Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science: A South Asian Response [1 ed.] 0761932151, 9780761932154

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Ed' - r p , N -h he Ii Cha dan SengLJpt

Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science

Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science A SOUTH ASIAN RESPONSE

Editors Partha Nath Mukherji Chandan Sengupta

Sage Publications New DelhifThousand Oaks/London

Copyright © Partha Nath Mukherji and Chandan Sengupur, 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

publisher. First published in 2004 by Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd

BA2 Panchsheel Enclave New Delhi 110017 Sage Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks California 91320

Sage Publications Ltd 1 Oliner's Yard 55 City Road London ECIY ISP

Published by Tejeshwar Singh for Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in

10/12 Goudy OlSt BT by Prism Graphix, New Delhi and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi.

Library of Congress Cataloging,ffi,Publication Data Indigeneity and universality in social science: a South Asian response leditors, Partha Nath Mukherji, Chandan Sengupta. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Social sciences-Philosophy. 2. Indigenous peoples. 3. Values. 4. Globalization. I. Mukherji, Partha N. (Partha Nath) II. Sengupta, Chandan. H61.15.l53 300'.l-dc22 2004 2004007076

ISBN: 0-7619-3215-1 (US-Hb)

81-7829-341-2 (India-Hb)

Sage Production Team: Geetanjali Minhas, Radha Dev Raj and Santosh Rawat

To Professor M.S. Gore, from whom we have learnt much, of which much remains to be put into practice.

Contents

of Tables Prefacr

List

Introduction: Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science

9 11 15

Partha Nath Mukherji 1.

Social Science and the Quest for a Just Society

00

Immanuel Wallerstein

2. The Captive Mind and Creative Development

83

Syed Hussein Alatas

3. The Call for Indigenisation YogeshAtal

4.

Economic Theory and Development Practice: Stiglitz's Critique and the Sri Lankan Experience Saman Kelegama and Chris Rodrigo

99

114

5. Pseudo. .modernisation and the Formation of Youth Identities in Sri Lanka

129

S. T. Hettige

6. Poverty in a Rural Economy: Opportunities and Threats-A Case Study of Nepal

143

Bishwambher Pyakuryal

7. Inquiring Minds and Inquiry Frames

171

Ajeet N. Mathur

8.

NGO Failure and the Need to Bring Back the State

187

S. Akbar Zaidi

9. Values and Development: Gross National Happiness

Lyanpo Jigmi Y. Thinley

203

8

Contents

10. Gross National Happiness: Bhutan's Vision of Development and its Challenges

212

Stefan Priesner 11. Glimpses of Social Structure in Ancient India: Kautilya's Relevance for Sociology in South Asia

233

Rangalal Sen 12. Institution Building in South Asia: Dilemmas and Experiences T.K. Oommen 13. Traditions and Actors: 'Communities' Reconfigured in Nineteenth . . century India

255

268

Sadsh Saberwal 14. Globalisation, Intellectual Property Rights and Indigenous Response Indra Nath Mukherji

295

15. Consultative Managerial Leadership Style in India: A Viable Alternative Sadsh Kumar Kalra

315

16. The Indigenous and the Modern: Education in South Asia Jacob Aikara

331

17. Urban Sociology of South Asia: The Problem of Formulating the Indigenous Chandan Sengupta

362

About the Editors and Contributors

Index

385 391

List of Tables 6.1:

Distribution of the Poor and Non-poor Households

by Farm Categories

155

Annexure 6.1: District~level Estimates ofIncidence of Poverty by Poverty Indicator (Poverty Indicators in Per Capita) Annexure 6.2: Poverty Incidence-Regional, 1995-96

169 170

15.1: Characteristics of the Three Kinds of Indian Kartas

318

16.1: Percentage of Population aged 25 and above by their Educational Attainment in the SAARC Countries

340

16.2: Gross Enrolment Ratio in Primary and Secondary Schools in the SAARC Countries

341

16.3: Rate of Retention and its Coefficient of Efficiency in 16.4: 16.5: 16.6: 16.7: 16.8: 16.9:

Primary Education in the SAARC Countries Pupil~teacher Ratio in Primary Education in SAARC Countries Illiteracy Rate for the Population aged 15 years and above (estimated for 2000) in the SAARC Countries Total and Current Expenditure on Education in SAARC Countries Percentage of Enrolment in Private Education at Different Levels for 1990-95 in the SAARC Countries Female Adult (age group of 15 years and above) Literacy in 1998 in the SAARC Countries Percentage of Girls in Primary Education in the South Asian Countries

342 344 345 353 354 355 356

17.1: Projected Total Population, Urban Population, Urban Population as Percentage of Total Population and Decadal Percent Growth of Urban, Rural and Total Population in South Asian Countries (1980-2020)

371

10

List of Tables

17.2: Incidence of Urban and Rural Poverty (Headcount) in Bangladesh during 1995-96 and 1991-92 17.3: Percentage of Population below Poverty Line in Rural

375

and Urban Areas of Selected South Asian Countries

376

17.4: General and Slum Population (in million) in Selected Cities ofindia

377

Preface

Preparatory to the 14th World Congress of Sociology a South Asian Regional Conference of the International Sociological Association was hosted by the TataInstitute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, from March 25 through 27, 1997.

The theme was: 'Sociology in South Asia: Heritage and Challenges'. The success of the seminar prompted us to focus even more precisely on'Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science' and bring out a symposium volume. Social science is heavily weighted in favour of scientific paradigms of knowledge from the West. We needed to give it a fresh look. In the late 1960s up to the 1970s there was a near~revolt against social science from the West being virtually thrust upon the developing countries. The question of relevance of such social science was soundly interrogated. However, the next two decades were marked by a period of relative quiescence. The era ofglobalisation beset with structural adjustment programmes and their consequences, following the neo~liberal prescriptions (conditionalities) of the World Bank and the International Monetary fund, once again raised questions on the veracity of such economics and social science for the developing countries. The Internet and Bio-technology Revolutions suddenly brought about quantum and qualitative changes in the development scenario. The 14th World Congress of Sociology in 1998 deliberated upon the 'Future of Sociology: Heritage and Challenges'. In such a historical context, we felt that a serious discussion in the form of a symposium volume was a need of the moment. It was not lllltil we took up this responsibility that we realised how difficult it was to organise a symposium volume, where invited contributors were expected to do a paper on the focus provided by a poseur from us. Some responded promptly, others got delayed because of their other commitments. By the time delayed papers arrived some who had presented their papers earlier got wearied and published them elsewhere. This meant searching for other serious contributors. These delays also affected the time schedules of the editors who were engaged in other professionally important commitments. We were willy~nilly caught in a vicious circle. Our visits to the four South Asian countries (Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Maldives), individually or together, gave us an opportunity for serious

12

Preface

interactions with many scholars. Almost all of them appreciated the need for endogenous strengthening of social science disciplines in the health of the SouthAsi311 countries. What worked in the specific conditions of one country could provide valuable insights for the others. There would also be sharing of problems that were common and could pave the way for collaborative research. The academia could provide for a different level of South Asian integration. We are extremely happy that the volume has now reached a good presentable stage. In fact, the delay became a blessing in disguise as more South Asian scholars joined the venture with genuine concern reflected in the theme. The book now consists of 18 papers. Three of these papers, by Immanuel Wallerstein, T.K. Oommen and Siri Hettige were presented at the Mumbai conference in 1997. Wallerstein's paper was subsequently published in the American]ournal of Sociology (1998), whilst Oommen's and Hettige's papers appeared in our conference volume Sociology in South Asia: Heritage and Challenges (edited by Partha N ath Mukherji, Jacob Aikara and Chandan Sengupta, 1998) published by the International Sociological Association, Madrid. The papers by Syed Hussein Alatas and Yogesh Atal, are seminal contributions in this area and have been published by the International Social Science}aumal, UNESCO, 1974 and 1981 respectively. The paper by Akbar Zaidi was first presented in absentia at our Mumbai conference, but subsequently revised and published in the Journal of International Development in 1999. Satish Kalra first presented this paper at the armual conference of the International Leadership Association held in Seattle, USA during 14-16, November 2002. Subsequently, it was put as a full text website paper by the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland, USA. He has been kind enough to provide us with this paper. The papers by Lyonpo Jigmi Y. Thinley, Honourable Foreign Minister and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Royal Government of Bhutan, and by Stefan Priesner appeared in Gross National Happiness published by the Centre for Bhutan Studies, 1999. The rest of the papers by Ajeet Mathur, Bishwambher Pyakuryal, Chandan Sengupta, Indra Nath Mukherji, Jacob Aikara, Partha Nath Mukherji, Rangalal Sen, Saman Kelegama jointly with Chris Rodrigo, and Satish Saberwal, have been written afresh for the volume. The book now has acquired the status of a good reader in the thematic area. We take this opportunity to thank all the contributors for joining us in this endeavour. If this volume is able to re~initiate the discourse on indigeneity in the social sciences by moving away from the parochial and reaching out to the universal, their efforts will have been worth the trouble.

Preface

13

In particular, we are grateful to the University of Chicago Press for granting us permission to reproduce Professor Wallerstein's paper; to the Centre for Bhutan Studies for permitting us to reproduce the papers by the Honorable Lyonpo Jigmi Y. Thinley and Dr Stefan Priesner; to the James MacGregor Bums Academy of Leadership for permission to reprint the paper by Professor Satish Kalra; to the International Sociological Association for allowing us to reprint the revised version of Professor T.K. Oommen's paper; to the Intonational Social Science}oumal for pennission to reprint the paper by Professor Syed HusseinAlatas; and to John Wiley and Sons Limited, UK, for allowing us to reproduce the paper by Dr Akbar Zaidi. We are thankful to the International Sociological Association and the International Social Science Journal (ISS}) for their enlightened practice of permitting their authors to reproduce their papers. This has allowed us to reprint the papers by Professor T.K. Oonrrnen and Professor Syed HusseinAlatas. But for all these permissions, this compendium would not have been possible in this form. The Sir Dorabjee Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust had generously supported the regional conference held at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai in 1997. We were left with some money from this conference. We are extremely grateful to the two Trusts for permitting us to utilise this balance fund for pursuing our follow~up objective from the conference. The funds made available for the South Asian conference, has in addition, now this volume. We thank them for holding their patience for so long appreciating our practical predicaments. We carmot forget the assistance and cooperation received from Amit Dasgupta of the Indian Foreign Service, then Director~ India, SAARC Secretariat at Kathmandu. It was because of him that we finally got our contributions from Nepal and Bhutan. Dr RR. Singh, Director Tata Institute of Social Sciences was kind enough to extend his wholehearted cooperation. The cooperation extended by Dr Muttayya by making available all the facilities of the TISS library has helped in the painless production of the book. Janaki Ramdas has been the silent and deft hand that tied up all the requirements that went into the production of this volume. She acted as the virtual office for this operation. This volume owes much to Professor Indra Nath Mukherji and Dr Rahul Mukherji for helping us in connecting with some of our valuable contributors. Anand G. Talwar took meticulous care in finally putting the volume in one piece. Our sincerest thanks to all of them. The preparation of this volume has gone through several bouts ofintense concentrated work. I relinquished office as Director Council for Social Development, New Delhi, and opted to join the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) instead of assuming yet another Directorial role in

14 Preface another prestigious research institution. I am sincerely grateful to the NMML for enabling me to pursue the book, which fell under the ambit of my project there. However, it is finally at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, that the book could finally be wrapped up and I am indeed happy to gratefully acknowledge Dr George Mathew, Director of the Institute, for the unencumbered freedom with which I have been able to pursue this objective to the end. Finally I must put on record our admiration for Mr Tejeshwar Singh, who right from the time the volume was being planned way back in 1998, had assured me that Sage would like to consider its publication when the manuscript was ready. He kept his word and took his decision professionally. It was delightful to work with Ms Omita Goyal and Geetanjali Minhas in the production of this book.

Partha Nath Mukherji

Introduction:

Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science Partha N ath Mukherji I The historical context of the evolution of the social sciences was provided by the industrial revolution in the West, the subsequent course that was taken by capitalist development and its need for expanding markets. The release of these forces led to sharp contradictions between the feudal and ecclesiastical structures (divine authority) on the one hand, and the new wave ofEnlight~ enment (based on science and reason}) on the other. Renaissance thinkers

and scientists like Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Desiderius Erasmus, Michel de Montaign, Robert Boyle, Johann Kepler, Nicholas Copernicus, Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton all contributed to the institutionalisationofa causal~ explanatory science with the establishment of the experimental method. The Newtonian model was premised on the assumption of the 'eternal present', of the 'symmetry between the past and the future" its beliefin the deterministic certitude of empirically verifiable invariant laws of science. The Cartesian model was premised on the 'fundamental distinction between nature and humans, between matter and mind, between the physical world and the social/spiritual world' (Wallerstein 1996: 2). For the three nomothetic social sciences, economics, political science and sociology, the Newtonian~ Cartesian model of science was emulated to gain accredition as scientific disciplines. Science engaged in the pursuit of universal laws, which would hold true irrespective of time and space. Auguste Comte regarded Newton's Law of Gravitation, as an exemplar for the science of society.

