Dialogic Relational Research

(October 18, 2019)

Diego Tapia Figueroa, Ph.D. and Maritza Crespo Balderrama, M.A.

“Culture is looking at the other. Respect is looking at the other once again.”

 (Tom Andersen and John Shotter)

Attention: For the box check: https://iryse.org/investigacion-relacional-dialogica-i/

First part

(October 18, 2019)

Embracing complexity (*)

Research is for connecting, “for embracing complexity” as proposed by Sheila McNamee (at the Taos Institute’s International Relational Research Network).  The research method (dialogic relational research) becomes a resource that contributes to people being able to engage, participate, reflect and act in directions they co-create. The research will be a process in which we generate the conditions to relate to the new, the different.

A process based on successful collaboration, which is built with others, from a position of curiosity, respect, openness, acceptance, reflection:

• It’s having a sense of participation
• That invites a sense of belonging
• That invites a sense of contributing
• That invites a shared responsibility
• Co-constructing new meanings
• What does a transformative dialogue mean?

Connecting all this leads us to:

• A reflective pragmatic
• Meaningful dialogues
• Alternatives
• Results
• Solutions
• Relational ethics
• Common wellbeing
• Possible futures

As Jan Defehr (2008) explains in his thesis:

The method, in the practice of collaborative therapy, is always “on the way”, it is always a “premiere”, it is always used for the “first time” that arises from a particular historical dialogical situation”. (p. xvi).

The research method oriented from social constructionism allows us, precisely, the opening to the polyphony of the participating voices and the diversity of existing positions and is not built previously. As Harlene Anderson (2016) argues, it is a construction that we do with the other, in conversation.

According to Kenneth Gergen (2011), social constructionist research is primarily concerned with addressing the processes by which people come to describe, explain, or, in some way, account for the world (including themselves) in which they live.  According to Gergen (2011, p. 16): «If, as I propose, meaning is born of the relational process, it is necessary to conclude then that the concept of individual mind results essentially from the relation».

The “method” used in this style of research has no previously set parameters, previously raised hypotheses, tools or techniques planned and chosen from a menu of possibilities; because it is an investigation with the active participation of the actors of the local contexts, summoned to the meeting space, based on the experience and opinion of those, who made their specific culture visible.  We focus research, as part of a different process of social creation, with the commitment to contribute, in a creative way, in the construction of a future, with a criterion of relational responsibility, interested in social results.

Therefore, the method implies conceiving research as a form of social action aimed at the social transformation that, for example, families and communities need, as the participants manifest with their voice; participants whom we conceive as co-researchers.

Generative/appreciative dialogue

According to Dora Fried Schnitman (2017), whom we quote in extenso:

The generative operator (valid for a generative researcher) contributes to bringing out the best in a person, to mobilize their resources, their potentialities; to recognize and value the positive of their being, their contributions, and questions. It is choosing to emphasize positive resources rather than deficits. Accompany them, stimulating a reflective responsibility, in which all the voices present, have a place, their place. A sensitivity to the interactive moment, to what is happening in the relationship.

Asking ourselves: How to bring our resources into this dialogue, which has a transformative purpose? And an ongoing question: how come I’m relating here?

Appreciative Dialogues according to Dora Fried Schnitman, are the co-creative search for the potential, the best of the people, teams, organizations, and systems in which they find themselves. It’s a thoughtful conversation. Through meaningful questions, successful experiences of the past are narrated; the positive stories of the present are told; the possibilities that we want to build together for the future are counted.

For Dora F.S.: Being a generative operator means a way to participate vividly in the conversation. Someone who can notice the difference, the possibilities in dialogue. It includes the experiences and perspectives of the participants as resources in the dialogue. Being curious about the way we relate to our experience.

The challenge of research would be not to illuminate what is, but to create what is to be.

Kenneth Gergen (np, 2014), in this segment of the article From Mirroring to World-Making: Research as Future Forming, proposes a possible and new path:

But you may wonder, what if we suspended the metaphor of the mirror and its invitation to study what captures our gaze? Metaphorically speaking, what if we closed our eyes and began to imagine those worlds of our hopes? What if we replaced our constant rush to “make the case” and started asking, “what kind of world can we build”? This would place the researcher’s values at the beginning of all his activities. Instead of being a latent force in its choice of terminology or methodology, and in the vain hope that an audience absent in one way or another will be able to make use of one’s work, what if these visions are full of purposes and passions fueled our initiation of inquiry? By providing a vision valued as far as possible, the challenge of research would be not to illuminate what is, but to create what has to be. This is the essence of research aimed at shaping futures.

