Who has the rigth to speak: knowledge or power. Report of an experiment in participative research

Abstract

As part of a participative research experiment carried out within the context of the Itapecerica da Serra Teaching and Services Program, a first preliminary meeting, which brought together a Health Center and associations of mothers of Itapecerica da Serra county, SP (Brazil) and an academic institution was held. In order to prevent the imposition of power relationships, by those who had academic and tecnical knowledge upon the community, a proceeding called "strategy of silence" was chosen for the aforementioned meeting. The power relationships pre-existent both in culture and society were discussed by the three groups in such a way as to make people aware of the problems. Some methodological considerations were raised, specially those related to the opportunities opened up by the participant research concerning the subject-object relationship in social research as well as the problems of output in this kind of research.