Promoting transnational inter-organizational dialogue and knowledge while conducting multi-site field research: The case of the latin American “cardboard book publishers”

Twelve alternative social and cultural organizations (that describe themselves as “cardboard publishers”) based in seven Latin American countries were not founded due to a centralized decision of multiplication of the pioneer one. Oppositely, their multiplication was multi-nodal and multi-linear. That’s why most of their members have never met in person. While conducting field research for my M.A. degree’s dissertation focused on their multiplication and local appropriations of meanings, I decided to proposed to each press to take part in a video in which they could tell the history of the organization, the way they work as well as to send greetings and messages to the rest of the organizations that they have never seen in their lives, though they work in a somehow “sister institution” in a neighboring country. I would afterwards edit it and show it and give it to the rest of the organizations while conducting multi-site field work. According to the members of the organizations, these videos have promoted the transnational inter-organizational dialogue. My decision as a researcher of undertaking this action was intended to show my ethical and political commitment to the subjects I studied and has influenced the history and inter-relations of the organizations, as it has been also declared by some members of the organizations in interviews that I conducted.