Situated expertise in integration and implementation processes in Latin America

Abstract

Several environmental, political, social and institutional factors have resulted in the heterogeneous and adaptive integration of knowledge, actors and methodologies in Latin America. Despite poor recognition and even a lack of research conditions, experiences involving different societal actors and types of collaboration have developed across the region. These experiences form a collection of integration and implementation processes not yet fully systematised in a way that serves other cases. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of how expertise is defined in integration and implementation processes in Latin America. To re-signify collaborative practices in the region, a critical perspective is applied, and a heuristic framework is built that comprehends the ‘situated’ and relational dimensions of expertise. This framework is tested to study five cases from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay related to territorial planning, gender and knowledge, coastal management and the provision of climate services. These concepts are compared on the basis of the three dimensions comprising the framework—context, actors and methods —and the intersections among them. Applying a qualitative methodology and auto-ethnography, we identified the main features of situated expertise in Latin America, that is, engaging marginalised societal actors, fostering greater participation, acknowledging power imbalances, managing conflicts and contradicting perspectives, and directing an ethical-political engagement in the research process. As a result, situated expertise encompasses not only the situatedness of practices and processes, but also their political (and potentially transformative) dimensions in tracing power imbalances. This paper then argues that this situated aspect of expertise is relevant for conducting more context-sensitive integration and implementation processes in Latin America, thus contributing to the ethical-political dimension on how expertise is defined, embodied and enacted in vulnerable contexts.