For a Public Social Science. Beyond Geographical, Epistemological and Disciplinary borders

Introduction
In 2023, a research team led by Laura Montes de Oca Barrera produced a documentary series that will broadcast in late 2024 through a Canadian TV channel and YouTube. The objective of the series is to make the challenges and opportunities that professional women from Latin America face in their migration process to Canada visible. The series is part of a research project developed by Laura Montes de Oca at UNAM’s Institute of Social Research (IIS), in collaboration with the University of Calgary.  

In this article we reflect about the role which UNAM can play outside the geographical borders of Mexico, as well as on how the construction of knowledge may also cross disciplinary borders in addition to complementing “traditional” modes that privilege writing (books and academic articles), with audiovisual productions. This favors the construction of a social science that crosses geographical, epistemological and disciplinary boundaries thanks to deterritorialization, multimodality and trans-disciplinarity, while assuming its public function to understand the movement of the knowledge produced as a central task of scientific work. 

We reflect on the implications of the construction of knowledge by a team whose members come from  a Mexican university and a Canadian university. Together, they combine diverse expertise for a research project developed in Canada on the mobility of Latin American people to that country. The resulting product will be broadcast locally through Canadian TV station and globally through the internet. Thinking about the implications of the project lead us to consider the way in which geographical borders can be crossed, but also the way in which epistemological innovation can take place, leading us to multimodality and to the diversification of knowledge products. Finally, considering these implications, the project also leads us to look for ways to redefine research when it involves participants with diverse backgrounds and, therefore, with diverse knowledge, know-how, and techniques aiming to enrich  it. 

The article is organized in three sections, each corresponding to the three types of borders can be crossed. To cross the geographical boundary we propose to “deterritorialize” the construction of knowledge. The epistemological frontier may be crossed by recovering the range of possibilities of multimodality. Disciplinary boundaries ca be crossed, as in our example, by articulating work teams with the diverse techniques and expertise of their members. 

Deterritorialization in Knowledge Construction
In a society in constant movement (Urry, 2007) it is essential to question, transcend, and even erase geographical, epistemological, and disciplinary boundaries in research. Deterritorialization helps us to move forward in the first task. Geographers prefer to call it “multi-territoriality” (Haesbaert, 2017). Either way, it has been defined by social sciences as “the separation of social, political or cultural practices from their native places and populations” (Mayhew, 2015) and it is linked to phenomena such as globalization and the international mobility of people via migration. Various cultural, economic, social, political, artistic, or other knowledge activities can become “deterritorialized”. To set an example, “the expansion of world music exemplifies the deterritorialization of cultures” (Mayhew, 2015). 

Deterritorialization has also been defined by thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as “the liberation of labor power from specific means of production” (Mayhew, 2015), leading to “an optimal process” necessary for the “release of creative energies” (Buchanan, 2018). There is a need for “at least some deterritorialization to keep things from stagnating” (Buchanan, 2018). In this article we propose to think deterritorialization or multi-territoriality for the construction of knowledge in a globalized world where due to information and communication technologies, and as a consequence of international migration flows it is possible (if not even desirable) to create research teams where people from different latitudes collaborate, and where the knowledge produced will be consumed by local and global audiences. 

The research project titled “Voices and Images: Latina Women in Canada” is an example of deterritorialization in the construction of knowledge. The objective was to learn how Latina migrant women living in the city of Calgary in Canada, have managed to settle in the country and rebuild their family and work life in a formally multicultural context where immigration is welcomed, but discrimination and exclusion do exist. The project was conceived to be collaborative, so, in early 2023, a public call (on social media) and word of mouth was launched to invite Latinas living in Calgary to participate. 

The project was part of the work carried out by Laura Montes de Oca during an academic research stay in Canada. Initially, the plan was to create an audiovisual product of photo and voice recordings (photovoice) where the women who were interested in participating would tell their stories based on photographs they had taken at different moments of their migratory process. In May 2023, the group of women who had responded to the call for proposals, led by Laura Montes de Oca, adapted the project to respond to another call for proposals to support the production of a television series. After obtaining support from the Voices-Storyhive 2023 program, the project was modified to produce a documentary series. 

This is how a nine-episode documentary series titled, Latinas’ Diary: A Journey of Strength, Hope and Empowerment, was born. For the realization of this new audiovisual research project, we formed a team with Silvana Torres, Ehécatl Cabrera, and Emmanuel Aviña from UNAM, and Berenice Cancino and Scott McLean from the University of Calgary. Laura Montes de Oca, director and producer, was in charge of writing the script and conducting the interviews with eight women from five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. She was also in charge of analyzing the information for the coding and pre-editing of the audiovisual material. 

