The Role of Social Research in Pandemic Emergency: What Methodology for Resiliency?

Eleonora Venneri
Department of Law, Economics and Sociology - University "Magna "Graecia of Catanzaro

Abstract

With the theoretical and empirical one, the dimension which qualifies and corroborates the scientific nature of social research is that of effective usability that suggests a transactional and pragmatic vision of social investigation. So, the ability of social research to produce knowledge predisposed to impact and measure itself effectively with real-life contexts is particularly arising in pandemic emergency. Perhaps, never like now, the reflexivity of research is the pre-condition for the reasonableness of a conscious practices, related to the need for solutions inspired by social relationality criteria combining with the everyday life and interpersonal exchanges of people. For this purpose, social research must be inspired by criteria of temporariness, contingency and circularity of the methodologies and techniques that need to be coherent and suitable for distinct situations. At this level, the reflexivity assumes meta-theoretical connotations that imply, on the one hand, an implicit recognition of the need to adapt solutions to specific contexts and, on the other, a tacit acknowledgment of the continuous opening of social research to a reasoned dialogue with the stakeholders for evaluate opportunity and merits of operative solutions. This contribute aims to offer a theoretical reflection on the topic by trying to highlight how the value of reflexivity in research in times of “information deluge”, puts the researcher in front of two questions (one conceptual, the other properly methodological). Where the excess of information tends to irrelevance and communicative ineffectiveness, the reflexivity of the research turns rather to the adoption of "existential" methodological procedures suitable for understanding the more than representative dimensions of the real experiences lived by people (their affective and perceptive responses and the relational experiences of the pandemic “time” and “space”; the perception of contagion risk; the fear of loneliness induced by physical distancing; the prospects for future life, etc.).


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