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Transdisciplinary innovation research inUzbekistan – one year of ‘following theinnovation’
Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Mehmood Ul Hassan,and Peter P. Mollinga
In 2008, a German-funded interdisciplinary research project in Khorezm province, Uzbekistan
initiated a participatory approach to innovation development and diffusion with local stake-
holders. Selected agricultural innovations, developed by the project and identified as ‘plausible
promises’, have since then been tested and modified accordingly by teams of researchers, local
farmers and water users. This paper discusses the challenges faced in this process of joint
experimentation and learning between researchers and local stakeholders whose behaviours,
attitudes and actions are heavily shaped by the local context, academic discipline and hierarch-
ical culture of knowledge governance.
KEY WORDS: Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS; Technology; Environment
Introduction
Research is good at developing component technologies, such as fertilizers and Bt-cotton.
But farmers have designed systems within which these component technologies must
provide a benefit. And all too often they do not because research has not bothered to
analyse the systems into which the component technologies must fit. (Roling 2009: 18)
The ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land and Water Resources Management in Uzbeki-
stan’ aims to devise restructuring concepts to ease environmental and socio-economic problems
in Khorezm province, Uzbekistan. The project intends to increase the economic efficiency of
agriculture, while improving the natural ecosystem and its services. To ensure the embedded-
ness of the developed innovation packages into the local agricultural and knowledge system,
five years into the project a transdisciplinary research component was added to, jointly with
local stakeholders, test, adapt and finalise institutional and technical innovations.
This paper seeks to elaborate and discuss the experiences collected so far in nurturing this
transdisciplinary process of joint experimentation and learning between researchers and local
stakeholders.1 The project is located in the Uzbek setting, shaped by strong hierarchical
structures, remnants of Soviet Russia, as well as traditional Muslim culture and the
effects of rapid agrarian processes of transformation leading to and allowing for change.
CDIP582085 Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, U.K. 5/31/2011
ISSN 0961-4524 Print/ISSN 1364-9213 Online 060825-14 # 2011 Taylor & Francis 825
Routledge Publishing DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2011.582085
Development in Practice, Volume 21, Number 6, August 2011
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The process design, its strengths and weaknesses are outlined and recommendations for
improvement discussed.
The ‘Follow the Innovation’ approach
Uzbekistan’s central government is strongly involved in agricultural decisions at farm, district,
regional and national scales Q1. State quota on cotton and wheat regulate farming practices, inputs
and outputs. Consequently the space within which farmers can innovate is relatively small and
the need for research ideas and innovations to be tested and refined jointly with farmers (and
other stakeholders) especially pressing. Within this relatively small ‘window of opportunity’
(Roling 2009 Q2) and despite the state plan with its impediments to innovation, farmers in
Khorezm have shown to be active experimenters, developing local knowledge to improve
their cotton and wheat yields. Wall (2008) states that ‘within these conditions there is a surpris-
ing level of innovation and experimentation’ Q3. This knowledge creation and implementation
takes place within the space for manoeuvring granted by the politically restrictive system. Inno-
vations that oppose agricultural state norms (for example large scale crop rotation) do not occur
(Wall 2008, pp. 122–3).
Building on this, in its sixth year the project initiated a participatory approach to innovation
development and diffusion, hoping to, together with the local stakeholders, be able to (a) ident-
ify stakeholders interested in experimenting with the project’s ideas in order to together, (b)
modify selected innovation packages according to the local ‘window of opportunity’, and (c)
strengthen the project’s transdisciplinary nature by developing locality specific methods and
concepts to innovation. Additionally this was thought to be supported by a work package
looking at the national, regional and local governance structures, decision and policy-making
procedures in order to offer models not only for innovations within the existing windows of
opportunity of farmers as well as models and research-based recommendations on the policy
and institutional levels in order to stretch these windows Q4. Yet, due to the sensitivity of conduct-
ing governance research in an authoritarian system such as Uzbekistan, there is a clear
mismatch of the levels of governance research needed and research conducted.
In the design of this transdisciplinary component the project explicitly rejected linear
approaches to innovation diffusion such as the ‘Transfer of Technology’ approach (Chambers
and Jiggins 1986) or ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ (Rogers 2003). Instead, the ‘Follow the
Technology’ framework developed by Douthwaite et al. (2001) was chosen as starting point.
