On Conversation and Authorship: Legal Frameworks for Collaborative Methodologies

Abstract

Collaborative methodologies are at the forefront of an academic movement seeking to recognize the way social research emerges out of interaction with social actors involved in the processes studied. However, the question of how this recognition can be expressed through authorship is rarely explored. Even though co-authorship is common in different academic fields, including social sciences, the inclusion of actors involved in the social processes studied as co-authors of academic reports is still quite rare. Thus, I here analyze the methodological and epistemological assumptions underlying traditional expressions of authorship embedded in intellectual property models, and how these can be challenged through collaborative methodologies and co-authorship dynamics. I then present a methodological approach that focuses on the co-authored construction of academic texts through conversations, which was developed through four different experiences with scholars and persons involved in different social and political initiatives.

Introduction

Collaborative research has often been studied as a form of interaction between academics that cowrite a paper (Wray, 2006). This article takes a step away from those studies and focuses on the collaborative efforts that aim to involve the participation of academics and non-academics in the social sciences. This approach has been gaining popularity in Latin America, especially in the field of anthropology (i.e. Aragón Andrade, 2019; Hale, 2006; Hernández Castillo & Terven, 2017; Trentini & Wolanski, 2018). As I will further explore, these methodological efforts develop in different ways but they all challenge the way academic knowledge continues to prevail over other forms of knowledge, and question the typical role of social actors as simple sources in empirical social research. As illustrated by these efforts, research with the participation of these social actors is only ethically possible when they effectively contribute to the construction of knowledge. Yet, the question of what social actors’ active role in the construction of knowledge can, and perhaps should, entail for the way authorship is presented is much less explored. This article aims to bring that issue forward.

My proposal here owes its inspiration to Cecilia MacDowell Santos’ course in the first Summer School “Learning from the South: Towards Intercultural Translations” at the University of Coimbra in 2014. Her work on gender violence (i.e. Santos, 2019) was an important influence to question the role of academics and our interaction with the people who are at the center of our studies. In that course, she compared in-depth interviewing with open sky mining: you expect persons to share their life with you, to be put into your own product. Perhaps because of my own background in intellectual property (i.e., Ibarra Rojas, 2019, 2016), I saw her discussion as also one of authorship. When conducting qualitative research, it is expected that persons embedded in a social process share their lives with researchers, who will take their narrative, classify it, reinterpret it, and claim a final product under the researcher’s authorship. Can we bring different authorship dynamics to academia?

As I will explain, the legal notion of authorship is essentially a form of appropriation that indicates that what is written has been conceived by the person that signs the document. In academia, authorship can take on other meanings, but scholarly efforts scarcely question its implications in either ethical or epistemological terms (Hollis, 2001, Dreyfuss, 2000, Wray, 2006). Even in collaborative methodologies, the discussion over authorship is barely considered (Rivera & Lehm, 1988, Sinha & Back, 2014). To address this gap in academia, this article will analyze the methodological and epistemological assumptions underlying traditional expressions of authorship. Then, by adopting a critical perspective (Aluwihare-Samaranayake, 2012), the paper will also explain how these epistemological assumptions can be challenged in collaborative methodologies through a co-authorship research method that aims to bring new voices to academia to further the democratization of knowledge production.

In order to do this, I will first address how authors, particularly academic authors, are conceived as both the genius scientist and the literary genius, setting the tone for the way in which intellectual property is framed. Next, I will examine how the different facets of collaborative research aim to express their commitment with epistemological justice. The third section explains and analyzes a research method consisting on building an academic report based on conversations between authors from different backgrounds. Finally, I highlight the contributions that emerge when we consider co-authorship dynamics as a way to advance the goals of collaborative methodologies.

From the Author to Authorship

Qualitative and collaborative methodologies nowadays depart from a well-established challenge to the epistemic view of positivism. However, this has not extended to questioning authorship in academia; nor to challenging how intellectual property tends to uphold the positivistic view. Intellectual property creates scarcity and monopolizes ideas by placing boundaries to their circulation. While intellectual property is widely recognized for its economic value, it also has an underlying epistemic position (i.e. Halbert, 2006; Ibarra, 2019).

The classic division of intellectual property places science and technology in the realm of industrial property, while authors’ rights and copyrights are meant for the artistic world. Nevertheless, one cannot challenge that the dominant expression of academic work is the writing of academic reports such as books, articles, and chapters. Industrial property is irrelevant for the average social scientist (unless that is your actual topic of study), yet we all live under the “publish or perish” mandate. However little scholars may reflect upon this, the notion of authorship carries meaning, as well as rights, and establishes an epistemic position of authority.

