Experiencing Agreste: Trials for research about people and business in a peripheral context

This epistemological essay, which emerges from experiences set in the Agreste of Pernambuco between 2007 and 2016, has a main objective to systematize epistemic trials for research on people and businesses in a peripheral context, in the sense of greater linguistic clarification. After the introduction, some socio-historical features that constitute a place and its people are presented, followed by a brief retrospective look at such experiences. In the main section, trials are exposed that point to: (1) the need for an appropriate understanding of the context as peripheral; (2) advancement in the construction of a scientific mode of production appropriate to that context; (3) the relevance of clarifications about language as an ordinary action of researchers and researched people; and (4) argumentative rhetoric as a means to achieve legitimacy in accordance with the audience to which it is directed. The text ends with brief concluding remarks.