16

Partha Nath Mukherji

One of the most epistemologically relevant questions in the social sciences is: the social sciences that originated in the West, are indigenous to the West, are they necessarily universal for the rest? In recent times, competent scholars have addressed the conditions under which the heritage of social science became 'worldwide' (Alatas 2001; Borgatta and Cook 1988; Delanty 1997; Giddens 1987; Mukherji 2000; Wallerstein 1996 and others). The question that I wish to address is: does the universal always explain the particular, unless the universals in the particulars contribute to the construction of the universal? Is such universality possible in the social sciences? The claim ofWestern social science to be universal remained more or less firmly established between 1945 and 1970, until the rise of (non-Western) East Asian power (Wallerstein 1996: 53). History, economics, political sci~ ence and sociology, since their inception, had been concerned primarily with the empirical realities of Western countries. Out of these, according to Wallerstein, emerged the 'presumed intellectual problematic of"modernity" that was the underlying objective of intellectual inquiry in the social sciences: what it was, what social"problem" it caused, how we might better understand its evolution'. This distinction between the modem West and the non~modern 'rest', with an explicit or implicit determination or asslITIlption of linear evolution, could 'no longer be stated as a truism, but must have to be defended as a controversial intellectual position' (1997a). He asserts that 'if social science is to make any progress in the 21st century, it must overcome the Eurocentric heritage which has distorted its analyses and its capacity to deal with problems of the contemporary world' (1997b: 22). Scientific concepts and theories, ideally, are supposed to command universal validity. This conditionality of science is generally proving to be problematic but is far more so when applied to the complexities of social science. Any body of knowledge with a claim to the status of science will have (a) a theoretical base and (b) a raison d'etre in some methodology. Theories are abstractions of reality that remain authentic until they are questioned or challenged and cease to be so. Then they are either suc~ ceeded by newer abstractions, which may refute or circumscribe previous formulations, or the given abstractions may undergo modifications and evolve. Theories in the natural sciences are applied to produce a wide variety of technologies (including for instance, bio~technology and genetic engineering). In the social sciences, through different extant paradigms and related ideologies (for instance, socialism, liberalism, neo~liberalism, functionalism and so on) they find applications in policies and programmes, education and training, administration and governance, management and marketing, and so on, covering material and non~material aspects oflife

Introduction

17

and living in societies. It would be appropriate to say that scientific concepts and theories move the contemporary world, with intended or unantici~ pated consequences, for better or for worse, with state and power playing an important role. Knowledge in both the natural and social sciences is produced through interactions between the subject (researcher) and the object (that which is being researched). The subject~object relationship is qualitatively dir ferent in the natural and social sciences. In the former, the subject~object relationship (between a human subject and non~human object) is dis~ crete and relatively constant. Culture and society do not intervene di~ recdy in the quest for answers to the riddles of scientific inquiry about nature and natural phenomena. This permits the subject to maintain a certain level of'detachment' in relation to the object, consistent with the methodological rules of 'normal science', which can be bent once in a while in pursuit of'anomalies'. Nevertheless, the pursuit of scientific truths in the natural sciences is not necessarily all that free and autonomous, insofar as scientific inquiry is generally theory~impregnated, and methodo~ logically constrained by paradigms legitimated by the 'scientific commu~

nity' (Kuhn 1970: 47).

In the social sciences the subject~object is a social relationship between humans (social entities). Either of them may come from social, cultural and institutional contexts different from the other. The course of social scientific inquiry, in such a situation, is not only theory~impregnated and methodo~ logically constrained, it is additionally, value~ interest~ and power~ impregnated. 1 This in good measure accounts for the constant generation of 'puzzles' and the multiplicity of contending paradigms in the social sciences, as compared to the relatively fewer 'anomalies' and paradigms over time in the natural sciences. The problem is further compounded in the social sciences inasmuch as most of this intellectual activity of the subjects (of whatever origin but mosdy Western) is concentrated in the Western establishments of knowledge production. 2 Besides, the state and the market do influence the course of 1 Wallerstein observes in this context, 'unlike the natural world as defined by the natural sciences, the domain of social sciences not only is one in which the object of study encompasses the researchers themselves but also is one in which the persons they study can enter into dialogues or contests of various kinds with these researchers'

(19% 50). The political economy of social science knowledge production is heavily skewed in favour of the rich industrialised countries which 'control 95 per cent of the funds for research, have 75 per cent of research institutions located within them, and 90 per cent of all social scientists live there' (Dube, S. C. 1982: 498, 501). l

18

Partha Nath Mukherji

scientific inquiry, whether in the natural or the social sciences. 3 The universality of the social sciences remains an epistemic question, even as universality remains the goal of all science. The emergence of a plurality of co~existing paradigms in the social sci~ ences is indicative of the diverse efforts to grasp the complex realities that underlie the accelerated pace of social changes that are taking place the world over. No single paradigm is in a position to provide the intellectual space within which all relevant discourses can take place. The social sciences are under conflicting pressures to produce authentic, credible, relevant and more convincing knowledge. Conspicuously, the rest of the world is per~ ceived practically through all the major paradigms that have originated in the West. The discourses and debates in the West tend to get re~cited and recycled in terms of the substantive realities in other societies and cultures. Dominant Western interests in no small measure tend to condition the social sciences. This is the Eurocentrism of the social sciences and its hegemonic character. Much before the real debate took off over Western social science, as early as in the 1940s, Fei Hsiao~tung, the doyen among Chinese anthropologists, a student of Malinowski, commenting on the debates in Chinese universities, described these scholars as 'pedants showing off their knowledge' based on 'facts and theories derived from Western sociology' (quoted in Alatas 1996: 6). Fei himself has been a master indigeniser who contextualised the then British anthropology engaged in the study of'savage' societies, to the study of peasants in a 'civilised' society having historical and traditional depth. He took exception to the dichotomy that privileged the 'civilised' as opposed to the 'savage' in terms of'human~ness'. His own methodology which produced a 'people's anthropology' was not constrained or inhibited by Western anthro~ pology (Fei Hsiao-tung 1996). It was from the late 1960s till the mid-1980s that a good deal of heat was generated over the relevance of Western social sciences to the social realities of the newly liberated postcolonial South Asian nations. The mood and temper of many Asian social scientists during this period is ably recorded by Atal. The main complaint was that the social sciences were basically imported from the West and hence lacked relevance (P.L. Bennagen 1979; S.c. Dube 1978; A.c. Espiritu 1968; c.T. Kurien 1968; John Samy 1978; Kikuo Yamaoka 1968; all cited in Atal1981: 190-92). Atal observed that The findings of social science can be perceived as 'subversive' by ruling regimes. This may affect the 'autonomous' functioning of social science, more so under authoritarian regimes.

3

Introduction

19

there was 'a worldwide concern with this problem', but the call for indigenisation of social science in Asia had 'not yet gone beyond the reactive phase'. He summed up by saying, that the word indigenisation had 'gained considerable currency' but there was a 'lack of consensus on its meaning and desirability'. The key issue was the 'thorny dilemma between universality of science and specificities of cultures'. The current crisis converged on the 'demand for the deparochialization of Western social sciences' (ibid.: 196). The first Asian Conference on the theme 'Teaching and Research in Social Sciences' was held in India (Simla) in 1973 and was attended by scholars from 14 countries. This was followed up by a similar conference of the Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils (AASSREC) in 1983. In both the conferences the pressure to 'indigenise' was accompanied by the growing cynicism with 'Western' social science. In the first conference (which amongst others was attended by relatively new entrants to the social sciences like Bangladesh and Nepal), the follow~ ing points were vigorously argued: that teaching materials in the social sci~ ences were mostly available in the foreign languages; that imported books carried illustrative and research findings that made little sense to students; that even researches done within the country were reported or published in foreign languages; and finally, that these researches, whether carried out by native or foreign scholars, followed the 'models and the methodology devel~ oped in the West' (Ata1197 4: 20-22). In the inaugural session Gore had observed (cited in Atal 1983: 11): It is a weakness in our scholarship that we know a great deal about countries of the developed world and their problems and so little aoout our neighbours and ourselves. Besides, whatever we do know about each other's countries we seem to learn from Western scholars.

The influence of the Western academia came out clearly in the country papers presented. The first university to be established in Nepal (Tribhuvan University) was a contribution of the USAID fund. Naturally there was some anxiety about US influence on the courses and curriculum that were to be taught (Chaturvedi 1974: 180). It was pointed out that in Sri Lanka social scientists chose 'to pursue their research work in England in preference to any other country in the world'. There was a growing realisation that 'the study of social sciences has been an academic exercise unrelated to the development needs of the country' (Rajalingam 1974: 239). Fresh from the liberation struggle, Bangladesh struck an optimistic note observing, 'that there runs a common factor through the social sciences-the unity in the interrelatedness of cultural, social, economic, political and psychological

20

Partha Nath Mukherji

behaviour', and further that, 'the social sciences have a peculiar methodol~ ogy which at once combines "mind and science, the common thread being objectivity'" (Qadir 1974: 94). The conference concluded with a statement that was marked by mod~ eration and cautious optimism. It stated: Efforts should be made to develop new methods and techniques suited for the investigation of different questions and of a variety of peoples ... to derive ground~level generalisations, to construct middle~range theories, and to pre~ pare macro profiles of the societies. In doing so, Western theories and con~ cepts may be used. Their validity and applicability will, however, have to be examined in the Asian context ... (Atal1974: 21). The AASSREC conference produced a stronger echo of the concerns expressed in 1973 and proposed as a solution, the indigenisation of social sciences. Gore, now Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Re~ search (ICSSR), intervened by observing that he was not against 'the use of the word indigenisation but the limits within which this term can be used with reference to any science [that] must be understood'. He clarified: ... problem about transferability of'Western' social science knowledge may be at two levels. It may be that the prescriptions of Western social scientists to the ailments of Asian societies have no relevance because the Asian problems are different. If this is the case then no basic issues arise with regard to the nature of social science knowledge. But ifit is asserted that the basic patterns of motivation and behaviour of Indian and Asian peoples are different from the people of the West then questions about the very possibility of anything like social science coming into existence and, in fact, about any meaningful communications taking place between these peoples except at a very elemen~ tary level arise (Gore 1983: 110-11). Gore was indicating that the discrepancy between the professed universality of theories and concepts, and their mismatch with contextual realities, was well within the realm of social sciences to resolve. Actually what was being interrogated was the ability of Eurocentric social sciences (including the USA) to be applicable, appropriate, adequate and even relevant to Asian settings of social reality. The demand for indigenisation did not go very much beyond a radical protest. The concept remained unelaborated. That social sciences needed to be contextual and native concepts should find incorpor~ ation in the unveiling of social reality, were considered important. The ques~ tion that naturally registered was: how then could the 'native' concepts relate with the 'universal'? Could any kind of social science be erected purely on native concepts? It was this problematic that Gore addressed.

Introduction

21

Around the same time, the Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas came up with the concept of the 'captive mind'. It referred to an 'uncritical imitation' that pervaded 'almost the whole of scientific intellectual activity' including, 'problem~setting, analysis, abstraction, generalisation, conceptualisation, description, explanation, and interpretation' (Alatas, S.H. 1972: 11-12). He likened it to Duesenberry's concept of 'demonstration effect' and applied it to the state of affairs in the social sciences: Through the operation of the demonstration effect on the intellectual plane amongst both scholars and planners we also have a fonn of derived development: the consumption~oriented process based on innovations from abroad. The demonstration effect results in an intensive frequency of exposure to novel goods which tends to diminish inhibition. Soon a demand is created. The massive bombardment of developing regions by an ever~ growing volume of imported literature on development constitutes a major problem owing to the absence of critical and selective assimilation ... (Alatas, S.H. 19n 17).

Subsequently in 1974, he further elaborated on the concept. The captive mind, according to him, 'is the product of higher institutions of learning, either at home or abroad, whose way of thinking is dominated by Western thought in an imitative and uncritical manner' (emphasis added). It 'is uncre~ ative and incapable of raising original problems'; 'incapable of devising ana~ lyrical method independent of current stereotypes'; 'incapable of separating the particular from the universal in science and thereby properly adapting the universally valid corpus of scientific knowledge to the particular local situation'; 'fragmented in outlook'; 'alienated from the major issues of soci~ ety'; 'alienated from its own national tradition, if it exists, in the field of intellectual pursuit'; 'is unconscious of its own captivity and the conditioning factors making it what it is'; 'is not amenable to an adequate quantitative analysis but it can be studied by empirical observation'; and it 'is a result of Westemdominance over the rest of the world' (Alatas, S.H. 1974: 691). HusseinAlatas, it may be noted, is not against 'constructive imitation'. He goes to the extent of stating that '[nlo society can develop by inventing everything on its own. When something is found effective and useful, it is desirable that it should be adopted and assimilated, whether it be an artifact or an attitude of mind' (ibid.: 692). The concept of the captive mind was well received by several Asian scholars. S.C. Dube observed that 'social scientists demonstrating the captive~ mind syndrome could evidently not produce emancipatory research' (Dube 1982: 497). He identified four mutually non-exclusive options:

22

Partha Nath Mukherji

1. Careful adaptation of Western social science theories to Third World conditions: This meant two things: explorations of 'creative adaptations' of classical theorists, and guarding against 'mindless imitation' (ibid.: 498,

499). 2. The decolonisation of the social sciences, involving 'critical heart searching as well as careful analysis of manifest and latent traits of colonialism and neocolonialism': This did not mean that all Western social scientists were 'hostile to the aspirations of the Third World ... but like all scholarships even their contributions must be objectively and critically assessed'. Just as '[n]ative traditions and categories of thought' could no longer be 'rel~ egated to a position of secondary importance', so also, it needed to be ensured 'that nativistic overtones and chauvinism [did] not overpower our capacity to assess objectively the social reality of the present times'

(ibid., 498, 500). 3. Indigenisation, 'as a step towards national self-reliance in the field of social sciences': The demand for indigenisation rejected 'borrowed conscious~ ness' and sought to promote, 'in its place, an authentic self~awareness'. This could be accomplished by the rejection of 'the false universalism of Western social science and by investing historical and cultural specificity into social science education and research' (ibid.). 4. '[Clollective self-reliance of countries that, as a consequence of colonialism find themselves more or less in a similar economic and social position' of

'retarded growth and large pockets

of poverty' (ibid., 498, 501).