Copyright and authors’ rights are two intellectual property traditions that create a state-backed monopoly (Picciotto & Campbell, 2003). By these rights, authors are to receive an economic incentive for the exploitation of a creative work. The copyright tradition, which originated in the British legal system, conceives rights almost exclusively in economic terms, while attribution (that is the notion of being recognized as author) is assumed but rarely addressed. In contrast, author’s rights, conceived in the French legal tradition, are composed of two dimensions: economic rights and moral rights. Economic rights refer to the possibility of getting an economic gain from the exploitation of the product. Moral rights refer to the inalienable link between the work and the author (attribution), which is central to author’s rights.

Regardless of the legal tradition, authorship, as a legal and social concept, is strongly linked to the notions of originality and ownership. Martha Woodmansee defines an author in the following way: “By ‘author’ we mean an individual who is the sole creator of unique ‘works’ the originality of which warrants their protection under laws of intellectual property” (1994, p. 15). Vaidhyanathan defines original work as that which “contains markers of creative decision making by the original artists” (2017, p. 19). However, the originality of a work is hardly ever evaluated. Unless there is an actual challenge to the work, it is enough for the creator to merely place their name in relation to a piece of work to indicate that said work is both original and the legitimate private property of a person or corporation.

These assumptions, however, have been constructed and placed into the legal structure without being representative of the historical or contemporary construction of texts. Intellectual property gives a certain legal framework to knowledge and creation, but, in turn, it is itself also framed by social processes. Foucault (1998) wrote one of the most influential reflections on how current understanding of authors is representative of a specific historical process where ideas became “individualized.” Historical research (Drahos & Braithwaite, 2002; Jaszi, 1994; Woodmansee, 1984) shows that the notion of “author” is the product of certain economic and cultural transformations from the late 18th and throughout the 19th century. In this period of legal transformations, key players in the literary world such as Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens were highly influential. Thus, the French tradition openly placed the existence of rights in relation to the author, who then became the justification for the right itself. This is why an author’s moral rights include elements of prestige and integrity. The idea of the author as an exceptional creature, who works alone to create a unique piece that is only possible because of its individual merit as creator consolidated in this period (Burk, 2007; Halbert, 2006; Jaszi & Woodmansee, 1994; Woodmansee, 1984). Thus, each text is assumed exceptional because the author is also considered exceptional.

In academia, authorship replicates the notion of the literary genius. An author enjoys the assumption of originality, even though the structures of academic and scientific work are supposed to provide standards. Take the use of peer-review strategies for example, the process of having a text reviewed and edited is intended to uphold certain academic standards. Nevertheless, the academic author’s claims of ownership and originality are hardly contested. The literary author and the researcher are also connected epistemologically. The cartesian construction of knowledge is based on the existence of a single, self-sufficient individual guided by reason who observes an object external to himself (Burk, 2007; Code, 1991). Objectivity is then conceived as detachment of the knower from the object to be known; it is, however paradoxically, about close engagement without being engaged. Also, as Foucault (1998) explains about the “author” and Bourdieu (2009) about the “academic,” the academic-author takes an individual position of power over a view of the world that is highly regarded as legitimate within society.

Ignoring the social processes and epistemic accounts that shaped the legal form of authorship, makes it so that underlying power dynamics, gender and race conceptions, go unchallenged. However, knowing who writes matters. Colonizers often destroyed the documents that expressed the writing of native languages and women have had less access to education and the possibility to learn how to read or write. In the history of humanity, the white male perspective has dominated the use of the pen; their version the world, their making of world, is dominant as well. As pointed out by several feminist authors (Barwa & Rai, 2003; Burk, 2007; Halbert, 2006; Swanson, 2015) and by the studies of traditional cultural expressions (Dommann, 2008; Flórez, 2007; Ibarra Rojas, 2019), this white male dominance has also defined the kind of cultural products that can fit into the framework of authors’ rights and copyright. In particular, the knowledge that has been historically developed by indigenous peoples and women has fallen outside the frame of intellectual property. The creative spaces dominated by women and indigenous peoples include products fostered in collaboration, those closely connected with tradition in which often the technical, esthetical and sometimes even the spiritual element are not separated.

Nevertheless, even in the male dominated European writing tradition, individual authorship is far from being the absolute norm for writing. Prior to the 19th century, texts would derive value from their connection to previous work (Woodmansee, 1994). Before the individual author became romanticized, several people and functions were also considered essential steps for creating a book. This included the papermakers, proofreaders, publishers, book binders, and many others which still continue to exist. Contemporarily, legal provisions and society reinforce a view of texts that often seems absolute and is also championed as absolute by proponents of stronger intellectual property (Picciotto & Campbell, 2003); but texts are produced collectively in most contexts outside of academia (Lunsford & Ede, 1994; Woodmansee, 1994).