A participatory approach to technology development and innovation, it is composed of a set
of steps assuming that once there is a technology with a ‘plausible promise’ that it may work
and raise interest in users, innovators engage in a process in which the technology is experimen-
ted with in real situations by a group of users (‘product champions’ and ‘partners’). The process
itself is one of trial and selection, leading finally to a point where the technology is sufficiently
robust to be released more widely or abandoned because it has proven to be unsuitable for the
region. The methodology ‘follows the technology, using this intervention as the entry point into
a complex situation, and then allowing what is discovered to determine what is important’
(Douthwaite et al. 2001 Q3; Hall and Nahdy 1999). Douthwaite’s idea to ‘follow the technology’
was adapted as per the design of the research component to ‘follow the innovation’, including
technical and institutional innovation packages.
As main steps, (a) basic supportive research, (b) early adoption by innovators or champions,
(c) adaptation through additional research, and (d) promulgation/out-scaling of successful
innovations, were planned (Mollinga et al. 2006). Q5
826 Development in Practice, Volume 21, Number 6, August 2011
Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Mehmood Ul Hassan, and Peter P. Mollinga
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‘Follow the Innovation’ – a stepwise realisation
The ‘follow the innovation’ component aims to develop a participatory, locally embedded
approach to innovation diffusion for Khorezm province, and to strengthen the transdisciplinary
research of the project. The process is facilitated and documented by a full-time senior staff
member. Additionally, an external consultant was hired for five training seminars on participa-
tory research methods, skills for stakeholder involvement, communication and facilitation tools.
This professional expertise adds legitimacy to the process and helps to underline the importance
of jointly testing and adapting innovations with local stakeholders within the project coordi-
nation, team and research institute.
The overall process started in February 2008 with the first training seminar. The FTI-facili-
tator nevertheless only joined the project, due to hiring difficulties, in April 2008, the beginning
of the field research period. Altogether, three training seminars were held in 2008. During the
third, local stakeholders participated for the first time..
After a number of intensive discussions on the project’s conceptualisation of ‘innovation’,
the researchers agreed that innovation is ‘the use of new ideas, new technologies, or new
ways of doing things in a place or by people where they have not been used before’ (Hall
2004 Q3 Q7), and therefore considered that all ‘plausible promises’ developed by the project were
merely ‘inventions’ until successful testing, adaptation and acceptance by stakeholders
would qualify them as ‘innovations’ (Wettasinha and Bayer 2008: 8).
A series of meetings followed to discuss key literature related to participatory technology
development and innovation systems. They generally seemed to be of interest to project staff.
During the second seminar, the participants listed and ranked the project’s prospective inno-
vations and chose four key innovations (out of a potential 17) with seemingly the highest plaus-
ible promise to first enter the ‘FTI-process’:
a) conservation agriculture (including precision levelling, minimum tillage, permanent beds,
residue and nutrient management)
b) advanced tools for rapid salinity assessment and improved irrigation scheduling
c) strengthening Water Users Associations (WUAs) through capacity building
d) afforestation on marginal/degraded lands (field and policy levels)
An interdisciplinary FTI-team was formed around each of the selected innovations, compris-
ing scientists from the appropriate disciplines. After identifying their respective local stake-
holders these interdisciplinary teams were later to develop into transdisciplinary working
groups (TWGs). A scientist from the core discipline of each innovation led the respective
group. Additionally some disciplinary gaps were filled by interested PhD students (Veldhuizen
2008a).
Additionally the separate steps of the FTI-approach were discussed, as illustrated below.
Once the interdisciplinary FTI teams have identified and engaged with their key stakeholders,
the precise steps of joint design, testing, adoption and adaptation of the innovations have to be
identified. Roles and responsibilities are distributed within the transdisciplinary working group.
Through a process of continuous involvement with the stakeholders while at the same time also
giving enough space (laissez faire) for experimentation, the innovation at hand is tested and
modified accordingly. The validation loop (middle right in Figure 1) is thought to ensure that
local knowledge and the concerns of partners are included into the modified design of the inno-
vations. Through a process of participatory monitoring and evaluation (PME) it has to be
assessed whether the innovation in its revised form still holds as plausible promise, or needs
to be shelved. In the former case, further research will be required to understand the entire inno-
vation system and eventually form recommendations for the extension and technical assistance
Development in Practice, Volume 21, Number 6, August 2011 827
Transdisciplinary innovation research in Uzbekistan – one year of ‘following the innovation’
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100
105
110
115
120
125
130
135
Tab
le1:
Date
Loca
tion
Q6
Tit
leO
bje
ctiv
es
11-
14.0
2.0
8
Bonn
Conce
pts
of
Agri
cult
ura
l
Innovat
ion
and
Inte
r-/
Tra
nsd
isci
pli
nar
y
Res
earc
h
.gai
nunder
stan
din
gof
dif
fere
nt
conce
ptu
alis
atio
ns
of
innovat
ion
.dev
elop
under
stan
din
gof
conce
pts
of
tech
nolo
gy
adopti
on
and
adap
tati
on
.m
erge
use
rsan
dte
chnolo
gy
char
acte
rist
ics
for
modif
yin
gdif
fusi
on
and
adap
tati
on
pro
cess
es
.defi
ne
mult
i-,
inte
r-an
dtr
ansd
isci
pli
nar
yre
sear
ch.
