Abstract
Collaborative research practices in the field of plant genetic resources must follow the principles of fairness and equity as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). In this context the concepts of fairness and equity generally refer to the substantive and procedural dimensions associated with sharing the benefits of this research. But neither term is clearly defined by these international treaties, and the meanings attributed to the concepts vary among different societies. This paper looks at the question of how to account for the diversity among value systems when conducting research that implicates diverse stakeholders and respects the requirements of fairness and equity. We incorporated an auto-ethnography method developed as part of a multi-stakeholder network involved in research projects on plant genetic resources in West Africa. A theatrical device was used as a framework for testing the principles of fairness and equity, helping us to collectively identify feelings of injustice, and explore the conditions for making collaborative research practices more ethical in ways that respect the perspectives of different stakeholders. In an environment of extensive political and socio-cognitive inequality, this approach makes it possible to explain the criteria relating to interactional justice and expectations in terms of socio-political and socio-emotional benefits. It also invites us to consider the principles of fairness and equity in a framework of ethical competence that goes beyond international directives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In other words, extrinsic to the subject who only needs to use predefined rules and apply them to the situation through a deductive and decontextualized process of analysis.
For a description of the advantages and limitations of using applied theatre, according to participation levels in the theatrical approach and duration of the process, see Heras and Tabara (2014).
Dewey proposes a model of five stages: (i) awareness of the problem, (ii) understanding its construction, (iii) suggestions for possible solutions, (iv) examination of the suggestions and their consequences, (v) testing the hypotheses.
Test is the English translation of épreuve. In the Francophone world, indeed, the term épreuve has a more complex meaning, referring also to “trial”, “ordeal”, and “proof”.
Fair in the sense here of being "right", morally and ethically correct in the situation and in the response to the situation.
Defining the script opened the discussion to subjects that are rarely, if ever, broached in the framework of international research partnerships. International exchanges and the reception of researchers are governed by conventions at the scale of the research institutes, that never take into account the divergence in mandated authority that exists among the different institutes.
When only a small group defines the initial script, it is important to evaluate the effect of the framing of the play on the debates. The appropriateness of the situations is crucial. In our case, this was possible because of the long-standing collaboration between the different stakeholders. Moreover, during the forums, the spectators have had the possibility to modify the script of the play by adding scenes or characters that they feel are missing from the situations represented.
CBD, Mo’otz Kutal Voluntary Guidelines for the Developments of Mechanisms, Legislation or Other Appropriate Initiatives to Ensure the ‘Prior and Informed Consent’, ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’ or ‘Approval and Involvement’, Depending on National Circumstances, of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities for Accessing their Knowledge, Innovations and Practices Relevant for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity, and for Reporting and Preventing Unlawful Appropriation of Traditional Knowledge, CBD decision XIII/18 (2016), https://www.cbd.int/decisions/cop/13/18/6
Research project of the Agropolis Foundation “Adaptive Governance for Coexistence of Crop Diversity Management Strategies” (CoEx) (ANR-10-LABX-001–01).
Abbreviations
- ITPGRFA:
-
International treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture
- NP:
-
Nagoya protocol
- CBD:
-
Convention on biological diversity
- PIC:
-
Prior informed consent
- ABS:
-
Access and benefit sharing
- FT:
-
Forum theater
- ASPSP:
-
Association Sénégalaise de Producteurs de Semences Paysannes (Senegalese association of peasant seed producers
References
Aiguiers, G., and J.-P. Cobbaut. 2016. Le tournant pragmatique de l’éthique en santé : enjeux et perspectives pour la formation. Journal International de Bioethique et d'ethique des Sciences 27 (1): 17–40.
Ando, N., and S. Matsuda. 2010. How employees see their roles: The effect of interactional justice and gender. Journal of Service Science and Management 3: 281–286.
Banks, M. 2001. Visual methods in social research. London, UK: Sage.