Because what it is about is to incorporate the relational being in all contexts, inviting a collaborative dialogue. Constantly and passionately seeking to open possibilities and open sensibilities. Gergen invites us to continually ask ourselves: what matters; what is valuable? From a reflective pragmatism, ask ourselves: what do we want to create that matters to others, that has value for others?

Gergen explains that the important thing about the relational perspective is to create and elaborate a space of understanding, in which the important thing is in the process of the relationship. Because what someone says will have value and meaning when the other receives it and does something different with it. Because the value lies in the well-being of the process. Do relational research to build the future; futures that matter to us. The method that guides us in doing is what is happening among the co-researchers, not what dictates some manual, protocol, tool, technique, institution, or theory.

Research as a reflective practice in which to investigate is to ask to expand, process, and understand what is being done together.  To learn from what we do and what we could do differently.  What interests us, from dialogic relational research, is the process and what interests us today is practical knowledge; which serves and is useful for all participants in the specific context of their local culture.

Relational research seeks that the people involved in the dialogue feel like active participants in the proposed process and that this conversational space is their place.  That they develop a sense of belonging to be able to think about their present differently and project themselves into the future, in the way that we can generate well-being for all.

Relational constructionism in research

Sheila McNamee (2012, p. 63 to p. 86) – we continue her reflection, in a free translation from English, systematizing and adapting it to the present discourse – on the “social- constructionist method” of research argues that an investigation asks to be considered according to the paradigm of science that the author set out to follow.

This position holds that knowledge has a subject and that subject has a voice. McNamee (2012,) reflects that reliability frameworks are more about the internal consistency and recognition of the linguistic community, rather than the vision of cause and effect and the accuracy of the sample.

In everyday interactions with others, the relational reality in which communities and people live is constructed. For constructionism, it is about common action, or what to do together and what constitutes its doing. Constructionism asserts that the use of research lies in the generation of action potentials that it creates along with the reflective critique to which it invites participants.

McNamee (2012) explains that the main instrument of this research is relational dialogue; it makes it possible to deliver pragmatic and practical “results” for all involved. Dialogically speaking, relationally sensitive research creates the potential for participants to make a critical reflection, to enhance the expression of the multiple voices present and the coordination of various agreements. It is, precisely, the idea that when there is involvement with others, meanings are being created among all.

McNamee (2012) states that the constructionist alternative is a relational discourse -significant measures always emerging within the relationship- and this also includes the relationship between the researcher and the participants.  Therefore, the co-creation of space for the expression of the multiple voices present includes that of the researcher.

Knowledge is built on interaction with others (language practices), including interactions in the context of research. The objective of this research with these contexts is not to test hypotheses, but to build frameworks of intelligibility. In constructionism, research is a process of transformation experienced by all participants (the researcher and the co-researchers). It is decided together: what is pragmatic; what serves research participants; what forms of questions might be more compatible with participants? Others are invited to an attitude of “curiosity with reflection”.

McNamee (2012) insists that a constructionist position invites us to see research as a way of knowing; it is a way of knowing how the local reality is socially and historically situated and how it constructs and processes its complexity. This implies that there could be other ways of knowing. Therefore, moving from a modernist position of knowing (“what”) to a constructionist position of knowing (“how”) in a reflective movement.

The sense of what is useful provides the opportunity to engage in self-reflective research on own resources that (although not being used) could help in creating ways to co-construct together.

 There are no rigid rules for researching a constructionist stance; there are some resources, fluid and flexible, that can be used to guide research.

Sheila McNamee (2012) says that there is no attempt to reach a consensus between different beliefs or values of the different participants; nor is there an attempt to determine the values and beliefs of the community that are “better” or “right.” The constructionist orientation is towards multiplicity, diversity, difference.