The reaction and response to Western social science in the early 1950s was mixed and unclear. The modernity paradigm initiated through the structural functional model of social sciences had its staunch adherents and critiques. Whether through the conflicting functionalist or the Marxist paradigms, the project of modernity was vigorously pursued by protagonists of the Western model of development. Both were routes competing for rapid economic development of the colonially emancipated, underdeveloped countries. M.N. Srinivas and Ramkrishna Mukherjee representing the tvvo conflicting paradigms, engaged in bitter debates over concepts and methodology, yet both were for development from their respective ideological and method~ ological positions (Mukherjee 1979; Srinivas andPanini 1973; Srinivas 1987). The critiques of the modernity paradigm, on the other hand, either rejected outright the modernity paradigm, or attempted to provide alternative ap~ proaches to development. Most of the critiques, one way or the other, were not prepared to accept the polarity between tradition and modernity. D.P. Mukherjee, (who pre· ferred to call himself a Marxologist), in his address as the first President of the Indian Sociological Society in 1955, enjoined Indian sociologists to regard

Introduction

23

their first task to be the 'study of social traditions to which we have been born and in which we have had our being'. He viewed the modernity paradigm from the reverse end of tradition, maintaining that we needed to study 'the changes in traditions by internal and external pressures'. He rejected the notion that tradition 'is nothing but the act of conserving, hence conserva~ tive'. In the ultimate analysis the study of tradition 'involves that of symbols which, under certain conditions and on particular levels, are explosively creative and dynamic; and, therefore, the values and norms retain and en~ rich their noetic connection with specific social structures and concrete his~ toricalsituations' (Mukherjee 1958: 228-41). R.N. Saxena and others expressed similar views. Whilst a scholar like A.K. Saran rejected the very basic premises of such sociology, as he found them premised on Western values and ideology, howsoever it may have been couched in positivistic or Marxist terms. He was all for the essential universal traditional values that he considered superior to the Western (Singh 1983: 85). More recently, Saran has elaborated his unorthodox views pungently at a highly complex abstract philosophical-metaphysical level. Precisely because such a position hardly features in the social science discourse it is necessary to give this some space. Whereas sociology and the social sciences are erected on the fOlllldationofmodemity/modernisation, Saran4 rejects this approach and claims that 'Tradition comes to us from time immemorial.;It is given from Above to all peoples in alliands./All creatures live and sustain themselves by the Tradition they receive.;Tradition is ever contemporaneous (1996: lxvi). For him '[b]y tradition more is meant than custom just long established'. It defies exact definition because of its transcendent character, 'being formless and supra~personar. In his own words: All that can be said of it at the moment is that wherever a complete tradition exists this will entail the presence of four things, namely: a source of inspira~ tion or, to use a more concrete term, of Revelation; a current influence or Grace issuing forth from that source and transmitted without interruption through a variety of channels; a way of "verification" which, when faithfully followed, will lead the human subject to successive positions where he is able to "actualise" the truths that Revelation communicates; finally, there is the formal embodiment of tradition in the doctrines, arts, sciences and other elements that go together to determine the character of a normal civilization

(Saran 1996: xcv). ~

Professor A.K. Saran follows a unique style of writing in this treatise. It is some kind of an open-flexible-verse style in which sometimes a single word constitutes a line and all emphatic words are capitalised in each verse. The 'oblique' marks (I) correspond to boundaries of the verses. There are very few brief spells each verse.

24

Partha Nath Mukherji

Saran's radical position is a total rejection of the modem scientific epistemol~ ogy, which 'has to decide in favour of Method leaving Truth to its own devices' (1996: xxix), when in fact, 'Truth is inseparable from Reality it is independent of acceptance by you or me on the experts the cognescenti' (1996: xxxi), For him the world which is an accumulated repository of trad· ition is a 'symbol of transcendent Reality ... Resting on the Oceanic "ground" ofInexhaustible Residues', which is in the realm of the 'Unknowable' but 'that it is to be Remembered'. Yet another important aspect of how the dominant modernisation para~ digm affected and overshadowed the sui generis development of the social sciences is brought out clearly by Saberwal. With its 'syndromes of mobility, achievement, mobilisation and the like, and our preoccupation with caste and other forms of institutional inequalities' it 'distracted our attention from the study of secular inequalities like poverty and its perpetuation'. Several generations of European anthropologists and sociologists had constructed caste 'as a polar type in the continuum of the stratificatory system' eventually creating an intellectual environment in which 'the sociological mind came to equate the caste system firmly with inequalities in Indian society overall' (SaberwalI979: 247), Ifsociology and the social sciences were expected to capture, comprehend and explain social phenomena, it is amazing how the sociological imagination of veteran scholars eluded the social (communal) ferments during the period of nationalist struggle that led to the 'partition' of the subcontinent, the antifeudal agrarian class struggles in Bengal and Hyderabad, the linguistic strifes that ripped the country in the 1960s, the insurrectionary movements in the north~eastand other convulsions of the time up to the 1970s. In the face of these societal upheavals, the social sciences maintained an incredible academic placidity pursuing their research interests on village, caste, family, kinship and so on, prompted by a stereotyped academic mindset implanted by Western academia (Mukherji 1980: 39; Oommen and Mukherji 1986),' After nearly five decades of social science since political independence, Beteille is for a mix of the contextual and the universal. He observes: Today at the close of the 20th century it is impossible to practise sociology as a serious academic discipline without drawing on the vast reservoir of socio~ logical concepts, methods and theories created by scholars over the last In the early 1960s when both T.K. Oommen and myself were working on the Sarvodaya Gramdan Bhoodan movement, without having known each other, both had the same independent experience of being told by our professional veterans that we were into an important area of study, but it was not in the field of sociology. 5

Introduction

25

hundred years .... Surely there is room for an Indian perspective, or better, several Indian perspectives, but to be viable, they have to address themselves to society and culture everywhere, and not just to Indian society and culture

(Beteille 1996, 23--62). Beteille is obviously, and quite rightly, against a narrow parochial approach to social science. He is, again quite justifiably, for universality in social science. However, implicit in this formulation is the view that any perspective, West~ em or non~Western, to be universally viable, will need to draw on the 'vast reservoir of sociological concepts, methods and theories' created almost ex~ elusively by Western scholars in the process of sorting out the problems that the West faced, or the agenda that the West pursued. Ifwe rephrase Beteille somewhat differently retaining the essence of his argument, my point will be elear: Surely there is a western perspective, or better, several western perspectives, but to be viable, they have to address themselves to societies and cultures every~ where and not just Western societies and cultures or their interests. It should be kept in mind that the historical process of the institutionalisation of the social science disciplines in large part was coterminous with the Western agenda of empire building and the logic of world capitalist expansion. Colonisation of territories and peoples ran simultaneously with the colonisation of the social sciences in these areas, a point alluded to by Dube earlier. As Syed Hussein Alatas observes, 'The counterpart of the captive mind does not exist in the West' (Alatas 1974, 691). Paradoxically, the politically liberated postcolonial states still needed to undergo decolonisation of its social sciences. More recently, Syed Farid Alatas, has attempted to sharpen the concept ofindigenisation by relating it to the aspect of irrelevancy. He argues that the social sciences that emerged in the West were initially applied to non~Western societies through colonisation and subsequently 'implanted among the locals during and after fonnal independence' (1996, 1). Atthe core of'irrelevancy' was the lack of a goodness of fit between Western theory and non~Western realities (ibid.: 25). Such 'irrelevancy', ifauthenticallydemonstrated, provided the rationale for the indigenisation project. For Farid indigenisation and universalisation are not in opposition, they are 'one and the same thing', since 'indigenisers of knowledge do not wish to discard Western social sciences, but want histories to become bases ofknow~ ledge'. It followed, that all cultures, civilisations and historical experiences had to be regarded as sources of ideas for the universalisation of the social sciences (ibid., 25-28). More recently Farid, building on Syed Hussein Alatas, has gone a step further in systematically identifying seven attributes

26

Partha Nath Mukherji

oflirrelevancy' (Alatas, S. R 2001). Since they provide some kind ofa frame~ work for analysis, it is useful to examine what these are: 1. Lack of originality: relates to an 'uncritical demonstration effect' which results in imitation at all levels of scholarly activities including 'problem~ setting, analysis, generalisation, conceptualisation, description, explana~ tion and interpretation' (Alatas, S.H. 1972: 11). 'What is being ques~ tioned is not the appropriation of Western thought per se, but rather of its uncritical imitation. 2. Non-accordance between assumptions and reality: refers to the inconsis~ tency between reality and assumptions about it. Scholarly 'WTitings that display this 'non~accordance' are victims of the 'captive mind' (ibid.). Illustratively, many of the observations of Marx and Weber about non~ European societies were factually incorrect and based on questionable assumptions about 'Oriental' societies. 3. Inapplicability: refers to the 'practical problem of inapplicability of theories, concepts or models' based on questionable assumptions (Alatas, S.F. 2001: 7). Theorising on the Asiatic mode of proouction is such an example. 4. Alienation: refers to 'the discrepancy between the concerns of social sci~ ence and the needs of the community of which the social sciences are a part' (ibid.: 8). This logically follows from lack of originality and mis~ placed assumptions that go into the making of social science formulations. 5. Redundance: refers to 'propensity for scholars in the developing societies to uncritically assimilate verbal inventions and tautological expressions which do not represent new ideas' (ibid.). 6. Mystification: refers to the 'irrelevant' use of jargon as signifying sophisti~ cation in social science (ibid.). 7. Mediocrity: is associated with 'shallow social science that attains high levels of currency and prestige in the social science peripheries of the world, despite their being beset by various problems ofirrelevance' (ibid.). Basically Farid Alatas is making the point that for social sciences to be indig~ enous they have to be relevant to the contextual reality. If this relevance is lacking, on account of an uncritical, rule~bound, routinised, limitative' adherence to the research process developed and institutionalised in the West (problem setting, analysis, generalisation, conceptualisation, descrip~ tion, explanation and interpretation), then this is an indication of the captiv~ ityofmind, which becomes incapable of independent critical cognition and volition, hence, lacking in originality. Such a state of mental captivity is unable to discern the assumptions behind concepts and theories, which may relate well with realities elsewhere, but not with those in the given context. Mystifying and redundant jargon, passing as sophisticated social science, can create an alienative gulfbetvveen the preoccupations of social science and

Introduction

27

the compelling needs of the community. An imaginative, constructively criti~ cal approach pursued towards the social sciences developed in the West (or elsewhere), however, will reduce or eliminate this problem of falling a prey to the 'captive mind' syndrome, and be able to discern, what from the social sciences in the West will apply to our realities as well. The question arises: does it follow that if the irrelevancy of Western social sciences is suitably countered, the sui generis process of indigenisation of the social sciences in non~Western societies and cultures will take place ipso facto?6 If Asian social scientists in the 1970s and 1980s proposed iruiigenisation of the social sciences, Wallerstein at the end of the tvventieth century has drawn our attention to the problems of parochialism of the Eurocentric social sci~ ences. He locates the origin of the social sciences in a historical perspective: Social science is an enterprise of the modem world. Its roots lie in the at~ tempt, full blo\VTl. since the sixteenth century, and part and parcel of the construction of the modern world, to develop systematic, secular knowledge about reality that is somehow validated empirically (Wallerstein 1996: 2).

He reminds us that if he were to implant the story of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in a longer dura~ tion, from several centuries longer to tens of thousands of years, ... the Euro~ pean 'achievements' ... thereby would seem less remarkable, or more like a cyclical variant, or less like achievements that can be credited primarily to

Europe (Wallerstein 1997b, 24).

However, even if, 'universality, however sincerely pursued, has not been fulfilled ... [and] even if up to now social science has been unacceptably parochial', barring the more extreme of the critics, it is still regarded as 'a worthy and plausible objective' (1996, 49-50). A real hindrance to the pursuit of universal truths, Wallerstein believes, is linked with social power. Those who wield social power 'have a natural 6 Partha Chatterjee raises the issue of relevance. 'How and by whom is it to be determined?' The national social science policy approach to determine relevance has generally been discredited in India in the past, but 'question of relevance in tenns of the uses of social science is still very much a matter of discussion' (2002: 83). Akbar Zaidi discusses how the definition of relevance has changed over last two or three decades in Pakistan. Currently, '[kJnowledge is defined as something concrete, something which must have a practical use. Abstract thinking is discouraged and academics are told to "get out of their ivory towers" ... relevance has limited the growth of the social science discipline and social science research, as a medium for the search of knowledge. It is merely a search for solutions, often without even understanding the problems and/or their links with the wider whole' (2002: 3658).

28

Partha Nath Mukherji

tendency to see the current situation as universal since it benefits them'. The scientists themselves rooted in an unequal, asymmetrical world of power, call into question the 'neutrality of the scholar', who as 'measurers intruding on the measured', espouse 'competing particularistic views of what is universal~ ity'. Actually, '[sl cientific truth is itself historical' and the issue is 'not simply what is historical but what is evolving, and whether that which is evolving is necessarily identifiable with progress' (ibid.: 58). How then do we move towards overcoming this problem? He suggests that we 'open the social sci~ ences so that they may respond adequately and fully to the legitimate objec~ tions to parochialism and thereby justify the claim to universal relevance or application or validity' (ibid.: 59-60). In his own words: If universalism, all universalisms, are historically contingent, is there any way to construct a relevant single universalism for the present time? Is the solu~ tion to contingent universalism that of ghettos or that of social integration? Is there a deeper universalism which goes beyond the formalistic universalism of modem societies and modem thought, one that accepts contradictions within universality? Can we promote a pluralistic universalism, on the analogy of the Indian pantheon, wherein a single god has many avatars? We need to reckon with the fact that we are faced with a number of co~ existing, competing and even conflicting paradigms in the social sciences, which owe their origin to the West and have arisen out of contradictions both internal to the West and out of conditions external to it. These paradigms find speedy dissemination to the rest of the world through journals, books, Western~trained native scholars and Western scholars, setting the course of discourse in social science. This makes the task of identifying and authenti~ cating irrelevancies more confusing. The dominance of the West in the political economy of knowledge proouction makes it extremely difficult for indigenous intellectual authority in the non~Western world to attain a high level of international legitimacy. Added to this is the complacency of the governments and public foundations of the developing non~Western coun~ tries to create the proper intellectual environment, infrastructure and reward system for scholars to produce excellent 'relevant' knowledge. Raising these issues is to underline the Herculean challenges that confront free~from~ fetters indigenous social science generation of knowledge. There is yet another externality that is vitally affecting the indigenisation process. A more recent problem to ponder over is the large~scale penetration of civil society organisations (Non~Govemmental Organisations, NGOs) as agencies of social and economic development, and the consequence this has had on social science research in the South Asian countries (and presumably

Introduction

29

elsewhere). Much of the academic time of many social scientists in univer~ sities and research institutes is being diverted to evaluation/consultancy re~ searches very much in demand by NGOs. These organisations are mostly donor~driven and funded by external agencies who define the research agenda. The donors insist on reports on the progress of their client organisations for renewing funds to them. More often than not, the design of inquiry, research tools and overall methodology to be used is pre~packaged by donors. The data so collected, the analysis done and the recommendations made are generally not available for research publications and restricted from public discourse. The fate of such research findings and recommendations remain unknown even to the evaluators/consultants. Reasons are usually not offered as to why certain recommendations were not pursued. The consultantlevalu~ ator, in effect, becomes a passive parmer of the client, with a smug feeling that her;his job is over after submitting the report for which a sumptuous fee is earned! Authentications by respectable scholar~experts appear to be the only objective of many such client oriented research. Much ofNGO research falls in this category (Mukherji et al. 1998: 23). 7 This is yet another aspect of colonisation of the social sciences to which Dube had alluded.

