Scientific knowledge, social stakes and public action

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• Scientific knowledge, social stakes and public
  action
• Mahaman Tidjani Alou
• LASDEL, Niamey

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Meanings

• 1. Development as field of anthropology studies.
  This orientation is a very general issue. There
  is debates about legitimity of anthropology to
  study development. The problem is now solve.

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Meanings

• 2. Anthropology as tools to improve policies of
  development. I will talk about this issue in my
  presentation.

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Main issues

• 1. This contribution adds to an already old
  debate on the difficulties related to the
  production of knowledge about social stakes and
  the obstacles induced by the application of the
  results of scientific research in the public
  sphere of activity. 
• 2. We will therefore question the institutional
  conditions of the production and use of research
  articulated with public action and on the
  concepts used and their relevance.

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Main issues

• This brings us directly to the heart of certain
  well-known discussions in the sociology of
  knowledge, which can, in many regards, be helpful
  in reflecting on the future of research in its
  multiple linkages to action.

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Main issues

• This reflection is resolutely anchored in
  Sub-Saharan Africa which has been for us an
  incomparable field of investigation.
• Universities and research centres constitute
  fertile sites of observation. How did
  universities and research centres emerge in the
  institutional spaces of the African countries?
  What types of knowledge have they been able to
  produce? What is the status of this knowledge in
  African countries? Do they influence the public
  action?

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Concerning public action

• It regards in general the implementation of
  public policies, either by the action of the
  State or by that of private organizations.
• It s possible to consider the policies of
  development like a public implemented by state or
  other organisations

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Some questions about our topic

• What are the sources based on which the
  constitutive elements of public action are
  formulated? What is the role of scientific
  knowledge in the decision-making process of
  public organizations? In other words, is
  scientific knowledge necessary to public action
  in the implementation of development policies?
  What type of knowledge does a decision maker, a
  public or a community organization need in order
  to act? How is this knowledge used in the process
  of production of public action?

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Some questions about our topic

• These are questions at the heart of our subject,
  which implies, above all, that public action is
  oriented in the direction of social change in
  societies undergoing constant transformation.
• In African countries, the implementation of
  development policies is an important part of
  public action. We know that these policies have a
  broad spectrum of mobilization. including not
  only official actors but also their external
  partners who, at various levels, participate in
  public action.

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Knowledge and the structuring of the field of
scientific knowledge

• Plurality of the forms of knowledge available in
  anthropology
• General work
• Results of research
• Social science Expertise

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Knowledge and the structuring of the field of
scientific knowledge

• What are their relationships to public action?
• In this regard, it is easy to note that each type
  of knowledge determines a specific field of
  predilection and a particular configuration of
  cognitive interests in connection with reality.

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Knowledge and the structuring of the field of
scientific knowledge

• The development of expertise emerged to the
  detriment of social science research, since both
  are produced by the same persons.
• These dynamic should not veil the fact that a
  real increase in knowledge on African societies
  has occurred
• However, this proliferation should in turn
  obscures certain structural features of the
  knowledge produced in the universe currently
  dominated by expertise which has developed
  considerably to the detriment of research.

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The Implications for Public Action

• A point of view from LASDEL experiences in dialog
  with projects, donors or minitries
• An action to development an independant knowlede
  in the development work
• Three points will be develop

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The Implications for Public Action

• 1. Research on social stakes the pathway into
  action
• The question of action arises as soon as the
  researcher orients his/her work in the direction
  of subjects related to social stakes, for
  example, educational policies, the management of
  water in villages, access to health, etc.
  However, the production of knowledge on subjects
  of this type is no easy matter. Three obstacles
  can be identified

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The Implications for Public Action

• Reticence and resistance
• One of its most ordinary manifestations takes the
  form of recurring requests for administrative
  authorization. The actors subjected to enquiry at
  this level always feel the need for an
  administrative protection authorizing them to
  speak to researchers. Nobody wants to be the
  author of information that is denunciatory or
  critical.
• Problems arise concerning the reliability of the
  data collected in the context of this type of
  interaction.