• Agreement is not paramount; it’s curiosity.
• The challenge is to open up relational possibilities rather than closing them.
• For the constructionist, research is not a process of documenting or “discovering” what exists. Research is a process of construction.
• Research is transformative and ultimately practical; it has generative possibilities for all participants (researchers and co-researchers).
• For the constructionist, reliability and validity are replaced with the criteria of utility (for whom is this information/knowledge useful?) and generativity (how will this information/knowledge help this community “to continue together?”).

Next, a scheme is presented that compares modernist scientific theoretical research with postmodern socio-constructionist research.

COMPARISON OF MODERNIST RESEARCH AND POSTMODERN RESEARCH

MODERNIST SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH	POSTMODERN SOCIOCONSTRUCTIONAL RESEARCH
Hypothesis Approach	Questions from curiosity and respect/Alternative
Data	Continuous process
Results	Processes
Control	Minimum structures and deployment
Positioning of the researcher as an expert A priori	Positioning of the locally located researcher
External and objective researcher	Participating co-researchers
Design	Dialogue and non-hierarchical structures
Method	Forms of practice-Developed in context
Certainty-Truth-Essence	Uncertainty-Possibilities-Diversity
Unique speech of the researcher	Multiple voices of co-researchers
Orientation to determine the right, the good, the correct	Orientation to value difference, multiplicity and diversity
Diagnosis	Curiosity
Documentation or diagnosis of reality	Construction of reality.
Reliability	Generativity
Validity	Usefulness for local communities
Protocols/Measurement instruments	Emergence and reflexivity/Real dialogue
Focused on science and the scientist	Focused on continuous processes
Objective neutrality	Complexity
Universality and generalization	Social, cultural and historical contextualization
Must be universal	Relational ethics

Second part

(November 1, 2019)

“Love is more than wisdom: it is the resurrection, the second life. The being who loves revives or lives doubly. … Miner of love, I relentlessly do until I find the reef of infinity.”

 (Jorge Carrera Andrade)

Curiosity with reflection (*)

The ideas about research that arise in the orthodox modernist-positivist perspectives (especially in dominant and traditional academic and scientific fields), with their ideology of unique essences and truths, tend to privilege the analysis and interpretations of the expert; to choose stereotyped surveys, tools, and formats for collecting one-sided information; to draw quantitative conclusions that confirm what their rigid hypotheses and absolute theories pose; to continue repeating that there are generalizable truths valid for all people, universal scientific truths applicable in every context, culture, epoch.

It is a standardized, fixed, and dogmatic worldview, which is convinced that the way to do scientific research -correct/superior- is from the quantitative/modernist or qualitative/modernist perspective, as a model of what can and should be done and what cannot.  With banal and useless technicalities he maintains his credibility and academic and professional respectability. This way of research proposes a reductionist recipe book with steps to follow; formats, protocols, roadmaps with an eternal unquestionable “must be”.

Research done to inflate resumes, climb the ladder, compete and win medals of an omnipotent expert who conquers more power and privileges. Research that few or no one will read, that nobody cares about; they are archived and forgotten. Functional to the status quo. Normative echoes of a dead philosophical, political and social thought. With a language for domestication,  discipline, social conformism, subalternity, and cynical vulgarization of functional meanings to power. Research without curiosity, without new questions, without respect, creativity, or imagination, without critical spirit or relational ethics, and empty of poetic and transformative power.

A fact consistent with the ambition to succeed and command is the established trade to publish. Journals indexed with ad hoc rates according to the type of rehash you want to publish or pretend to have been published. A name or a list of names, which did nothing except paying the stipulated percentage. Then they will be able to give scientific research classes, direct thesis projects, be academic authorities, and thrive. It is what is in the periphery and this society. And yet, let’s continue with what we trust can make a difference…

In relational constructionism in research, it is said that research is a process of transformation experienced by all participants. Others are invited to an attitude of “curiosity with reflection”.

Research from social constructionism is a reflective practice in which to investigate is to ask to expand, process, and understand what is being done together.  To learn from what we do and what we could do differently.  What interests us in the process; is practical knowledge, which serves and is useful for all participants in their specific context of local culture.

Attached to what happened in the conversations exposed in these pages, it would not make sense to propose conclusions that “close” doors, but to explore and suggest processes of construction of life in common; enhancing the resources that communities have, to develop relational possibilities, new critical reflections, collaborative dialogues, unpublished narratives and creative languages of possible worlds.

