Concepts and Transformation - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2004

This article offers a summary reflection on the recent (September 2003) WTO Summit held at Cancún, Mexico. It places the WTO issues in the context of the process of globalisation. The discussion has four main sections: The first surveys the Cancún meeting, its participants, orientations and main topics. The second covers the characteristics of the altermundista international movement, its composition, its denunciations, proposals and demands, and the failure of the Summit. The third section raises the possible consequences for Latin America, the problems and the forces at work. The final section gives a personal view of the outcomes of this event and expresses that it opened up some opportunities for hope.

This is a personal Latin American perspective on action research, as my contribution to the debate promoted by Werner Fricke on the subject. My discussion follows the main issues outlined by Davydd Greenwood in his article (CAT 7(2): 2002), which laid the ground for our exchanges. I argue that it is too early to dismiss all contributions from conventional research to the social sciences, and that action research’s main contribution is to really involve ordinary people in building knowledge, an endeavor that is not easy to achieve. In relation to unfulfilled promises and unmet challenges I discuss such issues by referring to my own practice.

Contemporary action research is facing three major challenges: The need to deal with a future that can no longer be understood in terms of the past, the need to create processes that can involve large numbers of other actors and the need to link the practical results of action research to the democratic institutions of society. In research terms, these challenges cannot be met through conventional, historically oriented studies only. There is a need to develop new orientations and to shape the research processes accordingly