OOS 31-3 - Sweat equity, reverse transdisciplinarity, or showing up: The importance of real reciprocity

Calls for large-scale changes to the status quo in order to address the polycrises facing us -- the interwoven challenges of climate change, catastrophic biodiversity loss, environmental toxification, and widespread deprivation of human rights and well-being – have become commonplace, particular among ecologists. Business as usual, it is widely agreed, is not an option. Yet even as we call for significant societal changes, many of us who make our living elucidating the challenges before us have continued to do our own business largely as usual, despite generally being in more privileged positions.
If radical change is necessary, then our practices, expectations, and reward systems must be radically updated in service of that change, lest the alarms we raise ring hollow.
This presentation proposes that enhanced training, effort, and rewards around one key practice would dramatically advance our efforts towards change. This practice has been called “sweat equity” or, more loftily, “reverse transdisciplinarity.” It could also simply be called “showing up”: scientists being practically present in communities that we wish to understand or work with. "Showing up" means not just being present, but also treating the priorities of these we are present with as being of substantively equal importance to our own. That is, backing our words up with good faith actions that put our effort, resources, and time towards others' priorities.
Common sense and advanced research on reciprocity both point to the duel benefits of such practices: (1) enhancement of trust, mutual understanding, and communication between academics and larger society; and (2) building the material basis for asking for and seeing real change.
In the end, there is little reason to expect we can successfully ask for sacrifice, participation, and change based on ecologists’ (valid) priorities without sacrificing, participating, and changing based on the (valid) priorities of others.