National Coordinators

Team Leader:

Ricardo Cetrulo

Professor 

Methodology on qualitative research/Philosophy / Sciences of Religion / Social Sciences

President of  Instituto del Hombre, Center for an Alternative Reflection

State University

Joaquín Requena 1204,

C.P. 1200 Montevideo

e-mail: cetrulo@adinet.com.uy  

Short Biography

I was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in a middle class family, a nuclear family of four: parents, brother and sister. I lost my father early, when I was 14 years old. Being the only son, circumstances forced me to become too quickly an adult man. During my high school studies, I spent a lot of energy in the practice of various sports: 100 and 200 meters in athletics, basketball, soccer, swimming...

Later on I entered in the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and I followed the whole curriculum of studies of the Institution: 1. Classical and Modern Literature. My center of interest was the human problems as reflected all through the history of Literature. 2. Graduate studies of Philosophy (what we call Licence) with emphasis in existentialist philosophy, i.e. the study of “human condition” through the various versions. 3. Graduates studies of Sciences of Religion and Theology (Louvain, Belgium).

It is obvious that in these three branches of knowledge the human dimension was present as well as the effort to understand the complexity and ambiguities of the human condition.

It is not surprising that I experienced a strong shock when I finally made post graduate studies in Social Sciences, University of Chicago, USA. where the orientation was of a radical positivism.

The contrast between the humanistic approach of the three first disciplines and the radical positivism prevailing in the Social Sciences Department of the University of Chicago, was really striking. Working in the Social Psychology Lab I made the full experience of the possibilities as well as the limits of the instrumental rationalilty.

Back to my country (1965) after 15 years of training in the mentioned disciplines, I found a political situation in deep confrontation between radical left (urban guerrilla- tupamaros- Unions movement , students organizations, new political parties – Frente Amplio, a coalition of leftist parties) and radical right (the traditional political parties in the government for more than 170 years).

To understand this situation sociological functionalism was not an adequate theoretical tool. I had then to make an interesting finding : in my effort to study the approach of Critical Social Science, as more adequate to understand the conflicts of my country, I could overcome the circle of strict positivism in the methodology of research and recuperate the human aspects of the qualitative methodology in Social Sciences. I could put again MAN in the center o f my concern, now from a sociological perspective: the axis adaptation-deviance as proper of functionalism left place to the axis: alienation-emancipation in the Critical Sociology (Marxism –School of Frankfurt etc)

After 8 years of teaching Critical Sociology and Social Psychology in the Department of Social Work I was fired by the military government in 1976 and was banned from any formal teaching activity. (Besides, because of my political involvement I had to leave the Society of Jesus a few years later.)

What to do? Leave the country? Remain? And if so, what for?

I chose to remain, and doing so I started one of the most important part of my life, that is, the praxis with the deprived class of society with a twofold objective:

In that way I could free the Social Sciences from its academic isolation, I could also elaborate theory from emancipatory praxis and finally I could overcome the boundaries of each discipline (Sociology, Anthropology, Social Psychology) looking for a more holistic approach to reality.

This is the origin of the Institute of Man, a non profit organization dedicated to popular non formal education (a kind of school of citizenship) and to processes of local development (improving the quality of life, looking for alternative micro societies at the local level).

After 12 years of military dictatorship, democracy was finally restored in 1985 and then I could resume my chair at the State University of Montevideo in which I am still teaching “Methodology of qualitative research” with emphasis on the paradigmatic transition: from the hegemonic paradigm of the instrumental rationality to the paradigm of complexity.

My life goes then now from emancipatory praxis of popular education to the academic level of the University, the former being really an input to the academic endeavour.

Three years ago our Institute started a new programme, of which I am the coordinator, called: Community University. Knowledge is not an exclusive property of the Academic University, but on the contrary there are other kind of very valuable knowledges: the knowledge of the common people, the knowledge of the everyday life, the knowledge coming from the fight for survival. The Community University tries to appraise these knowledges, to  help people to become conscious of them, and so increase their self esteem, and finally systematized them.  

Going now to other aspects of my life, I must say that I am happily married, I am a good cook and a good gourmet too. I enjoy spending the weekends in my ecological cottage built on natural materials in a sea resort called Punta del Este one hundred kilometres from Montevideo [Please view the following pictures: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5].

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Team Members:

1) Dr Carlos Vignone. I was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1964. I am Medical Doctor and graduated from the Medical School of the State University of Montevideo, Uruguay. Post graduate studies of Psychiatry in the same University. I have specialized in Energetic Corporal Psychotherapy (Ergonomy) in the Center of Ergonomic Studies (Córdoba, Argentina). I made postgraduates studies in Gestalt Psychology , individuals as well as group processes in the Gestalt Center, Montevideo. I also trained in E.M.D.R with disciples of Francis Shapiro the founder of this technique for the approach of traumatic and post traumatic phenomenon. In the area of Social Sciences, I studied Popular Education-Intercultural Action at The Institute of Man, Montevideo.