GNERO Y CIENCIA
GNERO Y CIENCIAAnalysis of Martnez and Pujol Conocimiento
Situado: Un Forcejeo entre el Relativismo Construccionista y la
Necesidad de Fundamentar la Accin
IntroductionMarisela Montenegro Martinez holds a doctorate in
Social Psychology with a thesis entitled Knowledge, Agents and
Joints: a look at the social intervention. Currently, she is a
professor in the Department of Social Psychology at the Universidad
Autnoma de Barcelona. Has worked in the area of community
psychology and the participatory action research and also in
participatory processes research that has been developed both in
Caracas (Venezuela) as in Barcelona. Joan Pujol has worked as a
professor at the University of Huddersfield (UK) and conducted
research at the University of Reading (UK). His work develops a
corporal perspective of social phenomena. Addresses issues such as
the modifications of bio-body, post identitarian policies, rave
culture, new masculinities, processes of (des) subjectification,
social technologies, and participates in a project funded on
conception of gender and TICs.
The text presents a critical perspective of social intervention
as a set of adjustments compatible with the social order, that in
the end lead to social transformation. The authors are using the
social constructionist perspectives in their argumentation,
analyzing the reality through the filter of knowledge production
technologies. Their proposal could be summarized just in one
sentence, as they are saying: How to change that which we cannot
know and, even if it was knowledgeable how to decide the direction
that change should follow? Further, Martinez and Pujol are
analyzing the concept of social problem, understood as a
degradation of the quality of life, putting the concept in relation
with the action, which is the social intervention based on situated
knowledge.[footnoteRef:1] It is important to mention that the text
is combating the realist and relativist perspectives of social
problem. [1: Martnez and Joan Pujol Tarrs, Conocimiento Situado: Un
Forcejeo entre el Relativismo Construccionista y la Necesidad de
Fundamentar la Accin, 2003, pp.1-2]
The first argument is the one of the Awareness. The awareness
can be understood as when the members of the community or group
that works with the financial controller "realize" that the reasons
why are they inserted in certain conditions of life have to do with
the social relations and that of asymmetric production in certain
societies. This in turn is concatenated with the political action
of transformation that assume these people through participation
during such awareness. This concept is marked by the Marxist
tradition conceptions of the concept of ideology because it assumes
that the contents of consciousness of the people are produced from
certain social orders that mask the relations of domination by
making them appear as natural. [footnoteRef:2] Further they are
saying that the reality is the product of asymmetrical power and
relations in society but is hidden through the ideological elements
of consciousness that mask these relationships and situations that
are derived from them. The authors consider that knowledge as a
basis for intervention is called into question the authority of the
modern state. The critical flows with the notion of representation
of reality, although they have been useful to show the contingent
nature of all knowledge and the effects of power of the scientific
institution - academic in the definition of persons and social
problems, do not suggest a clear exit on how it is possible to
develop a political action or form of intervention from there;
applied to practical situations its consequences can be
disconcerting in the sense of producing immobility in questioning
the principles on which the action is founded. Tension arises when
we wonder how we can act (intervene or constitute ourselves as
political agents of social transformation) if each content is a
social construction, if there is no reality "outside" which can be
achieved to which we might refer out of the technologies of
representation that produce.[footnoteRef:3] [2: Ibidem, pp.4-5] [3:
Martnez and Pujol Tarrs, Conocimiento Situado: Un Forcejeo entre el
Relativismo Construccionista y la Necesidad de Fundamentar la
Accin, 2003, pp.6-7]
The authors are facing an obstacle in the case of how can be
defined the case of social intervention. Because the action of
definition implies a set of meanings that can be sometimes
misleading, it is better to understand how the definition of social
intervention is constructed. Therefore, they are proposing that the
definition of that which is worthy of transformation is made from
the joint participation of different subjects, including those who
are defined as financial controllers, persons affected by the
social intervention, groups, institutions etc. These are framed in
contexts of relations of power, authority, interests,
institutionalization, and alliances. Therefore, this context draw
the limits and possibilities of the processes of definition of
social problem, making of it a political issue. [footnoteRef:4] [4:
ibidem, p.11]
Going further, as from the point of view of the construction of
the text, I consider that it is following the pattern of an
argumentative text, even though we encounter descriptive passages
of literature they are used just in the purpose of maintaining the
argumentation against the realist and relativist perspectives. In
what concerns the epistemological perspective their vision can be
included in the social constructionist wave. Social Constructivism
focuses on the social nature of knowledge, valorizing the language
and cultural elements and also capitalizes the role of
interpersonal relations in the transmission and generation of
educational content (individual cognitive construction is performed
in interactive contexts in which children and adults are engaged in
a joint activity). This perspective of social constructivism is
related to the author Vygotsky. He insists on the role of social
interaction in this development, considering that the social
customs in a particular time, the collective intellectual and
material procurement, scientific, artistic, the history that the
individual lives determines his development. Vygotskys creative
period coincides with the revolution in Russia, so it was
influenced by Marxism and leads him to emphasize the
sociolinguistic aspects of human behavior and less the unique
nature of the individual.[footnoteRef:5] [5: Lev Semyonovich
Vygotsky (November 5, 1896 June 11, 1934) was a Soviet
psychologist, the founder of a theory of human cultural and
bio-social development commonly referred to as cultural-historical
psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle.]
From my point of view the text can be included in the
postmodernist wave of social science and can be related with other
social constructionist authors, such as Michel Foucault and his
work on power and bio-power, sexuality, and social problems. Also,
in the text we could signal Feminist Marxist influences. For
Marxist feminist, discrimination against women is rooted in the
traditional role that a woman has in the family, which limits their
access to social life outside the home. Marxist Feminism argues
that "class society is inseparable from the male dominance".
Therefore, discrimination against women is a social problem and the
purpose of this movement is to eliminate this problem by
eliminating inequalities between men and women. As a solution to
this problem they propose to bring women into the public sphere of
society and in this way to stop the dependence on the man. In my
opinion the social problem is a social process and construct (such
the author are saying), a feature, a situation which a subsystem of
society or they think should be changed, or another explanation of
how an undesirable situation which is considered an important
segment of society is sufficiently serious to warrant collective
action in order to obtain a significant improvement or change.
There is a significant discrepancy between social norms and social
reality in fact. At the level of social policies, awareness and
such behaviors are imposed by external mechanisms. Social
transformations caused by widening participation of women in
activities in the sphere of material production and generally in
social life, imposed a gradually changing role of the family and
its members. Feminist analysis starts from conceptualization of men
as a group invested with power, whose domination over women is a
social and historical construction, which reproduce and keep in a
variety of ways, such as handling conviction, influencing, forcing
and conditioning the woman to behave in a certain way. The social
problem of women is understood as part of a structured system power
and operates within patriarchal relationships.
Bibliography
Marisela Montenegro Martnez and Joan Pujol Tarrs, Conocimiento
Situado:Un Forcejeo entre el Relativismo Construccionista y la
Necesidad de Fundamentar la Accin, Revista Interamericana de
Psicologia/Interamerican Journal of Psychology Vol. 37, Num. 2 pp.
295-307, 2003.Saul Mcleod, Lev Vygotsky, Developmental Psychology ,
2014, available at http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
30.04.2015Adams and Sydie , Sociology 319 Contemporary Social
Theories, Feminist Sociological Theory March 17, 2006
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