Research as dialogue, a conversation that responds to specific relationships and situations

Research also has the potential to invite transformative dialogue if it is conceived as part of social poetry (…). Therefore, research is also itself a form of conversation, which is the same as another form of dialogue, and with it- as in any activity committed to the relationship- our worlds are described.  One can represent the world only in language, that is, in what we do together.

Conceiving research as a poetic activity means focusing the tension on research as dialogue; that is, as a conversation that responds to specific relationships and situations, and can therefore broaden the spectrum of possibilities and ideas for other forms of social life. (McNamee, 2013, p. 108).

Research is a process of social construction guided by dialogue that articulates and gives meaning, therefore, it does not have predetermined objectives (except that which is related to facilitating social connections, meaningful, reflective, and transformative conversations) but responds, pragmatically, to the needs of the participants and the context of the local culture.

The perspective provided by Kenneth Gergen (2016), allows us to understand the openness and flexibility of this position:

I believe that therapists from almost any school – from psychoanalysis to Buddhist meditation – can provide important resources to allow consultants to escape isolated self-torment. Everyone can affirm the individual as a valid participant in the social world, as opposed to treating them with distrust or ignoring them. Everyone can establish a relationship of care that contributes to the special advantage of therapy over other ways of responding to deviation. And at the same time, they are fantastic variations of how much of the patient’s private dispersion will be affirmed and recognized in conversation. (p. 434).

The questions posed seek to initiate a process of collaborative dialogue, which will allow to expand the networks of relationships and begin to overcome the conceptual and practical ignorance, deploying and expanding creative alternatives.

Continuing with others, connected and in relationship

As Celiane  Camargo-Borges explains to us (2014, p.347):

The dialogic epistemology of social constructionism is interested in the creation of conversational practices that can build possible paths for people to stay together. It is interested in the use of a discourse that is not persuasive, but one that can be shared, so that conversations are not closed so that new inclusive possibilities are opened for these conversations.

It is to choose a different place for the creation of the different; a dialogical position capable of generating conversational actions-practices in the construction of new paths oriented to the joint creation of well-being with others; and to decide, responsibly, to continue with others, connected and in relationship.  To continue together, in a discourse respectful of otherness, diversity, and multiplicity, polysemy; a discourse that engages with the other as a way of sharing what is meaningful, from curiosity and openness that initiates conversations instead of restricting them, that includes all voices in new transformative conversations.

It is the co-researchers -constituted by research as a collaborative learning community- who take the process to a different level than the one they started. Where they could not have reached individually (poetic levels). Understanding that, from their contexts and with a curious attitude; coordinating diversities and multiplicities; mobilizing resources with an innovative, flexible and forward-looking attitude, changes will occur.

There is an ethical and political intention of this style of research, together with the process of joint construction of transformative practices and meanings. Because the ethical and the political cross all the interrelations in which we participate and the choice of social constructionism -by interweaving these connections- invites a way of being ethically and politically consistent with the joint construction of other futures, which mean contributing to the well-being of local communities.

The methodology used in constructionist research is based on dialogical analysis

Collaborative conversation requires sharing, trusting, and actively participating to create meaning. When one actively listens to another, the conversation flows and becomes meaningful to the interlocutors.

 The manifestation of this multiplicity and complexity is what is sought to enhance in the meetings with the co-researchers that will result in a document that contributes and builds the difference.

In the words of Tom Strong  (2003): “Collaborating means keeping what we say or do very close to what the consultant proposes, and much less than what our theories establish”. (p. 134).

Among the objectives of the research process is to create and weave relational connections, trust, curiosity, and mutual respect among all participants. This respect is also related to the will to enrich human sensitivity, with a language of affection between the interlocutors. Something complex, because, as already said, it entails levels of reciprocity; that means: good treatment, gentleness, appreciation, authenticity, acceptance of differences.

From this perspective it is understood that the relational is the basis of everything social and that it is from there where the meanings that will allow us to understand each other to develop new constructions for coordinated action arise; by mobilizing all the resources that nourish the conversations, asking if there are other ways to conceive the future, to generate alternatives that allow us to be together in a complex social world that becomes its own because it is transformed together.