In fact, co-authorship dynamics are alive and well in the academic environment as well. In fields like physics or health sciences individual authors are as common as papers authored by over 26 persons, or up to the thousands (Mallapaty, 2018). One article on the Higgs Boson (Aad et al., 2015) included over 5,000 authors. While philosophy continues to be mainly authored by individual persons, social sciences like economics have clearly joined the trend of multi-authorship (Hollis, 2001; Mallapaty, 2018).

As the number of authors included in single papers has increased systematically throughout the last few decades, the impact of academic co-authorship has become a subject of study (Hollis, 2001; Mallapaty, 2018; Wray, 2006; Zutshi et al., 2012). Many of these studies are concerned with the impact that collaboration has on a scholar’s productivity and the quality of the work (Hollis, 2001; Wray, 2006). Collaboration is also recognized for being the only way some discoveries can be achieved and for how it contributes to the training of young scientists (Wray, 2006). Nevertheless, the question for collaborative research, in the context I analyze, is quite different. It is not that collaborative researchers do not concern themselves with productivity or quality, but rather that the driving force of collaboration, at least the kind I discuss here, is bringing knowledge from different actors to the academic sphere.

Collaborative, Activist, Feminist: Developing Conversation

Given that positivistic views of science has historically neglected the knowledges of women and indigenous peoples (Barwa & Rai, 2003; Dommann, 2008; Halbert, 2006), it is unsurprising that collaborative and critical methodologies have proliferated in the context of feminist research and/or research with indigenous peoples (Alonso et al., 2018; Hale, 2008; Hernández Castillo & Terven, 2017; Macleod, 2018; Trentini & Wolanski, 2018). I write about collaborative methodologies, as my main aim is to discuss how collaboration can turn to co-authorship, but indeed the methodological approaches that I am referring to present themselves with different names in Latin America. I am particularly interested in research methodologies and perspectives that challenge the notion of the genius individual author.

Collaborative methodologies, at least in their participatory versions, aim to recognize the significant contributions of non-academic social actors in the construction of knowledge (Aluwihare-Samaranayake, 2012; Evans-agnew & Rosenberg, 2016; Held, 2019; Porter, 2016, Rappaport, 2018; Sinha & Back, 2014; Sletto et al., 2013; Trentini & Wolanski, 2018). This means that the people involved in social processes are not considered external, passive, or lacking of agency for the construction of knowledge. Critiques argue that the category of research subjects should be dismissed when it limits or reduces people to nameless, generic and indeterminate forms (Alonso et al., 2018; Leyva et al., 2018). Thus, participatory research requires understanding that the voice of social actors has value in itself; that there is no need for someone else to speak for the subject as they can do much more than give an account of their experience: they can analyze it.

The second way in which collaborative methodologies challenge positivistic views of social science is through the political commitment of the scholar toward the social process she studies. This methods have been known as militant research, activist research, co-labor, situated, engaged or decolonial research (Alonso et al., 2018; Aragón Andrade, 2019; Hale, 2006; Held, 2019; Sieder, 2013). All these concepts carry different meanings and set forward their own kind of agenda, commitment, techniques and epistemic guidelines. Nevertheless, they all share a view of research that goes beyond a commitment to the academic field, and choses to acknowledge a political commitment with any given struggle for social justice. These forms of research attach a transformative value to a scholar’s work and build on “the ethical link that emerges from the dialogue between critical analysis and political commitment” (Alonso et al., 2018, p. 23). Therefore, it is not rare that this kind of research emerges from within social movements and often entails involving participants of the movement in the research, as well as developing knowledge useful for the communities and their struggle.

These collaborative methodologies depart from a recognition of the political commitments and build on academic structures that aim to be compatible with the former (Aragón Andrade, 2019; Hale, 2006; Trentini & Wolanski, 2018). They also often allow the possibility that the aims of the research, as well as its design and the methodologies, be defined through the dialogue between academic and non-academic actors (Alonso et al., 2018; Held, 2019; Evans-agnew & Rosenberg, 2016; Sinha & Back, 2014).

At the center of collaborative methodologies there is an ethic and critical epistemology of shared production of knowledge, even if it is not necessarily expressed in co-authorship dynamics. Researchers involved in collaboration often reflect on the power dynamics embedded in their practice and how to establish horizontal relations, based on respect, with social actors (Alonso et al., 2018; Leyva et al., 2018; Zutshi et al., 2012). For this purpose, researchers construct spaces of dialogue with the social actors. Workshops, meetings and training activities are central in this endeavor because they allow for the interaction between researcher and social actors to be more collaborative as they share and construct knowledge. However, even if a commitment to social movements has been widely discussed in anthropological research, the methodological strategies for the collaborative construction of knowledge are mentioned but rarely described (Trentini & Wolanski, 2018). There are also other methodologies that attempt to highlight the voice of participants such as ethnographical narration (Yaselga & Jara, 2013) or photovoice research (Evans-agnew & Rosenberg, 2016). These bring a plurality of voices that are traditionally excluded from academia and can go as far as recognizing the people that participate in them as co-researchers (Evans-agnew & Rosenberg, 2016; Porter, 2016; Sinha & Back, 2014).

