Hi @npiland,
I hope everything is alright.
It has been a very busy time for me and I have not been able to follow the forum. When I saw your message, I felt the need to bring an update.
In the last few months, I have been reading some books on research in Brazil from the 60s to the 80s. I found that at that time a strong movement was emerging called “pesquisa participante” that - in addition to Brazil - it was widespread in South America. There is the Gajardo’s book (1986) on this subject, and an excellent analysis in the book chapter by Brandão (2006), both of which are referenced below. There is a strong relationship of these thread of studies and the works of Orlando Fals Borda that Karen Soacha mentioned in another conversation here at the Forum.
The description of what “pesquisa participante” means is very close to what we currently consider to be in the field of citizen science, participatory science, etc. The “pesquisa participante” term, however, was not included on our list of terms in Portuguese. I examined if including it in our list would make a difference in the search results. The answer is yes. In Portuguese, “pesquisa participante” is the second most common term in SciELO behind only the term “pesquisa ação”. Not only in old articles, the “pesquisa participante” term is widely used in recent articles.
Despite already noticing some major change with the inclusion of this term, it may still be much less than the reality. The reason for this is that, as far as I was able to identify, people who were in this movement were more likely to publish books than articles. So, in SciELO, for example, this sort of literature is not indexed on a large scale. I believe that the same happens in others databases like WoS and Scopus. To test the inclusion in gray literature search, I did a quick google scholar search comparing hits for the term “pesquisa participativa”, which is on our list, and the term “pesquisa participante”, which is not on our list . The difference is very big, there are 7830 hits for “pesquisa participativa” and 24800 hits for “pesquisa participante”. It is an indication that perhaps one of the most important movement of people’s participation in science in Brazil was not being covered in our analysis.
As the analysis done in the mapping was focused on discovering current initiatives and projects, the absence of this term may not have a great effect. However, if you are going to write something taking into account this context of terminology, geographic distribution, and fields, without being restricted to the present (i.e. including articles published in any year), please take this information into account. Anyway, I am not suggesting a change in the plan you have proposed, I am just adding this information that you may not know.
Finally, I am excited to see the long history of the struggle for greater participation of people in research in our region. It is something that sometimes may seem new and recent, but that has already been done by many movements at different times in history.
Take care of yourself and your family. Stay safe.
Lesandro Ponciano
References
GAJARDO, Marcela. Pesquisa participante na América Latina. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986.
OZANIRA, Maria da Silva e Silva. Refletindo a pesquisa participante. São Paulo: Cortez, 1991.
BRANDÃO, C. R. A Pesquisa participante e a participação da pesquisa: um olhar entre tempos e espaços da América Latina. In: Brandão, C. R.; Streck, D. R. (Org.). Pesquisa participante: o saber da partilha. Aparecida: Ideias & Letras, 2006. p. 21-54.
BRANDÃO, C. R.; STRECK, D. R. Pesquisa participante: o saber da partilha. 2. ed. Aparecida, SP: Idéias & Letras, 2008.