1

Methodology of Coyuntural Analysis

Notebook # 1: The Epistemological Review of Coyuntural Analysis

GENERAL PRESENTATION OF THE SERIES

This material that you have in your hands is the product of a practice and
reflection of many years of work. As a product of this process, we in SIPRO arrived to
this systemization with the contribution of many people and with the valuable
collaboration of Enrique Valencia who made the basic text of this edition possible. From
his document we try to be loyal to the methodological process he plants in a difficult
theme, but essential for those who carry out a labor of education and accompaniment to
social processes and the reality of our country.

These materials are aimed at contributing to all of those people from the ngo’s,
promoters, advisors, students, professionals, educators who accompany processes of
popular education and of social organizations, and for those intellectuals who produce
coyuntural analysis.

The notebooks we present here are a basic text, a contribution that does not signify the
last word over this subject. There is a lot still to be said, proposed, and written over it. For
many, the approaches and concepts can be debatable, questionable and anachronistic.
We are in agreement over that and that is what it is about: generate a reflection and
understanding that begins to find new roads and horizons in this galloping reality.

The content of these notebooks can be used in multiple forms depending on the interest.
It can easily be part of an extensive course, used for a more deep and focused discussion
on the theme, or it can be used as a tool for consulting. It does exempt its readers from
the task of going into depth, questioning, criticizing, connecting, proposing changes and
even less so of the challenge of sharing in a more accessible way if the theme is deeply
comprehended. This would be the central objective of our proposal.

In the face of the disordered reality in which we live, we see the necessity of stopping to
analyze it with the objective of accompanying the historical process of change and be
participants of it. That is why in Servicios Informativos Procesados, A.C., we revisit this
document and we retransmit it for those actors who want to be an active part of their own
history.

We hope that the systemization of these notebooks can be a modest contribution and
useful for the best development of the analysis of coyuntura.

Gustavo E. Castro Soto

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INDEX

Page
PRESENTATION……………………………………………………………... 3

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION…………………………………….…….….. 4

PROPOSED DEFINITION OF COYUNTURAL ANALYSIS…………….…...7

THE EPISTEMELOGICAL REVIEW OF COYUNTURAL ANALYSIS

A. The basic questions of the epistemology………………………….…9
B. The relationship between epistemology and methodology………....14
C. The obstacles of knowledge and the methodology……………..…..16

ANALYTICAL INDEX………………………………………………………….

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………..
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PRESENTATION

As a pedagogical approach we propose that the entire series be divided in two

parts. The first three notebooks form the first part that we can denominate Epistemology
and Coyuntural Analysis.

Why isolate the epistemological aspect? The principal idea is that if we critically
analyze the manner in which we learn and understand when we do coyuntural analysis, it
will permit us to advance methodologically and it will help us realize more complete
investigations with more precise results and findings.

In this notebook we attempt to establish the relationship between epistemology

and methodology, and between epistemological obstacles and methodology. If we
investigate the errors and correct findings that emerge when we analyze something, the
methodology will advance towards a better understanding of things.

Coyuntural Analysis is a concept that has little by little been finding a space in
our society. Here we will briefly discuss this historical process and its practice. Before
going into the central theme of this notebook, we also propose a definition of Coyuntural
Analysis that will be the guide that will orient and tie together the combination of
notebooks.

SJR-SIPRO
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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Throughout the 1960s there began to occur a certain increase in the practice of coyuntural
analysis. This was expressed in the birth of specialized publications (i.e., journals,
reviews, etc.) on the topic;

In the formation of commissions dedicated to these investigations in the political parties

or in the social organizations, be they syndicated, rural, urban, ecological, feminist,
ngo’s, of ecclesiastic communities and others;

In the formation of informative and analytical centers and in the writing of the thesis with
the objective of studding a certain special event or happening;

And also in the writing of coyuntural reports of theological centers of study, of human
rights centers, religious or ecclesiastic associations.

We do not want to suggest that in those years for the first time in the sociological studies
the analysis of coyuntura is realized. These were formally initiated at least in the second
half of the previous century.

All we affirm is that in Mexico, in the last two decades and in the current, in the field of
social sciences and within the political and social organizations, the concept of
coyuntural analysis gained its importance.

