Pluralism under asymmetry: China’s international research collaboration in economics and education

Thesis

Scientific activities can be largely conceptualised into two interlocking levels—the national and the global systems. International collaboration as a distinctive practice in this dual system is shaped by materiality (infrastructures, regulations, funding), epistemology (disciplinary logics and methods), and values and imaginaries (norms of openness, merit, and techno-nationalist imperatives). Researchers in international collaboration seek to build trust and negotiate relations of power through various strategies regarding agendas, authorship, data, and leadership. This study investigates social science collaborations between on one hand researchers from China, on the other hand researchers from Western countries (the United States and France), the East Asian region (South Korea) and the global South (Pakistan). Collaborations in two disciplines are explored: Economics and Education. The central question of the study is: what do these researchers’ cross-country collaborative experiences suggest about the global and national research systems? To address the question, this study used an exploratory emergent design that applied primarily semi-structured interviews (N=43, including 11 cross-country dyads on the same projects) complemented with bibliometric analysis. In the experiences of these researchers, global standards travel through unequal infrastructures and nationally inflected imaginaries, producing patterned yet negotiable asymmetries whose outcomes hinge on how partners organise relations of power, translate epistemic repertoires, and sustain reciprocity. In this sense, global science is neither a flat, stateless network nor a fixed centre–periphery order. It is a layered system in motion in which structural inequalities are consequential yet never fully determining; collaboration is made workable—and sometimes innovative—through situated practices that reorder relations of power and render epistemic difference intelligible.

Authors: Yu, K

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-1akemkeqz
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: social sciences; global science; international research collaboration
• Subjects: Science publishing; Higher education and state