Combining Research Practices

Can Foreign Researchers Create a Synthesis of Scientific Systems?

Abstract

Why should Germans conduct research in Vietnam if there are Vietnamese researchers who could do this work? This is the question that this article tries to answer. By presenting two different research projects that were implemented in Vietnam by German researchers, the special role that what we call the “transcultural researcher” holds will be analyzed. As a theoretical framework, the work of Rehbein (2013) on the “kaleidoskopische Dialektik” and Homi K. Bhabha’s (2004) “third space” will be employed. We argue that the researcher can create a synthesis of two societies and two scientific systems as he or she temporarily migrates to the country in which the research is implemented. The synthesis in this context is, however, not accompanied by the loss of either of those two but rather entails the deeper connection of both.