This analytical practice began conquering territory in the intellectual field and in the
competition for cultural legitimacy.1

It began to be specialized in this field within the academics as well as the social militants
and politicians, a new type of intellectual: the coyuntural analyst.

As generally occurs, following the practice there emerged a systemization of it in which

the first methodological articles on coyuntural analysis were born. Pioneer works in this
subject were those of Alberto Arroyo and Ignacio Medina (1976) and the special number

1
See BOURDIEU, 1978: 136, 138 and 163.
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of the Revista Mexicana de Sociologia (1979). Shortly after there was a group of more
articles, some of which we refer to here.

Within the journals or publications interested in coyuntural analysis since the beginning
of the ‘60s, some deserve special mention: Estrategia, Punto Critico, and among those
dedicated to theology on liberation, Christus. By the ‘80s there are various publications
which include some periodic information on coyuntural study. Moreover, in almost all of
Latin America centers of informative systemization and analysis were founded.

The diagnostic that we present here is that the concept of coyuntura is so widely used
that today it is utilized within the academics, journalists, politicians, social organizations
(popular & ecclesiastic), in government dialogue, in any medium of communication, etc..

Because it is widely used, the term is thus easily abused. We often apply it
indiscriminately and in the end we do not really know what coyuntura is.

Examples:
1. Through coyuntura we understand whichever social action—on the other hand—
only the significant ones like the structural or revolutionary changes.
2. Almost every day there is a discussion of coyuntural changes—or on the other
extreme—it has been said that there is only a real coyuntura ever thousand years,
as we say.

For those of us who think this way, only when the door is open to revolutionary
possibilities is it that we find ourselves faced with real coyuntura: the rest is considered
pretensions.

The goal of these notebooks is to offer some tools by which to utilize coyuntural analysis,
since we are convinced of its utility and importance. For this reason, these notebooks
attempt to be pedagogic. The objective is to present a methodological reflection through
the systemization of an analytical and pedagogical practice.

In this reflection we find that the coyuntural investigation is a great medium not just for
social knowledge and understanding or for the planning of social political alternatives,
but also for discussion and socialization of the supposed social theoretics that the
coyunturas analyze.

In studding a certain historical period or a part of the current history, we place upon it our
conceptions about the past, about the current society and its future perspectives, the way
in which we understand economic, social, political, and cultural relations.
 6

For all these reasons, we propose that coyuntural analysis in addition to being a form of
knowledge or a method of discussion and socialization of theoretical conceptions is also a
space of epistemological ruptures and creations.
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PROPOSED DEFINITION OF COYUNTURAL ANALYSIS

To quickly move forward, we propose a definition of Coyuntural Analysis:

We will understand analysis as: the real or theoretical construction of the object/thing
that we want to study.

We will understand coyuntura as: a cut in the actual moment or in the moment of the
development of the social totality or structure, form the point of view of the correlation of
forces.2

This means that we are going to reconstruct the forces or power that diverse social groups
have to accomplish their interests in a defined time.

Examples:
1. If we take the knowledge of the death of Lic. Luis Donaldo Colosio,
PRI candidate for president, the situation of the treaty for free trade
(NAFTA), the presidential problems, and campaigns and the conflict in
Chiapas, that all coincide in the first months of 1994, as well as other
relevant knowledge of that time, and we see the strength of the diverse
actors involved in those moments, we will be making a cut in the actual
moment of that history.
2. If we analyze the force that these diverse interests have, we will be
analyzing the correlation of forces. In the case of the armed conflict in
Chiapas we can see how the Zapatistas have mobilized a large number
of people, thus their arms are not guns etc. but their allies (supporters).

In notebook #5 we will discuss in more detail what the significance of a <<cut in the
actual moment of history>> signifies and in Notebook #7 what the <<correlation of
forces>> is.

Coyuntural analysis in general refers to the study of the actual moment in which we are
living. However, and analysis of coyuntura can also be done on understandings of the
past even if they are from many years ago.

The analysis of coyuntura implies two things:

1. A diagnostic of the correlation of forces in the actual moment of a national social
totality. (Although generally it is used for national analysis it can also be used in
regional and local analysis as well—of the state, department, region, colony,
barrio, sector, canton, etc.).3
2. A diagnostic of actions (and its practice) that are necessary to influence in that
correlation.(And within a project that attempts to transform or maintain the
method of reproducing a social totality. In other words, the way in which all of
society functions today be it just or unjust.

