ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to introduce a “partial overlaps” framework with particular attention to the roles of values in transdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration. This framework attends both to overlaps between epistemologies, ontologies, and values included in different knowledge systems and to differences that make those overlaps always partial. While overlaps can work as springboards for reaching common ground and coordinated joint action, their partialities require serious engagement with disagreements and tensions. In transdisciplinary practice, complex landscapes of heterogeneous and sometimes conflicting values need to be navigated, resulting in important challenges that can be faced using partial overlaps. In the chapter, the partial overlaps framework is situated in a wider history of epistemic paternalism, diversity, and decolonization, which involves an entanglement of values and knowledge production. The chapter illustrates partial overlaps between values by considering how they are articulated in different knowledge systems, especially focusing on Indigenous and local practices and knowledge. Finally, it also considers the possibilities of learning from partial overlaps, particularly in the entanglement of values and ontologies.
Readers may also be interested in the Handbook chapters by Jacalyn M. Beck et al. and Kyle Whyte and Pasang Yangjee Sherpa.
