Research partnership over neocolonialism: Max Planck Society policy in Latin America

• In Event: Innovative North-South University Research in Latin America

Proposal

This presentation addresses a question of paramount importance for understanding North-South university research partnerships: how can collaborations that may be controlled by Northern scholars driving the scientific dynamics and agenda of shared knowledge production maximize aspects of egalitarian cooperation and minimize those of hierarchical neocolonial control? Theoretical approaches to North-South research partnerships have highlighted how they foster better capacity building (Baud, 2002; Merton, 1973; Zingerli 2010), but also come with embedded external cultural controls (Gaillard 1994; Mignolo, 2011). This paper examines the control question through an analysis of the German Max Planck Institutes’ policy instruments in Latin America. It illustrates how cooperation is promoted by well-defined programs, resources and experience in the North and by academically oriented government and university policies in the South, particularly in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. It also shows how these collaborations give Southern researchers greater access to a wider realm of international activity, but at the expense of operating within agendas that are still largely determined by Northern partners.

The Max Planck (MP) Society’s Latin American research cooperation is based in the North, through a programmatic regional office, two international cooperation facilities, two partner institutes and laboratories, and more than 20 research groups affiliated in some way with an institute. All of these configurations work to facilitate access to high-level training, equipment and experience for Latin American researchers in pursuit of the expansion of local knowledge. The MP initiatives support Baud’s (2002) claims that programmatic research agendas, represented in this case by a prestigious Northern scientific society, foster better capacity building opportunities than do unstructured individual initiatives.

On the Latin American side, public and private universities and institutes with varying profiles seek and develop joint international research collaborations based on policies that serve to advance their own scientific agendas. The utility of these activities--and the training and access they can provide--ultimately depends on the degree of national government support they receive as well. The universities currently carrying out MP research agendas are clearly visible in their countries because of a national research tradition that was instrumental in initially attracting interest from MP. The fact that these universities have attained success within such environments is also related to their own systems for institutionalization and organization of research. The MP case somewhat challenges the rhetoric that overestimates the capacity of university management to institutionalize research without having broader national frameworks in place that support long-term stability and scientific exploration. MP activity in Latin America highlights the importance of both the governmental support needed for large-scale international scientific cooperation and the internal organizational academic interactions that lie at the heart of each successful partnership.

A decolonial perspective would conclude that the research activities analyzed here are, indeed, situated within larger Northern research agendas, which can, subsequently lead to diminished influence of Southern peers with regard to the approaches and topics emphasized in the international collaboration. Although both partners benefit from the research agendas and the exchange of ideas in their different modalities of cooperation, often the main research focus is established by MP, the Northern researcher. Much of the MP collaboration funding also comes from the North, perpetuating a clear Southern research dependency relationship, as other scholars have discussed (Altbach 1998b; Crossley and Tikly 2004; Nguyen et al. 2009). Thus, the dynamics behind the research topics selected are more likely to be guided by the transfer of research cultures, paradigms and approaches, as neocolonial perspectives claim (Crossley 2012).

The MP Latin American collaborations examined show that not all forms of cultural exchange and research partnership fit neatly into a broad category of neocolonial-style relationships. MP activities in the region have been clearly beneficial to both parties and cannot be portrayed as a neocolonial abuse of emerging territories. Still, North-South imbalances do exist and continue to influence the structure and implementation of the research collaborations. Transformative evolutionary processes, especially those involving learning and knowledge production, will necessarily involve a number of grey areas regarding timing, strength of paradigm and power shifts. Analyses of cases like these aim to contribute positively to this evolution for both sides.

Authors

• Pedro Pineda, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana

• Bernhard T. Streitwieser, George Washington University