7 Leela Dube at the Xth World Congress of Sociology held at Mexico, expresses this concern, 'International aid for development requires evaluation of aid projects. The evaluation designs and the instruments of data collection are perfected at the donorend. Only the collection of raw data takes place through institutions equipped to do it. The data itself is analysed back at the donor-end. The question that arises is "To whom have the benefits gone and why?'" (1982: 3) Krishna Hachhethu describes the Nepal situation, 'Social sciences research in the university is becoming neglected and marginalised.... Particularly after the restoration of democracy in 1990, a new type of culture has emerged: that is talking culture not working culture, and no research without extra money. The quest for money has led the TU (Tribhuvan University) social scientists to work more in other places, mainly on private campuses, NGOs and INGOs, even at the cost of their individual responsibility/assignment in the university' (2002: 3635). Akbar Zaidi, commenting on the Pakistan situation points out that a few NGOs are producing research of better quality, but even they are doing research 'related to their line of work and expertise, and is often project-specific'. Most NGOs produce information than do research. Qualified Masters level social scientists hired by NGOs 'are not really working as "social scientists" ... what goes in the name of "research" in NGOs is highly questionable' (2002: 3649-50). Momtaz Uddin Ahmed from Bangladesh observes, '[cJontrary to expectations, the research output produced by the academic community has, on the whole, been inadequate and, in many cases, of poor quality. The reasons for this dismal performance are quite evident. Most of these researchers are busy in providing consultancy services to the donors, NGOs, or, government organisations in exchange for higher recommendations, and thus neglect serious academic research which does not pay directly or as well as the consultancy jobs' (Ahmed 1997: 112).

30

Partha Nath Mukherji

It is unfortunate that resources for problem oriented academic research are on the decline, even as money is going a~begging for sponsored client oriented evaluation research and consultancy. There are several implications of such a research scenario. First, scholars are distracted into evaluations and consultancies to the detriment of problem oriented, empirically based, theoretical and basic research and high quality teaching. Second, research agendas are set externally by global funding agencies and the market. Fi~ nally, institutions of research and teaching are left with little option for their survival and future contingencies without reaching out to such external funding (Chatterjee et al. 2002; Mukherji 1998: 23). In a recent research on social science research capacity in South Asia conducted by the Social Science Research Council of the USA, Partha Chatterjee observes, '[alcross the region, in all countries, we heard from social scientists that while it was becoming impossible to do research without projects sponsored by international funding agencies, these projects rarely produced results of any serious academic significance' (Chatterjee 2002: 3610). He rings the alarum bell by stating candidly that if research funding for academic research is curtailed drastically, it would actually lead to a situation where fundamental theoretical research would be confined to the first world universities and third world researchers would be sent out to the field only to do empirical policy~oriented research. In fact, this is actually the situation today in most third world countries (ibid.:

3610).

This in effect means, the first world will develop and perfect the paradigms and prescriptions of development, whilst the client developing world will engage in~nuts~and~bolts~research to ensure conformity to the first world specifications of what constitutes development! Mismatches between such theorising and reality, leading to debilitating consequences, would be blamed on the 'inability to implement', on poor governance, or as the inevitable price and short~run pain for pursuing the bitter Western prescription for ultimate deliverance from poverty and backwardness. There is a pattern (intended or unintended) in the externally induced efforts at constructing civil society for the developing countries, ostensibly to promote the democratisation process. The latent implication of this process is the overpowering penetration of concepts and theories developed and packaged in the West that are expected to become catch word recipes for development-empowerment, sustainable development, participatory grass roots development, advocacy, governance, a social~justice and human~rights regime against communities, gender, child, old~age discriminations and

Introduction

31

associated rights. These concerns have suddenly descended upon developing countries, with funding from external donors and accountability to them, through civil society organisations (i.e., NGOs). The endogenous culture of voluntarism through which these goals were vigorously pursued is fast succumbing to the donor~driven regime of dependent development, adversely impacting the indigenous process of social development and change. To give one example, the panchayati raj institutions poised to spearhead indigenous rural development in India through its own resources are faced with competing agendas of civil society organisations that are foreign

funded. The era of globalisation has witnessed two parallel developments: the aggressive theorisation of neo~liberal economics with its mantra of market fundamentalism, and the exponential proliferation ofNGOs as a new wave structuring civil society all over the globe. Both these approaches have a common critique of the state/government as an institution not meant to carry out major economic and social roles. This is not to say that these approaches are free from critiques. 8 The important point relevant to our discourse is that these have impacted on developing societies in holding them captive to certain theories of development, which have not necessarily delivered the predicted desired results. Globalisation per se, which is a technology driven, irreversible process of change in which information technology has enabled the quantum compression in space and time operations in communication, is not at issue. What is problematic is a particular theorising on economic giobalisation of the world, 9 which is far from universal in terms of its professed outcomes. The issue of indigenisation is not about a counter~parochialisation ofna~ tive social science to offset parochialism of Western social science. Indigenisation is a step forward from the contextualisation of our under~ standing of social phenomena. At a time when competing social science Stiglitz refers to this by observing, 'A. particular view of the role of government and markets has come to prevail-a view which is not universally accepted within the developed countries, but which is being forced upon the developing countries and the economies in transition' (2002: 224-25). 9 'The discontent from globalisation arises not just from economics seeming to be pushed over everything else, but because a particular view of economics-market fundamentalism -is pushed over all other views. Opposition to globalisation in many parts of the world is not to globalisation per se-to the new sources of fund for growth or to the new exp:JIt markets-but to the particular sets of doctrines, the Washington Consensus policies that the international financial institutions have imposed. And it is not just opposition to the policies, but to the notion that there is a single set of policies that is right' (Stiglit, 2002, 220-21). 8

32

Partha Nath Mukherji

paradigms in the West are engaged largely in comprehending their own internal contradictions, it is important that we do not get restricted to debates and disputations within the parameters of the Western paradigms, for com~ prehending our social realities. We need to address ourselves to the relevance and importance of an indigenous approach to the complex realities of our societies and cultures. The questions that need to be seriously addressed are: 1. Are the realities in the non~Western developing world getting refracted when perceived through the prism of concepts and theories generated in/ by the West?lO 2. Are such perceptions of realities introducing new confusions and contra~ dictions, dependencies and asymmetries, new sources of deprivations and conflicts? 3. Are the non~Western societies, in the process, getting induced to recon~ struct their reality consistent with the logic of the dominant Western paradigms, with unanticipated consequences having critical implications for their social development? 4. Is it not urgent that the non~Western developing and the least developed countries now focus on these questions and respond indigenously, that is, by anchoring themselves more firmly in their historical~contextual reali~ ties and wisdom? It is heartening to note that a small country like Bhutan has doggedly refused to be swept away from its traditional views on development, while at the same time cautiously responding and creatively engaging with the strong winds of change that are moving the world. Out of the world as it might sound, Bhutan has proposed gross national happiness as its ultimate developmental goal in preference to the model of maximizing gross national product, by refusing to compromise with uncontrolled urbanisation, environmental deg~ radation, and by heavily subsiding health and education for the masses. In the Bhutanese model, the optimal increase in gross national product is the means commensurate with its ultimate goaL There is a welcome resurgence of interest in India on re~appraising, re~ searching, and protecting indigenous knowledge and practice (IKP) which have been handed down to us through the centuries and millennia of tradi~ tional practices in medicine, health, housing and so on. For example, sincere and dedicated efforts are being made by creative and innovative medical scientists and practitioners to combine IKP with the essentials of modem For example, concepts such as caste, race, ethnicity, nation and nation-state, and secular, are Western concepts having problems of efficiently capturing or explaining non-Western realities. 10

Introduction

33

medical science to provide better, cheaper, health conditions and treatment for the people, especially the poor who can ill afford the benefits of expensive allopathic treatment. Health and illness are conceptually distinguished (see Antia, Dutta and Kasbekar 2000; Banerjee 1999). Such practices and efforts are drawing the attention of the world, and have even led to poaching by the Western industry and their research and development scientists by laying false claims on intellectual property rights of knowledge and products that rightly belong to the non~Westem indigenous knowledge traditions. This is a proof of the fact that traditional knowledge is a repository of universally valid knowledge, although all traditional knowledge may not be universal. However, IKP is not to be confused with indigenisation of social science knowledge, which is a search for efficient concepts and theories that explain societal phenomena and/or enable a better comprehension of changing real~ ity. And yet, like IKP, why shouldn't social science developing indigenously not have the scope of acceptability beyond its territories? It is pertinent to ask: is 'indigeniety' in principle, compatible with the criterion or goal ofuniversal~ ity' in social science? To clarify this, the major assumptions underlying the indigenisation of social science need to be explicitly stated: 1. Indigenisation is not to be confused with parochialisation of social sci~ ence. Science and parochial knowledge are incommensurate. The process of indigenising social science has to be consistent with the process of universalising social science. 11 2. Just as concepts and theories emanating from the West can and may have relevance beyond the West; likewise, concepts and theories originating from contexts other than the West can and may have relevance for the West. It is only when knowledge generation from different societal and cultural contexts contributes to the pool of social science knowledge, that social science will be moving genuinely towards its proper universalisation. 3. Since theory and action are inextricably linked, it is expected that action which issues out of indigenous knowledge will release processes of change with continuity more consistent with the system's 0\VTl. propensity for change, thereby making it more probable for development and change to be enduring. 4. One of the important assumptions underlying indigenisation is that social reality is best comprehended if it is analysed, inferred, explained, interpreted with the help of conceptual abstractions that are; (a) either, deeply rooted in its structure, culture and historical process, (b) or, are 11 \X1hen this aspect of indigenisation and universalisation was discussed with the legendary Chinese anthropologist Fei Hsiao-tung, in 1998 in Beijing, he summarized it approvingly, 'It is a search for the universal in the particular.'

34

Partha Nath Mukherji sufficiently efficient in capturing the complex realities, no matter if they are formulated in contexts other than their O\VTl.. Such a contextualisation of conceptual and theoretical formulations, it is contended, makes for a more precise grasp of social reality and its dynamics.

It should be obvious that indigenisation of social sciences can be understood at different levels of abstractions. Let me identify three-the original, the innovative mix and the universal passing the indigeneity~generalisability test. When extant concepts and theoretical formulations generated indigenously at one place fail to capture adequately or satisfactorily the social reality of another, there arises the need for creative and original search for additional or substi~ tute abstractions that do so. This may lead us to native concepts, which express the contextual reality more efficiently. The scientific task then be~ comes, to develop further abstractions (,codifications' in the language of Ajeet Mathur) of the native concepts so that they can capture social reality in contexts other than their own. Second, indigeneitymay lie in formulations of problems, by an uninhibited innovative mix of existing paradigms and blend~ ing of intuitive creative grasping of social reality. This, in effect, is an argument against social scientists getting paradigm}ixated. Finally, if concepts and theories originating in the West or elsewhere adequately comprehend the contextual reality elsewhere or in the West passing the indigeneity test under scientific rigour, it would mean these have demonstrated their capacity to generalise beyond the contexts in which they were formulated. Such con~ cepts and theories possess the potential for becoming universally accepted as they continue to evolve from one context to the other. This is also the generalisability test. More often than not, indigeneity is likely to be a product of an imaginative and innovative mix of conceptualisations and formulations from existing paradigms. All the three situations follow from the logic of scientific inquiry. Theoretically, a social scientist, whatever her;his intellec~ tual origin or training, can play the role of a scholar indigenous to a society other than her/his own, although the native scholar has an advantage of having an intuitive feel of one's own culture and society. In this framework, concepts and theories that have potential (that is, those that have proved their adequacy in contexts more than one), are not necessarily conceived as static or frozen, either adequate or inadequate, but in motion, capable of transcending their inadequacies through re~runs over different contexts in time. In an era of technologically driven, rapid, irrevers~ ible globalisation the pace of social changes is awesome. Social science, more so in the developing regions, faces the challenge of studying the swift changes that have already been set in motion, particularly by economic globalisation, and anticipate the changes ahead in all their implications. It must be able to

Introduction

35

debate the changes that were intended and those that were not; those that were desirable as against those that are unacceptable. It should be in a posi~ tion to foresee the possibilities in the immediate and the distant future with a certain measure of clarity. Armed with the power that such knowledge would provide, the agents and forces of change can take positions consistent with their own political orientations, with the satisfaction that they are close to reality. Such knowledge is power. In the absence of such continuous generation and flow of knowledge, persons in power (or those competing for it) will by default, tend to define reality in ways that best serve their own narrow political interests. In such a context pOUJer is posed as the repository ofknOUJledge. The vacuum of authen~ tic knowledge is vulnerable to mindless acceptance or rejection of untested knowledge, which could, intentionally or unintentionally, subserve agendas detrimental to the country and its people. Social science in South Asia has developed unevenly. While in India, Sri Lanka, and in recent times in Bangladesh, social science has taken off; in Pakistan and Nepal, with the exception of economics, it is opening up. In comparison, Bhutan and Maldives have a long way to go. Yet, countries like Bhutan and Maldives through their traditional institutions are evolving in ways that may provide invaluable inputs for the social science of develop~ ment. Social science knowledge and power are in a complex relationship, redeeming and emancipating, as well as, constricting and constraining.

II This volume is a result of this concern for indigenisation of social science to move in the direction of its universalisation. Whilst the volume is largely a South Asian response, we have among the contributors Immanuel Wallerstein and the Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas, who have contributed richly to our understanding of this problem area of history and philosophy of social science.

