Maatukathe II
Session3
6.4.2014
Minutes of Meeting
Words, or attending to words forms a very important aspect of our
activity in Matukate. Our instruments as well as materials worked upon are both
words. The session started with taking up two terms, conversations and workshop.
We have said before that conversations are of many kinds: chit
chatting, deliberating to take a decision, those oriented towards knowledge
gain or cognitively oriented conversations. Our focus will be on the last one,
cognitively oriented conversations. The second term workshop, distinguishes our
activities together. We are engaged in a workshop model of knowledge gain than
a showroom model (say like a conference or museum visit where finished products
are displayed for knowledge gain, similar to the display of finished products
in automobile showroom). A teaching and learning workshop does not revolve
around the idea of a master craftsman. Instead, it implies that persons from
different backgrounds, interests, and levels of experience have come together,
and each one plays the role of a teacher as well as an apprentice. This also
implies initiative and responsibility on the part of each. A further point
about a workshop of this kind is that it does not have any particular syllabus
or research methodology, nor does it seek to introduce any particular research
programme. Its main aim is to increase the breadth and depth of our horizon of
thinking.
The end product or objective aimed at in this workshop is
cultivating the habit of attending to words, and seeking out important
distinctions, such as good life worthy of desire and good life generally
desired. This is the nature of concepts: they are words used to distinguish
between things and for making distinctions.
Discussion on the article
‘Head Count’ by Elizabeth Kolbert
The article has as its
central focus a general concern about population where food is said to grow in
arithmetic proportions, while population grows in geometric proportions. The
text gives a sense of the relation between scientific discoveries and factors
such as agricultural productivity and patterns of consumption.
Something missing. Please
fill. Some point about printing press etc. (in
addition to the historical chronology we drew up)
Writing social history
Lack of sufficient food production in Europe was one of factors driving
the colonial enterprise. The text shows up a distinction between old world and
new world. Old world is the Eurasian world, comprising of parts of Rome, Turkey,
Africa and India, regions falling within the silk route and so on. The new
world is America. The old/new world distinction is used to signify the kind of
ecological changes brought about by the Europe-America relations in the 15th
century around the time of Columbus’ discovery of America. We usually have a
fair idea of political events but rarely keep track of, or explore,
corresponding social changes, or enquire into how certain discoveries or
ideologies affected social life. For example, we do not have much of an idea of
how the railways changed the life of Indians. This raises a question about what
it means to talk about social changes, agreeing that it is not mere recounting
of historical events.
At the moment we have two meta-narratives to talk about social
history- the Marxist meta-narrative which says all history is a struggle
between feudalism and capitalism, and the colonialism and anti-colonialism meta-narrative.
Neither of these meta-narratives adequately captures our memories of the last
3-4 decades. Historical research is primarily about memory (in the Indian
context there is so much stress on memory through sruti, smriti and
purana). To capture social histories,
memories we need other kinds of skills. What are these skills?
What are the salient
points in the text?
One, it gives us a sense of scientific discoveries and its impact.
Two, there is an argument which can be derived that social systems
depend on a particular picture of the world. Today it looks like the population
debate is about immigration and statist political ideologies, while it might
always not have been the same. So an alternate question about population
explosion would be what kind of social structures sustain a bigger population,
and which sustains a smaller one. Three,
the discourse about population which began with Malthus led to two responses;
one an alarmist sense about the future of the world and the other that this a
false fear (perhaps an extension of the
Christian fear in the time of Jesus Christ that the world will come to an end,
or Christians will be extinct???). Irrespective of the response it conveys a
definitive modern concern about the finiteness of earth’s resources. And a
failure of planning has given rise to skepticism. In this larger debate the
article observes that synthesized ammonia has some limits, and that has implications
for human social life.
Another important aspect of the text is to do with relevant and
irrelevant data. We have our regular distrust of big data but that has its
uses. For instance, forecasting is an important factor for city planning. One of
the big data a state uses is the census, a very crucial data for all state
planning. Evolving criteria of judging or sorting of data based on experience
leads to certain kind of knowledge.
The text is a systematic piece; it arranges facts systematically but
is not primary research. It does not concern itself with the validity of the
claims made by the authors of the books being reviewed. Its main purpose is to
put out ideas/facts for a public debate.
The text can be seen to be part of educated public discourse. One of the
requirements for such a text is that it must not contain too many technical
terms, and when they are used they should be explained, not taken for granted.
