Inquiring about the own from the otherness: retrospective of graduates of an intercultural university on their research processes

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the positioning that, in retrospect, indigenous graduates of the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural (UVI) in Mexico express about their research processes in their regions, identifying the emergence of subjectivities that involve both estrangement and self-affirmation as members of the communities where they investigate. This ambivalent subjectivity has generated differentiated ways of assuming themselves as researchers, who recognize or not the importance of their own knowledge for the construction and application of knowledge. Graduates of this University were interviewed, choosing eleven who have continued their postgraduate training and who have remained involved in research processes. It was found that their training in the Bachelor Degree in Intercultural Management for Development is strongly influenced by an ethnographic approach that contributes to the development of an estrangement on their own communities, and although they recognize their own knowledge, some consider it necessary to learn the “academic” ways of interacting and communicating with community actors, and, in general, refer to the need to resort to scientific theories to develop their research.