Guy Poitevin, born in France in 1934, and an Indian citizen by naturalization, settled in Pune in 1972. He obtained his Ph.D. in social sciences from Paris University, with a research on attitudes and aspirations of Indian students from lower social sections. In 1982, he established the Center for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences, Pune, devoted to researches on those social agents and communities whose socio-historical plight, struggle for survival, internal representations and cultural potentialities happen to be overlooked by academic research methodologies. Alternative ways are explored, based on the active cooperation and self-investigation of all those concerned, and geared in one way or the other to social agency.