What is accentuated from my research is the manifestation of another epistemic culture of development in the Mekong Delta. Knowledge-based interaction among social actors in knowledge diffusion in the Mekong Delta is key to achieving multiple goals, such as successful knowledge transfer, actionable knowledge generation, use of new knowledge diffusion approaches, structural change of knowledge institutions, sustainable development of agriculture and rural communities, or even development of learning organisations or a learning society. The essence of interaction among actors is to create the structural transformation of knowledge practices, another epistemic culture of development that facilitates
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and promotes the sustainability of the rural Mekong Delta. This section highlights the conditions, features, and development status of another epistemic culture of development in the Mekong Delta.
Three important conditions that extol interactions among actors across formal systems and organisations, on which another epistemic culture of development is nourished, include the following: interactive environment, new identity of actors, and hybridity of knowledge work organisations. The interactive environment is fomented by the need of collaborative and transboundary research and development efforts in a more complex, uncertain, and regionally integrated context. Further, the development of mass media and communication technology has aided dialogical forums, such as the Farmer’s Bridge television program or e-consultations between researchers and farmers. And importantly, the river and water characteristics of Mekong Delta residents with wide networks of brotherhood and friendship often cause the expert-farmer distance to blur. Such spaces in which extensionists and researchers sit drinking wine with farmers in an open backyard turn out to be important knowledge exchange moments that can change the whole lives of participating farmers. Informalisation or relativisation of relationships between knowledge and development professionals is quite distinctive to the delta’s culture, which increases knowledge interaction among groups from different professions (Chapter Four). Many professionals themselves even pursue a “water and fish” relationship with farmers.
The second condition is the growth of actors with a new identity through knowledge engagement with rural communities. For example, a group of grassroots extensionists who committed themselves to knowledge-based extension work has distinguished themselves from the large majority of staff who work as a State cadre. The expansion of farmer’s friend forces with three co-principles, “Drs Rice” and citizen scholars (Hall 2003) epitomises a new group of community-attached knowledge professionals.
Conspicuously, a number of case studies in this research have shown that barefoot experts, advanced farmers, and local knowledge pioneers are forming a new group that has shifted from agricultural production alone towards a new identity in which they function in the role of knowledge brokers and generators. They work with researchers to localise and diffuse new knowledge and technology, and at the same time they produce new knowledge based on their practice with their local fellows. Unquestionably, the new identity as discussed also represents hybridised forms of professions, in which actors take and add the new roles of the others.
Third, there is also another mode of hybridity that emerges from cross-boundary interaction among actors:
hybridised organisations. Some examples include private company’s research institutes or bio-fertiliser enterprises that are formed and managed by ex-academics. Agrochemical stores or seed farms of agronomists can provide agricultural inputs as well as knowledge exchange at the village level.
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Under these conditions another epistemic culture of development has emerged in the contemporary development context of the Mekong Delta. Many of this culture’s practices are not new; for example, before the national reunification in 1975, farmers such as Mr. V.V.C from Tien Giang worked with researchers to breed pest-resistant rice varieties (Chapter Four). Farmers have been inventing production tools since the early days of the delta exploration (Son Nam 2004). However, new dimensions have been constructed and reconstructed to form another epistemic culture of development characterised by three main elements: inclusionality, co-creation, and reflexivity.
Inclusionality76 promotes the fluid boundary logic view of space as “openness,” “infinite softness,” and
“cannot be cut,” which are all dynamic relational influences and coevolutionary processes between nature and humans, structure and environment, community and neighbourhood, individuals and groups, and self and otherness (Rayner 1997; 2004; 2011). Inclusionality allows for the conceptualisation and practice of a duality instead of polarisation of development as well as knowledge development in the Mekong Delta.
The Mekong Delta’s river and water civilisation, which is expressive of its own knowing and behaviour to the nature and life organisation within the delta’s distinctively energetic context, is not just a past experience, and it needs to be radically learnt and relearnt in any “modern” development engineering projects in the Mekong Delta. The “I know better” fence that divides actors into the binarism of development experts-beneficiaries, knowledge source-passive receivers, and agencies with interest and knowledge work clashes is eliminated because every actor has some “good” knowledge to share, and over time interactive knowledge flows occur at any moment between the systems. The farming community is adding a pillar to support the state-university-industry triple helix. Interactive and generative global-local, science-everyday and source-recipient knowledge(s) dualities are nourished. The “second order”
knowledge diffusion management integrates knowledge and non-knowledge, and formal and informal knowledge flows into interactions of knowledge systems.