Debate about the banning
of Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History
The chain of articles written in response to the banning of the book
(Jacob de Roover’s direct response and Nivedita Menon and Sufiya Pathan’s
follow up pieces to Roover’s article) show different ways of framing of a
debate, posing for us the question about the adequacy of one frame over the
other. Roover’s article begins by talking about the hurt sentiments and
experiences of the Hindu, Menon’s deals with patriarchy and Sufiya’s with
setting a standard of judgement. In response to Menon, Sufiya argues that once
you set certain standards in Hinduism studies, the problem of free speech and
banning which has become the main bone of contention can be put into context.
Romila Thapar’s article on the same issue alludes to unjust laws and
its continuation from the colonial times. While this point is well taken, a
critique of this would be to say that laws remain not because they are colonial
and people are lazy but because there is no expertise available and no public
discourse either. If certain unacceptable laws are prevalent in India
sociological analysis is needed to make that evident. In addition, strategies of discussion, legal
discussion are required to change constitutional matters.
The debate puts in perspective some of the problems arising from
pitching the arguments as contending narratives of justice- representing Hindu
men and Hindu women, and colonial ruler and Indian society. Nivedita Menon’s
position contains the assumption that all existence, civilization is about
injustice, and social conflicts are a result of such injustices. We can thus see two ways of looking at the
world:
-
A) Social existence as a
problem of unjust arrangements
-
B) Social existence as a
learnable (as embodied knowledge)
Batra’s problems with the way present Hinduism studies constructs Hindu
traditions, customs, texts, has to be reconstructed with a view to the later
way. The question then is about the tools required for a sort of history
writing which begins from assuming B.
Menon in her article makes a demand of Jacob’s article (like many
other academics do), namely that it recognize moral problems of equality,
patriarchy, immoral practices before making any further critique. We see from
the colonial period onwards that practices which were not a problem, or a source
of conflict earlier, becomes so with certain kinds of interpretations and
mainly with the constitution of state and law. Historical scholarship of a
certain kind has the possibility of becoming inimical to social practice and
knowledge about it, but it need not necessarily do so. Texts like Ramayana and
Mahabharata are read to get at an interpretation of the Indian society of its
time. Sometimes the relation assumed between text and society becomes
problematic. Literary texts for instance can be the source of history, but not
the records of history. There could be variety of interpretations and that need
not undermine the fact that there is such a thing as right and wrong
interpretation.
A necessary requirement for producing reliable accounts or interpretation
of social life is to distinguish between participant claim and participant
perspective. Participant claim is just that, one among many claims, while
participant perspective needs to be understood and rendered meaningful even to
the participant. For instance there is an interpretation of the practices of madi mylige which explains it as
practices to avoid the spread of infections or diseases. To say this is to make
a claim, a form of pseudo-scientific claim which if taken seriously can explain
away the practice.
Social conflicts involve conflicts about standard of good/bad
actions or conduct. It is possible to ask what the standards of justice are on
the basis of which we evaluate social life. Standard setting arises out of the
maturity of systems; they are rarely set by having a meeting or committee about
standards. They are part of the aspiration to establish a liberal society
(liberal as some desirable). An extreme of these concerns is visible when the
critique of actions, translate to a rejection of institutions. This sort of
summary rejection of institutions is a result of ideology critique (critique
dealing with ideas).
Limits of scientific
knowledge
Jacob Roover’s article responding to the banning of Wendy Doniger’s
book can be seen as a more scientific piece than the ‘Head count’ article.
Jacob’s article provides a hypothesis and defends a claim based on expert
research, while the head count article does not make a scientific claim in this
fashion. Roover’s article is not a certified scientific piece, but it has a
scientific nature in so far as it intervenes into a debate, makes a claim and
defends it. ‘Head count’ on the other hand is a systematic and revelatory piece
of writing. Most of the time social science research is reconstructing
phenomena like the ‘Head Count’ text. Humanities,
such as say philology have methods, protocols and accepted modes of enquiry, but
not a hypothesis to defend. That has its’ values, so to claim that all good
knowledge is or should be scientific in nature is a contentious one. But there
are standards to follow. An example is the contemporary debate about the
validity of Astrology which casts the central question as one between science
and pseudo-science, but the question to pose is what is the experience the
practice of Astrology contains, and how does it enrich human life.
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