Paper short abstract:

This paper exploring diverse forms of collaborative engagement between the researcher and the social movement of disability in South Africa. Using theories; Comaroff and Comraoff (2012), Bruno Latour (2004) the process of interface create a new understanding epistemic locations of disability.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores diverse forms of collaborative engagement using two collaborative research projects in South Africa as an ethnographic case. Analyzing demands as, more and more elements that emerge in the interface, social-material, heterogenity and multiple lives stories. The outcome these demands cut across seeing disability as an essence - substance - but rather as an interface of learning to be affected by more and more elements. The potential of investigating the research process as a scene of constructing new knowledge of disability; was not made explicit, nor equally understood among the actors, and not reflected upon in the outcome of the different publications. The division between quantitative and qualitative approach divided and put layers to the theoretically potential; of making use of the interface as an theoretical starting point. This paper draw attention to interface as theoretical and methodology starting point, enable us to move away from the dichotomy of able-disable. The ethnographic material emerge from the period of 2005-2009. Research project funded by Norwegian Research Council and South Africa Research Foundation