Trans-discipline research: subaltern groups set up as social actors.

Abstract

If reality is ever-changing, multi-influenced, plural and heterogeneous; if the inhabitants of this “globalized world” are actually wandering through borders through fractures, and through uncertainty and risk; one of the challenges the so- cial researcher faces is the construction of frontier knowledge. This knowledge has to be built from complex approaches which go beyond hypothe- tical-deductive approaches which presume this is the only valid way of conducting research. This scope will, in fact, get us near the discussion about “trans-disciplinarily” where non-traditio- nal categories are developed as alternatives to the ever-present aim of mono-disciplinarian exacti- tude and reliability. The new categories will then, give a central role to the methodological rigor, ethics, and epistemological thoroughness in the process of constructing knowledge. This paper aims at sharing my reflections about a trans-disciplinary research process which had a strong empirical component stemming from a group of suburbia citizens who belonged to a social-civil organization and got involved in an educational-political project during the 1980s. I am positioning myself in the social critique realm, which forces the researcher to become a social actor confronted with a double source of indignation: misery and selfishness.