PD otherwise will be pluriversal (or it won't be)

Abstract

The following text proposes a narrative and argumentative path starting in the wetlands of the Caribbean coastal region of Colombia, where Orlando Fals Borda, more than 50 years ago, found himself in the search for appropriate tools and methods for studying the complex social situation of the communities living there. His development of PAR -a transformative and explicitly political research approach with communities [15]- represented a radical critique and novel proposal for research in the social sciences. Such proposal opens a path for us to explore some examples of knowledge and research (building knowledge) otherwise such as ‘systematisation of experiences’ ‘epistemologies of the south’ [8] and ‘situated knowledges’ [20], as well as some design initiatives, networks and platforms otherwise that have emerged in recent years, such as ‘designs from the souths’ [19], ‘decolonising design’ [36], ‘depatriarchise design’, and ‘autonomous design’ [12]. We then build on these proposals of knowledge and design otherwise, to explain how they have influenced and informed our intervention in a specific case study of northern-European PD, which we will present as a practical example of such ideas. Our journey will end with a plea for contemporary PD to incorporate the political nature of the origins of PAR and the more contemporary concept of ‘pluriverse’ [13], so as to better articulate –not only its investigative- but also its transformative qualities.