Colectivo Situaciones

Description

Craig Dalton and Liz Mason-Deese:

" Through its research, Situaciones attempts to break down the subject-object divide to build mutual understanding and social change. Instead of idealizing objectivity and/or critical dista nce, Colectivo Situaciones describes the relationship between the researcher and researched as one of love or friendship. This is a relationship in which both parties actively participate and are transformed in the process (Colectivo Situaciones, 2002).

According to this theory, all knowledge production affects and modifies the bodies and subjectivities of the participants, and is an essential part of any political practice. Therefore, “the co-production of critical knowledge generates rebellious bodies.

Thought aboutrebellious practices gives value and power (potencia) to those practices” (Malo, 2007, 35). This research methodology acknowledges that research subjects also produce knowledge and that researchers also engage in political struggle.

Situaciones collaborates with social movements and subaltern groups to produce collective research practices and knowledges as a form of political struggle, recognizing that “collective thought generates common practice” (Malo, 2007, 35).

Not only is Colectivo Situaciones’ militant research an alternative to traditional academic research, it is also an alternative to traditional forms of activism. It is a manner of doing politics that takes nothing for granted, leaving no room for the easy answers of dogmatic ideologies or party lines (Colectivo Situaciones, 2002). Situaciones' way of doing political work emerged as part of a wave of autonomous, anti-capitalist organizing in Argentina following the country's 2001 economic collapse. They maintain long-term relationships with many of these movements, including unemployed workers movements, neighborhood assemblies, and recovered factories. Situaciones works with these groups by holding workshops and mutual interviews in which both parties question each other.

Each of their books emphasizes the situatedness of any political struggle, making universal, pre-known answers impossible and calling for continual investigation and questioning (Colectivo Situaciones, 2002; 2008)." (http://www.acme-journal.org/vol11/CCC2012.pdf)