| dc.description.abstract | Multi-actor initiatives aiming at environmental sustainability and social equity, face complex
tensions between institutionalized decision-makers, backed up by expert knowledge, and
communities with locally embedded knowledge and interests. Despite the importance given to
community participation, successful experiences are limited in number, scope and duration. Experts
are confronted with the paradox that they exclude local communities with the strategies and
languages they use to include them.
This study is based on the long-term experiences of the authors with a multi-actor initiative in
Southern Ecuador on sustainable rural drinking water management. They were involved as actionresearchers,
facilitating multiparty interactions and supporting reflective practice among the
participants.
The article shows how multiparty processes construct identities, workforms, structures and
activities that cross the boundaries between communities of expert and indigenous practice, even in
the exceptionally unequal conditions of the Andes, where inequalities between these communities
are deeply rooted in history. Such transitions were taken as opportunities to look for common
ground between different communities-of-practice whilst, at the same time, contradictions could
come to the fore. As inequalities tend to be confirmed through interactions, not only inside but also
outside the multi-actor initiative, they cannot be resolved definitively by a multiparty project. Under
those circumstances a social constructionist approach, calling the attention to the constructed nature
of mutual perceptions and relationships, was highly inspiring for the authors-facilitators to keep the
reflection and dialogue among the participants in the process going-on. | |
