Between Objectivity and Subjectivity in Relational Research: a Philosophical Inquiry into Methods

Abstract

Epistemological and ontological issues are intertwined in this philosophical inquiry into relational research methods. First, a sequence of debates in the social sciences is presented tying epistemology and methods to competing scientific paradigms and syntagms from the mid-20^th Century onward. After this, a general model of characterizing the researcher self is offered which makes possible biases explicit so that one can adopt strategies for controlling them. This model is then illustrated in issues of subjectivity which arose in the author’s own research in coastal areas of Rio de Janeiro state since the mid-1980s, during a period of considerable epistemological change in Political Ecology and Relational Ontology perspectives.