1-
4.0
6.0
8
Urg
ench
(UZ
)
Ope
rati
onal
izin
g
the
’Foll
ow
the
Innovat
ion’
Appro
ach
.dev
elop
under
stan
din
gof
dif
fere
nt
stag
esan
dposs
ible
acti
vit
ies
of
FT
Iap
pro
ach
.le
arn
par
tici
pat
ory
rese
arch
met
hods
and
tools
.org
anis
ein
FT
Ite
ams
wit
han
agre
edm
andat
ean
dag
enda.
17-
21.1
1.0
8
Urg
ench
(UZ
)
Dee
pen
ing
the
Under
stan
din
gof
the
’Foll
ow
the
Innovat
ion’
Appro
ach
.re
vie
win
itia
lF
TI
imple
men
tati
on
and
incr
ease
under
stan
din
gof
its
pote
nti
alan
dre
levan
cein
Uzb
ekis
tan
.le
arn
addit
ional
par
tici
pat
ory
rese
arch
met
hodsa
nd
tools
for
FT
Ipro
cess
.re
-ass
ess
org
anis
atio
nan
doper
atio
nof
FT
Ite
ams
and
re-s
trat
egis
ew
her
enee
ded
.
828 Development in Practice, Volume 21, Number 6, August 2011
Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Mehmood Ul Hassan, and Peter P. Mollinga
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145
150
155
160
165
170
175
180
agencies for further out-scaling. If the innovation fails to yield the anticipated benefits, enabling
conditions that are precondition to the successful implementation of the respective innovation
shall be identified.
After the second training seminar, the FTI teams held several meetings to plan their activities,
identify, and involve stakeholders as well as design their roadmaps and time schedules. Parallel
to this, first meetings with stakeholders were planned. During this process the teams closely
interacted with the FTI facilitator. It became apparent that the vast majority of stakeholders
were male. Only the stakeholder groups of two teams (salinity assessment and afforestation)
incorporated one female each – a female farmer and a female salinity specialist from a local
research institute. The masculinity of agricultural organisation in Uzbekistan as well as the
nature of the selected innovation packages can be identified as reasons for this. The type of inno-
vation packages chosen for the FTI-process did not allow addressing the gender-specific labour
division in Uzbek agriculture. An innovation package addressing subsistence/peasant farmers
(dehqans) as a stakeholder group, for example, would automatically involve a far more gender-
diverse group of stakeholders.
The level and type of stakeholder-engaging activities Q9varied strongly Q10between the groups.
They ranged from individual meetings with key stakeholders and possible partners to participa-
tory situation analyses. Amongst some FTI teams a tendency for individual and face-to-face
discussions related to rather simple and more ‘technology oriented’ innovations (i.e. advanced
tools for salinity mapping). In contrast, for innovations that originated from social science
disciplines, the tendency was to carry out more complex, participatory processes situation
analyses.
For the third seminar selected stakeholders from a closely cooperating Water Users Associ-
ation (WUA) and the Forestry Research Institute in Tashkent were invited in order to open the
so far internal training process to stakeholders. During the seminar it became clear that the pro-
gress of most FTI teams during the summer period had been less than expected. Three out of
Figure 1: Evolving FTI approach
Source: Ul-Hassan 2008. Q8
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four transdisciplinary FTI teams had prepared road maps until Q11Training III. Of the four groups,
only one continuously involved the key stakeholders of the innovation at hand in jointly design-
ing the road map. Two of the remaining three FTI teams had – at the time of the training – only
just begun to involve stakeholders; one was still in the planning process (Veldhuizen 2008b).
Some participants perceived this process of taking the developed ideas and critically review-
ing them together with the stakeholders as an extra task, separate to their main research, and it
did not receive their full attention. Furthermore, the rather late introduction of stakeholder
involvement in relation to the overall time span of the project left little time for the unconvinced
to familiarise themselves with it. This put ongoing stress on the process.
Nevertheless, initial interaction with stakeholders at various levels led to a number of prac-
tical results. It resulted, for example, in the strategy to unbundle certain innovations such as
flexible water management and conservation agriculture, to allow stakeholders to experiment
with (combinations of) selected components. Furthermore, it was encouraging to note that
after some initial hesitations participatory interaction seemed to be appreciated by some stake-
holders and project members, and related Q12methods (e.g. focus group discussions, visualisation
of group analysis) started to be adopted.
