Dynamism of Boundary Spanning Collaboration in Addressing Environmental Pollution in China: Reflecting Emergent Boundaries between Research and Practice

Abstract

When engaging in fieldwork in an emerging economy and other developing countries where contingent, uncertain, and restrictive situations are prevalent, how can outside researchers and local actors collaborate in practice against challenges to sustainability? This article focuses on boundaries emerging between research and practice in different stages and examines how each actor engages in “boundary spanning practice” by highlighting embedded experiences in a series of fieldwork. It defines a “boundary spanning collaboration” as the development of a novel idea into collaborative practice beyond each position and domain by various stakeholders of different positions and areas in an attempt to reveal the dynamism of multifaceted boundary spanning practices between the field and the home. For a case study, the author reflects on his experience of collaborative practices with a local nongovernmental organization (NGO) for almost 15 years in the Huai River Basin, China, which has been suffering from water pollution hazards, and has become aware of a series of boundary spanning practices. While the boundary between the field and the home has been opened, closed, and then reopened for 15 years, such practices have connected types of knowledge and resources beyond emergent boundaries along with serious pollution hazards between developed and developing countries, and as a politically sensitive issue. The author also realizes there have been three phases —“flatting,” “flipping,” and “reflecting”— beyond the boundary between the author as an outside researcher and the local NGO in different stages in their collaborative field research. Importantly, such phases have been contingently induced, and they have elevated their back-and-forth boundary spanning collaboration reflectively.