Online International Interdisciplinary Research Journal, {Bi-Monthly}, ISSN2249-9598, Vol-III, Nov 2013 Special Issue www.oiirj.org ISSN 2249-9598 Page 304 Dialogue as Method and Beyond Vikas Baniwal Assistant Professor, Department of Education, University of Delhi, India The present paper is an attempt to further the discussion initiated by Saraswati Haider(1998)on Dialogue as method for collection of ‘authentic’ data in social studies. In this attempt, the paper derives its theoretical framework from Martin Buber’s conceptualization of Dialogue as an ‘I-Thou’ encounter with the ‘other’ and attempts to search for the possibilities of ‘dialogue as method’. After a brief discussion of Buber’s understanding of Dialogue, the possibility of dialogue being more than a method has been explored. Further, an exploration of the relation between the self and the ‘other’ can be understood in dialogue and the involvement of the whole being in such a relation has been done. This is followed by a discussion of the concern about ethical in dialogue and the possibility of writing dialogically. KEYWORDS: Dialogue, Method, Educational Research, Social Research, Interview Haider(1998),in her paper ‘Dialogue as Method and as Text’, initiated a discussion on Dialogue as a method for collecting data in ethnographic research. Inthis paper, the focus would be onthe methodological aspects of the above mentioned paper and not on the content and context of the data, i.e.the lives of the women of jhuggi-jhompri cluster. In order to further the discussion of Haider’s paper, my paper derives its theoretical framework from Martin Buber’s conceptualization of Dialogue as an ‘I-Thou’ encounter with the ‘other’ and attempts to search for the possibilities of ‘dialogue as method’. Such a study makes even more sense in the light of the fact that Buber himself liked to be identified as a philosophical anthropologist rather than a philosopher. Buber’s conceptualization of Dialogue Buber discusses in his magnum opus ‘I and Thou’ (1958) about the two types of relations with the world in which a ‘person’ can enter: ‘I-It’ and ‘I-Thou’. The relation between ‘I and thou’ is a dialogic relation with the other and the relation between ‘I and it’ is non- dialogic. Though a distinction is being made between these two realms, yet they both are not self-sufficient asone cannot earn a living through an ‘I-Thou’ relation and one cannot have mutuality of love in an ‘I-It’ relation. Living through the feelings, experiences, enjoyment, and expressing oneself does not mean love. In love the ‘I’ do not want to have the Thou only for its content, as object; but it is between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’. “Love is a responsibility of an I for a Thou” (Buber, 1958, p. 15). When the world is approached with an individualistic attitude, a relationship between a subject and object is established, which is the relationship of an ‘I’ with an ‘It’. It is a relation of a person with a thing, of separateness and detachment involving some form of utilization, domination, or control. A relation in which the ‘other’ is experienced and thus Abstract