IN THE past couple of days, I have had the interesting but schizoprenic experience of straddling two seemingly separate worlds engaged in the same task of knowledge production.

Just over the weekend, I was at General Santos City to attend the annual Philippine Sociological Society Conference. It was a happy occasion for a community of practitioners engaged in problematizing social realities to come together and discuss developments in the discipline.

Yesterday (October 20), I was at the launching of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines book Kidlap: A Selection on their experiences working with the lumads and the rural poor in Northern Mindanao. The RMP represents a unique community among the religious and laity who are engaged in the same task of confronting the same social realities -- albeit with divergent methods and shockingly difficult results.

I cannot help but contemplate on the differences of these two worlds. Sociologys history in the country cannot be divorced from the benevolent assimilation goals of our colonial masters and the kind of academic work that is still dominant in various universities in the country still take their cue from the contemporary currents in the field from abroad. The language within the discipline remains steep in positivist science -- a belief that what is knowable about the world, are the only things that can be measured.

There is also a parallel development among young sociologists who have turned their backs on the modern traditions of the discipline and instead adopt the pessimism emanating from the so-called post-political condition. They actually represent the mirror-image of the positivist sociologist who argue that what is true is what is measurable but this time around, they eschew truths completely and suspend themselves in an esoteric language whose hallmark is a deep political agnosticism and undecidability.

The result of these tendencies within the discipline of Sociology is a myopic appreciation of the truth as is the case with positivists and the failure to recognize the enduring social truths of our time as is the case among those who align themselves with the postmodern persuasion. Both fortify Sociologys place in the ivory tower of the academe divorced from the realities of our time that of systemic human suffering and the systemic ways of social movements to end it.

I am glad that within the discipline there are also those who are aware of Sociologys limitations and have sought to free themselves from the blinders that university culture imposes. They are often the pariahs of the discipline, they are denied tenure, or expunged to the margins of academic life. But for this set, these trappings of academic careerism are not the goals of doing sociological work. And their inspiration are not the heralded erudite professors in the field or their fidelity to positivist method, but those who are beyond the walls of the ivory tower yet engage in bravely confronting harsh social realities and seek ways to change it.

I believe that the work that Rural Missionaries of the Philippines does as documented in the book Kidlap that was launched yesterday, together with those that stand with them in the social movement to end human suffering, represent groups that actually live out the ideals of Sociology as an emancipatory discipline even if they do not recognize themselves as sociologists. In fact, I am even brave enough to argue that they are doing more relevant sociological work than most of us who are in the field.

Driven by Christian compassion instead of the indexical parameters ingrained in academic work, they brave state persecution and dangerous working conditions to know the truth among the poorest of the poor and the most historically marginalized - the lumads of Mindanao. More importantly, they empower these communities through their livelihood programs and alternative schools without eliding the issue of historical injustice and the system that similarly victimizes the peasants, workers, moros, women and children in this benighted land of ours.

What I bring with me in my own sociological work after editing the book the said book is the intellectual and should I say spiritual reward as I turn to organizations like RMP and the work they do for inspiration. They prove to me that there need not be a dichotomy between head and heart, heart and mind. That in our shared drive to understand the painful realities of our times, compassion towards others particularly the poorest of the poor is an illuminating resource.

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