Sociétés et Jeunesses en Difficulté (Mar 2016)
Les recherches conjointes : Des tentatives pour construire des « connaissances composites » appropriables par les scientifiques et les intervenants
Abstract
Joint research is a system in which scientists and social actors confront their understanding of the phenomena they are studying. They learn to understand one another better by engaging in their respective arguments, and this enables them to produce more complex and more consistent studies. In this way, joint research enables the renewal of understanding in all participants, and consequently produces a hybrid product of shared knowledge. This creates a composite understanding which takes its source, on the one hand, in the informed discussion between actors with expert hands-on experience and actors who provide scientific learning; and, on the other hand, they proceed from the shared structures of knowledge organized for scientific debate and knowledge organized in order to clarify action. In this way, joint research enables the circulation of scientific research by virtue of a system which makes it accessible to field experts, following the example of the process of innovation analyzed by Norbert ALTER (2000). Their analysis gives new insights into the problems concerning the circulation of science. The classic distinction between fundamental and applied science shows its limits when social phenomena are concerned. Indeed, the question is not to apply learning developed by isolated intellectuals separate from the practical experience of field professionals, relying on information from people unaware of practical reality, but rather a shared construction based on both points of view.