Ana Alarcón, Carmen Campillo, Francys Granadillo, Gaby Badell, Grissel Aguilar, Mónica Hernández, Paola Castro, and Patricia Campos were the protagonists of the series. They shared their experiences of adapting to the climate and to a new lifestyle, the challenges they faced in finding a job or communicating in another language, as well as their strategies for building support networks. Silvana Torres helped with the semiotic-narrative structure of the story; Ehécatl Cabrera coordinated the audiovisual editing and artistic production with the support of Emmanuel Aviña; Berenice Cancino participated in the audio editing and provided technical advice in the audiovisual production, while Scott McLean collaborated with the translation and statistical data analysis. 

This research crossed geographical borders since, while combining a work team in two countries, interviews were conducted in Calgary with the protagonists, who participated closely in the entire production process. At the same time, thanks to information and communication technologies, there were regular meetings with the team in Mexico to discuss the details of the editing process for each episode. The research process crosses borders since it is an audiovisual production directed by a Mexican researcher who works at a Mexican university but, during a stay in Canada, was able to carry out a collaborative project with Latina women living in Calgary, in which she had the technical support of a team in Mexico. In addition, the product crosses borders because it is a Mexican Canadian production that will be broadcast on a local television channel (TELUS’ Optik TV), as well as on the Storyhive channel of the same company. 

The product, a TV documentary series, also crosses epistemological boundaries, as we will explain in the following section. Despite being considered a product of popular culture, with a language viewed as far removed from the scientific one, it was selected, according to Storyhive’s Voices’ project manager for being a proposal designed from the social sciences and, in particular, from sociology. 

Multimodality in Knowledge Construction
The research project that ended in the making of the Latinas’ Diary documentary goes beyond epistemological boundaries because the process combined scientific-research work with artistic-audiovisual creation. This led us to build a non-traditional knowledge product that has a multimodal character. Besides some articles and book chapters (written as complementary work), the main product of this research is audiovisual. This procedure in the construction of knowledge has led us to consider the importance that multimodality has gained as a new path for social research. 

We can understand multimodality as the relationship of modes, whether they belong to the same code or derive from different codes, that is, to one or more combination rules for visual, sound, or audiovisual elements. The relationship built between different modes is a semiosis process, where “the creation of meaning is continuous, incessant” (Kress, 2010, p. 93). Correlation between modes is a multimodal process. A mode can be a color or an image if it is conventionalized in relation to a meaning and its representation is coherent internally as well as in relation to its environment (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001). The image, then, is a group of modes (constituted of colors, conventionalized figures, etc.) It is also a mode in relation to its environment and other modes functioning meaningfully and as a complement in that same environment. 

A mode is a semiotic resource that allows meaning to be realized and represented.. It could also be understood as a semiotic materiality. A medium is the technical resource through which multimodality or semiotic materiality is communicated or mobilized via its distribution, or dissemination. Today, a medium can be a computer and a pencil, just as Facebook or TikTok are. The idea of medium is used in terms of a “means of execution”; hence it can be an oil painting or even speech (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 7). 

We can understand Latinas’ Diary documentary series as a mode and, in turn, as a multimodal process. It constitutes a correlation of modes and semiotic materialities with the colors used to signify femininity and feminism (pink and purple), as well as the clothing worn by the interviewees to represent the idea of empowered woman. At the same time, Latinas’ Diary is a communication product whose audiovisual narrative was constructed with different modes in the documentary series format. The media through which it will be distributed anticipate that diverse audiences will be able to interpret it and to assign meaning to the content of the narrative, because the audiences are also multimodal interpreters: they master “different languages and semiotic systems, from written to interactive, including audiovisual in all its forms” (Scolari, 2017). 

Under this logic, media also contribute or alter the meaning built into knowledge products. Therefore, it was necessary not only to identify the modes and codes that configured the audiovisual narrative and the constructed product, but also to know, identify, and choose audiences able to interpret it. The audiovisual narrative of Latinas’ Diary was developed in order to reach a constrained diversity of audiences: Latina migrant women. Nonetheless, considering that distribution media will alter the audiovisual narrative, we tried to ensure that it could also be assimilated by wider audiences and from diverse codes and interpretative contexts. 

Trans-disciplinarity and the Use of Techniques and Expertise in the Construction of Knowledge 
Knowledge construction today is shaped by a “widespread conviction” that the complexity of scientific and social problems requires multiple forms of knowledge, techniques, and expertise (Klein, 2022). With trans-disciplinarity, multiple disciplines are combined to achieve a more holistic approach. In transdisciplinary studies, at least two disciplinary boundaries are crossed to generate an innovative approach. Trans-disciplinarity requires and values varied perspectives and their interrelations, which means unity of knowledge (Hart, et al., 2021). 

