Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

In this paper I propose an exercise of methodological reflexivity on the categories to which I was compared in my research about love among gay men. The aim is to recognize that those categories are not arbitraries but get particular sense in the conformation of couples. I understood the couples as a network assembled for more than two individuals. So, being compared to a guy trying to date, a third party, a therapist and a friend makes the researcher role more dynamic, at the same time that provides information about really existing gay love.

This article reflects on the potential that has, at the methodological level, the production of narratives as emancipatory practices and generating critique of social control. For that, two research experiences of a qualitative nature carried out in Chile are used with professional in psycho-social fields. It analyzes how professionals build, in their narrative productions, the subjects with whom they work. It also demonstrates how the production of the narrative exercise itself can transform the practices of control, normalization and discipline to promote more emancipatory and anti-oppressive actions. The article shows the articulation that is generated in the process of production of the narration between researcher subject and professional of intervention, relationship that promotes the development of a process of reflexivity that implies a critical positioning on Psycho-social action. Thus, it is explicit the theoretical-methodological position in which these investigations are placed and the exercise of self-reflexivity is emphasized and that recognizes the importance of rethinking and examining the work: who intervene in the social area and who investigate their practices.

Within the field of social sciences, medicalization as a concept is a regular matter of cultural social, economic and political-legislative agenda. It is also convening in academicals, research, clinical and professional spaces, in which some inaccuracies related to the concept and its circulation, became evident. These inaccuracies can be resumed in three lines: the adjectivally use of the concept, the reduction of the concept and the inappropriateness of the concept. This paper’s objective is to present some theoretical and methodological implications and corollaries which are derived from the inaccuracies mentioned above. In order to do so, some analytical and interpretative methods on specific national and international bibliography are used, with ADHD as an empirical example.

In this work I address creativity in the process of social sciences research, comparing quantitative and qualitative approaches. In discussing creativity I go back to Chomsky and his distinction between rule-governed and rule-changing creativity. In my analysis I suggest that the quantitative approach is characterized by rule-governed creativity, the qualitative one by rule-changing creativity: these are two models of creativity that the Chomskian vision links to a set of rules. Thus in the first case the creation of the tools by which the researcher collects information is submitted to a set of rules related to substantial and procedural competences. In the second case the creative phase does not have a place in the creation of a tool, but rather in a performance. The idea of performance as a constitutive part in qualitative research is analysed on a substantial basis, revealing the implications of distinct creative processes under different methodological choices. Whilst a quantitative approach requires using procedural and substantial competences, I suggest that in a qualitative enquiry the researcher’s fieldwork is considered as a ‘performance’ because of its adaptive character. The researcher is constantly confronted with unforeseen situations, surrounded by an unknown environment. Also, this use of the notion of ‘performance’ comprehends both elements of the process as well as of the outcome of fieldwork, as it recalls peculiar characteristics of qualitative work: action and interaction, personal involvement and, above all, orientation to a purpose (in this context, the teleological purpose of knowledge production).

The New Urban Agenda agreed upon at Habitat III highlights the need to redefine public policies for Latin American cities. One of the main topics of discussion is linked to the problem of access to land. In this framework, the Urban Prosperity Index gains importance by incorporating housing indicators aimed at urban sustainability. However, it does not include the land component and qualitative criteria that would allow, from a rights-based perspective, to make diagnosis and urban intervention more complex. This paper elaborates upon the proposal of construction of housing indicators by defining principles and useful criteria to monitor compliance with public policies.

In this article I present theoretical and methodological reflections on the study of the production and circulation of scientific knowledge. The proposal is derived from an investigation of my authorship where I reconstructed the evolution of the Andean ethnohistory between 1970 and 2005. I describe the approach and the materials used, indicating the main challenges that emerged in the construction of the object and the research problem. I develop the strategies implemented and I argue that their relevance transcends the case study. I present the results obtained and then the lines of research that are opened from them.

The procedure of analysis developed in the course of research on the concept of development in Buenos Aires social programs is presented. The general design of the aforementioned research is presented briefly as a context, including objectives, units of analysis, corpus characteristics and theoretical-methodological framework. Following a detailed description of the analytical procedures are given in its three moments: data reduction, construction of theoretical concepts through the aggregation of codes and comparison of findings through the units of analysis. It is suggested that the approach and procedure described above may be useful in other public policy studies.

The concern to understand the processes of political subjectivation that arise in the heat of contemporary social movements has generated debates in which different theoretical, epistemological and methodological traditions are discussed. In this article we review the contributions of authors inserted in critical currents with the intention of building tools that guide the methodological approach of subjectivities that emerge around concrete experiences of action and labour organization. Finally, these proposals are analyzed considering an empirical research carried out in Mexico City.

The article supports the viability of the use of modeling as a method of scientific knowledge within the Social Sciences and, in particular, its application to the study of communicative media processes. It defines modeling with its epistemological advantages and risks, to then expose the steps followed in the analysis of local coverage television in Cuba and the creation of a model that makes it possible to explain the operation of this system as well as its unexplored potentials to act in for the local development. They are used as fundamental techniques to arrive at knowledge documentary bibliographic research, interview, survey and constant triangulation, always marked by the patterns of modeling as a scientific method. The results open the way for a projective television proposal for local development in the Cuban context.

A precise orthometric height (H) and orthometric height difference (ΔH) determination is required in many fields like construction, geodesy and geophysics. H is often obtained from an ellipsoidal height (h) and geoid height (N) of a geoid model (GM) because this computation does not have the spirit leveling restrictions on long distances. However, the H accuracy depends on the GM local area adaptation, and current global geoid models (GGMs) have not been yet evaluated for Costa Rica. Therefore, this paper aims to determine which GGM maintains a better fit with a GPS/levelling baseline that contains the gravity full spectrum. A 74 km baseline was measured using GPS, spirit leveling and gravity measurements to validate the N computed from EGM2008, EIGEN-6C4, GECO, EGM96, GGM05C and GOCO05C. First, an absolute N assessment was made, where geoid height from the GGMs (NGGM) were directly compared to the geometric geoid heights (Ngeo) obtained from GPS and spirit levelling. A bias fit (Nbias) of about 2 m was computed from this comparison for most GGMs with respect to the local vertical reference surface (W0). By subtracting the Nbias, a relative geoid height (ΔN) assessment was designed to compare the differences between GGM relative geoid height (ΔNGGM) and geometric relative geoid height (ΔNgeo) on segments along the baseline. The ΔN comparison shows that EGM2008, EIGEN-6C4 and GECO better represent the Costa Rican Central Pacific Coastal Zone and over long distances, ΔH can be computed with a decimeter to centimeter precision.