Appunti per una ricerca “in salute”: presupposti teorici ed esperienze concrete per una funzione politica e trasformativa della produzione di conoscenza

As Centre for International Health, we intend to contribute to the current debate on the public, applied and socially committed forms of anthropology by elaborating on the social impact and utility of research, and on the mechanisms of knowledge generation that are considered to be “scientific”. We argue that, in order to redefine (anthropological) research as a transformative process, there needs to be a methodological change towards collective and participatory research practices. The proposed reflection originates from the challenges that we face as a research centre, addressing on the one side the ethics and politics of research, and on the other one the constraints of the labour market. To illustrate these challenges, and the practices we developed to address them, we present three field experiences (that involve social cooperatives, civil society organisations and public services, and social movements) grounded in the approaches of participatory action-research and training-intervention. The theoretical and methodological contribution of these approaches opens the way for collaborative research practices that are inclusive from the planning to the evaluation, transforming research itself in a field for a possible change in society towards a greater self-determination of subjects and their emancipation from oppression. However, the challenge of how to sustain a research activity that is deeply political remains, and can probably be addressed only through a broad, collective and systemic engagement.