Constraints on researchers acting as change agents
Constraints on researchers acting as change agents Book Section
CAEPR Research Monograph
- Author(s): Holcombe, S
- Secondary Author(s): Hunt, J, Smith, D, Garling, S, Sanders, W
- Published: 2008
- Publisher: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, ANU E Press
Abstract: This chapter reflects on the role of research and the constraints on researchers acting as change agents in the context of a project on an Aboriginal governance issue. By examining what has happened to the knowledge produced in the context of this project, with the Anmatjere Community Government Council (ACGC) about a fringe camp within the Ti Tree township in the Northern Territory (NT), the tensions between advocacy and impartiality are explored. This fringe camp is without any basic servicing, although there has been a permanent Aboriginal population there since settlement of the town from the late 1880s. The conundrum raised by this research project was that although we found pathways to change, our suggestions were not pursued either by the ACGC or the NT Government. Considering why this was the case leads to an examination of power relationships between Aboriginal people and the state, as mediated through the council, and an exploration of the impacts of policy in this context. Thus, the challenges of operating as a researcher within this environment suggest that the impact of research is constrained by the limits to collaboration, both by the means through which policy becomes a rationalising tool of the NT Government and the deeper local history of colonialism.
- Urls: http://epress.anu.edu.au/caepr_series/no_29/mobile_devices/ch03.html, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p97361/pdf/book.pdf
- Publisher Location: Canberra