Constructing common ground and re-creating differences between professional and indigenous communities in the Andes

Multi-actor initiatives aiming at environmental sustainability and social equity, face complex tensions between institutionalized decision-makers, backed up by expert knowledge, and communities with locally embedded knowledge and interests. Despite the importance given to community participation, successful experiences are limited in number, scope and duration. Experts are confronted with the paradox that they exclude local communities with the strategies and languages they use to include them. This study is based on the long-term experiences of the authors with a multi-actor initiative in southern Ecuador on sustainable rural drinking water management. They were involved as action-researchers, facilitating multiparty interactions and supporting reflective practice among the participants. The article shows how multiparty processes construct identities, workforms, structures and activities that cross the boundaries between communities of expert and indigenous practice, even in the exceptionally unequal conditions of the Andes, where inequalities between these communities are deeply rooted in history. Such transitions were taken as opportunities to look for common ground between different communities-of-practice whilst, at the same time, contradictions could come to the fore. As inequalities tend to be confirmed through interactions, not only inside but also outside the multi-actor initiative, they cannot be resolved definitively by a multiparty project. Under those circumstances a social constructionist approach, calling the attention to the constructed nature of mutual perceptions and relationships, was highly inspiring for the authors-facilitators to keep the reflection and dialogue among the participants in the process going-on. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.