By the end of 2008, all four FTI teams had prepared their roadmaps for 2009. As outlined
above, the degrees of stakeholder involvement varied, with one group acting as strong front
runner, two groups slowly taking their first steps, and one group remaining in the planning
phase, hoping that a recently assigned PhD student would accelerate the process. The concepts,
methods and tools learned during the three workshops had entered all four road maps.
Key challenges
The first year of the process of ‘following the innovation’, to introduce project innovations to
local stakeholders, experimenting with them, rejoining the stakeholders and jointly evaluating
the outcomes, adapting and finalising the innovation, calls for a critical review Q13. The challenges
faced can be assessed by differentiating between (a) knowledge creation and dissemination in
rural Uzbekistan, (b) administrative challenges, (c) scientists’ versus farmers’ knowledge, (d)
team composition and organisation, and (e) contested transdisciplinary cooperation.
Knowledge creation and dissemination in rural Uzbekistan
The process design of jointly with stakeholders testing, adapting and finalising innovation
packages Q14is an immensely different approach to knowledge diffusion to that commonly used
and known in Uzbekistan. It therefore poses a challenge and offers new opportunities. Uzbek
policy thinking about the diffusion of innovations is heavily dominated by the linear model
of technology supply push. This can be explained by the authoritarian political system and
an amalgamation of Post-Soviet and reviving Uzbek, male dominated culture, resulting in a
hierarchically organised society used to receiving rather than critically questioning and adapt-
ing knowledge provided by the state. The authoritarian system of state control over knowledge
production that can be assessed in the realm of high-level research commissioned by the
government (Selim 2009, pp. 80ff; Wall 2008, pp. 141ff Q15), leads also in the realm of local, agri-
cultural knowledge production to a high level of self-censorship. Wall (2008, pp. 85ff Q15) ident-
ifies five characteristics of the local knowledge system of Khorezm. First, local ‘masters’ (‘wise
men’) with specialised knowledge, embedded in the patriarchal and hierarchical Khorezmi
culture, are central to the system and often hold positions of political and economic power.
Second, in terms of knowledge dissemination, family based modes of knowledge reproduction
and transfer are common. Access to external knowledge and its reproduction in the local knowl-
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edge system exists, but to a lesser extent. Third, in sectors of immediate importance to the state
agricultural production system indigenous, local knowledge lies at the interface with formal,
university-taught knowledge. Wall here assesses a linear, top-down approach to knowledge
diffusion with little, mutual exchange of ideas (2008, pp. 110ff Q15). A rather bottom-up designed
approach, such as FTI, involving the ideas, experience and knowledge of local stakeholders as
experts is therefore quite uncommon to Khorezm. This interlinks with Wall’s fourth point: ‘col-
lective knowledge’ which is rather unitary in nature, prevails in the Khorezmi agricultural
knowledge system, leaving little space for creativity-fostering diversity. Fifth, this unitary
nature of knowledge is further exacerbated by ongoing ‘knowledge loss’ and a ‘growth of ignor-
ance’ in the post-Soviet era of Khorezm (Wall 2008, pp. 123ff Q15).
The participatory, transdisciplinary approach of involving farmers as innovators in the
process of finalising project ideas, therefore meets several Uzbek-specific challenges. The
bottom-up approach is continuously challenged by, and at the same time challenges, a little-
developed culture of openly voiced criticism. This lack of communicated critical reflection
can be observed with regard to the scientific (external) knowledge that is offered by the
project as well as to locally tested, often superior ideas that could enrich the scientifically devel-
oped innovations.
The FTI-process aims for the exchange of explicit and tacit knowledge between researchers
and local stakeholders. While explicit knowledge refers to knowledge made available in books
and databanks, the notion of tacit knowledge focuses on experience gained through action
(Evers et al. 2009; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). Neither project-employed researchers, nor
local stakeholders hold only explicit or only tacit knowledge; all actors hold different kinds
of explicit and tacit knowledge on the subject. Yet, Botkin and Seeley (2001) argue that
roughly 80 per cent of all knowledge is tacit in character, bound and expressed in action ( Q3).
In this estimate they do not consider how much this tacit knowledge increases in relation to
explicitly expressed knowledge in the situation of an authoritarian, hierarchical system with
repressive mechanisms focusing on the explicit, not the non-explicit knowledge. Locally deter-
mined tacit knowledge is therefore crucial to the process of ‘following the innovation’. The
systematic exchange of the different forms of knowledge shall yield the creation of new explicit
knowledge, manifested in the finalisation and out-scaling of the selected innovations.
