The participation of practitioners in transdisciplinary sustainability research has been heralded as a promising tool for producing ‘robust’ knowledge and engendering societal transformations. Although transdisciplinary approaches have been advanced as an effective avenue for generating knowledge positioned to question and transform an unsustainable status quo, the political and power dimensions inherent to such research have hardly been discussed. In this article, we scrutinise the constitution of participation in transdisciplinary research through a power lens. Guided by social theories of power and a relational understanding of participation, we analyse how diverse actors equipped with a variety of material and ideational sources wield power over the subjects, objects, and procedures of participation. We applied a qualitative meta-analysis of five transdisciplinary projects from a major German research funding programme in the field of sustainability to unveil the ways in which the funding body, researchers, and practitioners exercise instrumental, structural, and discursive power over (i) actor selection and (re-)positioning, (ii) agenda setting, and (iii) rule setting. We found that researchers primarily exert instrumental power over these three elements of participation, whereas practitioners as well as the funding body wield primarily structural and discursive power. By elucidating tacit and hidden power dynamics shaping participation in transdisciplinary research, this article provides a basis for improving process design and implementation as well as developing targeted funding instruments. The conclusions also provide insights into barriers of participatory agenda setting in research practice and governance.

中文翻译：

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谁的知识，谁的价值观？跨学科可持续性研究中权力的实证分析

实践证明，从业者参与跨学科的可持续性研究是产生“稳健”知识并促进社会变革的有前途的工具。尽管跨学科的方法已被发展为一种有效的途径，用于产生定位于质疑和转变不可持续的现状的知识，但几乎没有讨论这种研究固有的政治和权力方面。在本文中，我们将通过权力的角度来审查参与跨学科研究的构成。在社会权力理论和对参与的相关理解的指导下，我们分析了配备各种物质和思想来源的各种行为者如何对参与的主体，对象和程序施加权力。我们对来自德国可持续发展领域一项重大研究资助计划的五个跨学科项目进行了定性荟萃分析，揭示了资助机构，研究人员和从业人员对（i）演员行使工具，结构和话语权的方式选择和（重新）定位，（ii）议程设置和（iii）规则设置。我们发现研究人员主要对参与的这三个要素施加工具性力量，而从业人员以及资助机构则主要发挥结构性和话语权。通过阐明影响跨学科研究的隐性和隐性动力动力学，本文为改进流程设计和实施以及开发有针对性的资助手段提供了基础。