ABSTRACT
In 1999 a PhD project about a typology of local production systems was presented in the Basque Country. The PhD student had been educated in an approach to research where the researcher was supposed to remain neutral and distant from the object of analysis. She had used secondary data produced by the regional statistics institute to analyse 13 production systems, and grouped them in a way that could help to adjust policy to the specificities of each system. The work was published in a book by the Basque Government in 2000 and sent to the main policy making actors in the region. She never received any feedback from any of the virtual readers of the book. During the writing process there had been no connection at all between the territorial actors and the researcher. She had never talked to the policy makers for whom she had written the recommendations. In 2002 she left her position at a university to go to work in a local development agency where she could use her knowledge in practice.