The process that led to the making of the documentary series Latinas’ Diary, was an unorthodox knowledge construction action, since it was situated at the crossroads of various disciplinary boundaries. The process, thus, followed the line of transdisciplinary studies, which, in contrast to interdisciplinarity (based on the transfer of research methods from one discipline to another), refer to “methods that are between, across, and beyond an individual discipline” (Hart, Martin & Hinrichs, 2021). The team formed for the realization of the documentary series involved different social sciences workers (not only researchers) who mobilized practical knowledge for the manipulation of objects and devices (such as the audio recorder and specialized software). This research mode included procedures, tactics, and ways of action that can be called techniques and expertise. 

In this research and in the process of knowledge construction, the creation of content for public communication of science was nodal. Trans-disciplinarity favored the realization of a documentary series from the intersection of people located in different fields of the social sciences. The experts in audiovisual techniques and artistic creation were responsible for the distant teaching to the rest of the team and specially to the director, how to configure an audiovisual text whose language was made up of visual codes such as types of shots, camera movements, angles, and rules of composition; in addition to sound codes such as sound shots, musicalization, or the use of voice over, as well as narrative codes related to dramatic or rhetorical structure. 

The research team went through several stages. In order to reach the moment when a coherent story was built with video fragments, the team implemented techniques to approach the protagonists; to plan and pre-produce the documentary. Later, we used filming and sound recording techniques during the field work, which worked simultaneously as techniques to involve the protagonists in the construction of their own representation. After this stage, techniques were implemented for the classification, organization, and transfer of the filmed material, and, finally, we moved to the organizational techniques to begin the editing process. 

Interviews, filming of sequences, and analysis of information were conducted in Canada. Using qualitative social analysis techniques, this material was processed (classified and codified), which allowed us to make a cut of information that, from the point of view of audiovisual technique, corresponds to a first cut. This material was sent to the team in Mexico for final editing, which involved arranging the pieces of the puzzle that had been selected in the first editing stage to order them in a sequential narrative. Artistic creation was added here, using formal resources such as fades, transitions, the elaboration of animated graphics, the design of bumpers, credits, captions, color correction, equalization, and musicalization. 

If we think about the multimodal approach discussed above, we will be able to identify how the possibilities of social science research can be enhanced when we cross the boundaries of classical disciplines in search of other languages such as audiovisual, as well as other ways of working with informants, other techniques to build collaborative representations, and other means of transmitting social knowledge. The possibility of crossing the boundaries of our disciplines and exchanging our diverse techniques was one of the conditions that allowed us to abandon the comfortable path of classic research which ends with a book, to explore the uncertain but exciting route of trans-disciplinarity and multimodality. 

IT IS TIME FOR UNIVERSITIES SUCH AS UNAM TO OPEN SPACES WHERE INTERNATIONALIZATION TRANSLATES INTO A DETERRITORIALIZATION OR MULTI-TERRITORIALITY IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE AND WHERE DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARIES BECOME MEMBRANES THAT ALLOW TRANS-DISCIPLINARITY

Final Thoughts
The experience of making the Latinas’ Diary series showed its participants that the first step to trans-discipline is to know in depth the languages and techniques of one’s own discipline of origin. This project would not have been possible without an expert knowledge of ethnographic research, discourse analysis, and audiovisual creation. But to reach the result shown here, the process was much more than simply adding up expert work from three disciplinary fields: it was an exercise of dialogue, patience, and even willingness to learn and value notions, languages, and techniques contributed by the other participants. 

In our project, deterritorialization or multi-territoriality and trans-disciplinarity in the construction of knowledge implied betting on the dialogue and translation between diverse codes and contexts of meaning production that converged in a unique knowledge product and also betting on the multimodality of a product and, therefore, on a multimodal public. Today’s social research work requires thinking about deterritorialization, trans-disciplinarity and multimodality as common ways to build knowledge that has public value, a project that can be consumed by different audiences—not only people with academic profiles—and at the same time, a product that allows us to imagine, reinvent, experiment, and build solutions, questions, and answers to problems presented by the complex reality we live in, and which we ourselves have contributed to build, as a species and as a society. 

It is time for universities and centers where knowledge is built and mobilized throughout the planet to cross geographical borders to enable learning and research networks, which in turn favor the exchange of ideas, the combination of technical and scientific knowledge, as well as the lived experience of the people who make up societies and communities. It is time to diversify knowledge products into formats that reach wider audiences. It is time for universities such as UNAM to open spaces where internationalization translates into a deterritorialization or multi-territoriality in the construction of knowledge and where disciplinary boundaries become membranes that allow trans-disciplinarity.

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