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SPIRAL SPECIAL Newsletter — Orlando Fals Borda 12 August 2008
September 7th, 2008
*Systemic - Participatory - Inquiry - Research - Action - Learning*
SPIRAL — The Victorian Statewide Action Research Network
http://www.spiral-victoria.net/
Thankyou to ARIA members Robin MCTaggart and David Legge for the news we report below of the death of our honoured participatory action research friend and colleague — Orlando Fals Borda in Colombia at 1.30am on Tuesday 12 August 2008.
Many of us have fond memories of our times spent with him at the World Congresses of ALARPM (now ALARA) in Brisbane, Melbourne and Cartagena — the latter being a particularly memorable gathering in 1997 organised by Orlando, and attended by over 1000 people from all over South America and the rest of the world.
Please see the Google English translation (slightly edited) below the Spanish obituary which we reprint first as an acknowledgement of Orlando’s own language
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The sociologist Orlando Fals Borda has died.
Considered one of the most important sociologists of the country, he died on Tuesday 12 August 2008 at dawn in his 83rd year.
You can see the last video interview he gave to Semana.com last April.
Regarded as the father of sociology in Colombia, Fals Borda founded in 1959, along with Camilo Torres Restrepo, the Faculty of Sociology at the Universidad Nacional, the first in Latin America. He was its dean until 1966.Until his last days, Fals Borda, author of the classic book Violence in Colombia (1977), his gaze combined with academic and theoretical practice, aimed at transforming reality. He died being honorary chairman of the Democratic Pole, which was a party of ideological lighthouse.
Son of Henry and Mary Fals Borda, Orlando was born in Barranquilla on July 11, 1925 and since his youth, he realized that in Colombia it was essential for the development and implementation of social sciences. That was noticed in the middle of the 1950s, when he had just returned after having completed a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota and obtained a doctorate in sociology at the University of Florida.
Later, he founded a qualitative research method called Participatory Action Research (PAR), which aims to meet community needs and try to transform their reality to their satisfaction.
Orlando Fals Borda held various positions, both public and private. Between 1959 and 1961 he served as Minister of Agriculture. Later he was director of research at the Instituto de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo Social. Between 1972 and 1976 he led the Foundation for Research and Social Action in Bogota. In 1973 he founded the famous magazine ‘Alternatives‘, along with Enrique Santos Calderon, Gabriel García Márquez, Arturo Alape and Antonio Caballero.
He was always associated with the academy and history. Therefore, he was a member of the Academy Boyacense History and the Foundation for the Analysis of the Colombian Reality (Fundarco).
His works and reference books are found in all Colombian social sciences libraries, starting with the classic, reprinted several times, ‘Violence in Colombia’ (1977). Another of his most important works are ‘Campesinos of the Andes‘ (1955), ‘Man and Land in Boyaca‘ (1957), ‘Revolutions unfinished in Latin America’ (1970), ‘Science and its intellectual colonialism ‘(1972) and ‘History of the land question in Colombia’ (1975).
Recently, Orlando Fals Borda spoke with Semana.com — you may see the video of this man of great strength.
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