Advances in Contemplative Social Research

The book is about a new paradigm in social sciences, contemplative inquiry. It concerns theory, methods of research,and practical applications. Deep contemplation of a situation could be an epistemological choice for social scientists. It is a fundamentally different approach to research, whereby the investigator is researching not only the object, but also the situation of research and herself/himself in it. Contemplating is a dual way of approaching the truth. It does not mean that the researcher is mentally divided; on the contrary she/he wants to be complete and achieve the unity of being as a researcher-human being and as an element of the situation (psychosocial and historical). Contemplating enables researchers to see how the mind works and create images and reports from the field: What is available for the mind and what is silent or repressed because of the dominating rhetoric of description and rhetoric of feeling? Contemplation is not only analysis, it is also an ethical choice of stopping here and now to see the situation clearly and reporting it together with all th reservations that could result from the mindfully observed interaction of mind, self, and situation at one historical moment.