Abstract

LUJAN CHRISTIANSEN, María. "If You Want to Know What the Water is Like, don't Ask the Fish" Second-Order Epistemology in the Study of Violence. Eidos [online]. 2017, n.26, pp.121-148. ISSN 1692-8857.

Abstract The claim that violence is a phenomenon suitable for the objective approach is highly questionable. In this article, some aspects underlying the more classical approaches about such topic will be indicated, and their intrinsic violent potential will be emphasized. The core of the ideas that aims to raise the objectivist epistemology leads to a symbolic violence entrenched in the principle of the excluded middle. Consequently, efforts to make violence a topic of objective research end up becoming a flagrant feedback of the same violence they intend to observe (causing a kind of "epistemic iatrogenesis"). However, in contrast to the ossified objectivist position (associated with the empirical-positivist tradition), a socio-constructionist epistemological approach will be explored. It focuses on violence as a complex reality, by framing it within a "Second-Order Research" (or "Epistemology of Observing Systems").

Keywords : violence; objectivism; social constructionism; second order epistemology.

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