source of information for academic research and contribute during the research process, this is only one form of knowledge production that does not necessarily reflect their analytical interests. The issue becomes more complex if we consider that participatory action research engages researchers politically (the activist researcher). At this point, there is a clash between the scientific objectivity to validate knowledge and the manifest interest in transforming reality through political action based on the knowledge generated. Cooperation between these two conceptions seems necessary despite these tensions.

Table 4. Products from research proposals submitted to CAPAZ.

Academic products	Books, academic conferences, and university courses
Socialization and knowledge transfer	Open archives of historical memory; digital information repositories; training programs for local communities; communication products (documentaries, radio programs in local stations, exhibitions and fairs, podcasts, web series, songbooks, transmedia products).
Art and symbolic works	Monuments, counter-monuments, and art installations; travelling museum exhibitions.
Technical advice and consultancy	Policy briefs with public policy recommendations; technical advice to governmental and non-governmental institutions; participation in public policy interfaces.

As in the case of the methodologies, research products still obey formats that are highly influenced by expert knowledge. The category “art and symbolic works” probably offers more flexibility to experiment with initiatives that come exclusively from local people. Furthermore, technical advice and consultancy products show a kind of eagerness to demonstrate that peace research has a relevant and viable impact. This is supported by the fact that many of the analyzed proposals included policy briefs as a research product, but they did not give much thought to how conclusions could reach decision-makers.

Understanding the interaction between local and scientific knowledge in projects researching a highly normative topic such as peacebuilding is challenging. In this article, we analyzed three factors that operationalize this interaction: agenda items, methodologies, and products. It would be naïve to think that the dichotomy between these types of knowledge disappears with the open declaration of working together on international research projects. Institutional logics of knowledge production and validation of Western science and local knowledge continue to struggle internally to accommodate each other. We, therefore, need to understand when and how coincidences between these two logics occur. Co-publication in academic journals between scientists and local communities is only a sign that this is happening.

In the analyzed case, complexity augments because there are various levels of tension to observe: between academic researchers from the Global North and South, between researchers from local communities and academic researchers from the Global North, and between researchers from local communities and academic researchers from the Global South. One would expect there to be more affinities between researchers from academic communities in the Global North and the Global South, but we still know little about their relationships with researchers from local communities.

Finally, more research is needed on mechanisms that inform us when knowledge co-production occurs. One possible hypothesis is that it occurs when the conceptual approaches of academia and local knowledge interact and give up their original conceptual claims to shape innovative concepts that bring a new perspective on how peacebuilding occurs. It is precisely at this point that the concept of “resistance” becomes meaningful, not only as a mechanism of cultural defense but also as a principle of reaction for the construction of new conceptualizations. In our case, the resistance and re-adaptation of some classic concepts of the liberal peace model is a good beginning. Better understanding of how conceptual hybridizations work, will allow us to have a more concrete idea on how cooperation facilitates or hinders this co-production.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carlos Mauricio Nupia

Carlos Mauricio Nupia was Administrative Director of the German Colombian Peace Institute – CAPAZ in Bogota, Colombia. From April 2023, he is Scientific Collaborator at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut – Preußicher Kulturbesitz in Berlin, Germany. At the IAI he is currently coordinating a study on the perspectives of research networks between Latin America, the Caribbean and the German-speaking Area (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin – FUB. His academic production has been related to topics such as public policy for science, technology and innovation; international policy transfer and learning; scientific cooperation for development; and scientific knowledge production and peace building.

Laura Valencia Espinosa

Laura Valencia Espinosa is academic assistant of the platform Necapaz at the German Colombian Peace Institute – CAPAZ in Bogota, Colombia. She is a Languages and Culture and Political Science professional from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. She specializes in international relations and comparative politics. She joined the CAPAZ in August 2021 and she supported the Administrative Direction in the area of knowledge management.

Notes

1 The collegiate work published by Clacso about “other forms of knowledge” (Leyva Solano 2018) provides a comprehensive analysis of plural research practices implemented by Latin American academic and activist scholars.

2 From a theoretical perspective, CPAs are an integrated collection of parallel and reinforcing processes designed to promote reconciliation between warring groups. They are intended to help build better social relations and overcome fear and insecurity addressing the root causes of civil war (Joshi & Quinn 2017, 3). For the Colombian case, the CPA included the following chapters: (i) comprehensive rural reform, (ii) political participation, (iii) end of the conflict, (iv) solution to the problem of illicit drugs, (iv) agreement of the victims of the conflict and (v) implementation, verification, and public endorsement.

3 A preliminary reading of the 310 pages of the Colombian CPA from the perspective of “knowledge production for peace”( Balanzó, Nupia, and Centeno 2020) allowed us to identify five thematic blocks on which knowledge is required: (i) agricultural innovation, (ii) environment and land use planning, (iii) drug trafficking value chain, (iv) judicial enquiry; (v) forensic research. This is an important guide for future research on the relationship between knowledge and peacebuilding.

4 One example is the financial support provided by USAID to the Peace and Conflict Observatory at Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

5 The role of the international centers for peace research (SIPRI, PRIO, PRIF, USIP) is highly relevant for policy diffusion and agenda-setting (Bergmann 2018; Montgomery 2003). Based on a combination of basic research and knowledge transfer on policy-making, these institutes have contributed to shaping the understanding of liberal peace through training, policy recommendations, and the promotion of best practices.

6 The founders of CAPAZ were: German academic institutions (Freie Universität Berlin, Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Albert Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, and Peace Research Institut in Frankfurt) and Colombian universities (Universidad Nacional, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Universidad de los Andes, and Universidad del Rosario).

7 The workshop entitled: “Towards a Research Agenda on Scientific Knowledge, Society and Peacebuilding in Colombia” was held on December 10 and 12 2018. It received 74 applications from different universities and research organizations in Colombia of which 16 were accepted to participate in discussions. Find out more at: https://cutt.ly/oJOxVL7

8 Proposals lacked information on topics such as interaction between scientific and local knowledge, agency, plural epistemics, roles, and tensions in multi-actor collaborations and transdisciplinarity.

9 An interesting discussion emerged during the workshop on why scientific knowledge was presented as the extreme opposite of local knowledge and why it was the main focus of the organizers' attention. One of the main arguments was that local knowledge could include more different forms than scientific knowledge.