Despite these research methodologies and the aim they put in the interaction and dialogue, the implications of collaborative methodologies for authorship dynamics have been much less discussed. Dreyfuss’ (2000) work is one of very few pieces that connect collaboration with the legal issues regarding copyright. Relying on an economic and legal perspective, Dreyfuss sketches the complications of asserting authorship rights and solving disputes in academic collaborations. However, she hardly deals with the ethics of collaboration since she is only concerned with collaboration among academics. Sinha and Back (2014) also discuss their work with migrants in a co-authorship scheme in which the participants do not necessarily write the piece but are closely involved in developing the analysis, and providing insight that informs the work. Although Latin America now has an important tradition of collaborative research in social sciences, there has been little discussion over how this collaboration could have implications for the authorship of academic work.

There are some examples of collective authorship, like that of the Seminar on Social Movements, Subjects and Practices (Alonso et al., 2018), however their work does not engage in any reflection of authorship. In her Master’s thesis on the protection of traditional textiles, Gloria María Treviño included a recognition of the women who shared their lives and ideas with her, to the point in which her work is authored as “Gloria María Treviño and coauthors” (2018), even if those women did not write the thesis. This is a symbolic but significant action that invites us to think over the role of social actors in our work. One of the very few reflections on authorship in Latin American scholarship can be found in Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Zulema Lehm’s (1988) text on work ethics. They discuss the possibility of collective authorship in the context of the discussion workshops from which their own work emerged. However, they come to the conclusion that the concerns that guided their efforts did not represent the entire collective. Taking this into account, in the following section I will address how collaboration in the development of a text as co-authors can significantly advance the aims of collaborative research.

Authorship and Collaboration

As I mentioned, co-authorship is not uncommon in the academic field, yet it can mean different things. Asserting what kind of contribution merits authorship is not always clear in general nor in academic work (Dreyfuss, 2000; Wray, 2006; Zutshi et al., 2012). In the natural sciences where co-authorship prevails, it hardly represents the act of putting words into paper (or on screen). For example, even if it is not made explicit in documents, interacting with researchers of natural sciences will show that they understand authorship as recognition for various form of collaboration: getting funds, doing experiments, providing equipment, supervising students, can all merit the recognition of co-author. In social sciences the expectations are different. Authorship is still very much thought of in relation to the composition of a text. Social sciences scholars are less likely to recognize other kinds of contribution with authorship, even in the context of collaborative research.

There are different ways for a collaborative research to begin. Trentini and Wolanski (2018), for example, started doing research in the context of their respective PhD degrees. Their research turned into a participative research because of the expectations of the people involved the social movements they worked with. An opposite case is that of Aragón (2019) who started acting as a lawyer for the indigenous community of Cherán in México. Eventually, Aragón’s process turned into an activist research project that led him to bring his experience and that of the social movement into the academic environment. There are, of course, instances in which people set out to do collaborative research (Sinha & Back, 2014; Speed, 2006) and then the project itself is designed with those involved in the process. A relevant issue for many of these efforts, raised from the standpoint of critical epistemology, is how to build on scholarship that does not reproduce the disempowerment of persons that participate in it. For Aluwihare-Samaranayake (2012) the answer may lie in “developing a shared critical consciousness between participants and researchers through an emancipatory strategy such as dialogue, reflexive questioning, and listening” (2012, p. 70). The research methodology based on co-authorship can do just that.

My experience with collaborative research began in a context similar to that of Aragón in Cherán, when I was working with Kejtsitani (Ibarra Rojas et al., 2020), a group that works for the conservation of community memory in Cherán. Kejtsitani integrates various persons including young people and scholars from the community, as well as scholars that come to Cherán to study issues related to the social movement that developed there. Cherán is the first indigenous community in México that achieved the right to elect their authorities and integrate their government according to their own law, after a social movement faced the organized crime and corruption of local authorities (see: Aragón Andrade, 2019). I started working with Kejtsitani when their members were considering entering into an agreement with a public university to gather funds. My role as a sort of legal counselor enabled them to build on an agreement from the perspective of Cherán’s indigenous law. From that idea, we began a larger project to develop intellectual property and research ethic guidelines from a community perspective which could gather our collective reflections and convictions on the role of scholars in the community. My work with Kejtsitani made me part of Kejtsitani, at least in what refers to the parts of the project that had to do with law. The agreement never came through, but we did manage to create and publish an article (Ibarra Rojas et al., 2020). This experience also laid the ground for a collaborative methodological approach that is based on a proposal for co-authorship. After our work in Kejtsitani, I developed similar methodologies in three different contexts.