Immanuel Wallerstein Immanuel Wallerstein makes a seminal contribution to the understanding of the role of social science by drawing our attention to its parochialisation by the West and making a strong case for opening up the social sciences for

36

Partha Nath Mukherji

bringing about the necessary balance (1996). This essay is an outcome of this position. Making a history and philosophy of social science excursion into theology, philosophy and science, he points out that the current debates relating to structure and agency, macro and the micro, local and the global that have taken place, have not enabled the social sciences to transcend these antinomies. He foresees that in this rapidly transforming world, in the next 25-50 years the world will be facing a 'period of disintegration of our existing historical system' and will be making a 'transition toward an uncer~ tain alternative'. Therefore there is an urgent need for collective effort to 'create a form of knowledge' that can comprehend and engage with the challenging realities of the future and its problems. In order to face this transition toward an uncertain alternative, Wallerstein, enjoins social scientists not to shy away from 'discussing the possible, of analysing the possible, or exploring the possible?' Agreeing with Ilya Prigogine, he asserts' [tlhe possible is richer than rear. The continuing role of the social scientists ata time 'when the historical social system of which we are a part is furthest from equilibrium', is to engage in serious and continuous research on utopistics. Distinguishing it from utopia, he clarifies, '[ ul topistics is the analy~ sis of possible utopias, their limitations, and the constraints on achieving them. It is the analytic study of real historical alternatives in the present. It is the reconciliation of the search for truth and the search for goodness' (emphasis added). Wallerstein traces the disengagement of 'truth' from 'goodness' in the pursuit of knowledge in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Scien~ tists asserted that they 'possessed a firm basis for truth, in which empirical investigation leads to testable and tested hypotheses and then to those provi~ sional universals called "scientific theorems))). Moral laws or goodness, not amenable to the scientific method, were hardly knowledge worth pursuing. As we all know, the claim by the scientists that 'science represented the unique path to locate truth, gained wide cultural support, and they came to be the preeminent constructors of knowledge in the course of the late 18th and early 19th centuries'. He draws our attention to the fact that the same eighteenth century also witnessed the French Revolution, which introduced 'a belief system (fur~ therance of goodness) at least as powerful as that provided by the rise of cultural predominance of science' (emphasis added). Social Science that came to be established in the nineteenth century is, therefore, heir to both these searches, of truth and goodness. However, social science 'rather than reunifying the two searches, has itself been tom apart by the dissonance between them'. He traces the history of this dissonance to

Introduction

37

the aggressive stance ofNewtonian~Cartesian science. The nomothetic so~ cial sciences (economics, sociology and political science) tried to appropriate the methods of triumphant natural science 'in search of universal laws, con~ sciously modeling themselves on the good example of physics (as nearly as

they could)' (parentheses added). Wallerstein draws comfort from the 'two remarkable intellectual develop~ ments of the last two decades that constitute an entirely new trend, signs that the world may be now in the process of overcoming the two cultures'. He refers to the complexity studies in the natural sciences and the cultural studies in the humanities. The former acknowledges that reality is complex, that '[elverything affects everything, and, as time goes on, everything expands inexorably'. The 'arrow of time' is the prime factor that makes the universe move according to a non~deterministic model. But this did not mean that the universe could therefore move in any direction whatsoever. 'It is the child of its own past, which has created the parameters within which these new paths are chosen.' Complexity studies have rejected merely Newtonian determin~ ism but 'have in no sense rejected scientific analysis'. What is interesting about the cultural studies, according to Wallerstein, is that they are not really studies of culture but of 'cultural products'. At the core of these studies is an assertion of the absence of absolute aesthetics, to insist that we have to explain how particular cultural products were produced, when they were produced and why in that fonn, and then to proceed to ask how they were and are being received by others and for what reasons.

The study of cultural products has moved away from 'the traditional terrain of humanities' and has entered 'the terrain of the social sciences', byprovid~ ing an 'explanation of reality as a constructed reality'. He is optimistic that [w]e are in the process of overcoming the two cultures via the social scientization of all knowledge, by the recognition that reality is a constructed reality, and that the purpose of scientific/philosophical activity is to arrive at usable, plausible interpretations of that reality, interpretations that will inevi~ tably be transitory but nonetheless correct, or more correct, for their time, than alternative interpretations.

Wallerstein's essay contributes to our understanding of indigeneity and universality in the social sciences. Historically, the evolution of the social sciences through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brings out the Western context of social science seeking to universalise. Up to 1945, Wallerstein observes, history and the nomothetic trio remained 'very much

38

Partha Nath Mukherji

social sciences of the civilized world, by the civilised world, and about the civilized world'. What is more to the point has been the inability of the Western social sciences to transcend their own constructs ofbinary oppositions, which according to Wallerstein got fixated with non~issues, thereby proving inadequate to the maladies like racism, sexism, colonialism, fascism, and so on which afflicted the Western world. The singular pursuit of'truth' did not address how'gcxxlness' could be brought about to prevail, itonlyauto~suggested that eventually goodness would come about. The aspectofindigeneity, as I perceive in Wallerstein's analysis, is embed~ ded in the orientation towards the study of cultural products, as constructed reality. The onus of the social scientist is not to construct social reality, but to find out how it is constructed by the actors in the game of construction, 'and to test the multiple social constructions of reality against each other'. First we discover the reality 'on the basis of which we have constructed reality', then 'we seek to understand how this underlying reality has in turn been socially constructed' (emphasis added). The contextuality of the social construc~ tions provides the indigenous base. In such a scientific enterprise the essay opens up the scope for exploring indigeneity as the basis for lllliversalisation of the social sciences by investing the social sciences with the twin responsibili~ ties of pursuing truth and goodness over time.

Syed Hussein Alatas The issues relating to indigeneity, as observed earlier, began to get articulated in the late 1960s and gathered momentum in the early 1970s. The tvvo essays by Syed Hussein Alatas in the International Sodal Science}ournal in 1972 and 1974 were seminal contributions, in as much as, this problematic got conceptualised in the captive mind. Applying Duesenberry's concept of'dem~ onstration effect' on consumer behaviour to social science, he observes that '[tlhe main drive in the assimilation of social science knowledge from the West is the belief in its utility and superiority'. While identifying its attributes he is clear that the captive mind 'is an uncritical and imitative mind domi~ nated by an external source, whose thinking is deflected from an indepen~ dent perspective'. However, 'constructive imitation', is no less necessary for the development of Asian society, for' [nl 0 society can develop by inventing everything on its own'. Alatas is quite clear that Western social science too has its universal aspects. What is important is to be able to separate the 'generally valid universal aspects of these sciences' from 'their particular association with Western society'. The problem lies in the inability of the

Introduction

39

captive mind to differentiate between the universal and the particular, sub~ suming the latter under the former; and not being able to detect the dis~ guised partiality that passes for value~free objectivity in science. There is a basic commonality between Wallerstein and Alatas, when he observes, '[i]ntrinsically science is associated with the good and the significant, al~ though it can also be associated with the bad or the trivial'.

Yogesh Atal Yogesh Atal does a perceptive review of the debate on indigenisation of the social sciences that took place in the late 1960s and the decade of the 1970s in the countries of the Asia and the Pacific. He points out that there emerged 'a certain revolution of relevance' with reference to the social sciences. The Western paradigm of development, with its attendant theories and method~ ologies were being faulted for their inappropriateness and irrelevance to non~ Western realities. 'Development strategies' were 'sloganizing the need for endogenous development', whilst, social scientists were 'agonizing for indigenisation'. The growth of the social sciences could be seen as going through the 'the twin processes of decolonization and development that [were] simultaneously in operation'. At the political level, indigenisation stood for 'localization, control and monitoring of expatriate research, and promotion of research on relevant themes" whereas at the academic level itwas, 'almost like a revolt against the dominance of Western concepts, theories and methodologies, which [were] decried as "unsuitable" and "irrelevant" in the Asian context'. Voices were raised against' blind imitation of foreign models by local scholars who [had] been trained abroad" and it was argued that foreign scholars, viewing reality through a 'different cultural lens' missed the deeper meanings and often distorted facts and misrepresented reality. 'Worse still, political and ideological motivations [were] imputed to foreign scholars-as promoters of a homogenizing convergence model, as practitioners of some kind of"Project Camelot", as maintenance engineers of a superordinate/subordinate relationship'. Notwithstanding the strong criticisms, Atal observes, the vociferous call for indigenisation had not gone beyond the 'reactive phase'. He explores the aspects of'dominance' of Western social science, the criterion of , relevance' , the absence ofaltemative paradigms and so on, and points out the difficulties that attend each of these. In the end, he believes, 'It is not so much an alternative which is really needed if one is to pursue the goal of a universal

40

Partha Nath Mukherji

science-and not the setting up of "schools ofthought", like sects, creating a priest-hood and a blind following.' More recently, Atal exudes robust optimism with regard to the indigenisation ofindian sociology. The debate has mellowed down. He finds 'more and more natives are getting involved in teaching and research and increasing attention is paid to the problems of contemporary concern'. There are scholars who are employing 'local/native concepts to explain a situation where a foreign concept has failed to capture the essence'. There are also those who are proposing 'their own concepts in an intemationallanguage for the phenomena that are not peculiar to India alone'. Nativistic demands of indigenisation as expressions ofnationalism, and an arglITIlent for the llllique~ ness of one's own culture that defies any scientific treatment is a thing of the past'. He finds 'constructive contributions to theory and methodology' from 'actively engaged sociologists', studying their own societies. Indian sociology, he thinks, has come of age (2000; 28-44). One only hopes that his optimism is well placed, in view of the recent debates in India on the re~writing of history and the burgeoning involvement with sponsored research.

Saman Kelegama and Chris Rodrigo Saman Kelegama and Chris Rodrigo, through a remarkable blend of economic theory, economic history and Sri Lankan development practice and experience, demonstrate that there carmot be a single recipe for problems of development all across the globe. In the most recent exposition by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate in economics for 2002, they find an authentic voice who has been able to grasp the predicament faced by developing coun~ tries in pursuing economic policies dictated by IMF;World Bank and the 'Washington Consensus', rigidly adhering to the neo~liberal economic theory. They forcefully argue, 'that many of the failures of the Fund and the Bankresult from unscientific and mechanical conceptions of economic processes that are now commonly labelled as "market fundamentalism"-an analogy to the vari~ ous brands of religious fundamentalism common in the West and the East'. Referring to a variety of economic theories and models, the authors point out that contrary to the preoccupation with equilibrium models, 'Growth is a messy disequilibrium process; market~clearingmodels are not of much use.' Economics, being a 'developing science', needed to be in constant search for better models. They find the evolutionary models more promising, as they 'stress the learning processes involved in the development of technology, firms, organisations, and entire societies. The most successful organisations

Introduction

41

are the "learning organisations"-those that are continuously learning and adapting'. Kelegama and Rodrigo discuss the substantive experience of Sri Lanka. According to them 'Sri Lanka followed a stabilisation and structural adjust~ ment policy package during various phases of its liberalization programme

during 1977-2002'. The IMF prototype model was pursued with the application of economic variables for the developmental outcomes to follow. In effect, what happened was that the non~economic variables that were not built into the model 'became a binding constraint, thus defeating the developmental objective of the policy mooel.' Problems surfaced in three areas in the context of structural adjustments, these were, 'slow adjustment of non~economic variables to market reform, resource allocation by market forces being subject to political interference, and the inability of the private sector to live up to expectation in the market economy.' These non~economic variables included, serious challenges to nation building through ethnic disharmony, 'consequences of the incompatibility of electoral democracy with social harmony in a multi~ethnic and multi~religious environment', 'a risk~averse private sector" and others. The authors observe that while marketisation per se does not warrant rejection, the problem is to find the way suited to manage the market economy. It is clear to them, 'that development constraints are structural and social, and carmot be overcome through economic stabilisation and policy adjust~ ment alone; they require a holistic, broad~based approach. The shortcomings of the market should be dealt with by complimentary government policies.' The essence of their argument is, 'that each country should tailor the market economy to its own needs and capacity. It should not be "forced" on devel~ oping countries in a manner that suits the international donor commllllity as it so far has been. One size most certainly doesn't fit all.' Kelegama and Rodrigo clearly indicate that a mooel of development indigenous to the country and its people needs to be evolved through system~ atic research following the rigorous logic of the scientific method. Handed down theories, should not be uncritically accepted as received wisdom. In this process lies the development of economics, because economics is a 'de~ veloping science'. What is true of economics, is true of all social sciences.

S. T. Hettige If Kelegama pointed out the consequences of following the structural adjustment model of neo~liberal economics of market fundamentalism,

42

Partha Nath Mukherji

Hettige discusses the non~fulfilment of expectations from the modernisation theory. The post~war model of modernisation provided for an all~encompassing change and development in social, economic, political and cultural domains. The modernisation theory envisaged that if countries were able to provide education and literacy to the masses, industrialise, enable high media participation and exposure, ensure increasing participation in national and electoral politics, then the 'people in these countries would merge into unified nation~states, broadly similar to those that emerged in many Westerncolllltries after Second World War', On all these fronts Sri Lanka scored well, yet the expected transition into a unified nation~state did not materialise. On the contrary, sharp ethnic divides threaten its secular nationhood. Hettige takes the position that in fact the modernisation model of devel~ opment was 'subverted' and 'undermined', leading to consequences detri~ mental to the crystallisation of a 'unified nation~state'. He points out that although during the anti~colonial struggle there were 'influential and active national leaders who clearly transcended ethnic and religious boundaries', the nationalist movement that emerged 'did not develop into a truly national movement that cut across ethnic and religious boundaries'. Hettige demonstrates how the ethnic contradictions kept on getting cu~ mulatively reinforced through state~led economic reforms and industrialisation with its political patron~client syndromes, and through media participation that increasingly insulated the ethnic populations within their vernacular newspapers, magazines, films and television progranrrnes. Intra~ethnic inter~ actions far exceeded inter~ethnic exchanges. Political participation was high but ran along ethnic rural~urban divides. As a consequence, in spite of the presence of almost all signs of modernization such as widespread literacy, extensive media participation, high rate of political participation, etc, distinct ethnic and social groups in the country could not be effectively integrated into a modem nation~state characterized by a broader national identity. Hettige's essay is a neat and lucid presentation of the contradictions that characterised the Sri Lankan society, economy and polity. The main argu~ ment cannot be faulted that the nationalist leaders failed to be truly national. However, one should question why the colonial establishment, after initially introducing elementary education in the vernacular and secondary school education in English, chose to change this to a policy of vernacularisation of the rural masses and the Westernisation of the urban intelligentsia? The two structural divides-the rural~urban and the inter~ethnic-would seem to be a natural outcome of the colonial policy of education initiated by the British in their own interest to sustain imperial rule.

Introduction

43

The second point relates to Hettige's contention that the Sri Lankan society failed to homogenise. If Sri Lankan society was culturally heteroge~ neous to begin with, was there a need for it to homogenise to make it conform to modernity? It can be argued that if the British had continued with its initial policy of elementary education in the vernacular and secondary edu~ cation in English for all populations, and institutionalised it, far from polarising ethnic groups, it would have made for a probabilistic equalisation of life chances for all ethnic and rural~urban groups in the colonial economy. Kelegama's essay and Hettige's are complimentary. While Kelegama sug~ gests that the IMF conditionalities, which Sri Lanka assiduously followed for bringing about the desired pace of economic development, did not factor in such non~economic factors as ethnic violence, nor did it take into account the externalities, Hettige's paper deals with misconceived externalities that contributed to the exacerbation of ethnic conflicts. Both essays point to the need for indigeneity in our social science thinking, critiquing received wis~ dom and creatively formulating (or reformulating) our conceptual and em~ pirical experiences.

