Social movements and popular experience: methodological challenges for social research

Abstract

This article offers an epistemic-methodological consideration ofresearch in the social sciences within the fields of social movements andpopular experiences of organization. From a perspective which recoverspolitical thought and critical epistemology, we present a reconstruction ofthe assumptions from which knowledge is produced, and the implicationsof the ontological starting points for our methodological approaches. Thelatter is complemented by two empirical studies that differ in scope. In thecases examined we investigate the formation of subjects and subjectivities inpopular sectors, considering the analytic density of a research object whichis seen at once as construction, in movement, and influenced by a number oftemporalities and spatialities. The article suggests recovering a context forresearch that is able to formulate questions to which there are no answers,and which assume the challenge of abismal thinking for acquiring a betterunderstanding of social reality.