Research Methods in Clinical Social Research

This chapter consists of two major sections. The first part examines ethics and critical epistemology in Clinical Social Research (CSR). This is followed by dialectical research methods in Clinical Social Research, particularly concerning the central themes of sociodiagnosis and therapeutic intervention through the involvement of the individual and social groups seeking help. The epistemology of CSR aims to address its users' stigmatization, enclosure, and self-enclosure by producing knowledge to be used primarily as an operational tool of official policy but also of social elites in knowledge and economy. The second part presents a concise series of methods applied in the social sciences. It examines the research designs and methods that Clinical Social Research selects and utilizes from the methodological quiver of the social sciences to give the researcher access to the social realities and lived experiences of the research subjects. The sections that this chapter, by way of introduction and summary, covers are as follows: Finally, this chapter presents, as an example, the method of dialectical "En-imaging" of social reality, a method developed in the project’s conceptual and aesthetic dialogue with the artwork. The dialectical visualization of social reality is based on a dialogue that can move beyond and next to language, beyond the specific time and object of the artwork, and beyond the time of its interpretation.