Harlene Anderson invites us to reflect on what, according to her words, she explains in this text published in Spanish in 2012, about the meaning of transformation: “Change or transformation is generated in language, it is part of the participatory process of understanding and is full of uncertainty and risk.” (p. 4). It is the creative and different dialogues, the conversations guided by the connection with others, that contribute to the construction of that way of being collaborative, which expands relational possibilities and generates unthinkable future worlds.

 The expert character of a therapist lies in his ability to create and facilitate spaces and processes of dialogue.  The focus of responsibility is on the forms of relationships that invite these processes and expand them.  The focus is not on the content.  The decisive thing in this expertise lies in the position assumed by the therapist.  This position is best described as a philosophical stance—a way to meet, to reflect together, and to talk to the people a therapist works with.  It is a posture characterized by an authentic, spontaneous, and natural way of acting. Through this attitude, tone, and position, the other is being told: “I respect you”, “You have something valuable to say to me” and “I would like to hear it” (Anderson, 2013, p. 64).

It is an investigation to produce transformations in the relational contexts that participate in the research

It is in the relational process that mutual transformation occurs, as social constructionism suggests.  “In effect, constructionists try to understand the understanding of things and, in doing so, offer tools or discourses that can be used for many purposes … The metaphor of constructionism as a great umbrella under which there is room to shelter all forms of creating reality, and even to welcome the apparent reality of constructionism itself”.  (Gergen and Gergen, 2011, p.108).

It is the importance of thinking critically about one’s theoretical assumptions and the need to open the panorama to other ways of conceptualizing and understanding research. Relational, means that it is an investigation to produce transformations in the relational contexts that participate in the research. And we are clear that it is a process that never ends, it is a process of infinite dialogue.

This position holds that knowledge has a subject and that subject has a voice. McNamee  (2012) reflects that reliability frameworks are more the internal consistency and recognition of the linguistic community than the vision of cause and effect and the accuracy of the sample.

In everyday interactions with others, the relational reality in which communities and people live is constructed. For constructionism, it is about common action, or what to do together and what constitutes its doing. Constructionism asserts that the use of research lies in the generation of action potentials that it creates along with the reflective critique to which it invites participants.

Grandesso (2014) argues that (as a social constructionist and collaborative and dialogical practices therapist) there is a clear understanding of the importance of dialogue as the context for transformation; therefore, dialogue (methodologically) is organized from the conversation itself.  And this way of being with is what opens up the possibilities for them to be creative and innovative dialogues, transformative dialogic practices.

Third part

(November 15, 2019)

“Speak also you…”

 Speak also you be the last to speak, say your say.

 Speech. But don’t separate No from Yes. And give your saying meaning: give it shade.

 Give it enough shade, give it so much around you know extended between midnight and noon and midnight.

 Look around: see how everything becomes alive In death! Living! The truth is told by those who say shadow.

 But the place where you are is narrowing now: Where now, stripped of shade, where? Amounts.  Tanteante ascends. You become more subtle, more unrecognizable, finer.

 Finer: a thread by which the star wants to descend to swim down, to the bottom,  where it is seen shining: on mobile dunes of wandering words.

 (Paul Celan)

Dialogue as the first option in the construction of relational ethics(*)

 In contemporary society, which has devalued the word to pure exhibitionism, to pure marketing (if not to victimhood complaining or blackmailing and irresponsible blaming) the type of transformative dialogue called therapy is -in itself- because of the complexity of the process of questioning the unsaid, deeply political and ethical. Doing dialogic relational research in a society like the Ecuadorian one is a complex challenge: a brutal and criminally classist society with legitimized social injustice; with abject racism against indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorians; with a cynically patriarchal discourse for subjugation and exclusion; with permanent, cruel, and unjust mistreatment and abuse of children; with corrupt and ignorant governments; with human misery proposed as a model of being successful. Dialogue in these contexts is urgent, generating the joint construction of meanings and the social pragmatics necessary to transform inequitable and unworthy social conditions and oppressive relational contexts, this is in itself transformative, as a dialogical process, that allows us to co-construct a life that deserves to be lived with joy.