Trust as a basis for cooperation and precondition for the mutual transfer of tacit knowledge
has to be built. While this importance of trust is not unique to the Uzbek setting, the project’s
experience shows that the level of trust needed as well as the input required to build this trust is
substantial. Continuous cooperation, meetings, workshops, seminars, material and immaterial
concessions and kept arrangements become crucial to the overall process. This very time and
work intensive process requires staff in the field with the necessary language and communi-
cation skills as well as the scientific qualifications. While this appears logical in terms of the
process design and its desired achievements, it is not easy to recruit the required personnel
and get the required financial means approved.
The administrative challenge
The process design planned for an FTI-facilitator to be continuously present in the field (8
months/ Q16a year in Khorezm; 4 months/ Q16a year in Bonn) facilitating FTI-teams in their
cooperation with stakeholders as well as one or two external consultants for a series of five
training events on participatory methods. Before hiring them, a detailed work package proposal
had to unblock the already approved funds. The external consultancy group was found and hired
relatively quickly. However, the recruitment of the FTI facilitator took three recruitment
cycles to find a candidate with the required profile and willingness to largely stay in
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Urgench/Uzbekistan on a basic academic research position. This resulted in a delay of almost a
year in starting the implementation. The first FTI-training had to be conducted without the FTI
facilitator, before the agricultural season. Consequently the continuity of facilitation was ham-
pered at the start of the progress and negatively influenced the creation of a pro-FTI atmosphere
within the project team.
Scientists’ versus farmers’ knowledge
The initial attitude of the disciplinary scientists to engaging in an eventually transdisciplinary
dialogue on adapting their respective innovations was that being scientists, their role was to
develop cutting edge ‘best bet’ technologies/innovations. Many believed that their discipline
offered ‘the best’ solution to the environmental/economic issue at hand and that the context
should change to fit the innovation, rather than the innovation to fit the context. Several
teams had gone through internal debates about the ‘right things to do’, and the ‘right way of
doing things’. The perception of some that the answers to these questions were rather
imposed by one or the other discipline illustrates the difficulty interdisciplinary teams face in
mutually acknowledging the validity of the disciplines.
Similarly the value of local knowledge was not immediately clear to everyone. The team
members of almost all groups came up with a scientific work plan intended to ‘raise the aware-
ness’ of stakeholders about the importance of the scientifically identified problem and to
convince the stakeholders of the validity of the innovative solution. One example is the reluc-
tance and disappointment of some regarding unbundling complex innovations, like conserva-
tion agriculture. During the first interaction with farmers, it became obvious that the farmers
were keen to implement laser levelling, but cautious to proceed with all elements of conserva-
tion agriculture. The farmers reasoned that the state had no objection to levelling. Its potential
benefit of saving water, which is critically short in the area, is unquestionably proven. Other
elements of the conservation agriculture innovation package, such as reduced tillage might,
in contrast, attract state sanctions for violating state recommendations on production norms.
Some of the teams had difficulties in discerning between the validation of innovation through
the FTI process and adoption and out-scaling through extension. The teams appeared to design
an approach whereby the phase of jointly experimenting, validating and finalising the inno-
vation together with the stakeholders was considered as one step amongst many. The steps fol-
lowing the stakeholder interaction were already planned in detail, disregarding the possibility
that the phase of joint testing could lead to results that would require a set of completely differ-
ent, so far unanticipated steps.
Team composition and organisation
The division of teams into core and support members, with the former being (mainly male)
senior project scientists holding supervisory responsibilities, and the latter (mainly female)
PhD students and research assistants, in some teams negatively affected the team spirit. It
was understood as a hierarchical organisation of the teams that additionally was not consistently
kept (i.e. with regard to invitation to meetings). This resulted in a demotivating imbalance of
information sharing. Once such tendencies were noticed, a small perception survey was
carried out amongst the students and results shared with the FTI groups as an appeal to
address the root causes. One FTI group addressed this issue by broadening its support member-
ship.
Furthermore, the distance between Bonn, Germany (where ZEF, the project-holding research
institute, is located) and Urgench, Uzbekistan (the capital city of Khorezm province where the
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project is based) posed a challenge. Some core and support members of FTI groups were based
at two locations; Urgench, where field activities are carried out, and Bonn, where most of the
scientific writing and analysis is done. The group on WUA empowerment for example continu-
ously shared minutes, ideas and plans for inputs with colleagues in Bonn. Yet, the inputs
received in return often merely consisted of more questions and suggestions far off from
local reality. This added to the work but little to its value. On the other hand, the group on
salinity and flexible irrigation scheduling had a similar setting, but did not experience such
difficulties. This can be explained by the nature of the different innovations, understandings
of the process, personalities and degree of disciplinary and gender heterogeneity in the team
involved. The socio-political process innovation carried by a discipline- and gender-diverse
team and involving a wide range of terminology and understandings of the process nevertheless
raised most discussion.