2
See RUIZ SAHAGUN, 1984: 301 and ZAMELMAN, 1987b: 27.
3
See LUENGO, 1982: 290-291.
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QUESTIONS

1. What do we understand about ANALISIS? Could you give an example?

2. What do we understand about COYUNTURA? Could you give an example?

3. What does a <<cut in the actual moment>> signify? Could you give an example?

4. In what levels or spheres can we do Coyuntural Analysis?

5. Is Coyuntural Analysis only for the <<actual moment>>?

6. What are the two characteristics that the Analysis of Coyuntura implies? Could
you explain them in your own words?
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THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL REVIEW OF COYUNTURAL ANALYSIS

A. The Basic Questions of the Epistemology

We should not be afraid of the term EPISTEMOLOGY. It is easy to understand.

Let us see…

The fundamental question of the epistemology in general terms is:

What are those conditions that make possible4 the understanding/knowledge in the
science?

As we well know, there are many types of sciences. For each there is a corresponding
epistemology. In other words, a way of understanding the reality of that science.

This signifies that there is an epistemology of sociology, of economics, of history, of

psychology, of mathematics, of chemistry, of physics, of biology, etc.

The epistemology of the social sciences (like history, sociology, psychology, etc.) is
brought on by the rationalization5 of the process by which we investigate them.

In a similar manner there is an Epistemology of Cultural Analysis!

To understand something of reality we first make an investigation through various means:

we ask, we observe, we experiment, we interview, we verify, we come to conclusions,
etc.

Thus the epistemology is a second reflection that we make, but what is that second
reflection?

In elegant words we could say that epistemology is:

The critical study of the start or beginnings, hypothesis and results of the diverse
sciences, with the end result of determining its logical origin, its value, and objective
reach.6

This signifies that epistemology consists of making a reflection over/of the beginnings,
prejudices, values, ideas, etc. that we use to see, feel and investigate the reality, the way
in which we make hypothesis and how we formulate results.

We can understand HYPOTHESIS as the provisional supposition of something to get

from it a consequence. One can formulate a hypothesis of different types: An interpretive
hypothesis (of an actual or past knowledge, prospective hypothesis (what we assume will

4
BACHELARD, 1974: 15; BOURDIEU, 1975: 20.
5
ARROYO, s/f: 1. GIMENEZ, 1978: 8.
6
LUENGO, 1982: 147.
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happen in the future). More will be discussed on the subject of hypothesis in Notebook
No. 4.

The basic question of the person who studies epistemology in the social sciences is:

What is it to know?

But epistemology asks for a particular kind of knowledge—the scientific! And from a
practice: that of the diverse ways or processes that we do to investigate the diverse
sciences.

So a basic and first question in epistemology refers to:

What is Social Science?

We do not just ask this question of the social sciences, it extends further:

What are its conditions of possibility?

In the relationship between subject (the person) and the real object (the thing we want to
know) we ask:

What is the investigational process we use so that the subject can

learn about the object?

In other words:

What are the steps we take to understand something?

This question can be taken apart in two extremes:

1. From the point of view of the subject (the person):

What makes it possible for a person to realize an act of knowledge?

How is it that she can know?

And

2. From the point of view of the object (the thing):

What in the object makes it possible for us to know what it is?

How is it that the object can be learned?

Here we are talking about the relationship between:

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On the one hand the concept (the word that defines something) and reality (the
things) and on the other hand the cognoscente subject (the person that knows) and
object that can be comprehended and that can be transformed7 (the thing that is
known).

The previous questions do not just refer to the process of knowing but also to questioning
how valid8 are the results.

That is to say, the concept (or the word) that we construct in the process of knowing does
correspond to the reality.

Is it a reconstruction (in the mind) adequate to social reality? How do we know?

For that reason, the epistemology is used in the different criteria to verify how real what
we have learned really is:

How do we contrast, with the most precision, the relationship between the concept and
the real object?

With what we have seen thus far it would seem that we are left with an image of partial
epistemology. That is why epistemology is not used solely in the conditions that make
the scientific process of knowing something possible.

It is also asked about that which stops us from understanding something and that causes
us to fall in errors.

