Research Centre for Public Health, Equity and Human Flourishing, Torrens University Australia, Adelaide, Australia.
College of Humanities and Social Science, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
Health Expect. 2023 Oct;26(5):1954-1964. doi: 10.1111/hex.13804. Epub 2023 Jul 31.
Co-produced research holds enormous value within the health sciences. Yet, there can be a heavy focus on what research participants think, do and know; while the researcher's responsibility to explore and re/work their own knowledge or praxis tends to escape from view. This is reflected in the limited use of co-production to explore broad structural distributions of health and risk(s). We argue this missed opportunity has the potential to unfold as what Berlant calls a 'cruel optimism', where something desirable becomes an obstacle to flourishing and/or produces harm. We explore challenges to involving lay populations meaningfully in health research amidst a neoliberal cultural landscape that tends to responsibilise people with problems they cannot solve.
Drawing together principles from hermeneutic and feminist philosophy, we develop a novel methodology for co-producing research about determinants of health and health risk (using a case study of alcohol consumption as an example) that centres on what researchers do, know and think during research: Women's Thought Collectives.
Keeping the constructed nature of social systems-because they shape ideas of value, expertise and knowledge-in view during co-produced research illuminates the potential for cruel optimisms within it. Such reflexive awareness carves out starting points for researchers to engage with how social hierarchies might (tacitly) operate during the co-production of knowledge. Our work has broad utility for diverse population groups and provides important considerations around the roles and responsibilities for reflexive co-production of knowledge at all levels of health systems.
The development of these ideas was sparked by working with lay participants during the Women's Thought Collectives for Kristen Foley's doctoral research 2021-2023, but undertaken without their direct involvement-in accordance with the responsibilities of researchers in the reflexive co-production of knowledge. Forthcoming publications will address the outcomes and processes of this work.
共同生产的研究在健康科学领域具有巨大的价值。然而，研究往往过于关注研究参与者的想法、行为和认知，而忽视了研究人员探索和重新审视自己的知识或实践的责任。这反映在共同生产在探索广泛的健康和风险结构分布方面的应用有限。我们认为，这种错失的机会可能会演变成贝伦特所说的“残酷的乐观主义”，即令人向往的事物反而成为繁荣的障碍，或者产生危害。我们探讨了在新自由主义文化背景下，让非专业人群有意义地参与健康研究所面临的挑战，这种背景往往会让人们对自己无法解决的问题负责。
我们借鉴解释学和女性主义哲学的原则，开发了一种新的方法论，用于共同生产关于健康决定因素和健康风险的研究（以酒精消费为例），该方法侧重于研究人员在研究过程中所做、所知和所想：女性思想集体。
在共同生产研究中保持社会系统的构建性质，因为它们塑造了价值、专业知识和知识的观念，这揭示了其中残酷乐观主义的潜在可能性。这种反思性意识为研究人员提供了起点，让他们能够参与到社会等级制度在知识共同生产中（默许地）运作的方式。我们的工作对不同的人群群体具有广泛的效用，并为各级卫生系统中知识的反思性共同生产的角色和责任提供了重要的考虑。
这些想法的发展是在 2021-2023 年克里斯汀·福利（Kristen Foley）的博士研究期间与非专业参与者共同开展女性思想集体时引发的，但没有他们的直接参与——这符合研究人员在知识的反思性共同生产中的责任。即将出版的出版物将探讨这项工作的结果和过程。
