Conocer es actuar. Entre la epistemología genética y el legado de Paulo Freire

Abstract

The key of knowledge construction has to do with empowering people. Especially those who have been “designed” and treated as merely objects of study and not as active subjects of knowledge. That is one of the most important outcomes of Paulo Freire’s legacy, not only in Brazil, but in the world. But, what does it mean to become “subjects of knowledge”? The social actors who can confront their problems by mean of the construction of their own knowledge, do they really become empowered? The theory and findings granted from Genetic Epistemology, gives us a powerful theoretical and methodological tool for understanding the experiences of “conscientization” as processes of empowering. Freirean method for literacy can be fruitfully interpreted under the light of a scientific theory of the processes of knowledge construction. In studying and practicing Communication for Development, I claim that Information, Communication and Knowledge must be taken as a crucial threefold, non-separable process that includes simultaneously biological, behavioural and social transformations, especially those that have been collectively created. These transformations improve both, individual and group capacity to differentiate and integrate (that means, “knowing”) their experiences of the world, and by doing that, empower their capacity of acting, confronting and overcome their social conditions.