The first case in which I repeated this methodology was with participants of a cultural project in the Basque Country (Ibarra Rojas et al., 2020). Eltzia is the name of a community that gathers around a cultural center. The space is home to different activities that range from artistic expressions, such as dance or photography, to community building exercises. However, the purpose of Eltzia is not just to provide a space to develop these activities, but to intervene the local cultural policy by democratizing the initiatives that are developed in the town of Oñati. I learned about this project in a workshop I organized with the Basque scholar Miren Manias Muñoz. Eltzia was presented by Mirari Sagarzazu Sacristán and Ekain Muñóz Oñatibia, who are involved in the project and also prepared a brief text. Miren and I suggested to expand this document to bring it into discussion within academia. Unlike the case of Kejtsitani, I was not a member of Eltzia and did not work with them in the development of their project. The team that developed the article included two scholars and two Eltzia participants. Our collective discussion went very deep into the notion of the state in a part of the world where the link between a people—the Basques—and the political structure of the state—Spain—is quite complex.

Later we followed this collaborative methodology in another case, a study on gender violence in the context of self-determination; in which I worked with Yunuen Torres Ascenio, Rocelia Rojas Guardián and Guillermina Tapia Fabián, who are indigenous women from Cherán (Ibarra Rojas et al., 2020). The movement in Cherán began in great part due to the activities of the organized crime in the community, which sparkled the social movement that achieved their right to self-determination. Thanks to it, the community has found a remedy against violence. However, in 2018 a feminicide shook the community. The case was quite visible in local and even national media, as many researchers that had come into contact with Cherán had met the victim. The case was brought up in a the Seminar on Dialogue of Knowledges and Militant Legal Practices, ¹ in which I was involved and where many scholars believed that Cherán’s population had been indifferent to the attack against a woman from their own community. Thus, I contacted Yunuen, Rocelia and Guillermina, who I knew from Kejtsitani and who had been involved in the organization of the community to demand justice; I asked them to participate and write something for that seminar. We built the text together, as we had done in our previous experience; but this time we did not work in Kejtsitani as a collective. I was not part of the mobilization in Cherán and had only accompanied their struggle from afar. However, I knew that the internal processes of the community had been complex regarding the femicide and that I could do something to bring light to the internal efforts to bring justice that had gone unnoticed by outsiders. Incidentally, I also knew the women that organized the movement to demand justice within the community, and I knew that they had strong voices who could speak for themselves about their own experience.

The last case in which we implemented this methodology was with a group of activism that I am involved with (Bárcena Arévalo et al., 2020). The Collective Emancipations ² reunites activist-lawyers and scholars, as well as other specialists. We started the project as an academic seminar and later some of our colleagues began accompanying the struggle Cherán as their legal advisors int their judicialization process. Since then, the activist group began a trajectory working in the defense of indigenous rights, particularly in cases for self-determination. For a very long time, the litigation team was mainly integrated by women; however, gender dynamics often made the voices of our male colleagues more acceptable in many social environments. Although the collective has not engaged in feminist activism, we have a feminist political conviction and, through the many years we have worked together, we have also developed a feminist reflection over our work. Erika Bárcena Arévalo and Alejandra González Hernández, who are part of the litigation team and brilliant scholars, set out to write a text to bring that reflection forward in an academic setting. I joined their reflection with a proposal to work on the text in the same collaborative methodology I had followed before. Although I am part of the collective, I am not involved in the litigation team which means that I have mainly taken a supportive role in specific activities with them. Thus, while I have shared many experiences with them as part of the collective, I was also more of an observer to the work of the litigation team. This was something to consider as we set out on a reflexive journey over our shared experience, and what it meant both in a personal and on a collective level.

Despite the differences across these four projects, the process of building on the texts and turning experiences into research was quite similar. In all of these cases we began with a draft that involved at least some of the participants in the project. Only in the case of Kejtsitani did I build on the draft with my research assistant Ezequiel Escobedo. The Eltzia report was made by Mirari and Ekain, who are participants in Eltzia, and the first draft on activist lawyering was made by Erika and Alejandra. In the case of community activism against gender violence, the draft was developed during a meeting with Yunuen and Rocelia to set the agenda of the text. In these cases, the first document was more schematic and meant to guide an oral presentation in an academic seminar.

The first moment of drafting, whether it is setting discussion points or building on a short text, is very important because it was that moment where the objectives, analytic points and main examples were decided. Thus, although we did not previously plan for this, it is fundamental that the actors involved in the social process participate. Even in the case of Kejtsitani, where had a higher intervention in setting the agenda of the piece, I was also at the time involved in the project of building intellectual property guidelines. By being built by or with the people that participate in the social phenomenon, they establish the priorities for the analysis.