Bishwambher Pyakuryal Pyakuryal provides an extensive and fairly comprehensive coverage of pov ~ erty in Nepal-the structural factors that reproduce it and the strategies adopted to overcome it. The context he provides is that of a state in transition with its attendant contradictions. Two major transitions seem to have taken off as a historical conjuncture. The first is the transformation from a monar~ chical to a representative form of democracy with the King continuing as the constitutional head of the state. Second, as in the case of other South Asian countries (barring perhaps Bhutan), the transition into a liberal model of economic development from the begirming of the decade of the 1990s, more or less coinciding with the introduction of democratic institutions. This transition process has generated basically two broad sets of contradic~ tions, which have had consequences for development and social change. At one level, we have the inertia of the old feudalistic regime and its culture persisting within the structures of the new democratic 'secular' institutions, creating problems for efficient governance. At another level, the assump~ tions ofneo~liberal theories and strategies of development have not been able to encompass the urgent ground realities of rural poverty and social backwardness. As a consequence, there is stagnation and worse in the rural areas leading to Maoist insurrectionist backlash, threatening the existing

44 Partha Nath Mukherji democratic institutions and structures. Consequently, both governance and strategies of development need to be addressed. The important point that Pyakuryal is conveying is that economic liberalisation, in general, has not been able to contain 'poverty, marginalisation, exclusion, deprivation and injustice'. Agriculturalliberalisation, in particular, has not 'exhibited positive impact' in reducing rural poverty or in increasing food security. The liberalisation regime has a macro~economic urban bias, aimed primarily at accelerating economic growth, which by itself is not sufficient to alleviate poverty. The sustainability of targeted, much needed, poverty alleviation programmes has been overlooked by placing 'too much emphasis on a growth~oriented approach', marginalising the distribution as~ peet, thereby increasing 'income inequality among several districts of Nepal' . When it comes to improving the welfare of women in poor households, their sorry condition, it is argued, cannot be left to the mercy of the market, espousing a philosophy of 'cutting public expenditure'. Pyakuryal is fully aware that 'increasing social expenditure in a resource scarce economy could in many instances be possible at the cost of growth'. Echoing Mahbubal Huq, the architect of the concept of human development, he observes, the fulfilment of human choices does not necessarily depend on the accumu~ lation ofwealth alone. A society does not have to be rich to afford democracy. A family does not have to be wealthy to respect the rights of each member. A nation does not have to be affluent to treat women and men equally'. Accel~ erated growth by itself'cannot lessen inequality unless policies translate such growth into human development and poverty reduction. The emerging global trading system provides a scope for working out com~ parative advantages in the production of export of agricultural products. Unfortunately, 'trade and industrial interests tend to be biased against agri~ culture'. Thus, heavy agricultural taxes and low food prices benefit the urban elite, whilst 'high rates of protection for industrial interests, are contradictory in the context of the globalization of world economy'. The indigeneity of the Nepalese model of development lies in working out a balance between growth, on the one hand, and human development and poverty reduction (if not elimination), on the other. If this is not worked out, the general well-being of the people will not be achieved leading to social unrest and consequent threat to democratic institutions. Pyakuryal and Kelegama are on a similar wavelength. Both illustrate with reference to their own countries, the points that Stiglitz is at pains to make the world understand. Developing countries need to tailor their economic and social development in terms of their own objective realities.

Introduction

45

Macro~economic growth at any cost is part of the problem rather than the solution to the problems of poverty and unrest. The need to set in place the relevant institutions is a requirement that a developing country can ill afford to ignore. Received wisdom has to undergo the test of indigeneity.

Ajeet N. Mathur Ajeet Mathur approaches the theme of indigeneity from an interesting framework of inquiring minds and inquiry frames. The problematique is not restricted to whether social science knowledge indigenous to the West is universally generalisable, it is of even greater significance to examine its corollary, namely, 'whether knowledge derived from experiences outside the West (a large part of which comprise tacit knowledge and oral traditional knowledge) is generalisable with or without first being codified' (emphasis and parenthesis added). Mathur distinguishes the processes of primary and secondary socialisation in tenns of the functioning of inquiring minds and the development of inquiry frames. The process through which the infant goes through the first steps of personal identity fonnation, in 'cathectic' interaction with the 'others', according to him, 'is specifically indigenous in content as evidenced by the variety in traditions of child~rearing practices which constitute the prin~ cipal detenninant of how dependency, counter~dependency and inter~ dependency are culturally transmitted across generations'. Embedded in this process is the essence of the 'inquiring mind'. At the level of secondary socialisation, through 'fonnal and non~fonnal education', the scope of individual observation and interpretation, opens up and at the same time gets limited. This process 'supplements natural human endowments attributable to parenthood through the introduction of one or more competing fonnulations of knowledge about the world, personal skills required for human living and behavioural adaptation required to take up roles in response to needs, opportunities, resources and constraints'. These are the inquiry frames through which the inquiring mind operates. Clearly, the 'knowledge of the West created and acquired in or from the West', which 'is a valuable addition to ways of knowing and doing any~ where', is an inquiry frame that is acquired during the process of secondary socialisation. Having been the first to industrialise, the West felt privileged to let the rest of the world learn from their experience 'that all phenomena of the world is objectively knowable through inquiry frames of the West' and 'that the knowledge so obtained is universal'. This is the hegemonic character of knowledge generated by the West.

46

Partha Nath Mukherji

Noting with concern and a certain sense of despondency, the preoccupa~ tion of Nepalese academics with research and report writing for INGOS (International Non-Governmental Organisations) with dubitable knowledge production, he observes, '[a]lmostall of the social science output of Nepal is now INGO-grant led report writing for the use ofiNGO missions and UN and its related organs, much of which is never published since it is essentially directed to support livelihoods of foreigners engaged in the aid business which, from present indications, is endless.' In the given situation, he thinks it is best that the most is made out of this sponsored knowledge, and examine this in a comparative frame with the experiences of countries similarly placed. More positively, he thinks 'the unemerged tacit local knowledge in Nepal' should be tapped. He concludes by observing, [u]nless there be an explicit aim to create new knowledge originating from different knowledge traditions in many different parts of the world, the focus is likely to remain limited to finding information that would facilitate partici~ pation in a narrow set of inquiry frames of the West.

Akbar Zaidi Akbar Zaidi focuses on a very important area of social, economic and political concern in Pakistan-the failure of the state and the construction of civil society to redress this failure. The last two decades have witnessed the phe~ nomenal growth of the so~called non~governmental organisation (NGO) sector all over the developing world. What began as alternative sites for developmental and political action for the persecuted Left intellectuals in the military regimes of Latin America in the mid~ 1970s, over a course of time, transformed into sponsored projects for the poor, backward, developing COllll~ tries of the World Bank and other mega~donor institutions. 'The Policy Agenda', formulated by them, expects the NGO sector to 'address and re~ solve issues which range from those that affect the environment, gender inequality, sustainable development, law, political emancipation and partici~ pation, and almost every other shortcoming that is supposed to convey some meaning to the term underdeveloped'. Zaidi identifies a number of historical conjunctures that seem to be at the root of the emergence of this global structural feature, including, the oil crisis, the serious debt crisis in Latin America, the end of the Cold~War with the demise of the Soviet Union, the fiscal and administrative crises in the under~ developed world, the overall retreat of the state which occasioned the strong

Introduction

47

antidote ofneo~liberal economic policies prescribed by the Reagon~Thatcher regime. The ushering in of a New World Order privileged the private sector, market and the non~governmental'third sector' institutions, while at the same time minimising the role of the state and the public sector, which had failed to deliver. The NGO sector, interestingly, was not only viewed as a corrective to state failure (not to the failure of market, ifit came about), more positively, it was perceived as a force that would stimulate democratic process in the world. Zaidi lists the expectations of the World Bank from the NGO sector: 'strong grassroots links; field based development expertise; the ability to irmo~ vate and adapt; [a] process~oriented approach to development; participatory methodologies and tools; long~term commitment and emphasis on sustainability; [and] cost~effectiveness'. He observes: [h]ence the key justification for the expansion, growth, and importance of N GOs, seems to be their ability to be what the state is not and cannot be. The NGO sector is seen to be a sector contra the state sector, and far better at doing what the state should have done well.

Citing a variety of important studies published in prestigious journals, Zaidi brings out the utter donor dependence ofNGOs, which results in a patron~ client sub~contracting relationship, pursuing a pet donor policy agenda, subverting the very qualities of strength they were expected to demonstrate, reducing them to a puppet status. Their accountability to donors, as a consequence, tends to acquire precedence over their accountability to their grassroots clients. This kind of situation inhibits the production of replicable and sustainable projects for development. Besides, there is some disenchantment that the NGO sector seems to have been appropriated by the middle class, and 'technocratic' professionals, inviting comments such as 'opportunistic', 'corrupt', 'elitist', 'yuppieised' from prominent researchers. Quite a few display five~star sophistication akin to the corporate culture. While Zaidi may be sceptical about the overall NGO scenario, he lauds the role of some of the major outstanding NGOs, particularly in South AsiaBRAC, The Grameen Bank, Proshika, and Gonoshtru Kendra in Bangladesh; SEWA, WWF, SPARC and the Chipko movement in India; Sarvodaya and SANASA in Sri Lanka; the AKRSP and OPP in Pakistan. But these are too few and the population they cater to is minuscule. They do not represent an alternative to the state and the public sector, and at best are providers of a minimal amount of 'band aid social welfare'. What they miss out on, gener~ ally, is the holistic approach-the social context within which the problem is situated. Elaborating on this he observes:

48

Partha Nath Mukherji

[i]fpoverty, for example, is a result of adherence to a structural adjustment programme which results in low growth, deindustrialisation, and more unemployment, then poverty alleviation becomes simply an NGO "project" to be undertaken in some preferred locality, based upon NGO, or more significantly donor, priorities and preferences. These are the inherent limitations ofNGO initiatives, especially as they concern macro~level policy and structural change.

Zaidi is aware that the 'old' state structure is 'corrupt, inefficient, dictatorial, parasitic and inflexible'. Be that as it may, 'the only alternative to state failure, which is indeed endemic, is not privatisation, the market, or any new or alternate paradigm, but the state itself'. Two fundamental questions arise from Zaidi's very interesting essay: The first is: Can an externally constructed civil society, with imported concepts of

sustainable development, in a patron~dient 'dictatorial' relationship of asymme~ try, really produce lasting economic and social development on a national scale? The second relates to the state: Is the external construction ofNGOised civil society an answer to the non~performance of the state? Zaidi has ably addressed both these questions. We have a long and laudable history of philanthropic donorship, voluntary and missionary grassroots organisations (for instance, Tata Trusts, Sarvodaya institutions, Ramakrishna Mission and other Christian, Jain, Sikh, Islamic and other religious institutions) that have pre~ ceded the NGOisation of civil society. The conceptualisation of indigenous development lies at the heart of such efforts. It would be interesting to learn how such original development efforts make their rites de passage into an increasingiy donor ~driven framework of the non~govemmental organisation.

Rangalal Sen Social scientists all over the world become familiar with the rich heritage of Western classics like those by Plato and Aristotle. The same does not hold true for non~Western classics, not even for social scientists of the non~Western world. Rangalal Sen familiarises us with one such South Asian classic on state and society-Kautilya's Arthasastra (henceforth AS) . What Rangalal Sen presents is in essence some kind of historical sociology dealing with the ancient Indian social structure, gleaned out of the classic. The treatise is an extraordinary feat of an exceptional mind, Kautilya, detail~ ing one of the most exhaustive manuals on administration and governance by any standard at any time. What Sen does is to provide us certain 'glimpses' of the ancient Indian social structure that he finds sociologically meaningful.

Introduction

49

Sen observes that Kautilya's understanding of social structure neither fits in with the class model of Marx nor the status model of Weber, but rather 'in terms of the complex relations of caste, class, and ofboth ascribed and achieved socio~economic positions'. Likewise, class stratification in can 'neither be comprehended by the Weberian principle of market' nor 'by the Marxian principles of relations of production', both of which were conceptualised in the context of the development of Western capitalism. Rather, it brings out the wisdom of combining the two theoretical perspectives within the frame~ work of ' the pattern of agrarian caste~based social stratification of ancient India'. In addition, Sen deals with the manifestations of slavery in AS. He finds the relevance of this conceptual mix in the contemporary context of Bangladesh, India and South Asia, in generaL The conflict between dalits (untouchables) and high~caste Hindus in India, and the status of domestic servants (child labour and sexual abuse of women) in Bangladesh, illustrate some of the problems that can gain from Kautilyan social analysis and social policy prescriptions. Another important aspect of AS is its 'secular' dimension. Unlike the Dharrnasastras, the Arthasastra, accords prime importance toartha (wealth or the material basis oflife) in preference to dharma (religious and spiritual basis oflife) and kama (sensuous/pleasure basis oflife). This logic provides the 'secular" political economy model of the AS. Kautilya's observations on the art of diplomacy and statecraft are considered seminal. He combined theory with practice, but not without a thorough grasp of the empirical reality, for which he established departments to do regular surveys. There is always a chance that in our search for indigeneity the use of Western concepts proves limiting rather than enlightening. For example, Sen finds himself in some dilemma when he says, '[aln important conceptual point that comes out in Kautilya is with regard to the Western concept of slavery, which by itself, cannot explain all indigenous forms of social bond~ ages that existed or still prevail in the various parts of the Indian subconti~ nent'. Yet he makes the observation that slaves in India could not be engaged in dirty jobs and could O\VTl. property and earn for themselves. The Arthasastra prescribes various regulations for the protection of slaves. The children of slaves could not be deemed to be slaves, and if a female slave had a child by her master, both mother and child became free (emphasis added).

Interestingly, Megasthenes, a contemporary of Kautilya, did not find the practice of slavery in Kautilya's time. More recently, Brodov the Russian scholar (quoted by Sen) commenting on the same problem with reference

50

Partha Nath Mukherji

to the Kautilyan period also expresses his misgivings when he observes, '[t] he social structure in India at that time cannot therefore be uncondition~ ally described as slave owning. The solution of the question at hand should be sought for in determining the concrete historical meaning of this concept'. The classic feature of slavery is total lack of freedom of the slave and his family, because the master oums the 'purchased' or 'vanquished' slave. The labour time of the slave is owned not hired. One who is owned carmot own anything himself;herself. Obviously the concept of 'slavery' in this context, does not fully explicate the kind of bondage that tied the bonded to the bond-master. This problem echoes the conceptualisation of ' bonded labour' in India. The existence of so many categories of so~called 'slaves', pointed out by Sen surely provides the scope for exploring the limitations of the concept and how this conceptual problem could be resolved. This exploration is a necessary condi~ tion for indigenisation of the concept and its universalisation.

