A Second Look at Social Research: Detachment or Involvement?

“Socially Shared Inquiry”
By Herminia Corazon Alfonso
Great Books, 2001


If there is any pronounced redeeming feature to capitalism, though driven by the engine of profit, it is this: It has industry players who believe in and are committed to be “responsible corporate citizens.”

Close to two decades ago, the idea that business can be a positive social force caught up with the country’s captains of industry. So, as a decisive step, these industrialists put up the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), an expression of their common desire to “return” to the community a portion of their earnings as their contribution to social development.

Corporations, big and small, also caught the vision of being “good neighbors” to the immediate communities where they operate. They have, in fact, gone even farther. They created the “community outreach department” or its equivalent to substantiate such “good-neighbor” policy.

An important part of this department’s work is to continue feeling the pulse of its “host community” – a term that describes not only the obvious fact that the company is located in its midst. It also underscores a not-so-obvious reality that such a firm is also genuinely interested in the life, culture and “soul” of such locale.

There is a book, “Socially Shared Inquiry,” subtitled “A Self-Reflexive, Emancipatory, Communication Approach to Social Research,” which should give the CEO or the community relations official – not only a closer look at social research, but an insight into the current debate among social researchers: Should the researcher be a detached agent extracting data from a community, or should he/she be one who is involved and who participates in the community’s life as well?

This is actually no different from the debate among journalists: Should the newsman be a detached observer of society, or should he be involved as a crusading agent, take an advocacy position – and thus would truly contribute to a more honest, freer and saner society?

The foreword to the book underscores the author’s stand: “Fundamental to her (Alfonso’s) work is the recognition that social research is not only inquiring into social phenomena; it is a social phenomenon in its own right, one where researchers enter the very social fabric they intend to study and partly cause what they observe.”

This contrasts sharply with the studied detachment of researchers, described by the book as “disembodied researchers” involving everyone except the “object of research” – the communities being observed, clarifies the author.

Author Alfonso developed the book entirely on this concept: “Socially Shared Inquiry is designed to be a method of investigation enacted by the members of a community who engage themselves in the process as both doers and subjects of inquiry.” The community must be involved in the research process.

The book is a take off from the dissertation of the author, so it still uses the language of the academician.

Actually, you should look beyond the debate on whether the researcher is involved or detached. The value of the book to people disinterested in academic debates is that the book has a wealth of methodologies in getting the community to discuss their goals and to empower themselves.

If you continue on, the author pictures to you the transaction going on in towns and barrios where change is happening.

Read about the author’s interesting account of Erin Brokovich (starring Julia Roberts), an involved researcher who changed the life of an entire community.

For corporate citizens, this book will make you better know the “soul” of the communities where you operate. For this alone, it is worth steering clear of the academician’s lingo.