Each draft was then presented in an academic setting. The academic environment is not a mere side-element to the work we have developed. Each seminar brought forward issues and questions that made our work more critical and revealed relevant blind spots. This happened, in part, thanks to the questions brought forward by the scholars who participated in the seminars. Their interest was motivating and showed us that we had relevant questions and a significant experience. Other times, it was precisely the blind spots of the participating scholars, their reluctance during certain points of discussion, that showed us the strength of our work and its importance for wider discussions on issues such as gender, democracy, law and even the academic field itself.

Except for the experience with Kejtsitani, the presentations were led by the social actors either accompanied by me or by themselves. I was always part of that conversation, but I only in the case of Kejtsitani did I present as both a participant as well as a scholar. In the case of indigenous women activism, we integrated a text mainly from the indigenous women’s point of view and I participated solely as a reader. The presentations were recorded and raised significant questions to work through in later conversations.

After the academic presentations, the intense and meticulous work of making the initial draft into an article began. Collaborative writing is defined as “a situation in which decisions are made by consensus” (Morgan in Lunsford & Ede, 1994, p. 432). This consensus is the most enriching but also the most challenging part of the work. In most cases I drafted a document that integrated the points raised in the academic setting and became the basis for further collective discussion. The discussion was carried out in two to three meetings, reading the draft but also developing beyond it. We talked about the aims that were set in the first draft, the nuances to be included and the methodological guidelines. In this part of the work we also shared literature and references among the participants and discussed the theoretical approaches and scholarly discussions to be dealt with in the text.

The words put in the texts were taken directly from the recordings of our presentations and discussions. Collective authorship requires talking, going back and forth several times. Each meeting was recorded, and the words provided the content for the piece. The text was then familiar and yet not the same as the discussion because it was not just a written version of our conversation. Discussing the theoretical perspectives in our meetings also helped ground them. As we read through the document, long sections would often go unchallenged, but other times a single word or concept became a source of doubt and the subject of a lengthy discussion that did not always made it into the text.

The definitive text was only considered finalized until nobody had further comments. This meant that disagreements were not voted on, rather they were worked through so all the participants felt at ease with the final paper. This mechanism to find consensus was derived from how people in Kejtsitani generally work, which in the context of writing aimed to revise the content and the form of a text until it is finally unchallenged by all authors.

The discussion about the implications of authorship was only addressed in Ketsitani (Ibarra Rojas et al., 2020). As part of our discussion we talked about how to present the authorship of the work according to what it represented. We believed, as we stated in the final article, that our work should be part of the heritage of the community of Cherán and that this ownership should be the first recognition. However, we also came to conceive authorship as a form of acknowledgement on different levels. Besides the community, the main writing and drafting of the article was carried out mostly by myself and my research assistant at the time, so we are both individually included as authors. The final document also integrated the contributions of the members of Kejtsitani, not as source of data, but as creator of content; therefore Kejtsitani became a collective third author. In the other three cases the co-authorship dynamic was decided in advance, but every co-author was part of the decision making process. We may not have all written each word, but we all agreed on it.

Even though the other three documents did not engage in an explicit discussion over authorship, the fact that we were all going to be co-authors changed the way we approached the discussion. Being part of a decision-making process is key. Authorship is an act of taking credit, but also of taking responsibility. The participants of all these experiences knew that their name, or the name of their collective, would be associated with the final piece: the printed words would be their words. This did not entail that our commitment to the processes analyzed meant an homogenization of the participants within the process (Alonso et al., 2018, p. 26). On the contrary, each participant was concerned with being reflexive over the process, the collective in which they had participated (as all processes involved many people beyond the authors of the papers as well), and their own position.

Responsibility was expressed much more than ownership. We were all responsible for the way we portrayed ourselves and the processes we took part of. Especially for those involved, it was important that the text was critical and reflexive, that it would not just be a celebration of the processes they were involved with, but that it would also show the challenges and the expectations that are yet to be met. There was a lot of attention to detail, ensuring that the critiques were fair and honest, as well as correctly expressing the achievements. Thus, we developed a shared critical consciousness (Aluwihare-Samaranayake, 2012) over the issue at hand. As authors, those involved in the processes did do not see the text as something foreign to themselves nor to their experiences.

As a form of research, each participant had a different experience and methodological strategy. For those involved in the social processes, the research experience was a sort of auto-ethnography where they engaged in a reflection over something they had lived and a process in which they take part (Blanco, 2012; Guyotte & Sochacka, 2016). It was the same for me in the cases of Kejtsitani and of our activist collective. In these cases I was often pushed into becoming more self-aware of my role and into making my positions honest and explicit. For all of us, the process that we presented and analyzed reflected our commitment to the political convictions that go in line with the aims of the movement or organization that we are working with; even all co-authors participate in the same way and our commitment is different.

