The Application of the social sciences’ Contemporary issues to work on participatory action research

Abstract

No one could have been more surprised than I when at the closing session of the 12th International Sympo-N sium on Action Research for Education, held at my home city of Bogotá, Colombia May 14-18, 2007 a number of delegates from Australia, Great Britain and the United States went to the podium to announce that I was the new recipient of the prestigious Bronislaw Malinowski Award of the Society for Applied Anthropology. I should travel to Memphis for this purpose. It is a motive of amazement to find my name in the honor roll together with scientists and authors of my considerable youthful reverence, the masters of my professors-a roster with names such as Gunnar Myrdal, Everett C. Hughes, Laura Thompson, Conrad Arensberg, and Margaret Clark. How did I finally fit into this sacred list? I am not going to question the criteria for choosing. My main duty, I feel, is to examine whether I merit such inclusion from the standpoint of con-tinuity and/or accumulation of science, continuing some of the basic tenets of the discipline I learned in my university years in the United States.