The assignment of roles within the teams based on research experience rather than skills in
facilitating stakeholder involvement negatively affected stakeholder interaction. Several FTI
teams, due to the complexity of the innovations, decided that the teams should be ‘led’ by an
experienced scientist from the discipline of the innovation who would not necessarily be a
good facilitator. Consequently the respective FTI groups are experiencing considerable
tendencies of being overly research-oriented in their approach. One of these groups, instead
of preparing a roadmap of stakeholder engagement activities, went through an additional plan-
ning cycle preparing a scientific work plan on ‘how conservation agriculture should be
implemented in a scientifically sound fashion’ rather than ‘how conservation agriculture
should incorporate stakeholder concerns and knowledge into its design’ Q17. This was
subsequently addressed through formal training in facilitation skills as well as informal one-
to-one coaching by the FTI facilitator. Nevertheless some good researchers might never be
good facilitators. After two training events on methods of stakeholder interaction, several con-
crete issues still negatively impacting on stakeholder interaction were identified (Veldhuizen
2008b). These ranged from big rooms with farmers sitting at one end and project team standing
at the other, the difficulty of securing the attention of farmers, to questions too long, often entail-
ing several sub-questions and no eye contact between interviewer and interviewee.
Contested transdisciplinary cooperation
The FTI team on WUA empowerment realised the importance of trust as a precondition to any
further collaboration very early on in the process and strongly emphasised the building of it.
Water User Associations in Uzbekistan, while officially being farmer organisations, were
created by the state and are until today by many regarded as state organisations. Therefore,
the FTI group initially envisaged social mobilisation and awareness creation as an innovation
for strengthening collective action and improving governance practices within the WUA.
The group consciously turned against technological improvements, believing that those
would distract the focus of the WUA from management issues. However, after several
rounds of dialogues, the group realised that a minimum level of hardware inputs was necessary
to demonstrate the project’s interest in cooperating as well as to enable the WUA to do their
work. During the discussions with the WUA it became obvious that it physically cannot be
present on the land for which it is responsible due to lacking a means of transport. The
WUA staff could not be present at several places a day and therefore also be present in the
minds of the farmers as an organisation representing them. Contrary to the original design,
the group kick started with hardware (equipping the WUA with bicycles while at the same
time and from then onwards increasingly offering ‘soft’ inputs (i.e. training workshops, visits
to best-practice WUAs in Ferghana Valley, etc.)).
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The FTI team on innovative salinity assessment tools faced the ‘salesman’ challenge in its
interaction with local stakeholders. This innovation addresses one of the critical constraints
faced by Uzbek policy makers: salinity maps in Uzbekistan are, due to the process of how
they are made, outdated when published. The use of advanced tools could overcome this,
but since they are interpretative tools, their scientific validity is questioned by Uzbek scien-
tists. The group identified three key stakeholder groups: (a) policy makers who use the maps
but are not involved with their making, (b) technical institutions that prepare salinity maps,
and (c) educational institutions that carry out research on the science of salinity mapping.
Among these, the FTI group targeted institutions involved in the making of maps as their
primary stakeholders. During the meetings with directors of these institutes, no interest in
experimenting with the tool could be raised. The group member responsible for introducing
the innovation felt like a salesman of a manufacturing company and the question arose when
the project would decide that a certain innovation at hand would not be valid and could be
neglected in the future.
The conservation agriculture team has faced the problem that required technology for the
innovation to work (i.e. adjusted seeder) is too cost-intensive for the stakeholders. Conse-
quently, cost-sharing arrangements and jointly written proposals to third-party donors are
discussed. This rather often encountered problem of high- versus low-external-input technol-
ogies (Roling 2009, pp. 25ff) poses an immense challenge on inter- and transdisciplinary
research teams around complex innovation packages. The level of internationally financed,
technological research equipment often lies substantially above the technological equipment
of local stakeholders. The (international) researcher therefore finds their self pulled between
international fame as disciplinary researcher or local fame as transdisciplinary researcher
developing innovations that require little or no external input and make sense for the local
end-users.
Discussion
The process of ‘following the innovation’ took off after the second training event in June 2008.
From then on, the four FTI teams, accompanied by the FTI facilitator, identified their main sta-
keholders, established cooperation and suitable paths of jointly testing the innovations at hand.
