ABSTRACT
The functional specialty Dialectic proposes a shift in evaluation/critique from simply pointing to the limitations of some state of affairs to resolving the conflicts of the past by answering in an integral way the evaluative/critical question. Dialectic concern with the decisions people make as housing practitioners and as housing researchers. Dialectic places a demand on housing researchers to be explicit about the horizon within which they operate. It rejects the view that it is enough for evaluators to make explicit their beliefs and their values as if that provided an adequate framework for evaluation. Dialectic has two movements. In the first, the researcher appreciates what has been achieved through the movement forward of history. In the second, the researcher critiques the past state of affairs by grasping its limitations. Dialectic proposes a shift in evaluation studies, socio-historical critique, comparative studies and methodological critique: from an implicit, presupposed, unchallenged and unacknowledged alternative horizon to the self-luminous horizon of subject as subject.
