Preface

From the unexperienced young consultant at my first Treaty meeting back in 2004, I’ve grown into a reflexive research-actor, no longer scared of pointing to what I consider dominant positions.

From the ‘whole’ to the ‘part’ and vice-versa, from mono-disciplinarity to transdisciplinarity

Too much, not enough. One is always assessed by reference to one’s own refer­ence scale, which varies according to the reader’s origin, background, discipline, political standpoints, etc. I hope that in reading this work, the reader will be open, understanding and kind. Being a lawyer has been useful to provide a new understanding of the issues at stake. However, I quickly recognized my own disciplinary limits. I attempted to mitigate them by experimenting transdis- ciplinarity. Therefore, I have developed my research methods ‘on the spot’, ‘in the doing’. In 2018, transdisciplinarity is far more welcome and recognized as a valuable research trend than it was ten years ago. I hope that my sometimes- clumsy attempts to integrate real people (i.e. those I name stakeholders in my work) and other disciplines in my research process has contributed to improve our understanding of all the issues and interests at stake.

From gender discrimination to feminist research

Evolving in a male-dominant field (there were few women at my first Treaty meeting), becoming a mother during my PhD research and facing the invisible (to many eyes) yet significant discrimination women are facing in academia, I have walked my path opening my eyes on this institutional discrimination. Although I was a lucky researcher supported by both male and female feminist guides and therefore not suffering from harsh sexism, I realized that institutional gender discrimination is still a fact in everyday university life (even though I am perfectly conscious to be part of the privileged group - white, rich, educated young women - and that gender discrimination arises elsewhere too).

Both my personal and professional itinerary have transformed me into a proud feminist. This experience has led me to question my way of conducting a valu­able scientific research. I have not (yet) directly implemented feminist theory in my work, but my recent readings in the field are inspiring and enriching my current thinking, and I hope to conduct my future research following that direction. I want to contribute to rendering half of the humanity visible again.

From Eurocentric domination to a humble open mind

Yet, experiencing gender discrimination acquainted me with the colonialism of our Eurocentric research approaches imposed on other populations around the world. From a strong, unquestioned Eurocentric vision, which I embodied when I first started working on the Treaty, I have opened up my eyes to the diversity of minorities’ views - i.e. all other views than the dominant one. This has allowed me to question my initial assumptions, their validity and their ‘unquestion­ability’. As a consequence, I have more and more found interest in spiritual and holistic concepts - such as Ubuntu, Pachamama and the like - to grasp an understanding of my surrounding (i.e. taking into account Haraway’s ‘situated knowledges’) and open my research to ‘non-rational’ (i.e. non-Eurocentric colonial) thinking. I was eager to listen not only to what my mind can rationally understand or what my eyes can objectively see but also to what my heart can ‘un-judgingly’ feel and what my guts can intuitively sense.

From objectivity to subjectivity of the research-actor

This slide away from a ‘rational objectivity’ towards opening up all my senses in my work led me to conduct my research by recognizing my own subjectiv­ity. This move has been sometimes interpreted as activist-research versus what some academics consider ‘objective science’ should be. I believe objectivity in academia is a fake. I believe no human being is objective. I prefer recognizing subjectivity in my work and starting from there, trying to implement rigor­ous research methods to guarantee that all sides of the coin are considered.

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From the lonely researcher to the community of people

Finally, working as an academic researcher has not always been an easy process because of its sometimes-lonely character. I am a collaborative person, and I value exchanges with people as a source of richness and creativity. I am only able to work on my own with great difficulty. My mind becomes creative and productive out of interaction, interconnection and relation with people, whether academics or not. Therefore, I have developed a strong network of people with whom I have been, and still am, able to exchange. I thank all of them for con­tributing to my work and I hope to continue collaborating with them all and many new people!¹

I would be grateful to receive feedback and comments on the present book.

I wish you enjoyable reading and look forward to interacting with you!

Warm regards, Christine Frison

Note

1 Some of the new persons I hope to engage with in the future are the authors of the fol­lowing work, as 2016 and 2017 have been prolific years for agrobiodiversity law and policy in terms of PhD theses defended: Valerie Tilman (Universite de Namur, Belgium); Sonya Morales (Universite de Laval, Canada); Archana Patnaik (Wageningen University, the Netherlands).