GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER

Abstract

The Mexican sociologist, Hugo Zemelman notes that the classic approach of a researcher is to understand reality through the lens of theory, undertaking research to verify or disprove a hypothesis, rather than to change that reality. Practitioners, as distinct from researchers, interpret reality through past experience that they use to explain their present circumstances. For both researchers and practitioners an additional lens, that of ideology, may mediate their understanding, encouraging them to interpret the present by looking for signs of what they would like or hope the future will be. He identifies the methodological challenge as how to understand and change the present without these three biases constraining the identification of future possibilities (2000). Recognising this challenge, we were interested in identifying a research methodology that would involve development practitioners as theoreticians and researchers. We wanted a method that would help them and us be alert to the distorting effect of normative values causing us to avoid thinking what we would like to be as what is.