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Table 4 WHO: forms of power exercised by funding body, researchers, and practitioners

From: Whose knowledge, whose values? An empirical analysis of power in transdisciplinary sustainability research

WHO: power in actor selection

Funding body

Researchers

Practitioners

Instrumental

–

Deciding whom to involve or selecting practitioners; based on their authority as project leaders

Deciding to decline an invitation toparticipate, deciding to withdraw orre-position; based on a lack ofaccountability as non-formalised partners

Structural

Endorsing only researchers as applicants/PIs, transferring project authority to them, thus shaping the options of researchers and practitioners; based on material-structural sources

–

Shaping the structural conditions of researchers’ entering the field (behavioural and communication norms), (de-)legitimising researchers as actors in the field; based on practitioners’ legitimacy in the practice context; silent or outspoken threat of withdrawal, distant actors in the wider practice context, authorising individual actors to participate

Discursive

Framing practitioners in terms of ‘citizens’ and ‘concerned societal groups’ as opposed to ‘experts’, ‘stakeholders’

Ascribing roles to and positioning the practitioners, constructing them as ‘legitimate problem identifiers’, ‘implementers’ or ‘multipliers’

Ascribing roles to and positioning the researchers, constructing researchers as ‘advisors’, ‘evaluators’ or ‘organisers’, based on ideas of how the ‘others’ are