Paper short abstract:

A dialogue between an anthropologist of postcolonial STS and an economic anthropologist thinking together about the conditions, stakes, and complexities of collaboration.

Paper long abstract:

We will present a dialogue between an anthropologist of postcolonial STS and an economic anthropologist thinking together about the conditions, stakes, and complexities of collaboration. While attending to questions of collaboration more broadly, we focus in particular on collaboration between academics and community co-researchers. We will talk through examples from our past and planned future research, thinking them through in relation to existing theorizations of collaboration and community engagement. How, for instance, does one support the political goals of research collaborators and navigate political demands? What might community collaboration look like when the research object is something at the scale of global finance? What work needs to be done to prepare for and adjust collaboration? And how do we ensure that collaborations don’t exacerbate extractivist research logics?