Border work in the contact zone: thinking indigenous/non-indigenous collaboration spatially

This paper explores different ways of conceptualising Indigenous/non-Indigenous research collaboration and partnerships. It begins with a brief outline of the problem of current conceptualisations within the critical paradigm in qualitative research. It proposes the idea of the contact zone (Pratt, 1992) as a useful way to theorise the site, and border work (Haig-Brown & Archibald, 1996) as a way to understand the emotional and intellectual work, of intercultural collaboration. We apply these ideas to the analysis of a series of conversations between team members involved in a research partnership between an Australian Aboriginal corporation and a university. This analysis suggests that the way borders are conceived differently by different team members depends on their particular political investments. A range of border maintenance and border crossings is necessary for the task of achieving effective collaboration. The ‘discomfort’ zone of cultural contact is usefully conceived as an area of productive tension in which differences can generate hybrid outcomes such as team produced books for the organisation's ecotourism enterprise.