This also has consequences for the ethical key of this methodology in relation with the disclosure of the identity of the participants. The privacy and anonymity of the participants are important concerns in qualitative methodologies (Wood, 2017). This is a recognition of the rights of participants and the fact that their involvement in research can result in compromising situations. In the articles we co-authored, we took great care of protecting the identity of the people involved in the processes analyzed, but it is evident that all the participants in this methodology are clearly identified as authors; much as it would happen in an auto-ethnography. One must note that anonymity is meant to protect participants, but is also a right that can be waivered by them, and there are cases in which the political or personal context of the participants motivates them to seek individual recognition (Wood, 2017). Furthermore, there is a critical question on whether elites and powerful social actors should be given the same consideration as vulnerable social sectors in social research (Alvesalo-Kuusi & Whyte, 2018). As suggested by Aluwihare-Samaranayake “a critical perspective of ethics is concerned with who gets to decide what is good and what is (2012, p. 65). Thus, anonymity is not a value in itself, but a tool to be put in service of ethical considerations regarding power dynamics in scholarly efforts. The aims of participant research should be aligned to uphold the autonomy and informed participation of individuals in a research. Therefore, the in the methodology proposed, this autonomy is expressed in authorship and assumed by the participants in the responsibility they decide to bear as authors.

Furthermore, in most cases, it was the participants in the social process who first decided to bring their experience into an academic environment and that set forward the aims of the piece. This was important for many reasons. It implies that they saw a potential advantage of venturing into the academic field; maybe as a way to solve a problem, to argue against an interpretation of a process they lived, to shed light on an issue, even to show the importance of a social project. The participants had also assessed the risks and asserted their own standpoint before engaging in this methodology and producing a text. This showed the will and agency of participants to present and write about their case from an ethics of responsibility.

Co-authorship in this context also brings forward a deeper reflection of the conditions of the scholars themselves. When we establish co-authorship dynamics between people of different backgrounds, it is fundamental that we keep these conditions in mind and make them explicit. In the cases where I have not been involved in the process, my own experience resembled an interview or a focus group, as I often brought forward questions or issues to be discussed. It was also like a workshop in the sense that I often presented academic discussions or concepts. But there was one essential difference: I was not “teaching” and thus my presentation was meant to be questioned, and strived to make people think whether those categories and constructions make sense and are useful to them. Also, the information we recorded was handled in a different manner than in focus groups or workshops. Our voices during the discussion are content, not raw material. Thus, my own experience resonates with Sinha and Back’s description:, “a sociable process of travelling alongside in dialogue” (2014, p. 482).

Throughout each experience I felt that much more was achieved through the collaboration than if we had each been on our own, but there were also challenges and obstacles to consider. Not all research is collaborative, and not all collaborative research would be better expressed through co-authorship. I have only been able to work in this manner with people that I knew to a certain extent and who were interested in engaging in this kind of dynamics; not everyone is. Even when there were a few people involved, most of the groups have been quite small. This methodology would not be feasible in larger groups and this means that the authoritative voice, even if it is of participants in the social process and they are reflexive, is likely to hide other voices (Porter, 2016). We were concerned with this, especially in the paper we wrote with Yunuen, Rocelia and Guillermina, where we did not want to present an essentialized view. In the case of the Collective Emancipations we also carried out a meeting with the rest of our female colleagues to discuss the draft. The projects were feasible in great measure because I worked with people who were interested in the project, open to differences and patient enough to put in the work that was needed to achieve the final text.

I never encountered a disagreement that we could not overcome by placing the necessary nuances in the text. However, this does not mean that a fundamental disagreement cannot happen. Deliberative spaces are influenced by gender, race and personality dynamics. Collaborative methodologies can go awfully bad when conflicts arise between the participants (Kara, 2017). All these are aspects that researchers interested in working with this collaborative methodology must bear in mind. However, it is likely that many of these issues can arise in any form of co-authorship as well. In fact, I believe that developing conversations, learning and constructing through them, is an essential skill for all qualitative researchers.

In my own experiences, the main challenge was to have the patience and time to finish the process. We often had to coordinate complicated agendas. Participants were sometimes getting tired and felt that the final article was taking too much time to finish. It was, in fact, very hard to get non-scholars engaged with the peer-review process. This was also discouraging for me. I still made suggestions on how to deal with the reviews and, in most cases, the conversations on these suggestions were much more to the point and had little discussion. Nevertheless, I consider that by the time we were more tired of the text we also felt it portrayed our shared reflections. As I read through these texts again to prepare this article, I still feel that they represent a growing process of learning, questioning and reflecting that is very valuable.

However, it is necessary to also address some of the concerns regarding collaborative research that could extend to co-authorship. One of these, is the danger of making academic work a mere pamphlet of a social movement (Alonso et al., 2018). However, this concern departs from the assumption that that scholars will lose the objectivity of detachment, and that neither scholars nor the actors involved in a social process can actually be reflexive upon said process. The processes I have described were an opportunity to think, question, and challenge the experiences of those involved. In most instances, the social actors that I worked with were extremely critical of their own experiences, and expected more of the process and of themselves. This concern over a lack of reflexiveness indicates to the belief that political commitment is acritical, dogmatic, even blind; which is a misconception of explicitly politically active people, often made by those more comfortable with the veil of positivism which hides other political positions.