The speed and eagerness with which the teams moved this process forward varied strongly.
Yet all four teams actively reflected on their mode of conducting this process and took first
steps.
The challenges we faced and the lessons learned can be categorised into five groups. First, the
system of knowledge creation and dissemination in rural Uzbekistan is rather top-down in
nature, with a hierarchic and male-dominated organisation. As such it poses a direct contrast
to the bottom-up approach attempted by the project. Instead of openly voiced criticism and dis-
cussion, a mentality of first listening to and potentially adopting presented knowledge rather
than critically working with this external knowledge in order to develop it further, was encoun-
tered. This attitude was partly overcome and partly continues to challenge day-to-day inter-
actions. It became obvious that a form of interaction in which the project FTI teams are
active presenters of their knowledge while the stakeholders are passive listeners cannot lead
to successful enrichment of each other’s tacit and explicit knowledge. This was especially con-
firmed by the experiences of the groups on salinity assessment and conservation agriculture. In
terms of lessons learned, this means that the bottom-up approach faces an immense challenge in
the Uzbek setting, but at the same time seems to be the only possible approach for assuring that
the developed innovations make sense in the local setting.
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Second, we encountered administrative challenges, particularly in getting the process started.
Here, one lesson learnt is that substantial finances and open support from the project manage-
ment have to be provided. To develop an understanding of the process requires a continuous
facilitator in the field as well as external expertise that is not present in the project team, and
which – and this point should not be underestimated – legitimises the process. The internal
facilitator is crucial in advising and mentoring the interdisciplinary teams in how to plan and
conduct the process of stakeholder interaction. Roadmaps have to be designed and discussed,
concrete questions of how to communicate with the stakeholders addressed, and continuous
coaching on different approaches to knowledge transfer (linear versus non-linear thinking) is
required. The external expertise is important to justify the design, time and resource intensive-
ness of the process facing criticism within and outside the project. Furthermore, very well
trained staff are needed to continuously interact with the stakeholders for building and maintain-
ing the level of trust crucial for collaboration.
Third, it became obvious that the interaction of two highly differing cultures of knowledge
creation and dissemination between researchers and farmers requires continuous discussions
of the value of each type and form of knowledge. Thus, implicit views on one type of knowledge
being superior to another are present and require a continuous process of reflection, attitude
building and learning. It is a process that requires a high level of personal self-reflection, open-
ness and egalitarian value-guided action. Fourth, internal issues of team composition and
organisation are crucial for motivating team members. Interestingly, linear and hierarchical
thinking dominated the composition of the project’s internal FTI teams. Hence, the hierarchical
thinking that was regarded as counterproductive in the interaction with stakeholders was
employed to a comparable degree in the organisation of the project teams themselves.
Through several concrete events and reflection on those, the teams had to realise their role in
acting as role models for the transdisciplinary interaction with the stakeholders (including ques-
tions such as ‘are decisions taken in meetings with all members present or in the realm of a
private office excluding some?’, ‘Are these decisions documented and implemented, or
not?’, etc.). The successful mutual knowledge transfer requires a horizontal team composition
and participatory forms of communication within the transdisciplinary innovation team. In
order to achieve this, the project’s own internal FTI teams have to express and demonstrate
this participatory communication and organisation to the stakeholders. This realisation
continues to pose a major challenge to the overall project.
Fifth, we faced a number of challenges in direct interaction with stakeholders that made us
question our innovations. It became obvious that the crucial basis for any form of stakeholder
cooperation is trust. This trust had to be built and maintained through means of regular meet-
ings, transparency, openness and more so by offering something of immediate importance to the
stakeholders. Due to the experience of the WUA team, we learnt to be open to the direct needs
of the stakeholders as long as it still contributed to collaboration on the respective innovation.
With regard to the salinity assessment tool, questions arose regarding the innovation itself and
the degree to which we should pursue the interaction with disinterested stakeholders (salesman
challenge). We learnt the need to regularly reassess our innovations selected as ‘plausible
promises’, identified stakeholders and objectives of interaction. Furthermore, the problem of
high-external-input technologies was faced. Here, modes of drafting proposals together with
the stakeholders have to be discussed more systematically in the future. Furthermore, we
realised that the nature of the chosen innovation packages resulted in interacting with male-
dominated stakeholder groups. Specifically female agricultural knowledge is hardly accounted
for in the overall process. An exception forms the tacit knowledge of one female farmer
interacting with the afforestation team.
