, 2015

STUDENT: LOGOFATU IONUT CAROL

PROFESSOR: FATIMA ARRANZ

GNERO Y CIENCIA
Analysis of Martnez and Pujol Conocimiento Situado: Un Forcejeo entre el
Relativismo Construccionista y la Necesidad de Fundamentar la Accin

Introduction
Marisela Montenegro Martinez holds a doctorate in Social Psychology with a thesis entitled
Knowledge, Agents and Joints: a look at the social intervention. Currently, she is a professor in the
Department of Social Psychology at the Universidad Autnoma de Barcelona. Has worked in the area
of community psychology and the participatory action research and also in participatory processes
research that has been developed both in Caracas (Venezuela) as in Barcelona. Joan Pujol has worked
as a professor at the University of Huddersfield (UK) and conducted research at the University of
Reading (UK). His work develops a corporal perspective of social phenomena. Addresses issues such
as the modifications of bio-body, post identitarian policies, rave culture, new masculinities, processes
of (des) subjectification, social technologies, and participates in a project funded on conception of
gender and TICs.

The text presents a critical perspective of social intervention as a set of

adjustments compatible with the social order, that in the end lead to social
transformation. The authors are using the social constructionist perspectives in their
argumentation, analyzing the reality through the filter of knowledge production
technologies. Their proposal could be summarized just in one sentence, as they are
saying: How to change that which we cannot know and, even if it was knowledgeable
how to decide the direction that change should follow? Further, Martinez and Pujol
are analyzing the concept of social problem, understood as a degradation of the
quality of life, putting the concept in relation with the action, which is the social
intervention based on situated knowledge.1 It is important to mention that the text is
combating the realist and relativist perspectives of social problem.
The first argument is the one of the Awareness.

The awareness can be

understood as when the members of the community or group that works with the
financial controller "realize" that the reasons why are they inserted in certain
conditions of life have to do with the social relations and that of asymmetric
production in certain societies. This in turn is concatenated with the political action of
transformation that assume these people through participation during such awareness.
This concept is marked by the Marxist tradition conceptions of the concept of
ideology because it assumes that the contents of consciousness of the people are
produced from certain social orders that mask the relations of domination by making
them appear as natural.

Further they are saying that the reality is the product of

1 Martnez and Joan Pujol Tarrs, Conocimiento Situado: Un Forcejeo entre el Relativismo
Construccionista y la Necesidad de Fundamentar la Accin, 2003, pp.1-2

2 Ibidem, pp.4-5
1

asymmetrical power and relations in society but is hidden through the ideological
elements of consciousness that mask these relationships and situations that are derived
from them. The authors consider that knowledge as a basis for intervention is called
into question the authority of the modern state. The critical flows with the notion of
representation of reality, although they have been useful to show the contingent nature
of all knowledge and the effects of power of the scientific institution - academic in the
definition of persons and social problems, do not suggest a clear exit on how it is
possible to develop a political action or form of intervention from there; applied to
practical situations its consequences can be disconcerting in the sense of producing
immobility in questioning the principles on which the action is founded. Tension
arises when we wonder how we can act (intervene or constitute ourselves as political
agents of social transformation) if each content is a social construction, if there is no
reality "outside" which can be achieved to which we might refer out of the
technologies of representation that produce.3
The authors are facing an obstacle in the case of how can be defined the case
of social intervention. Because the action of definition implies a set of meanings that
can be sometimes misleading, it is better to understand how the definition of social
intervention is constructed. Therefore, they are proposing that the definition of that
which is worthy of transformation is made from the joint participation of different
subjects, including those who are defined as financial controllers, persons affected by
the social intervention, groups, institutions etc. These are framed in contexts of
relations of power, authority, interests, institutionalization, and alliances. Therefore,
this context draw the limits and possibilities of the processes of definition of social
problem, making of it a political issue. 4
Going further, as from the point of view of the construction of the text, I
consider that it is following the pattern of an argumentative text, even though we
encounter descriptive passages of literature they are used just in the purpose of
maintaining the argumentation against the realist and relativist perspectives.
In what concerns the epistemological perspective their vision can be included
in the social constructionist wave. Social Constructivism focuses on the social nature
3 Martnez and Pujol Tarrs, Conocimiento Situado: Un Forcejeo entre el Relativismo
Construccionista y la Necesidad de Fundamentar la Accin, 2003, pp.6-7
4 ibidem, p.11
2

of knowledge, valorizing the language and cultural elements and also capitalizes the
role of interpersonal relations in the transmission and generation of educational
content (individual cognitive construction is performed in interactive contexts in
which children and adults are engaged in a joint activity). This perspective of social
constructivism is related to the author Vygotsky. He insists on the role of social
interaction in this development, considering that the social customs in a particular
time, the collective intellectual and material procurement, scientific, artistic, the
history that the individual lives determines his development. Vygotskys creative
period coincides with the revolution in Russia, so it was influenced by Marxism and
leads him to emphasize the sociolinguistic aspects of human behavior and less the
unique nature of the individual.5
From my point of view the text can be included in the postmodernist wave of
social science and can be related with other social constructionist authors, such as
Michel Foucault and his work on power and bio-power, sexuality, and social
problems. Also, in the text we could signal Feminist Marxist influences. For Marxist
feminist, discrimination against women is rooted in the traditional role that a woman
has in the family, which limits their access to social life outside the home. Marxist
Feminism argues that "class society is inseparable from the male dominance".
Therefore, discrimination against women is a social problem and the purpose of this
movement is to eliminate this problem by eliminating inequalities between men and
women. As a solution to this problem they propose to bring women into the public
sphere of society and in this way to stop the dependence on the man.
In my opinion the social problem is a social process and construct (such the
author are saying), a feature, a situation which a subsystem of society or they think
should be changed, or another explanation of how an undesirable situation which is
considered an important segment of society is sufficiently serious to warrant
collective action in order to obtain a significant improvement or change. There is a
significant discrepancy between social norms and social reality in fact. At the level of
social policies, awareness and such behaviors are imposed by external mechanisms.
Social transformations caused by widening participation of women in activities in the
sphere of material production and generally in social life, imposed a gradually
5 Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (November 5, 1896 June 11, 1934) was a Soviet
psychologist, the founder of a theory of human cultural and bio-social development
commonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle.
3

changing role of the family and its members. Feminist analysis starts from
conceptualization of men as a group invested with power, whose domination over
women is a social and historical construction, which reproduce and keep in a variety
of ways, such as handling conviction, influencing, forcing and conditioning the
woman to behave in a certain way. The social problem of women is understood as part
of a structured system power and operates within patriarchal relationships.

Bibliography

Marisela Montenegro Martnez and Joan Pujol Tarrs, Conocimiento Situado:

Un Forcejeo entre el Relativismo Construccionista y la Necesidad de Fundamentar la Accin, Revista
Interamericana de Psicologia/Interamerican Journal of Psychology Vol. 37, Num. 2 pp. 295-307, 2003.
Saul
Mcleod,
Lev
Vygotsky,
Developmental
Psychology
http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html 30.04.2015

2014,

available

at

Adams and Sydie , Sociology 319 Contemporary Social Theories, Feminist Sociological Theory
March 17, 2006