Another concern (Alonso et al., 2018; Leyva et al., 2018; Trentini & Wolanski, 2018), perhaps more founded, is that collaboration can be a mere simulation; that the people involved in social movements or organizations are incorporated in the research as mere apprentices, or even used instrumentally without really being taken into consideration. In the work I carried out in Cherán, the community was concerned that researchers go to the community with an agenda and that they take their observations in a biased manner without truly listening. It is not a fear of disagreement, but a fear of being used and abused. Co-authorship can be a way to assure that this does not happen. Co-authorship, as proposed in this article, expresses a conversation where social actors own their voice.

The following concern, is whether social actors will lose their voice in the academic endeavor. Collaborative research efforts are usually concerned with the respect for people that they work with, and an understanding that social actors do not need interpreters to explain their own process (Alonso et al., 2018). From these perspectives: “Voice as a process is devalued when the interviewer is viewed as a ‘data miner’ or when writing is the exclusive province of a distant analyst who has scrutinized a life he or she inhabits only momentarily.” (Sinha & Back, 2014, p. 483). But bringing different voices to academia is both a matter of content as it is of form. In the methodology I present here, the texts are built from our discussions and so they should not change too much. Thus, the text should read more casual, like a conversation. But, the more scholars get involved in the writing, the more a text becomes sophisticated and detached from oral expression. The middle ground, however, must be met where the text is technically sound but those involved in the process can still relate to it. Social actors who are not academics must see the words on paper as their words, and scholars must find themselves comfortable with the level of specialization of a text. This aspect is, very much, part of the negotiation that I described. The papers that we wrote discuss concepts and words, and we realize through the process that how things are named and phrased matters.

Final Thoughts

Co-authorship is a natural and essential step in truly changing the epistemological standpoint in academic work. As Sieder (2013) indicates, the best case for collaborative methodologies entails a contribution to validating alternative and situated epistemologies. Authorship is constructed as an authoritative standpoint from which to name the world, and it has belonged to a specific sector of people and embedded into law. However, authorship can be practiced in a way that recognizes the place of social actors in the processes of constructing knowledge. The methodology I present here is a viable way to do this.

The merits of diversifying academic authorship are far more valuable than the obstacles. The process of collaboration transforms those who participate in it (Sinha & Back, 2014) because it is based on an invitation to reflect and challenge our experiences and assumptions. The political commitment and the collaborative element also brings an unusual kind of access (Trentini & Wolanski, 2018).

Nevertheless, the structure of the collaboration I propose also challenges the pertinence of whether the best standpoint to understand a social process is from within or from without. From within you see detail. From outside you see a bigger picture. In most of the cases described here, the process can be appreciated from both viewpoints. Both perspectives converge and we try to maintain the nuances while highlighting the more significant contributions to general discussions. Furthermore, constructing texts in a collaborative scheme can be fertile ground for developing other methodologies based on conversation that bridge the gap between an academic and practical understanding of the world.

There are further, and perhaps more radical questions to address in regard to authorship and collaboration. Could we move beyond the text? As I mentioned, the natural sciences do recognize different kinds of input in a research as authorship, even if they do not involve being part of composing the text. What kinds of input could merit authorship in the social sciences? Could this be extended to, say, the participants of an academic seminar that discuss a text? Another set of pertinent critical questions can be placed on authorship itself. Could we move to a non-author point? Would that be a good way to express the contexts in which ideas are produced? All these are beyond the scope of this article, but certainly show that there is still plenty to explore on the topic. However, unveiling authorship’s silver lining is already an invitation for readers to consider that the author, in social sciences, is rarely an individual genius and that social sciences rely much more on hidden conversations, with social actors and between scholars.

Finally, I must address what may be the elephant in the room regarding this article: my own authorship. For all the effort put into this article to argue a case for collaborative research and co-authorship, my individual authorship of this paper seems paradoxical. During recent years I have been involved in collaborative efforts and individual development of work. As I have described, engaging with interesting and thought provoking processes and people have changed a good part of my scholarly efforts. In this article, nevertheless, I wanted to bring forward the growing questions and concerns in relation to the role of authorship that relate to my traditional area of research, which is intellectual property. After Kejtsitani, these topics were not relevant to the issues discussed. Indeed, co-authorship entails compromise and understanding which of your own scholarly concerns fit within a collective agenda. This reflection started with Kejtsitani, but the methodological experience remains quite new. I believed that each experience would be different, and they were, but I also found the methodological strategies that worked for all cases. Thus, this is my account of all these different encounters and the paths we traveled together.