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The Implications for Public Action

• Field policy has exigencies barring which it
  becomes difficult to produce reliable knowledge.
  The enquirer is therefore obliged to engage in a
  more or less prolonged preparatory work allowing
  familiarity and creating ties of complicity with
  the field (Lenoir 1996). This is a long and
  laborious task that the current officials
  executing the financing of research find it hard
  to integrate in their program of financing, which
  are not adapted to the classic scientific
  approach.

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The Implications for Public Action

• The weight of morals and sanction
• The problem is about the norms of reference of
  the researcher and inquirers.
• How to depart from moral judgments or police
  methods when the research task relates to
  subjects as difficult to how to treat corruption?
  How to collect actors representations and logics
  when the subjects to be treated tend to invite
  more moral judgments (this is good this is bad)
  or police attitudes (hes a crook).
• Morals or sanction are never absent from the
  mindset of the researcher who must distance
  him/herself from these in order to engage in a
  process of production of scientific knowledge

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The Implications for Public Action

• Time and production of scientific knowledge
• Beyond the work of enquiry, the processing of
  results demands adequate frameworks of
  interpretation and analysis if the objective is
  to produce a scientific knowledge that is
  reliable and usable. None of these operations is
  automatic. They all evolve within an intellectual
  universe in which scientific work is always
  slowly elaborated. This is to say that the
  long-term is a factor favourable to the
  production of scientific knowledge.

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The Implications for Public Action

• 2. Effects of the results of research on action
• Three aspects must be taken in account
• The result of research and public debates
• It is clear that the results of research when
  diffused have an unquestionable influence on
  public debate. They nourish debate topics and
  conference themes. They are adapted by the media
  and made use of in the elaboration of new
  programmes. They are used by consultants in their
  expertise

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The Implications for Public Action

• Results of research and mediation
• The researcher intervenes in a milieu that he/she
  knows only through research. Hence he/she has no
  control over the milieu.

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The Implications for Public Action

• Results of research and appropriation of
  knowledge
• The researcher is contented to produce results
  which are then placed at the disposal of those
  concerned. In this case, research permits the
  production of knowledges that are completely
  appropriated by commissioners. This raises the
  question of the responsibility of the researcher
  since the knowledge he/she produces is liable to
  have a determinant influence on action.

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The Implications for Public Action

• 3. The difficult dialog with action two factors
• The conversion of the researchers as consultants
  and the long-term disappearance of the research
  profession
• Those who commission research always expect
  researchers to provide them with recommendations
  based on the diagnoses they elaborate. To be
  precise, they often expect researchers to become
  consultants at their disposal.

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The Implications for Public Action

• Consequently, many researchers end up as experts,
  to the detriment of their initial profession.
  Ultimately, it is the very possibility of
  dialogue between research and action which
  disappears, due to a lack of researchers, since
  the transfusion occurs only one direction.

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The Implications for Public Action

• The dialog of deaf
• The difficulty in establishing durable links
  between research and action leads to a dialogue
  of the deaf. The dissatisfaction of those who
  commission research leads them to disqualify
  research because, according to them, the
  researchers do not propose anything they are
  contented to diagnose without making
  recommendations for action.

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The Implications for Public Action

• The researcher has the option of converting
  himself/herself into a consultant-developer. In
  this case, he/she moves progressively away from
  his/her initial profession as a researcher.
• Otherwise, he/she might make the choice of a
  complete break with the possibility of dialogue
  with action and become, in a way, a provider of
  data, while taking part in the scientific debates
  in his/her disciplinary field.

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The Implications for Public Action

• Hence the idea of the missing link advanced by
  Jean Pierre Olivier de Sardan (2004) or of the
  social mediator that Bako Arifari attempts to
  construct, based on experiences in fieldwork
  enquiry on health carried out in Benin (2007).

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Conclusion

• Action and research constitute a dynamic process,
  in constant construction. It is therefore a
  question of finding the relevant articulation
  susceptible of making this dialogue possible.
• the question is not a simple one. It opens new
  prospects which would have to be explored in
  order to make this articulation viable.