In this sense, the epistemology an analysis for finding what made possible the
errors/wrong findings.9

It is the investigation of errors!

Errors are the school of science, because thanks to errors the sciences advance.

That is why we need a continual reflexive epistemology to discover those errors so that
we do not finish like the song <<me tropecé de nuevo y con la misma piedra...>> (I
tripped again and with the same rock…).

If it were not that way, new scientific findings would depend on a good guess or pure
genius, of which there are few.10

This way of understanding the epistemology as always tied to the processes of

investigation, allows us to understand it as an open critical reflection.

This does not signify that we necessarily have to follow the same small road for
everything. In each critically reflexive investigation, the epistemology can result in new

7
LUENGO, 1982: 103.
8
PIAGET, 1979: 15; LUENGO, 1982: 147.
9
BOURDIEU, 1975: 84.
10
BACHELARD, 1974: 287.
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findings or additions to those already found. It can also achieve new advances not just of
the error, but also of the certain results that have already been verified.

It can inclusively contest or contradict the previous <<advances>> that have not been
proved that certain.

Therefore the epistemology looks for the conditions that make it possible to know
something, as well as those that get in the way.
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QUESTIONS

1. What do we understand about epistemology?

2. Why is there an epistemology for each science?

3. What is the importance of the epistemology of the sciences?

4. Explain in your own words in what the fundamental question of the epistemology
consists?

5. Explain in your own words why the epistemology is a second reflection?

6. Explain in your own words the relationship between subject and object?
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B. Relationship Between Epistemology and Methodology:

We can understand methodology as: the strategy of investigation in which various

techniques are coordinated to reach and transform an object of knowledge.

For an epistemological posture a methodology emerges and for the social sciences a
sociological theory. 11

In other words, if there is a theory in society it is because there is a social science that has
formulated it; if there is a methodology it is because there is an epistemological posture
by which to understand reality.

• We have already said epistemology is a second reflection…

• From this reflection emerge a series of general conclusions about the conditions
that made possible the scientific understandings…

• We will use these conditions in all of the investigations we later make as

epistemological presumptions of the particular methods…

• In this sense we find epistemology as the elements prior to a new investigation.

And like that successively.

With this posture or response to the fundamental epistemological questions we construct

basic methodological principles.

The articulated and coherent conjunction of principles and the selection of appropriate
techniques to it, will for the general strategy or methodology.

That way we take into account the epistemology in the previous presumptions of an
investigation and also as an action following it.

We can thus formulate a relational outline between methodology and epistemology:

EPISTEMELOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS-------------Æ
METHODOLOGICAL CRITERIAS----------Æ
METHODOLOGICAL APPLICATION------Æ
EPISTEMELOGICAL CRITIQUE OF THE REALIZED PROCESS.12

We will attempt to explain the principle epistemological presuppositions that are

present in our proposal of methodology of coyuntural analysis. Obviously they have
emerged out of a second reflection of our methodological practice.

11
LUENGO, 1982: 89 and 147.
12
LUENGO, 1982: 105 and 148. See the outlines of the investigational process proposed in those that
discuss bettering a linear conception.
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QUESTIONS

1. What did you understand about METHODOLOGY? Explain it in your own

words?

2. Explain in your own words how an epistemology intervenes before and after an
investigation?

3. What is the relationship between epistemology and methodology?

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C. The Obstacles of Knowledge and of the Methodology

The epistemological systemization that diverse sciences have realized signify that in the
process of knowing we confront barriers and obstructions that cause halts and steps back
in the understanding of reality.

They are epistemological obstacles.13

They are the origin of the errors!

The Epistemological critique will be directed especially towards them.

In the historical process of the sciences, knowledge has not been conquered in a linear
form or without difficulties. The knowledge and understanding that we have been
accomplishing has not been for the simple act of accumulating it. The sciences have been
opening a step towards a constant struggle against <<assumptions>>,14 against the errors
that are masked as truths or certainties.

This in what the French epistemologist, Francés Gastón Bachelard, has been
demonstrating to us through his concept of epistemological obstacle. 15

According to Bachelard <<one knows in contrast to a previous knowledge, destroying

knowledge incorrectly acquired>> or <<prejudices>> or knowledge <<already
constituted>> and inclusive <<intellectual habits that were useful and healthy>>.