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Of these challenges, the most interesting and at the same time most difficult is the high degree
of linear thinking, further strengthened by hierarchical and authoritarian structures. It reflects
mainly on two areas: the composition and distribution of roles and responsibilities within the
interdisciplinary FTI teams in the project as well as in the confrontation of the external, scien-
tific knowledge and the local, stakeholders’ knowledge. We consciously speak of a confronta-
tion. The prevailing linear thinking within the project internal teams, as well as in the interaction
with stakeholders, leads to a polarisation of the different types and forms of knowledge that we
are trying to merge for the enrichment of the overall knowledge stocks as well as their carriers
(actors) involved. This, for example, resulted and/or was expressed in practical plans on how to
out-scale the production of an innovation before having tested the validity of it in a real-life
setting.
The linear, hierarchical thinking furthermore substantially weakened agency within the
group. Designating one researcher as ‘team leader’ resulted in the rest of the group leaning
back, waiting for the team leader to move. While this might depend on leadership and manage-
ment styles, in the transdisciplinary teams it resulted in a high level of demotivation, especially
as long as the leader did involve the rest. Action independent of the action of the leader was
hardly taken.
In the interaction with local stakeholders it nevertheless became obvious that despite the
present culture of a top-down, hierarchically organised society, bottom-up approaches proved
most successful. Researchers who created an egalitarian, horizontally structured atmosphere,
showing signs of respect with regard to the farmers’ experience and knowledge were by far
more successful in receiving open, seemingly honest answers that could form the required
basis for cooperation. In opposite cases, farmers did not give answers at all, became insecure,
or obviously felt uncomfortable. Accordingly, the FTI team explicitly opting for a participatory,
transparent bottom-up approach in interacting with the stakeholder group was one year after
starting the process, the first to sign a formal agreement for cooperation, including a concrete
12-step plan, with the respective Water Users Associations. Besides relating it to the bottom-
up approach, this can also be traced back to this FTI team engaging with the process more
actively than others. The success of this so far suggests a clear superiority of non-linear thinking
and participatory approaches in terms of stakeholder interaction over linear thinking polarising
Q18knowledge stocks and their carriers. This finding is especially interesting in the very hierarch-
ical setting of Uzbekistan, where linear thinking and approaches have dominated knowledge
transfer, education and agricultural extension systems since early Soviet-times. Yet, how
sustainable this is and how the WUA continues the path of institutional strengthening during
a time of less interaction with the project will be seen in 2010. Q19
Consequently this ‘follow the innovation’ process is crucial for testing, adapting and finalis-
ing our, Q20partly very complex innovations to a degree that we can rightly argue that they make
sense and pose a potential for development in the real-life local setting of rural Uzbekistan. Yet,
it is a difficult, time and resource intensive process that requires the energy and openness of
every project member and stakeholder involved. It requires a degree of openness that allows
and encourages every single member of the transdisciplinary FTI team to pull down boundaries,
and meet with ‘the other side’ on an equal level for the mutual exchange of explicit and tacit
knowledge to a degree that new knowledge is formed and innovations are finalised according
to scientific rationale and local sense.
Acknowledgements
This research was conducted under the ZEF/UNESCO project ‘Economic and Ecological Restructuring of
Land and Water Use in the Region Khorezm (Uzbekistan): A Pilot Project in Development Research’,
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funded by the Ministry Education and Research (BMBF), Germany (Project Number 339970D). The
authors would like to thank the transdisciplinary FTI-teams (project members and local stakeholders) men-
tioned in this article for the continuous learning process achieved. Further, we would like to thank Iskandar
Abdullaev, Lisa Oberkircher and John Lamers for valuable comments on this article, as well as Oybek
Egamberdiev, Inna Rudenko, Akmal Akramkhanov, Nodir Djanibekov, Elena Kan, Farida Abdullaeva
and Bashorat Ismailova for their hard work in fostering the FTI process. We thank Maike Retat-Amin
for her valuable assistance in editing and formatting.
Note
1. The case study presented therefore contributes to an emerging body of literature on transdisciplinary
research; see for instance www.transdisciplinarity.ch/d/Bibliography.
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The authors
Dr Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Senior Researcher, Center for Development Research, University of
Bonn is the Coordinator of the social science research in the ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land
and Water Resources Management in Uzbekistan’.
Q24
Mehmood Ul Hassan, Senior Researcher, Center for Development Research, University of Bonn is the
Facilitator of the ‘Follow the Innovation’ component in the ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land
and Water Resources Management in Uzbekistan’. ,[email protected].
Dr Peter Paul Mollinga, Senior Researcher, Center for Development Research, University of Bonn who
formerly coordinated the social science research in the ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land and
Water Resources Management in Uzbekistan’ and was responsible for designing the ‘Follow the Inno-
vation’ component. ,[email protected].
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