Academia and collaborative researchThere are certain conditions that need to be in place for collaboration to realize the potential described above. In this section I explore some of them. The first condition would imply the acceptance, or better yet, the invitation, of a variety of viewpoints into academic arenas. I start by describing two works that depict excluded viewpoints. I then explore what researchers have described as ways academic practices and structures challenge collaborative practices in order to represent the struggle that entails for academically based researchers to engage in collaborative research. By pointing at and describing some of the challenges, this section also illustrates some of the changes that would need to occur for academia to be seen as supporting collaborative research. Excluded standpointsRauna Kuokkanen (forthcoming) describes the academy as characterized by "epistemic ignorance" in that academic practices exclude epistemic and intellectual traditions that are not dominant. One example of these excluded epistemes are indigenous ways of knowing. Kuokannen (forthcoming) defines an episteme as a taken for granted lens through which we see the world. In my understanding, the development of a standpoint would include a reflection on one's episteme and the conditions under which this episteme has developed and is sustained. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) claims that traditional understandings of research privilege one way of knowing over others that are not recognized as generating valid knowledge. In her book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples, research is presented as a western colonizing tool. Through this lens, research is a cultural construct situated within a historical, political and cultural context and not a neutral tool.
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