Social Science Research Council

REFLECTIONS ON COLLABORATION
By Ron West

Collaboration - from the Latin root collaborare meaning "to work together" - was the theme of the recent SSRC Annual Fellows' Conference held 28 September - 3 October 2002 in Moscow, Russia. This contribution is intended not to merely reiterate the opening remarks of SSRC President Craig Calhoun but also to provoke further thinking on what it means to collaborate in the field and why it is a more likely environment for cooperation than academia.

Dr. Calhoun's remarks addressed the "why" of collaboration between scholars. Why is collaboration so difficult to realize in the social sciences when indications of joint work efforts are so readily manifest in the relationships of those who work in the natural and physical sciences? While the existence of laboratories, a shared work-space and shared equipment may provide part of the answer for why practitioners of the hard sciences seem to collaborate so freely, it does not explain why the prevalence of private sector collaboration also appears so much greater than in the social sciences.

Acknowledging that there is only a set of partial responses to the apparent differences between fields in posing the "why" of collaboration, Dr. Calhoun posited a general definition of what an optimal relationship between collaborators might look like - a joint venture of social scientists could include representation by persons from different disciplines or with different skill sets, who think clearly without rigorous divisions of labor and no formal infrastructure catalyzing the relationship. Collaboration, while no unicorn, is nonetheless both more difficult to observe and to achieve in the social sciences than it is among scientists from other fields and in the private sector. Dr. Calhoun concluded his presentation, appropriately one might presume, by setting forth the hurdles that social scientists must overcome in order to advance more equal and inclusive scholarly, collaborative structures.

One might argue that collaboration between scholars in the ivory tower and that which might take place in the field are two different brands entirely. In the field, the true laboratory of any social scientist, the impediments to research and practice should provide more than ample reason for collaborative ventures as well as a way to overcome long-standing barriers such as ethnicity or gender. For those who have spent more than a few weeks in a conflict or post-conflict zone, examples abound of cooperation, if not downright collaboration, between representatives from sectors with vastly different taskings. Simply stated, hardship breeds collaboration; or, to adapt a phrase employed by Robert Putnam, it's more likely you'll be "bowling" with others in a conflict zone than at home.

But what can scholars do to prepare themselves for the field where the petty jealousies and ardent competition over intellectual property that mark some academic departments is less important than staying alive or realizing project goals? In the field, it is not difficult to find outright competition or even back-biting among actors; the main difference is that the field is not an office and difficult conditions often serve to mitigate such problems either through attrition, resolution or self-interested abnegation.

When field collaboration does occur, and it does rather frequently, it is not usually the seamless cooperation one might expect from military or police units, members of which train together for countless hours. Differences in training and background experience would seem to contravene the definition of an optimal working relationship between collaborators from the social sciences thereby imposing limits on the cooperation. To return to the example of military and police, all unit members endure the exact same training conditions. Though one might gain expertise in a different skill than a teammate, survival of the unit dictates that all members have the same general background, having passed all of the same tests under the same conditions. Such factors dramatically improve the likelihood of high quality performance of unit members under duress and the likelihood of survival. An incumbent part of the training, in addition to being an indirect result of relying so heavily on others, is an increased capacity for inter-group communication, which could be regarded as the cornerstone of any collaborative venture.

Academia simply does not prepare scholars for the field where good collaboration may not be a matter of luxury but one of necessity. Undergoing a paramilitary training regimen probably would not alleviate the problem and would be rightly resisted by academics of all stripes. There simply is no easy way around the fact that it may be necessary and even worthwhile to collaborate with others from completely different backgrounds, engaged in totally different tasks with widely different incentives and objectives. While it may be more difficult for some of us than for others, a safe policy is to regard the knowledge of others, who have been living and working in the research environment, as infinitely greater than yours until proven otherwise. Open communication with counterparts from other fields, who may have more experience in the local environment than you, as well as with locals, who definitely know more about their environment than you, is absolutely essential both for successful implementation of a research project and for safety. Even advanced knowledge of a place, subjects or dynamics of intra-group interaction probably does not offer the same insights someone else may have acquired after direct exposure for an extended period of time.

This brings us back to the subject of communication. Direct, face-to-face communication with possible collaborators should be a critical part of the initial phases of project implementation. While one may choose to work only with other social scientists in managing a project, trained local assistants can be quite useful for conducting interviews, gathering survey data and for performing many other tasks. A visit to the local warlord (perhaps not somebody you would want to list as a collaborator) or a discussion with police or military commanders could be a way of simultaneously expressing respect, acquiring security and obtaining a glimpse of how power is distributed within a particular locality or region. In some instances, there may be other international actors able to provide security, but it never hurts to be attuned to local processes.

In concluding, the importance of quality and direct communications with other actors in the field cannot be overstated. Such communication is crucial to expanding the definition of collaboration on both a micro and macro level. In a field environment, particularly an environment that contains risk, collaboration should mean more than just an anthropologist and a political scientist from two different countries implementing one research project. It should also, when feasible, mean that the two social scientists engage locals in project implementation. On a macro level, moreover, there is a real need to encourage and promote collaboration between social science and other sectors. In addition to increasing a body of knowledge that academics and even the public might find useful, there are virtually a limitless number of institutions and actors that might benefit from targeted research, many of them engaged in some way with fashioning public policy. If the barriers to collaboration are high, there is a proportionate amount of good that may accrue in surmounting those obstacles.