WHEN RESEARCH RESULTS ARE DISCUSSED IN ASSEMBLY. THE PUBLIC VOICE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS IN ARGENTINA.

MERLINSKY, MARÍA GABRIELA

Upsalla

Seminario; International Meeting of the Summer Program in Social Science. An International and Interdisciplinary Initiative.; 2017

Summer Program in Social Science. An International and Interdisciplinary Initiative Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,

In this essay, I intend to contribute to the debate on the process of dissemination of research results in spheres forming part of that common background in which there already exist connections between professional sociology and public sociology. What I want to point out is that ?and there is marked discrepancy in this regard with the concerns of public sociology in the Anglo-Saxon world?, given the public character assumed by the construction of certain research problems, the presentation of findings implies an interconnected debate with other deliberation spheres. I am interested in analyzing the moment of publication not as a ?result? but as part of the very process in which the type of truth under sociological study is constructed and questioned. As Didier Fassin has convincingly argued in reference to public ethnography, ?it does not consist in affirming that the social sciences should have a public presence but rather in analyzing what difficulties, complications, and contradictions, as well as dares, expectations, and imaginations this public presence involves.? (Fassin, 2018:4)My presentation will focus on a few aspects referred to the public presentation and interpretation of findings and to the politicization of the debate on research and activism. When research findings become the object of public scrutiny, various interactions with different audiences are produced and this generates a discussion on the type of truth being mobilized. In this sense, rather than a space for specialization, public sociology constitutes an integral element of the permeable field work in which the social sciences unfold in Argentina.On more than a few occasions, it is the public who questions the role of state agencies and corporations in terms of the production of scientific knowledge, opening a debate on the researcher´s position in relation to locally shared knowledge that is at stake. Thus, the presentation of research results is faced with diverse questions about the political implications of research and about the role of scientific knowledge in the construction of views and possible worlds.