Lyonpo ]igmi Y. Thinley and Stefan Friesner Any serious discussion on the theme of indigeneity in South Asia can ill afford to ignore the Bhutanese model of development, which stands apart from the rest in terms ofits fundamental premises. The presentation by Lyonpo ]igmi Y.Thinley, principal ideologue and honourable Foreign Minister of Bhutan, is one of the most authentic voices of his country's development paradigm. While the world over, development is measured in terms of in~ crease in Gross National Product (GNP), for Bhutan, increase in Gross Na~ tional Happiness (GNH), a catchphrase introduced by the present King ]igme Singye Wangchuk in the late 1980s, is the primary goal of development. The pursuit of material gain is to be considered only as a means or an instrument to achieve this goal. Thinley considers it a paradox, that while '[h]appiness is a shared desire of every human being', '[t]he academic com~ munity has not developed the tools we need to look at happiness'. He raises some of the basic questions related with modem development and its dysfunctionalities, and proposes the pursuit of happiness as a national policy concern and objective. He questions in what manner the dramatic changes propelling us into the twenty ~first century-information technology; secularisation and nuclearisation of family; automation of the economy and society; global capitalism and international trade; shrinkage in biological and cultural diversities; gene therapy and so on-will promote individual and collective potential for happiness.

Introduction

51

Socio~economic indicators of development are mostly attempts at mea~ suring means, except for the recently initiated Human Development Index (HOI) of the UNDp, which 'is the most innovative yardstick towards the ends or objectives of development.' The basic question in the Bhutanese frame~ work of development is 'how to maintain balance betvveen materialism and spiritualism, in the course of getting the immense benefits of science and technology'. It stresses 'non~quantifiable goals such as spiritual well~being and gross national happiness.' Thinley identifies four major goals of Bhutanese development, namely, 'economic self reliance, enviromnental preservation, cultural promotion and good governance', emphasising that 'iriller spiritual development is as promi~ nent a focus as external material development' within Bhutanese culture. Bhutan is committed to a 'culturalistmodel of development', which encour~ ages 'ethics, ideologies, faiths and institutions, which favour sustainable lifestyles at a collective level'. Income and happiness are not directlypropor~ tional. The reproduction and reinforcement of this model in this modernising phase of its history is sought to be achieved through Bhutan's traditional educational institutions and monastic apparatus 'by a curricullITIl that tries to blend education in the Buddhist world~view with scientific studies'. Stefan Priesner, who did his doctoral dissertation on Bhutan with The Johns Hopkins University in 1996, provides an outsider's academic view of this remarkable experiment. He notes that in 1948 most of the population in Bhutan was practising subsistence farming with small landholdings; they were engaged in a predominantly barter economy; mule packs were the major means of transportation with no motorable roads; there were four hospitals with tvvo trained doctors, a handful of dispensaries and a leper colony; epidemics would wipe off entire villages; life expectancy was 38 years (1960); and there were only 11 primary schools with 440 children. When the Indian Prime Minister Nehru, visited Bhutan in 1958, it took him six days to reach Thimpu on jeep, pony and yak! By the late 1990s, however, the 'devel· opmental situation is unrecognizably different'. Although 85 per cent of the population is rural, 'modernisation has reached the remotest comers of the country'. Presently, Bhutan is benefiting from an extensive netvvork of agri~ cultural and livestock extension increasing yields from farming and cattle; it has 3000 kilometers of roads supported by hundreds of suspension bridges; electricity and telecommunication have reached certain parts; there are 26 hospitals, 145 Basic Health Units and a network of some 450 outreach clinics extending into inaccessible areas; the education system now caters to 100,CXXJ enrolled students (72 per cent) in some 300 schools, with literacy jumping from 17 to 47.5 per cent in the last two decades; both education and health

52

Partha Nath Mukherji

are generally provided free; per capita income has gone up to $510, highest in South Asia, and expectancy of life has dramatically climbed up to 66 years. Any South Asian neighbour will be envious of such an achievement. While a small population with a low density, and significantly higher per capita aid flows are enabling factors of this extraordinary development, they are not sufficient in explaining the quality and rapidity of development in Bhutan. Stefan points out that 'a major reason for Bhutan's smooth and successful development was that Bhutan possessed a powerful vision, which evolved from the country's unique historical, geopolitical and sociological circumstances and determined the broad framework, how to proceed'. This vision is anchored in a well~defined set of values, which has 'provided them with pride and self confidence during the process of change and enabled them to establish clear policy priorities bearing the stamp of Bhutanese perceptions'. They have not hesitated to reject development aid if donor agencies, following the mainstream development paradigm, sought to compromise with their policies relating to Gross National Happiness. In this model of development, the Bhutanese had embarked on Human Development, much before the UNDP conceived of it. Yet, according to Stefan, the Bhutanese model ofGNH is vulnerable. He traces this to three contradictions inherent in the modernisation process. First, while education has been almost universalised, the content of education is embedded in West~ em values. He foresees the inevitability of widening the scope of the private~ sector employment opportunities, which is predicated on profitability and individualistic gains. This is likely to introduce values antagonistic to the Buddhist model of GNH. Second, the new generation of the bureaucratic elite, the architects of future policies, are being exposed to education in the West and becoming urban~centred, thereby losing touch with the rural popu~ lation and the traditional values that lie at the base of GNH. Third, the Bhutanese state based on Buddhist institutions and values, has a sizeable (nearly 25 per cent) Hindu population. The commonalities between the two religions needed to be worked out, instead of allowing tensions to develop on the basis of the differences in their rituals and so on. Through determined intellectual and academic engagement the model needed to be developed and disseminated at the various levels of education and the professions to make it strong and resilient against the mainstream (GDP) development modeL The challenge before Bhutan, as I see it, is to engage in the process of a constant translation of an indigenously evolved development model into a more universalistic one, so that the model is able to transcend not only its internal contradictions, but is able to demonstrate its relevance 'beyond its

Introduction

53

borders' by its sustainability against the so~called mainstream development model (s). For this to happen, the 'culturalist model of development' will need to be ingeniously evolved into a 'cultural~pluralist model of development', to obviate the danger from the third contradiction-the ethnic contradiction.

T.K.Oammen T.K. Oommen discusses institution building with reference to state and civil society in the postcolonial South Asian, Indian Civilizational Region, which, in contrast to many ex~colonial countries, can boast of a long history of anti~ colonial struggles, democratic states, independent judiciary, vibrant press and the like. Yet, the South Asian situation is beset with problems. He iden~ tifies six major societal dilemmas associated with institution building that generally specify the South Asian situation, when contrasted with the West. The first is to be found in the two legacies that spawned during the period of colonial struggles, between the 'macro~holists" who defined the nationalist struggle for political emancipation as an obligation of the entire 'national' collectivity, and the 'micro~nominalists" who pursued specific social and cul~ tural interest~group (peasantry, industrial labour, women, youth, Muslims, Sikhs, and so on) agendas bargaining for their rights and entitlements, with the British imperial power through the creation of specific institutions. The second relates to the contradiction between the castigation of the Western civilisational values during the nationalist struggle, and yet the adoption or creation of political institutions premised on modern Western values. The third dilemma lay in the postcolonial nation states of South Asia, notwith~ standing their 'common civilisational history', demarcating their 'cut~off' points' in history depending on 'which religion constitutes their dominant religion'. The fourth dilemma lay in the South Asian nations instead of re~ placing the pre~modern institutions with the modem, as in the West, allowing the 'accretion' of the new institutions without displacing the old. The fifth dilemma drew from the different trajectory that South Asia took in contrast to the West, where an 'autonomisation of different institutional complexes of the state and church, the state and market, and the state and civil society' gradually took place. In South Asia, 'new visions of the world emergedHinduism, Buddhism andJainism became alternate and totalistic visions of life'. The last dilemma lay within the nature of South Asian society itself and in the process of institution building. The four~in~one, stratified, culturally hetrogeneous, hierarchical and plural societies were expected to build institu~ tions, 'which were expected to be arbiters of justice and promoters of equality'.

54

Partha Nath Mukherji

By providing a structural framework of dilemmas in the South Asian context, Oommen is able to address a major challenge of developing an abstract level of contextual specification for such a large and heterogeneous region. However, there is need to be a little circumspect about overarching macro assumptions of South Asia as an Indian Civilisational Region; or macro generalisations of common South Asian experiences like a long history of anti~colonial struggies, democratic states, independent judiciary, vibrant press and the like; or a comparative analysis with the West implicitly suggestive of a linear development. The extreme complexity of the South Asian region requires all the more, the development of a more intricate conceptual and theoretical understanding, which is so sharply reflected in Oommen's sixth and last dilemma, noting that the hierarchical and plural character posed 'intractable' problems for institution building in South Asia. The theme of indigeneityneeds the cumulative experiences of the South Asian scholars to arrive at more efficient levels of abstraction.

Satish Saberwal Satish Saberwal begins by posing the philosophical question in social science: should sociology in India be universalistic in the manner of the natural sci~ ence or 'be fully contextualised, committed not only to analysing the events and experiences within the society, but also to doing so principally, if not exclusively, in terms of the frameworks of thought that have emerged within the society over time?' These questions do not necessarily stand in opposition, as they 'are not always mutually incompatible.' Creative scholarship 'seek inspiration wherever they can find it' for fresh insights. Besides, concepts and theories 'rising above regional and cultural specificities', providing the 'high~ est level of generality attainable', are 'the more potent as intellectual re~ sources'. Inability to transcend the particularities of the context can result in a parochial orientation. His essay demonstrates how the contextual can be comprehended through a powerful conceptual framework, which in large part he devises to make it relevant to the problematic. The significance of Saberwal's essay lies in serving as a backdrop to the understanding of the perpetual tensions and conflicts that have characterised the two communities by analysing the unfolding of the Hindu~Muslim relations through the nineteenth century. His problematic leads him to ask: why did the Partition (of undivided India) happen? Central to his inquiry is the conceptual framework of structure and agency, within which he skilfully marshalls historical data. While structure (tradition in this case) is

Introduction

55

change~constraining, agency (actor) is potentially change~ inducing. Struc~ ture and agency are in a dialectical relationship of sorts, but it does not apply uniformly in terms of their respective valences and configurations, varying as it does from one community to the other (in this case Hindus and Muslims). He then works out a three-fold framework of (a) complex traditions per se, the (b) renewal and persistence of complex traditions and the (c) actor's freedom to effect change in complex traditions. Following Shils, Saberv.ral speaks of 'tradition' as something 'created through human actions, through thought and imagination', which 'is handed down from one generation to the next'. Complex religious traditions (religious beliefs and institutions) are a subset of tradition. Complex traditions are gen~ erallymulti~layered, composed of societal processes of different 'depths', some very deep and therefore commensurately more resistant to change, whilst others, relatively less resistant to change. For example, 'the principle ofhier~ archy has been layered deeply in the Indian tradition'. The passage of such complex traditions over time takes place through the primary socialisation of the enduring family structure, which embodies the self~evident ideas, attitudes and values of such traditions. These have an inertia that make them survive in the face of 'contrary attitudes, ideas, and practices [that] are learned later in life, at work and in adult relationships'. Their resilience lies in their being drawn from a

whole universe of sacrality: symbols, rituals, texts, specialist functionaries, and a sense of identity; from the creation of the universe do\VTl. to explanations of individual misfortune and guideposts to the future-in life and in death. Elements from such a universe of sacrality commonly serve as emblems, marking the followers of one tradition off from those of others.

Specialist functionaries derive their potential power and legitimacy by invok~ ing 'elements from that corpus of sacrality authoritatively, or at least convinc~ ingly'. Conformity to religious prescriptions is maintained commonly through promise of 'rewards for the believer in the hereinafter'. For the martyr the promise gets magnified. The renewal and persistence of complex traditions takes place through a learning process of the pattern of ideas, beliefs, values and practices that are embodied in an institutional form. But these very constituents go 'into modi~ fying the kind of experience that would henceforth be generated in that institution'. Experiences of events can be routine and familiar, or ambiguous. Ambiguous events may generate new ideas, which may lead to modifica~ tions in the concerned institution. Such modifications are 'open ended'. They may lead to deepening of social cleavages or in removing barriers to

56

Partha Nath Mukherji

separation. What is experienced of the caste system in urban India in early twenty~first century is very different from what it was even half a century ago. The actor's freedom derives from the ambiguities in human situations, and his (individual or collective) interpretations of the same. In complex societies, 'a multitude of human agencies may be defining the situation in a multitude of ways-which mayor may not add up to a coherent direction'. In such contexts the possibilities of human freedom' and conflict, arise. Sharp discontinuities in history-freedom from colonialism, revolutionary changesbear testimony to this. This leads Saberwal to his final aspect of the framework, namely, the interactions and redefinitions of traditions. Actors who make legitimate custo~ dial claims of tradition will be in a position to reinterpret new experiences not explicitly covered by texts and symbols, for themselves and for their 'dis~ ciples'. 'Gathered in an institution, or a cluster of them, they may come to acquire a certain directive, hegemonic influence giving the society, or a section thereof, a relatively clear sense of direction.' There may be other actors who 'may make complementary choices, adjusting their affiliations between traditions one way or another. Their ongoing social experiences may persuade them, at certain junctures, to confirm their affiliations with one or another of the identities and traditions being canvassed around them.' Saberwal provides a valuable framework for complex traditions by which the rigidity and fluidity of complex traditions in interaction can be meaningfully analysed and interpreted. It is within this broad framework that he examines the reconfiguration of Hindu and Muslim traditions in the nineteenth cen~ tury in interaction with each other and with the colonial administration and poweI: Saberwal's framework bears good comparison with that ci Ajeet Mathur's. While Mathur vests primary socialisation with the stage of (questioning) inquiring minds, Saberwal seems to suggest that this is the stage when complex traditions seem to impose/equip actors with (limiting) inquiry frame/so For Mathur, it is at the stage of secondary socialisation that the inquiry frames are constraining to the actor's choices. Whilst for Saberwal, the di~ verse experiences from different inquiry frames provide scope for inquiring minds to probe dilemmas and create spaces within existing institutions or to rebel against them.

