Uncommon Sense: Tōjisha Kenkyū and the Co-Production of Scientific Knowledge in Japan

This article introduces tōjisha kenkyū in Japan, a type of research practice wherein people with difficulties become researchers themselves, collaborating with peers who share similar difficulties to explore the mechanisms of their challenges and coping strategies. Tōjisha kenkyū is used by members of diverse populations who struggle with a compromised capacity to explain, to themselves and others, the conditions and characteristics of their own struggles. In this article, we explore how life challenges may become resources for knowledge production. We use the concept of "uncommon sense" to point to experiences that diverge from those which are commonly taken for granted in society. A central objective of tōjisha kenkyū is to make sense of these experiences so that uncommon sense can be understood and shared. These new ways of knowing in turn have the capacity to ameliorate individual and collective barriers to flourishing. This process is possible through the creation of collaborative epistemic teams, and the practice of epistemic inversion, in which traditional "knower" and "known" are reversed. Tōjisha kenkyū's objective is sense-making through transforming how we know the world.