Nomadas Issue 29

Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos – IESCO Nómadas - Issue 29 – www.ucentral.edu.co/iesco

Nómadas 29 La práctica de la investigación: poder, ética y multiplicidad

This Nómadas issue emphasis on the practice of research within the scientific work. We are trying to address the academics subject of knowledge production as the main concern to be debated. This practice it is understood as an articulation in the fabric of knowledge and power within the academic fields, histories and associated communities to the research work. In that order, we do not intend to propose an exercise of isolated self-reflexivity as a sort of biographies of scientists, rather this issue will focuses on the complexity of all dimensions that would shape the context and conditions of knowledge production for each research agenda. Following, you will find the three topics of consideration based on which the papers could be developed. 1. Knowledge and Power: reading policy on research practices This topic invites us to reflect not only on the researcher strategies to identify and present explicitly what has been his o her theoretical position, the impact of their research as a reflexivity exercise, but also encourages to considerer the implications of "collective / research groups" positional accountability in terms of the political effects performed into society. Additionally, we inquired for the positional played around the relationship established between communities / groups / research centers in the south, in regard to the northern ones. 2. Ethics and communicability in researching practices This second subject of discussion basically responds to concerns about the implications on what we do, from an ethical dimension that puts us in two problematic arenas in research practice: the communicability of our results and the political impact in our work. Here we are referring not only to the clarity of language that allows the knowledge to implicate specific meanings, as available to all, but how to incorporate the practical meaning of laymen, wondering why doing so, in what extent and by whom such language can be used. This question of a "communicative ethics" of research results concerns the discussions based on the language and its use and goes to the heart of the research process in regard to the problems of academic language translation for larger audiences, while considering the capability of understanding the language of each context of meaning, and in that order, the importance of how converge will play a role on building joint senses. 3: The practice of research and the demand for "multiplicity" This final component responds to concerns about with whom we do what? - in both terms theoretical and practical - but not from an stereotyped solipsism of research practice, but from the encounter and production in the sense of "multiplicity". This expression its trying to encompass the concerns surrounding the interdisciplinary, the cross it, the non-discipliner and the counterdiscipliner. Notions no longer understood only as a possibility, but as a political demand.

Isseu coordination: Sandro Jimenez-Ocampo ([email protected]) y Sonia M. Rojas Campos ([email protected]) Further information: [email protected]; [email protected] 1

Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos – IESCO Nómadas - Issue 29 – www.ucentral.edu.co/iesco

This leads to take a critical position in the culture of research, regarding the ways in which we build it, how we seek legitimacy and how we promote preferentiality to certain conceptual fields and research communities, not only from the stable world of discipliner knowledge, but from the abysmal world of what we have named here as the "multiplicity". We provoke to assess further this production of knowledge outside of the traditional institutions, exploring beyond the opposition or comparison with the disciplinary inquiry (which in fact, exist and will continue to refine its own logic, methodologies and ways of production - circulation of knowledge). For one thing, because since the investigation "edge" or "marginal" is being generated today as more comprehensive, critical and alternative of today's globalize world, on the other, because since it can offer a glimpse of the new directions that will be taken social science if we want to emancipate the academics project from the center on the Modern Eurocentric Model. References Mills, D. (2003) “Like a horse in blinkers: a political history of anthropology´s research ethics” En: Caplan, P (ed), the ethics of anthropology: debates and dilemas, Londres, Routledge. Narotzki, Susana (2004). Una historia necesaria: Ética, política, y responsabilidad en la práctica antropológica. Universidad de Barcelona, Relaciones 98, Vol XXV. Narotzki, Susana (2002). Reivindicación de la ambivalencia teórica: concepto clave, en : Endoxa, número 15.

la reciprocidad como

Reid, Roddey & Traweek, Sharon (2000) Doing Science + Culture, Routledge, New Cork Rouse, Joseph (1987). Knowledge and Power: toward a political philosophy of science. Cornell University Torrez, Alfonso (2006) La práctica investigativa en ciencias sociales. Universidad pedagógica Nacional, Bogotá.

Isseu coordination: Sandro Jimenez-Ocampo ([email protected]) y Sonia M. Rojas Campos ([email protected]) Further information: [email protected]; [email protected] 2