Interinstitutional Academic Cooperation: Reciprocity, Power, and Situated Dialogue among Scientific Communication Associations

Resumo

This article examines interinstitutional academic cooperation (IAC) among scientific associations, universities, research groups, and scholars in the field of communication. Although cooperation is a frequent practice through conferences, publications, networks, exchanges, and joint projects, it has not always been subjected to systematic critical reflection. The article argues that IAC should not be understood merely as an administrative or diplomatic activity, but as a communicative, epistemological, and political practice shaped by power asymmetries, material inequalities, linguistic hierarchies, geopolitical differences, and disputes over knowledge production. Drawing on Latin American communication studies, critiques of the coloniality of knowledge, epistemologies of the South, and debates on the geopolitics of science, the article proposes several guiding principles for more just and sustainable cooperation: non-instrumental reciprocity, situated horizontality, epistemological plurality, institutional memory, and care. It also discusses practical challenges such as moving from invitation-based models to co-design, recognizing the invisible hierarchy of language, addressing material and symbolic asymmetries, establishing shared responsibility and follow-up mechanisms, and creating flexible, multilevel, hybrid, and differentiated forms of collaboration. The central argument is that academic cooperation must create conditions for unequally situated actors to participate, decide, contribute, and benefit from shared intellectual work. In this sense, IAC can become a strategic practice for building more reciprocal, non-extractive, and regionally situated forms of knowledge circulation and recognition.