Toward a transformative-activist co-exploration of the world? Emancipatory co-research in Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject

With a fundamental interest in further developing and specifying the theoretical and ethical framework of Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject (PSS), the article at hand asks: What is the PSS researcher’s position in and responsibility toward society?
What does the theoretical concept of the co-researcher, which is so pivotal in this tradition, entail for conceptualizing the relationship between the academic researcher and all those others who participate from different societal positions? Is there a specific, emancipatory contribution the PSS researcher is to make to the production of societal conditions, including the production of knowledge? What is the contribution of the other co-researchers then, and how do they gain from the PSS researcher’s labor, in particular her scientific explorations of the world?
The article’s analyses delve into various versions of understanding and implementing emancipation through psychological co-research, i.e. of how PSS research differently aims at bettering one another’s living conditions. First, the original methodology developed in the Berlin context is presented, which can be roughly described as a theoretically informed dialogical exchange between academically trained people. This is secondly followed by a critique of this model, articulated by the Scandinavian Practice Research tradition and mounding in substantial conceptual and methodological developments – in particular of the understanding of the (co-)researcher relationship.
Thirdly, it is illustrated that Practice Research instantiated some new ambiguities, by analyzing its methodology of fellow knowledge gaining through the lens of culturalhistorical psychology and foremost Stetsenko’s texts on the researcher as a transformative activist. Finally, it proposes mutual knowledge-sharing as the primary task of PSS co-research projects, in order to specify and nuance the co-researcher concept in relation to the conceptualization of the nominal researcher. Thereby, we intend to resurrect lively debates of PSS’ emancipatory potentials and contribute to dialogically nuancing its self-understanding.