When we relationally orient our world, transform our worldview and relational understanding, we create a cultural difference that generates collective well-being.  By dialoguing differently we understand that the meaning of life is woven into the relationship we build with others; and that when we contribute to relationships we can develop our meaningful experiences. The constructionist perspective constructs perception as a consequence of the relationship of collaboration.

Sheila McNamee,(2015) points out that: “The ethical and political questions are: can we open in our relationships with people discourses of possibilities, instead of discourses of oppression and repression? Can relational ethics address personal issues, and at the same time address political, social, economic issues?”

Relational ethics is conceived as an ethic of discursive potential since we live in discourses of which we are often not aware, which are the dominant discourses.  We live in a relational world that is socially constructed through the coordination of people. Transformative dialogue introduces us to a relational ethic in which we position ourselves with our resources as imagining possible futures (also political), being critically reflective of our inner voices and what we are doing with others, coordinating our multiplicity, speaking from our history, from our lives, as opposed to speaking from our abstract values and beliefs.

Relational ethics can be seen as this human sensitivity in relationships (being present with the other) to understand people in a committed dialogue, which makes us co-responsible for taking care of relationships together. Because it is in this dialogue that lies the interest in the construction of new meaningful ways of connection between those who converse differently, which has to do with relational ethics: what do we build together that means well-being? This question explains how ethics is understood from social-constructionist positions and guides the methodological in meetings with co-researchers (the people with whom we dialogue for certain research).

To be, means to relate in dialogue with others

Bakhtin (n.d.) argues, in his work on Dostoevsky, quoted by Walter  Zitterbarth  (2013), that:

To be means to relate in dialogue with others.  When the dialogue ceases, everything ceases.  For this reason, dialogue cannot and must not cease.  In Dostoevsky’s novels, everything converges in dialogue as a meeting point, in dialogistic opposition as the center.  Everything is a medium, dialogue is only the goal.  An individual voice does not finish or decide anything.  Two voices are the minimum of life, the minimum of being. (Zitterbarth, 2013, p. 95).

Dialogue means that two people are interconnected. It is to look at the relational field that is organized when one is linked to the other; because to the extent that we connect, new aspects are generated for understanding, links are produced to develop new forms of collaboration.  It is in this space and relational context, with a reflective level, where the words of one of the interlocutors make sense because of the relationship-connection they establish with the words of the other interlocutor.

Language is what allows us to be and builds us; it is in living dialogue that life speaks. By relating dialogically we build ourselves socially. Only dialogue opens the possibilities of meeting -respectfully- with diversity and that the other is a genuine interlocutor because it is in this action with others -dialogue- that being exists.

Sheila McNamee  (2012), tells us:

Dialogue, from social constructionism, is used as always associated with generative social transformation, we would not connect dialogue to something that is not generative or to open possibilities (…) We create a space where people can pay attention to the ways they are creating together and understanding; and, also, that we create a space in which people can browse about differences. That doesn’t mean that dialogue solves the problem or that people come to an agreement, but that people are invited to new ways of understanding differences: and that’s really what dialogue is all about.

The coordination, through generative dialogue, of processes that enable participatory, inclusive, and collaborative relationships implies a fundamentally proactive attitude; recognizes and stimulates the capacities of the participants, and faces the complexity of different cultural, local contexts, with a sense of hope.  Dialogue is a question about what´s new; it means that it is deeply creative and mobilizes -for example, in therapy- the resources of consultants promoting -from curiosity- a sense of innovation and productive exploration, to understand differences.

Because the question remains: What are we creating together, to generate the possibilities of a present with the ethical and political relational conditions, which mean equity, justice, responsibility, dignity? How do we connect through dialogue, to create possibilities for different futures, respectful of human rights and the social and relational commitments of its participants?

Dialogue is pragmatic, it is action in the world

The therapist and historian Paolo Bertrando  (2011, p. 5) states: “(…) we inhabit different worlds, and we need dialogue – we need to get into the difficult struggle that is dialogue itself – so that those worlds communicate with each other.”

