This paper presents a discussion of possibilities for developing a research design that includes both ethnographic and genealogic principles in an attempt to produce a piece of work that engages with the situation and lives of high school graduates of a shanty town in Argentina, but resisting to enact the violence that social sciences exercise in naming those who become objects of their words. The following is a discussion of the ethical problems that the issue of objectification involves, which intervene in the production of an ethnographic account that produces representations of individuals or populations. 

The paper begins by presenting the main characteristics of Ethnography from a historical perspective, as well as with a reflection on the principles that have shaped my initial views on my own research in its initial stages. In this section I reflect on my own assumptions, moving from the influences of a realist ontology to conceiving knowledge as constructed and intrinsically political. After addressing these issues, the article moves towards exploring Foucault’s Genealogy in search for a response and an alternative. In this section it introduces Foucault’s ontological and epistemological principles, and a methodology for doing research that provides a critique to modern science that aims at cutting its associations and undoing the objects it produces. The critique to a realist ontology is complemented with a reflection on the role of the researcher. Having presented these two positions, Ethnography and Genealogy, I will try to apply some of their principles to the writing of life stories, questioning the meaning, implications and reasons for producing a narrative study from a Foucaldian perspective. This section addresses the question of why it is worth telling a life story.  Finally, I will look for ways of dealing with the tensions between these frameworks in the tradition of Latin American testimonio, addressing the works of Elizabeth Burgos-Debray, Rodolfo Walsh and Helena Poniatowska. Three points will be addressed: the purpose, the author and the claim of the life stories of my own research. In this way, the article discusses the reasons for writing these stories, focusing on the politics of it as the most relevant purpose. In discussing the purpose it becomes necessary to address the author, to ask whose political aim it is being pursued. Who is the author? The participant, the researcher or both? Finally, it is also questioned what is the nature of the text produced in the attempt to pursue the political aim. This last discussion will be focused on the contribution of the text as a fiction and/or a sociologic account.

The article, then, attempts to provide a set of conclusions that bring these two frameworks together into one methodology for my research on argentine shanty towns in order to deal with the issues that are involved in producing representations of the people who live in these neighbourhoods. The paper will draw on European literature as well as Latin American, intending to participate on an international discussion that takes particular forms in empirical research.

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