Community Inclusion

The challenges that our society is facing, are urgent and complex and demand much more from science than objective knowledge and technological inventiveness. Transdisciplinary research into specific sustainability issues brings together a multitude of voices and perspectives to develop solutions that enjoy the broadest possible support. But despite the obviousness of the idea, transdisciplinarity does not work automatically. How do you collaborate across disciplinary, social and cultural differences? How do you create an integrated perspective when everyone has their own view, and therefore their own grasp, of things? 

In this lunchtalk, Prof. Judith McKenzie will reflect on the involvement of “the community” in transdisciplinary research, and how this can contribute to community engagement. The concept of human rights forms an important foundation for the view that research should aim to involve citizens in issues that affect their lives. But involvement in knowledge production is not self-evident, and certainly not for people with complex support needs. This is not only about overcoming communication barriers, but also about recognising the state of “inevitable dependence”. The African philosophy of Ubuntu recognises the collective agency of people and sees individual participation as inextricably linked to the individual's place in the community. This raises the essential question of what role the community can or should play in knowledge production on complex sustainability issues, and how people with complex support needs can also be involved in this. In this presentation, Judith McKenzie will share some ideas about what community inclusion in research could entail. She draws on the Ubuntu worldview with regard to “community inclusion” and on a feminist ethics of care with regard to “inclusion in the community”.