Faced with contemporary homologation, the prevailing conformism, and the complacent repetition of commonplaces, what´s important is proposing reflective conversations about what people, in their culture, consider as necessary, good, and valid; to recognize what is different, that these worlds, unknown and strange, enrich us, as long as we can name the difficulties, contradictions, antagonisms, without fearing that dialogue (which is not to force agreements) deepens otherness while being the only possibility of recognizing these different worlds; worlds that recognize each other and share a process of knowledge and learning that recreates them, give them consistency, and allow them to have a life of their own.

We seek to get involved in relationships by committing to them, which means taking care of them.  This (being relationally reflective) entails the invitation that all the people we work with (in research, in therapy) can actively participate in relational processes. McNamee  (2015): “The lack of balance, of being equal in the relationship, is not ethical. As well as not looking at the political, economic and social issues that surround us. As Foucault says: dominant discourses exist because we make them exist.”

By conversing thoughtfully and holding the conversation meaningfully, we generate understanding by creating the context for co-responsibility in the relational process.  By inviting, with respectful dialogue and with good humor, to challenge the dominant discourse; it is possible to begin to open other unthinkable, unpublished alternatives. We choose to question the traditional hierarchical ways of relating, of conversing, the lifestyles in which some have the power and privileges and decide what others should live. We question those hierarchies in which beliefs, theories, categories, practices, truths, and perspectives are imposed.

Dialogue has a pragmatic dimension; dialogue is action in the world. And it is with dialogue that we can develop critical reflexivity.  Dialogue that opens that world by making sense of it. Dialogue that questions every monologue; every monologue of power, which evidences its mystification and when questioning the legitimacy of its unilaterality, confronts its hegemony, generating cultural and social alternatives of the desirable, of the possible.

Following the reflection of Edgardo Morales, (2014) the question is not whether something is true or not, but in what world we want to live, and what possibilities that world opens.  Morales, recalling Gergen, affirms: “In constructionist dialogues, the attention passes from the individual actor to coordinated relationships”. Morales argues: “alternative futures can be imagined and designed and new scenarios and forms of relationship can be initiated in everyday life”.

Processes focused on what happens “between” co-researchers

It is not the most important thing that I discover something that I did not know (or, perhaps, I did not know that I knew), but the opportunity to prefigure -together- the new relational possibilities, enhancing the ability to interrogate ourselves with human and intellectual honesty; to sustain this search with consistency and to resist (because it is also about resisting all forms of abusive power) from imagination and creativity.  Awakening, recovering, and mobilizing our mutual capacity to amaze each other.

Dialogue here is understood as dynamic interactive processes that occur in conversations, being clear that the focus is on the potential of the multiple perspectives brought to these conversations, which can be reflected and articulated, expanding the possibilities of action (…) According to the social constructionist approach, dialogue invites diversity, in which different ways of understanding reality are always welcome (…)  In dialogue, the interest lies in the formation of meaningful forms of connection between the participants. (Camargo-Borges, 2014, p. 353).

Dialogue means a nexus, a connection, a movement in favor of the relationship, a way of being with others thanks to conversations; opening a space for polysemy and the multiple voices, with their positions, points of view, and perspectives; to engage in these conversations, promoting critical reflection that allows choosing the useful ways to act relationally.

As dialogue is an invitation to diversity, the results it brings in favor of its community is recognized; it involves the right of each protagonist to tell their story in the first person, share their resources, enter into conversation with the other different stories and learn and enrich each other with the transformative power of their strengths turned into positive and constructive resources for contextualized action.

According to Dora Fried  Schnitman  (1998): “This perspective allows us to ask about the concepts of ‘truth’, ‘objectivity’, ‘reality’. It underlines an ethical position founded and rooted at the same time in responsibility for our constructions of the world and the actions that accompany them”.  (p, 27).

The possibility that is generated to understand our responsibilities in the constructions of the social worlds and how consistent we are in our practices, found and promote an authentic and genuine ethical position in relationships. The principles and values that guide people are related to actions, as long as they respond to the cultural and social needs of those who participate in a concrete conversational context because they are invitations to form new types of relationships.

Processes focused on what happens “between” the co-researchers: “(…) when we get involved in this relational research, we end up creating the future”. (Sheila McNamee, TAOS Network of Relational Research, 2016).

Does this work; is it useful to others?

