The production of knowledge as a « Minga » : challenges and opportunities of a new methodological approch based on co-determination and reciprocity

This paper presents a new methodological approach, entitled "MINGA", developed with the goal of achieving a more equitable working relationship between the researcher and her/his research subjects while also reaching a deeper understanding of the reality being researched. The question of what type of representations we produce as researchers, and with what consequences, has been addressed for some time now by post-colonial and feminist academics. Such critiques have been valuable in highlighting the need to generate new research practices that go beyond representation as the sole domain of researchers, and have thus contributed to "decolonizing" research methods. At the same time have there have been more efforts to theorize than to developing and implementing critical and collaborative methodologies. MINGA proposes a new approach, consisting of establishing research partnerships with the studied subjects, which are oriented by the principles of co-determination and reciprocity. The term MINGA was chosen to highlight parallels with the ancestral practice of "minga", dating back to Inca times, of the collective production of goods for the benefit of the community, without monetary exchange and on the basis of reciprocity. The methodology MINGA is therefore a form of co-production of knowledge where the mutual benefit is the expansion of the social and cultural capital of all of the research partners. Developing such methodologies requires first an exhaustive and critical reflection on the barriers that are to be overcome to create more egalitarian research relationships. Because few efforts have been made to identify them and think about how they could be dismantled, these barriers still remain invisible to some academics. After outlining a typology of such barriers, the article describes the guiding principles of the MINGA methodology. It ends by discussing the challenges and potentials of this new methodological approach.