For the historian all action <<poorly interpreted>> is converted into an obstacle for
understanding other actions, since it has been broken as false.

Our new scientific attitude implies being attentive to discovering the initial errors and
<<knock down the obstacles accumulated by everyday life>>.

Examples:

1. When we say that the <<poor>> are poor because they are lazy, that instead of
making marches and rallies with demands they should work more hours and better
themselves individually to come out of their misery, without taking account that
there are many factors—social, political, economic and cultural—that maintain us
in that situation.

2. When we believe that the information that the media (i.e., television, newspapers,
radio, etc.) provides <<is that way>> <<that they tell the truth>>, without taking
into account the fact that they transmit interests with a deformed reality.

It is to say, we need a <<rupture>> between thought and counter thought.

13
BACHELARD, 1974; 15; ALTHUSSER, 1979: 23; BOURDIEU, 1975. 27-50; GIMENEZ. 1978: 3
SANCHEZ VASQUEZ, 1973: 148.
14
KOSIK, 1981: 25-37.
15
See also: AKTHUSSER, 1979:23; BOURDIEU, 1975: 27-50; GIMENEZ, 1978: 3; SANCHEZ
VASQUEZ, 1973: 148.
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If we discover the epistemological obstacles it will help us to find the modes by which to
attack them. For Bachelard it is important to investigate the <<psychology of error, of
ignorance and impulsiveness (?)>> that are the fountains of a knowledge incorrectly
acquired.

The scientific task will imply finding and being reflexive of the obstacles for knowledge:

What are they? Why do they get in the way of knowledge?

Doing this will permit us to unfold a more critical work. It is not about doing a witch-
hunt obsessed against errors or a contest to see who finds them under each rock; it’s
about learning from the errors and assumptions.

There are epistemelogical barriers in the relation between cognizant subject (person
which knows) and the knowable and transformable object (the thing we want to know
and transform) and we can find preconceptions trapped many times in the valorizations
not yet criticized or analyzed.

In the process we do to know something there appear <<roadblocks and

confusions>>.16

Another man named, Kosik, distinguishes between <<representations or categories of

ordinary thought>> or <<common sense>> and <<conception>>.17 Following him, we
shall here talk about preconceptions and conceptions.

We refer here to the valorizations like:

<<immediate adherences to an concrete object, captured as a right, utilized as a value>>;

to the search for <<intimate satisfactions>>18, not of theoretical reconstruction and real
transformation of an object.

These valorizations can be conscious or unconscious and generally emerge in the

necessities of daily life and are not theoretically worked. Thus they are, <<not
criticized>>.

We propose the following outline of the relationship between epistemological obstacles

and methodology:

(A) VALORIZATIONS AND PRECONCEPTIONS AS

OBSTACLES-------------------Æ
(B) PROCESS OF INVESTIGATION--------Æ
(C) ERONEOUS AND CORRECT CONCLUSIONS--Æ
(D) CRITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY OF A, B, AND C-----Æ
(E) CONCLUSION: DETECTION OF OBSTACLES-------Æ
(F) PRESISION OF THE EPISTEMELOGICAL
PRESUMPTIONS----Æ
(G) METHODOLOGY.

16
BACHELARD, 1974: 15-22.
17
See KOSIK, 1981: 25-37; BOURDIEU, 1975: 28.
18
BACHELARD, 1974: 282.
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The proper critical effort will be in:

1. Discovering which are the preconceptions and the valorizations (moments D

and E) that have turned into an obstacle in the advance of the sciences.

2. With the end result of concluding in the epistemological presumptions (moment

F) and

3. be able to develop a serious and systematic methodological process (moment G).

If we want to investigate the coyuntura we should find these barriers that complicate
and impede the concrete analysis in the moment in which we make this investigation.

In Notebook No. 3 we will discuss with more detail the preconceptions and values not
criticized that get in the way of making a good Coyuntural Analysis.
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QUESTIONS

1. Explain in your own words what you understood about EPISTEMELOGICAL

OBSTACLE.

2. Give an example of appearances we have of reality that are not true, of knowledge
already acquired that we have not yet criticized, of previous judgments that we
have not yet stopped to reflect over its validity.

3. Explain in your own words the outline illustrating the relationship between
epistemological obstacle and methodology.