Barling, J., and M. Phillips. 1993. Interactional, formal, and distributive justice in the workplace: An exploratory study. The Journal of Psychology Interdisciplinary and Applied 127 (6): 649–656.
Barthe, Y., D. de Blic, J.-P. Heurtin, É. Lagneau, C. Lemieux, D. Linhardt, C. Moreau de Bellaing, C. Rémy, and D. Trom. 2013. Pragmatic sociology : A user's guide. Politix 103 (3): 175–204.
Bies, R.J. 2005. Are procedural justice and interactional justice conceptually distinct? In Handbook of organizational justice, ed. J. Greenberg and J.A. Colquitt, 85–112. Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Bies, R.J. 1987. The predicament of injustice: The management of moral outrage. Research in Organizational Behavior 9: 289–319.
Bies, R.J., and J.S. Moag. 1986. Interactional justice: communication criteria of fairness. Research on Negotiation in Organizations 1: 43–55.
Boal, A. 1985. Theatre of the oppressed. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group.
Boltanski, L. 2009. De la critique. Précis de sociologie de l’émancipation. Paris: Gallimard NRF Essais.
Boltanski, L., and E. Chiapello. 2007. The new spirit of capitalism. London, UK: Verso Books.
Boltanski, L., and L. Thevenot. 2006. On justification: Economies of worth. NJ, Princeton University Press: Princeton.
Bréviglieri, M., and J. Stavo-Debauge. 1999. Le geste pragmatique de la sociologie française. Antropolítica 7: 7–22.
Byström, M., P. Einarsson, and G. A. Nycander. 1999. Fair and equitable. sharing the benefits from use of genetic resources and traditional knowledge. Technical Report, ed. Swedish Scientific Council on Biological Diversity. Stockholm.
Cheyns, E. 2014. Making “minority voices” heard in transnational roundtables: the role of local NGOs in reintroducing justice and attachments. Agriculture and Human Values 31: 439–453.
Colleyn, J-P. 2011. De l’anthropologie visuelle. L’HOMME no 198 and 199.
Collie, T., G. Bradley, and B.A. Sparks. 2002. Fair process revisited: differential effects of interactional and procedural justice in the presence of social comparison information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38: 545–555.
Conrad, D. 2004. Exploring risky youth experiences: popular theatre as a participatory, performative research method. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 3 (1): 12–25.
Dai, L., and H. Xie. 2016. Review and prospect on interactional justice. Open Journal of Social Sciences 4: 55–61.
De Jonge, B. 2011. What is fair and equitable benefit-sharing? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 24 (2): 127–146.
Denis, B. 2009. Acting up: Theater of the oppressed as critical ethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8 (2): 65–96.
Dewey, J. 1938. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.
Ela, J.-M. 2007. Les Cultures africaines dans le champ de la rationalité scientifique. Paris, FR: L’Harmattan.
Engels, J.M.M., H. Dempewolf, and V. Hensons-Appollonio. 2011. Ethical considerations in agrobiodiversity research, collecting, and use. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 24 (2): 107–126.
Fall, M.A. 2011. Décoloniser les sciences sociales en Afrique. Journal des Anthropologues 124 (125): 313–330.
Graddy, G. 2013. Regarding biocultural heritage: In situ political ecology of agricultural biodiversity in the Peruvian Andes. Agriculture and Human Values 30 (4): 587–604.
Greenberg, J. 1993. Stealing in the name of justice: Informational and interpersonal moderators of theft reactions to underpayment inequity. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 54: 81–103.
Hennion, A. 2017. Attachments, you say? How a concept collectively emerges in one research group. Journal of Cultural Economy 10 (1): 112–121.
Heras, M., and J.D. Tabara. 2014. Let’s play transformations! performative methods for sustainability. Sustainability Science 9: 379–398.
Latour, B. 1988. The pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Lavery, J.V., and C. IJsselmuiden. 2018. The research fairness initiative: Filling a critical gap in global research ethics. Gates Open Research 2: 58–68.
Leach, M., and I. Scoones. 2006. The slow race. London, UK: DEMOS.
Ly, B. 1966. L’honneur et les valeurs morales dans les sociétés ouolof et toucouleur du Sénégal. Thèse de doctorat: Paris, Université de Paris I.
Marchegiani, P., E. Morgera, and L. Parks. 2020. Indigenous peoples’ rights to natural resources in Argentina: the challenges of impact assessment, consent and fair and equitable benefit-sharing in cases of lithium mining. The International Journal of Human Rights 24 (2–3): 224–240.
Morgera, E., L. Kramer, and E. Orlando, eds. 2018. Fair and equitable benefit-sharing. In: Principles of Environmental Law. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
Müller, B., C. Pasqualino, and A. Schneider. 2017. Le terrain comme mise en scène. Lyon, FR: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.
O’Faircheallaigh, C. 1998. Resource development and inequality in indigenous societies. World Development 26 (3): 381–394.
Parks, L. 2018. Challenging power from the bottom up? Community protocols, benefit-sharing, and the challenge of dominant discourses. Geoforum 88: 87–95.
Richard-Ferroudji, A. 2011. Limites du modèle délibératif : Composer avec différents formats de participation. Politix 4 (96): 161–181.
Thévenot, L. 2001. Pragmatic regimes governing the engagement with the world. In The practice turn in contemporary theory, ed. K. Knorr-Cetina, T. Schatzki, and V.S. Eike, 56–73. London, UK: Routledge.
Tyler, T.R., and R.J. Bies. 1990. Beyond formal procedures: The interpersonal context of procedural justice. In Applied social psychology and organizational settings, ed. J.S. Carroll, 77–98. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Van der Velden, M. 2009. Design for a common world: On ethical agency and cognitive justice. Ethics and Information Technology 11 (1): 35–47.
Vermeylen, S. 2007. Contextualizing “fair” and “equitable”: The San's reflections on the hoodia benefit-sharing agreement. Local Environment 12 (4): 423–436.
Visvanathan, S. 2005. Knowledge, justice and democracy. In Science and citizens: Globalization and the challenge of engagement, ed. M. Leach and I. Scoones, 83–94. London, UK: Zed Books.
Wagué, C. 2012. La fabrique d’un savoir scientifique sur sa communauté : témoignage d’une relation au terrain. In L’Afrique des savoirs au Sud du Sahara (XVI-XXI siècle) – Acteurs, supports, pratiques, ed. D. Gary-Tounkara and D. Nativel, 313–331. Paris, FR: Karthala.
Whiteman, G., and K. Mamen. 2002. Examining justice and conflict between mining companies and indigenous peoples: Cerro Colorado and the Ngabe-Bugle. Journal of Business and Management 8 (3): 293–310.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge Claire Billot and Diegane Diouf for their contributions to the construction of the play. The involvement of all the actors of the Kaddu Yaraax theater company contributed to the quality of the collective debates. We also thank the organizers of farmers' seed fairs, such as the ASPSP (Association Sénégalaise de Semences Paysannes), who have made it possible to involve a wide variety of stakeholders in the forums. We would like to thank all the participants in the various forum theater performances, that made it possible to carry out a collective analysis on collaborative research practices in the field of plant genetic resources. This work has benefited from the support of the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP/PPAAO 2A) through the Fonio project (CERA58ID06 SE), the CERAO projects (ANR-13-AGRO-0002), and the CoEx project that was publicly funded through ANR (the French National Research Agency) under the “Investissements d’avenir” programme with the reference ANR-10-LABX-001–01 Labex Agro and coordinated by Agropolis Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jankowski, F., Louafi, S., Kane, N.A. et al. From texts to enacting practices: defining fair and equitable research principles for plant genetic resources in West Africa. Agric Hum Values 37, 1083–1094 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10039-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10039-3