Co-creation relates to the active and creative participation of actors in development and knowledge development construction. Co-creation is the manifestation of the cogency and potency of inclusionality.
Knowledge co-production can be formally performed in transdisciplinary research or everyday practice of collaborative informal grouping. It has to be built upon partnership. Co-creation needs a strategic approach in structuring and supervising complex change processes (Regeer and Bunders 2009) and
76 In Rayner’s (2004) definition, “‘inclusionality’ expresses the idea that space, far from passively surrounding and isolating discrete massy objects, is a vital, dynamic inclusion within, around and permeating natural form across all scales of organization, allowing diverse possibilities for movement and communication. This way of understanding natural form radically affects not only the way we interpret all kinds of irreversible dynamic processes, but also the fundamental meaning of ‘self’ as a complex identity comprising inner, outer and intermediary domains, rather than an independent, single-centerd entity” (Rayner 2004).
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constructing suitable boundary concepts, workable boundary objects, and conducive boundary settings77 (Mollinga 2010) posed by that inter- and trans-disciplinary research. In many researched cases, co-creation can be designed and embellished through resource reallocation or practice restructuring to explore and develop potentialities and to enable contexts of interaction. For example, appreciation of grassroots knowledge-based extensionists can foster a reflective learning culture as the core of structural change of the extension system. Radical innovation from within or Emergent Innovation is argued as a key in sustainable knowledge co-creation (Peschl and Fundneider 2008).
Reflexivity refers to reflexive management of mega-knowledge in creating new knowledge at various levels of learning. Reflexivity is a multifaceted concept involving questioning, reviewing, evaluating, debating, and adapting processes through which innovative behaviour outcomes are generated, which make it frequently discussed in organisational learning and innovation literature (MacCurtain et al. 2010). Reflexive self- regulation of organisations indicates the reproduction of the organisation is reflexively organised through meta-practices (Albrecht and Elisabeth 2003; Giddens 1984). At the individual level, reflexivity is defined as “the turning back of the experience of the individual upon himself [sic]”78 (Mead 1934, 134). Reflexivity is widely used as an epistemological analytic standpoint in scientific practice, such as Bourdieu’s conception of epistemic reflexivity (Maton 2003). Reflexivity requires a person to reflect on knowledge for development processes and to challenge pre-fixed assumptions and frameworks through double- and triple-loop learning. This research has presented a number of cases that grassroots extensionists, researchers, and farmers engage in reflective practice to complete their tasks and generate new knowledge.
Reflective learning has helped to sustain the operation and effectiveness of networks and communities of practice. What becomes important now is the concept that reflective learning and “second order”
knowledge diffusion management needs to be further advocated at the organisational and sector levels.
Reflexivity creates opportunities for enhancement of conceptual readiness and effective implementation of innovation in more complicated and uncertain contexts of development as well as enrichment of local imaginings that potentially reshape and transform global issues and regimes. The next section offers a case study to illustrate how local researchers’ reflections on their interaction with farming communities can
77 “(1) The development of suitable boundary concepts to think multidimensionality; (2) The construction of workable boundary objects to make assessments and take decisions in conditions of incomplete knowledge, uncertainty, complexity and non-congruent interests; and (3) The crafting of conducive boundary settings, that is, shaping the internal and external institutional arrangements of research in such a way that the first two can be achieved effectively” (Mollinga 2010, 2-3).
78 In Mead’s (1934, 134) own words, “it is by means of reflexiveness - the turning-back of the experience of the individual upon himself—that the whole social process is thus brought into the experiences of the individuals involved in it; it is by such means, which enable the individual to take the attitude of the other toward himself, that the individual is consciously to adjust himself to that process, and to modify the resultant of that process in any given social act in terms of his adjustment to it. Reflexiveness, then, is the essential condition, within the social process, for the development of mind.”
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concoct local conceptualisations on which sustainable agriculture actions can implemented, instead of forming a dependence on imported ideas.
The three principles of inclusionality, co-creation, and reflexivity define the essential characteristics of another epistemic culture emerging in the development context of the Mekong Delta. Another epistemic culture of development is the core to structural and systematic change of the knowledge system and thus achievement of sustainable agriculture and rural development of the region. Since change energies are at the grassroots level and informal interface, promotion of knowledge interaction from within and mainstreaming of inclusional and reflexive knowledge practices bear a particular significance. If another development is people-centerd (Nerfin 1977; Duong Phu Hiep 2008), reflexive (Jakimow 2008) development, then another epistemic culture on which we are discussing can be called another- development epistemic culture.