Transdisciplinarity a tool to transform university research and extension

Abstract

The Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN - Managua) from the multidisciplinary School of Matagalpa and the Union of peasants organized in San Dionisio (UCOSD) are conducting an interdisciplinary dialogue since 2013. This dialogue is possible through a participatory action research where they are articulating different undergraduate and graduate levels at the University with the organizational, productive and environmental needs of the peasant organization. The different academic degrees of the university such as: agricultural engineering, economics and agricultural economics have had different dialogues with more than 300 peasant families organized in the Calico River sub basin. In these dialogues from the 13 communities where the UCOSD is present, a problematic has been detected: community organization has fallen apart giving way to an administrative bureaucracy that gradually transformed a peasant social movement into a company that provides peasants. The contradictions faced by peasant movements and rural families dialogue with the contradictions experienced by the University in its research work and extension. Hierarchical models of power, visions of knowledge are contradicted and little disrespectful, transfer inertia and not listening, personal pains that carry heavy backpacks on their students or the sons and daughters of farmers. These contradictions help us rethink governance models, models of research and extension and its articulation with teaching that should drive a university to meet the challenges and transformations of this century.

Rev. iberoam. bioecon. cambio clim. Vol. 1 num 2, 2015, pág. 52-74