Placing the relational at the center of the context leads us to focus on the dialogical part that allows us to see and move the processes of interaction.  Thus, we begin to do something different and to coordinate the new possibilities with people, as a way to build alternatives -other perspectives- to be with others in the world.  It is the collective and community exchange that allows us to understand the actions, discourses, and relationships on which they are based. With this, we open a space for the multiple voices -that are silenced and invisible-  to participate in the conversation and enrich this relational dialogue.

 In research, adding perspectives such as deconstruction is enormously enriching to expand the process of weaving. Deconstructing means maintaining an attitude of necessary and permanent doubt, a critical distance and a relativization concerning cultural beliefs such as truth, hierarchies, discourses; enabling a commitment to the search for new visions -others- to promote the encounter with the unexpected, in the permanent deconstruction of what is established by culture and society. Deconstructing does not mean being against everything or destroying but revealing what circulates implicitly and is not perceived, and then seeing what the assumptions are and consequently, broadening the perspectives.

In conversations with co-researchers, we can ask:

 what kinds of meaning and meanings arise in these forms of interrelation that we are building?  Thinking of dialogue as a way of relating, because transforming involves entering into a relationship and sharing a purpose.  Other questions are added: How can we participate in what is novel? Are we building something different together? Is it a constructive dialogue? Are we creating possibilities? How would we like to express ourselves in a way that allows us to tell others who we are? What resources do we identify that we have used in this meeting? What are the words we need to open relational possibilities in this space? What use can generative dialogue and collaborative practice have in this particular context? It is a position, a way of life and relating that allows others to have a place: Is this good; is it useful to others?

We conceive our work not only as “being” with the other, but “being present” with the other. With an attentive attitude towards relational processes and with very high sensitivity concerning what we understand as positive, recognizing what part of the responsibility we have in the conflicts, crises, or dilemmas that afflict us and seeking, at the same time, how to contribute to generating alternatives to those conflicts, crises or dilemmas.

How to generate spaces for research to be relational?

Several of our answers agree on this: by listening more deeply to what is coming from the context of each participant; we do this by facilitating a process of relational research that means we are in permanent conversation and relationship. Research from this position is always oriented to something different to emerge, to leave something that is useful, creating conversational spaces interested in the different, in the unusual, creating something new and understanding that collaboration is to establish a non-hierarchical relationship.

When we enhance resources and what they meant and generate in relationships, we are valuing the need for transformation in those relationships to generate social transformations.  These new ways of seeing, of opening other perspectives, of constructing different meanings, generate beginnings and possibilities for the participants in the research experience that they integrate into their own lives.

In the words of Kenneth Gergen (2016, p. 538):

To be responsible for relationships is above all to sustain the process of co-creation of meaning. In relational responsibility, we avoid the implicit narcissism of ethical calls to “care for the self”. We also avoid the self/other division resulting from the imperative to “take care of the other.” When we are responsible for relationships, we abandon the individualistic tradition, and the care of the relationship becomes the main thing”.

When choosing the path of relational research, we face different challenges to those that other types of research are linked to.  For example, the need to understand it as a creator of transformations in the relational contexts that participate in the process. In dialogue, the interest lies in the formation of meaningful forms of connection between the participants; a journey in which they share their local knowledge, the value of their own culture, and the reflections that give meaning to conversations that create constructive differences.

A Social constructionism that serves us to be interested in knowing, in understanding how we live in a network of relationships with others, with their diversities, cultural and contextual specificities, in becoming with the other in continuous metamorphosis.  Social constructionism and collaborative and dialogical practices in research (and therapy) processes are a way to open the horizon of the relational senses. With this perspective, we have come to understand that it is essential to highlight the creation of active meaning, the importance given to changes in perspective and language in the process of creating meaning.

We look for new ways of being with ourselves and with others -new ways. genuine and authentic, of being in the relationship with the other.  The social constructionist perspective is directed to the recognition of relational resources, of the strengths and skills that are generated in social interactions; in which the sense of the context that is innovated has to do with choosing to talk, dialogue, connect with the other, to walk together, to be with others in differentiated ways, recognizing differences, accepting diversity (embracing complexity).  Choosing, finally, the relationships that build common social futures.

(*) Based on DTF’s Thesis (2018), for the Ph.D. with the Free University of Brussels (VUB)

English translation of Bruno Tapia Naranjo.