Sense the socio-environmental debate

contributions from Carlos Rodrigues Brandão and Orlando Fals Borda

Abstract

This text aims to reflect on the contributions of participant research to/in the socio-environmental debate, taking as a starting point the contributions of Carlos Rodrigues Brandão and Orlando Fals Borda. In this exercise, we seek to identify contributions from these authors, respecting differences and fundamental principles of their epistemological and ontological practices, in the movement of knowledge production. Thus, we took some of his works as inspiration for carrying out our research, taking into account aspects such as participation, systematic communication, subject-subject relationship and political and social commitment. In this sense, we noticed some elements of rapprochement between the authors, attentive to their approaches and conceptions about doing ‘science’ with and for the subjects. Finally, it is worth highlighting that despite the points of divergence identified, we can perceive a fundamental aspect of convergence, being the production of contextualized knowledge, at a pace of respectful approximation between university and community-place. Thus, both in participatory research and in participatory action research, we can see the construction of approaches that are different, but not antagonistic, and in some cases (singular and contextualized), these can be taken as complementary.