Thinking another epistemology:

critics and reviews of the Social Science’s epistemologic paradigm in Immanuel Wallerstein and Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Abstract

This paper aims to reconstruct Immanuel Wallerstein and Boaventura de Sousa Santos critics towards the way Modern Social Sciences were constructed, and theoretical assumptions they lie upon. Picking up aspects of the critics to the hegemonic epistemological paradigm some authors initiated in the mid-20th century, they propose new facets and challenges to think the reconstruction of Social Sciences, based upon parameters connected to their historical conformation processes, the social subjects who are their protagonists (with their own interests and power disputes), and their philosophical and methodological plurality. Both conceive Science not as a hierarchic knowledge superior to others, but as a specific form of knowledge –which importance can’t be denied-, but that coexists with other forms of knowledge that we can and should respect, and that originate social practices, define cultures and produce knowledge. This does not imply to reject or relegate social sciences, but to open up to new conceptions and methodologies on the one hand, and to a democratic dialogue with other forms of knowing and of producing knowledge on the other.