A category’s genealogy: Socially Productive Knowledge (SPK)

Abstract

To present a category’s genealogy invites mainly to reconstruct the path that we, as researchers, have walked in this intellectual process. And, as it always happens, not every path leads to an enlightenment of the horizon of intellection, but also to obstacles and blind alleys. This paper discusses both experiences, understanding them as part of the same process of theoretical production. The field work that we carried out at the CIAM factory brought us together in 2002 in order to begin to debate the transmission of knowledge in production contexts, in this case, a recovered factory. Starting from the voices of workers and other subjects linked to the old SIAM-Di Tella, we intended to recover their pedagogical paths related to their work. The theoretical and methodological discussions that took place around this research project at the seminar of Appeal not only resulted in the publishing of the book “The Knowledge Factory” [La Fábrica del Conocimiento], but also in the construction of an alternative conceptual framework to think the multiple articulations between education and work. SPK was defined in correspondence with historically situated social, community, group and individual needs of every subject. This was an indicator that said knowledge could not be defined a priori according to its theoretical nature, as their specific value necessarily resided outside of itself, more precisely in the ideological-political articulation that it establishes with the social demands and needs, which grant it a particular singularity and inscription.

Key words: education and work, construction of a theoretical and methodological framework, socially productive knowledge.