Hacerse investigador social: testimonios del oficio y artesanía intelectual del sociólogo

Abstract

The exploration of what has been called the backstage of research admits diverse approaches. One of them is the one that focuses attention on how such-and-such work became, or how a line of investigation arose, either through testimony of the main author, or of somebody of the team or research group, or of a third. Here that footpath is not followed, although it is not discarded either as a whole. It is chosen, however, to focus on the process and the experiences of becoming a social researcher that converge in the trade of sociology, as this one has been incarnated in a few outstanding cases. It is aimed at a sort of historical-biographical backstage of research, in which one prosecutes to promote the knowledge of this trade from an exploration of diverse qualitative materials. There is no such a pretension of composing sketches of intellectual (auto)biographies, but to reunite and to reread some of the available ones (along with a range of related testimonies), to open the door towards the discovery and theorization of aspects that deserve to be registered. Neither it is attained to uncover or reconstruct the authentic. Simply one thinks that there are diverse forms of representation of the lived investigating experience (not only the most formal or academic ones); also of presentation of the self that investigates. Here we are specially interested on those experiences of biographical or autobiographical type. It is followed therefore a line of inquiry and methodological innovation to which attention has been paid from the educational and investigating activity.