Understanding the Emergence of a Hybrid Knowledge Production Discourse: The Case of the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) Drought Tolerant Rice Research in India

• In Event: TRANS-disciplinary Research Through STS Practice

Abstract

The Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) is an international platform for agrarian knowledge production for a complex scientific problem, namely, Drought. The GCP ushered in a new form of knowledge production that reconciles both the upstream laboratorial research and its downstream delivery at the farmer's field. This paper aims at understanding the knowledge production process of the GCP by taking insights from the two paradigms of knowledge-production discourse (Mode 1 and Mode 2), as well as by employing insights from agrarian knowledge production discourses (such as linear and systems paradigms). More precisely, it explores the following three research questions: how three core concepts such as research partnership, transdisciplinary orientation and inclusion of end-user in research and validation manifested within the knowledge production process of the GCP drought-tolerant rice research; what type of knowledge production emerged within the GCP drought-tolerant rice research; and what implications can be discerned for agricultural research and development. Through a qualitative case study method, this paper explores empirically the case of GCP drought tolerant rice research in the Indian context to elucidate the knowledge production process of GCP to sketch a theoretical as well as a practical position on the agrarian knowledge production discourse. This paper argues that a hybrid knowledge production discourse has emerged within the GCP rice research that has elements from Mode 1 and linear paradigms as well as Mode 2 and systems paradigms. Further, this paper also illustrates the implications of such hybrid knowledge production discourse for agricultural research and development.

Author

• Soutrik Basu, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata