Multi-track ETTDR processes: summary

As mentioned above, the multi-track approach for conducting ETTDR processes in different kinds of real-life contexts in the complex domain has been one of the key emergent outcomes of the ETTDR approach – in the sense that it was not intentionally planned for, or even anticipated, but rather that it was a response in the moment to the situation on the ground in 2011 that there were no formal legitimized stakeholders in the emerging Enkanini informal settlement with whom to start the TDCS. In this regard, the discovery of the literature on multi- track diplomacy and peace-building was very useful, since it enabled the research team to figure out the next possible steps of the research process in the fluid social context of the Enkanini informal settlement. This happened at two levels simultaneously: (a) at the conceptual / theoretical level, imagining and situating the ensuing ETTDR process as a second track type of a process – not in opposition to formal stake-holder driven processes, but rather as parallel – yet very different – to the latter, and (b) at the strategic level, learning from the onset to becoming methodologically agile in the sense of learning to use different aspects of mono-, inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches, whilst keeping the focus on the next possible steps in terms of co-designing and constructing the three small-scale safe-to-fail social change probes, and only then, when facing the consequences (peoples’ responses and reactions) to the latter projects, figuring out the next steps forward.

The purpose of being methodologically agile within each of the three multi-track ETTDR processes is to figure out how to contribute to social change in the actual real-life contexts in which such research processes are embedded. In practice this remains a real challenge – given the predisposition of explicitly transformative research processes to become very much entangled with the actual social change processes they set out to initiate. However, when this happens, the research process runs the risk of losing its research focus and to avert this danger it is important not to treat them as identical processes.

Key in this regard, of not treating them as one and the same, is the strategic understanding of knowing when, where and how to manage the so-called entry and exit points for transformative research processes – both in terms of starting and stepping aside (but not away) from the social change process. Yet in initiating the informal Track 2-type process in the Enkanini informal settlement, it was for all practical purposes impossible to separate the two processes. The main reason for this was that the day-to-day activities of the people involved (researchers

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and co-researchers) became inseparably intertwined. And when this happens it may very well lead to some role confusion in terms of when and how to perform the three mentioned roles of reflexive scientist / researcher, change agent / activist, and intermediary / facilitator (Pohl et al., 2010). Interestingly though, allowing the conflating of the different roles may very well produce the direct opposite position of over-structuring the research process – to the extent that both researchers and social actors are merely required to passively go through the motions of acting out some pre-determined roles – conducted, controlled and performed very much according to the rules and lines of a pre-scripted play performed on stage, as it were, for some attentive audiences (Hajer, 2005).

Either way, allowing the roles to become too entangled, on the one hand, or too impassive, on the other hand, it is bound to produce some negative effects not only on the way (process) transformative knowledge is being co-produced, but also the transformative knowledge per se (outputs / outcomes). It therefore remains critically important to treat – in both theory and practice – the research and social change processes as two distinct processes – but always in ways that would acknowledge and work with dynamic non-linear feedback loops and the two-way / mutual impacting on and transforming of each other. However, in the Enkanini case, the time for actually stepping aside from (but not completely away from) the social change process arrived when it became increasingly clear to the research team that this process had gained sufficient traction and momentum of its own in order to be transformed into an operationally and financially self-sufficient entrepreneurial business opportunity – and to be managed henceforth by some of the co-researchers who have become empowered to do so during the research process.

In concluding this section, it is important to acknowledge that there are multiple ways (processes) in which to navigate science-with-society relationships in the context of the complex domain. In this chapter at least three possible processes have been discussed, with specific reference to Track 2 types of processes dealing with informal processes. The key lesson that has been learnt from the practical research experiences in the Enkanini TDCS (since 2011) is that when faced with a particular set of circumstances, it is critically important to be methodologically agile, in the sense of being able to co-design the research process as it unfolds – including iteratively and dynamically (re)working the epistemic objects and (transformative) social outcomes produced by the emerging research process – rather than approaching the latter with too many fixed, pre-determined ideas, practices, methods etc. The particular set of circumstances faced by the research team in the Enkanini case was the absence of formal ‘legitimated’ stakeholders with whom to engage in setting up and conducting the research process, and hence the research team was compelled to adopt an emergent

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research design approach from the onset. Still, in other situations with different sets of circumstances there will be very different challenges to face, but the need for methodological agility – especially real-time learning and figuring out different ways of co-designing the emerging research process – will remain. Needless to say that how all of this happens in practice may differ from context to context, but what is crucial in this is sharing the learning63 and feeding it (the learning) back into initiating and conducting collaborative science-with- society processes in the context of the Anthropocene today.