Sunday 6 May 2007

Argument against defining concepts until they mean nothing

Estou aqui aos pontapés ao paradigma positivsta que já está "mais que ultrapassado" nas ciências sociais... Talvez o desafio é de facto, aplicar uma aproximação de construção social por um pobre biologo!!! Por as mãos na massa e não estar, com as mãos no bolso, a resmungar por não concordar com algo que ninguêm quer que eu faça... Mas que é tanto mais fácil, do que arriscar meter-me no meio da confusão das aldeias serranas e perceber e descrever a realidade lá vivida, para que todos me digam no fim "mas isso já se sabia!"

I do not enjoy reading my 1000 articles now. The perspectives are so contrary to mine or, when they are similar I mourn: they should rather act! than write that much about it in these highly artificial and unnecessarily complex scientific language that does no good to anyone.

Again, an article from my supervisor, Jules Pretty, has the answer to some of my internal upheavals/ implosions. Well, he says it is no good to try to define contested terms. They are socially constructed and what they are used for depends on the aims and values of who uses them. It is rather important in scientific approaches to state clearly what the aims and values behind the use of the concepts are!

This is such a solution! And allows me hopefully to throw all the articles whose aim is to come up with a single, universal definition for marginalization, land abandonment, post-productivism, sustainability, development, etc into the dustbin, without reading them!

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