The Cognitive Partnership: Intersubjective Religious Research Methodology

In a research setting, researcher and researched are usually in different regimes of enunciation (Deleuze, Becker, Latour), and share diverse interests. This is a methodological proposal of cooperation agreement, where, in a construction partnership, participants of a specific research can produce a knowledge useful for both of them. Departing from applied studies in sociology of religion, this methodology had been constructed and tested in several years, in researches did by the author and others investigators in social sciences linked to his research group in Brazil. With the good results gained, it was possible to do the systematization here presented. The starting point was the studies in complexity proposed by Edgar Morin, but after, with its application in religious studies, G. van der Leeuw and Bruno Latour came to complete the theoretical foundation. Several researches discussed in the paper, demonstrate the results of this methodological proposal, its applicability, forces and weaknesses. The Cognitive Partnership is a way of relationship between researchers and researched, in which both actors share their specific abilities and resources to achieve goals previously stablished. Although their objectives are diverse, they can work in partnership, since they trust in the validity of the final product of the research. The implication of this methodology for the sociology of religion, and for others fields of antropo-sociological investigation is significant. That’s a way of work with the human subjectivity that take advantage of it.