Indra Nath Mukherji Indra Nath Mukherji's essays demonstrates how under the direct impact of economic globalisation, Western concepts matching the interests of the

Introduction

57

developed Western nations are sought to be prescribed for non~Western developing countries, in disregard of their vastly different objective conditions, and the consequences these will have for the vast numbers of people. He illustrates this specifically with the stipulations of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in relation to patenting or providing protection for plant varieties. Historically, 'Patent Rights have emerged from typically Western thinking having relevance to industrial applications'. The principle of patents has simply been extended to agriculture. Simply put, patenting rights in agriculture means all micro~organisms developed through micro~biological processes having agricultural applications can be patented as intellectual property. The historicity of this development lies in the context of the emergence of a category of plant breeders in the Western industrialised countries, who were not necessarily farmers, who bred plants and seeds in large scale for the agricultural market. In course of time, they pressed for the protection of varieties of plants and seeds developed by them, particularly through high cost, genetic R&D (Research and Development) engineering. The recognition of the Plant Breeders Rights (PBR) was the outcome of this process. The objective of the UPOY (Union Internationale Pour Protection Des Obtentions Vegetales or International Union for the Protection ofN ew Varieties of Plants), which was established in 1961, was to ensure that breeders of new plant varieties in Member States are provided exclusive property rights on the basis of a few essential characteristics. The requirements are that the varieties need to be (a) distinct from existing grO\VTl. varieties, (b) sufficiently homogeneous, (c) stable, and (d) new, in the sense that they must not have been commerdalised earlier.

These requirements encouraged the proouction of new disease~resistant varieties on a large scale, promoting 'homogenisation' of seeds and plants proouced. This was consistent with large~scale monocultural agriculture in the West. In sharp contrast, peasants and farmers in developing countries are predominantly small landholders, interested and instrumental in preserving biological diversity. In spite of this significant difference in the objective conditions between the developed and the developing countries, the World Intellectual Property Organisation was suggesting that developing countries also 'adopt the UPOV Convention for framing plant varieties legislation'. Mukherji provides a competent sunrrnaryof the various aspects and provisions of the UPOV and the Convention on Biooiversity, which drew 'from various dialogues in international fora giving recognition to traditional knowledge

58

Partha Nath Mukherji

systems'. Mukherji then goes on to describe how some of the conscious civil society organisations in India resisted such a move, and contributed to the concerns of the developing countries in general. In fact, it came to light that the very farmers from the developing countries who freely supplied the feedstocks (raw materials) to the plant breeders and seed industries in the West, had to buy imported genetic resources from them at exorbitant prices, produced out of their own generously supplied feedstocks! This led to a social mobilisation by civil society organisations like the Gene Campaign led by Suman Sahay, Centre for Environment and Development led by Anil Agarwal, Navdanya led by Vandana Shiva, and others. The outcome of this movement was the formulation of the alternative draft Treaty to UPOV providing 'a forum for developing countries to implement both Farmer's and Breeder's rights. This was the Convention of Farmers and Breeders (COFAB)', seeking 'to protect food and nutritional security of developing countries ... acknowledging the role of farmers as creators of land races and traditional varieties which form the foundation of agriculture for modem plant breeding'. The movement led to indigenous formulations and concepts like Jaiv Panchayat ('Living Democracy' or the 'Democracy of all Life') by Vandana Shiva. She asserted that the Western paradigm ofIPRs represented the property rights to the products of mind, thereby resulting in knowledge and creativity being so narrowly defined that the creativity of nature and non~Western knowledge systems were ignored. Patents allow the usurpation of indigenous knowledge as a Western invention through minor tinkering or trivial translation. Through the concerted efforts of those who crusaded against imposition of a Western construct of intellectual property rights, India has been able to develop an indigenous sui generis system of community intellectual rights, which in tum, found its manifestation in the government's Protection of Plant Varieties and Fanners' Rights Act of 2001. The voice of the Third World seemed to have registered at the Doha Declaration relating to TRIPS. Mukherji observes: The Western concept of patenting, which originated and evolved in the West in response to the problems generated by the industrial revolution, and its almost parallel extension to protection of plant varieties and other life forms, is not relevant in the context of many developing agrarian countries which are still largely dependent on agriculture for their employment and livelihood. Mukherji's essay is an interesting study of how dominant Western concepts and formulations may, in effect disguise Western interests, at the expense of non~Western realities. It also reveals how this can spark a dialectical response

Introduction

59

and lead to a relatively more balanced outcome. It is through such a process of on~going dialectic that we can approximate more universalistic formula~ tions through indigenous responses.

Satish Kumar Kalra Satish Kalra provides us with valuable research in social science in the ap~ plied field of management leadership. Management styles and models in the West were introduced in the Indian business environment. It was soon found that the presumed universality of American management theory did not work quite as well in India, or for that matter much of the East. He points to a fundamental point that is missed out while generalising on the particular Western experience, namely, that I [b] asically management development is manager's development and any manager is first an individual belonging to a particular culture and then a manager'. Kalra weaves through a good number of empirical researches, including his own, to demonstrate that in India, authoritarian leadership styles work better than the Western participatory modes ofmanagement. However, there is more to this simplistic differentiation than meets the eye. He suggests that the socialisation process involved in the traditional institution of the joint family and the panchayat, makes for personality types that explain the kind of leadership style in management of business in the Indian context that really performs. The typical traditional hierarchical joint family in India is characterised by the karta as the head of the family, in which he commands respect by virtue of his age, seniority and experience. Generally every body in the family respects him, takes his advice and all important decisions of the family like buying of property, deciding about the career and marriage of the younger member of the family and so on, are taken by him. He is loved as well as feared.

The internalisation of these values and their embodiment in leadership styles in corporate management in India is conceptualised as the process of 'kartaisation' of management styles. Kalra then proceeds to classify three kinds of kartas to be found in the traditional joint families-the (a) benevolent, (b) autocratic/authoritative and (c) benevolent~authoritative/aut1writarian. The third is a combination of the first two. These are the three different karta psyches that find their manifestations in the management business environment in India. Gleaning from a good number of important empirical studies, Kalra observes that the

60

Partha Nath Mukherji

benevolent karta psyche ofmanagement leadership follows a consultative style. This kind of leadership is 'perceived to be caring and encouraging. They commanded respect and they consulted and involved their subordinates on organisational issues. Overall their style of functioning appeared to be a consultative style of management' . In contrast, 'ineffective or less effective bosses were those who were authoritarian, had favourites, lacked the hlITIlane approach, did not involve subordinates by taking their suggestions and so on'. Kalra now moves into a finer level of analysis in the benevolent karta model of leadership. Critiquing the seminal research ofJ.B.P. Sinha's Nurturant~Task Leadership Style (NTL), he distinguishes between the Consultative Style of Managerial Leadership (CSML) with the Participative Style of Management Leadership (PSML). The fonner is characterised by the manager's ability to make decisions by involving the subordinates in getting their suggestions/ideas with or without any discussion on them and with the manager having the sole discretion of either accepting or rejecting any idea with or without giving any reason or logic thereof and thus making the final decision by himself and by giving the subordinates a feeling of being he3Td.

This kind of leadership is patterned close to the traditional panchayat. In contrast, the PSML 'is characterised by the manager's ability to involve the subordinates in the decision~making process as equals and getting their sug~ gestions/ideas/views and then arriving at a joint decision based on discus~ sions, whereby the subordinates feel equally responsible for the decision as well as getting the feeling of being involved'. Kalra is of the view that the PSML is functional and operative in societies 'which are not hierarchical'. In a hierachical societal setting such managers are likely to be viewed as 'weak', and the CSML model is likely to be more effective. Kalra's empirically based study is of considerable significance, in as much as, the data speaks of the ground reality. The ideal type cannot be mistaken for the ideal. It has to do with abstractions from empirical reality. Thus the participative model of management is an ideal type abstracted from the empirical reality of the West, which makes for efficiency and high productivity oflabour in the Western context. This ideal type is not necessarily ideal for efficient management and high productivity in India. While there may be an ideal to be pursued, it is the real world that provides the ideal type. Even ifan ideal is universally accepted, its manifestations and expressions may take different structural forms. The varieties of models of management, provided by the Far Eastern countries, drawing from their traditions, surely will add to this important aspect ofindigeneity. The question to be posed is: if the empirical

Introduction

61

reality is changing, that is, if the traditional joint family and the traditional panchayat are changing, then will the socialisation in this changing context have consequences for the existing formulations of effective managerial model(s)? Indigeneityneeds to be grasped both in process and structural terms.

Jacob Aikara Jacob Aikara's essay provides a comprehensive sauctural description of the educational systems-traditional and modern---of the South Asian coun~ tries. The traditional systems that functioned prior to the colonial era-the madrasas and maktabs for the Muslims in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Maldives; the dzongkha in Bhutan; the Tal and Pathshala in India; and the Buddhist 'Pirivena' institutions in Sri Lanka-continue at certain levels to co~existwith the modem education system. The traditional systems of Hindu and Buddhist education in Nepal, however, had disintegrated much before the new system was initiated in 1951. Aikara's essay does a comprehensive coverage of the traditional systems of education and colonial intervention. He describes the structure of educa~ tion, including, pre~school, school, higher, and non~formal, education; education for all, including universalisation of primary education and its attendant problems of enrolment, retention, learner achievement and pupil teacher ratio; innovations in universalisingprimary education; incentives for primary education; literacy education for adults, post~literacy efforts; me~ dium of instruction in multi~linguistic states; centralisation and decentralisa~ tion of education; financing of education, including contributions from local communities, beneficiary fees, and foreign funding; the participation of the private sector; and inequality of access to education. Going through Aikara's essay, one becomes aware of mainly two evolving structural patterns of edu~ cation. First is the one in which the traditional system of education keeps on accommodating and adapting to the modern requirements of knowledge. The other pattern attempts to incorporate traditional and innovative ways of making the modem education system more effective. Both these patterns serve the function of reaching relevant education and knowledge to wider populations. The problem lies in either of these systems displaying inflexibility resulting in the problems of restricted access to education and consequent inequalities, or to insularities of knowledge and consequent compartmental~ isation of cultures. Aikara draws attention to the dilemma that efforts at indigenisation in education have led to, creating a dual system of education. While the

62

Partha Nath Mukherji

vernacular has replaced English in the state sector of education as medium of instruction mainly in rural regions bringing education closer to the masses and the lower sections, private~sector education mainly in Engiish, has catered to the upper classes. This reproouces the backwardness of the relatively deprived classes with structurally defined unequal life chances. The indigenous solution lies in symbiotically combining the vernacular and the English language as media of education, preserving the cultural sources of creativity and linking it with the instrumental value of a global language for participation in a globalising market. Both Hettige and Kelegama echo the same concern with respect to Sri Lanka.

Chandan Sengupta Chandan Sengupta basically addresses the question: 'how relevant are the various perspectives of urban sociology that originated in the West, to the understanding of South Asian urban reality?' He points out that in sharp contrast to the West, the South Asian region is predominantly agrarian, within which we are witnessing the phenomenal increase in urban population. The life and living patterns in this region are qualitatively different from that in the West. The processes of urban change are not necessarily endogenous, but largely, externally induced. Notwithstanding the many other urban phe~ nomena in South Asia that make for qualitative difference with the West, Sengupta focuses on poverty and vulnerability as the most important urban issues that need serious attention in the analysis of indigenous understanding of urban sociology in South Asia. The city in South Asian countries are islands of prosperity, attracting millions of migrants from the rural areas in search of opportunities. As a consequence, among the variety of urban prob~ lems the 'phenomena of urban poverty and vulnerability' assume critical importance. While poverty carmot be demarcated within spatial boundaries, urban poverty is greater in intensity and complexity than rural poverty. Sengupta goes on to discuss in some detail with available statistics, the phe~ nomenon of urban poverty and its complexity, its magnitude and multi~ dimensionality, its dynamics and vulnerability, with reference to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan. The South Asian perspective comes out clearly in Sengupta's essay. Some of the important observations in his essay need to be highlighted. Interestingly, urban poverty is on the decline in Pakistan. Two of the smallest South Asian countries, Bhutan and Maldives, provide important insights for our understanding of urban dynamics. Their problems do not stem from endemic

Introduction

63

urban poverty. Maldives is suffering from both population and vehicular density in an extremely restricted ecol.ogical space. In contrast, Bhutan is experiencing near~obsession with the demands on scarce housing and the danger of ecological degradation. It has put itselfin an alert anticipatory mode determined to stem the tide of the deleterious consequences of over~urbanisation. Sengupta acknowledges that '[a]lmost all the problems of world's big cities exist in the large cities of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.' The difference lies in the fact that 'the problems of the cities of poor econo~ mies like South Asia are more appalling and assume greater significance. The nature and extent of urban problems are however, different in different countries within South Asia'. The urban phenomenon is reflected in the contributions by Rangalal Sen when he discusses the pitiable condition of the lower classes in Dhaka. Kelegama, Hettige and Aikara link it with the edu~ cational variable vis~a~vis the rural counterpart, whilst Pyakuryallinks it with urban~centred development. With Sengupta's contribution on urban poverty and vulnerability manifesting itself in four out of the six South Asian coun~ tries, and the uniqueness of the two others, we arrive at a rich understanding of the urban scenario in South Asia.

References Ahmed, Momtaz Uddin, 'Recent Social Science Research Trends in Bangladesh', Asian Research Trends, No.7, The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO. Tokyo. 1991. Alatas, Syed Farid, 'Western Theory and Asian Realities: A Critical Appraisal of the Indigenization Theme', Paper presented at the Asia Pacific Regional Conference of Sociology, Philippine Social Science Center, Quezon City, 1996. ___ , 'The Study of Social Sciences in Developing Societies: Towards an Adequate Conceptualisation of Relevance', Current Sociology, March 2001, 49(2). Alatas, Syed Hussein, 'The Captive Mind in Development Studies', International Social Science Journal (henceforth ISSJ), 1972,24(1). ___ , 'The Captive Mind and Creative Development', ISSJ, 1974, 26(4). Antia, N.H, G.P. Dutta and A.B. Kasbekar, Health and Medical Care; A People's Movement, Foundation for Research in Community Health, Pune, Mumbai, 2000. Atal, Yogesh, Social Sciences in Asia, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1974. ___ , 'The Call for Indigenization', ISSJ, 1981,33(1). ___ , 'Social Sciences: The Tasks and Challenges for the 1980s' in Social Sciences in Asia in the 19805; Tasks and Challenges, Association of Asian Social Science Research (AASSREC) New Delhi. 1983.

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Atal, Yogesh, 'Indigenisation: The Case of Indian Sociology', IA.SSI Quarterly, 2000, 18(3). Banerjee, J.K., 'Rural Surgery, Caring for Developing Qmununities', Euro] Surg, 1999, 165. Beteille, Andre, 'Sociology and Commonsense', Economic and Political Weekly, 1996,31, special nos. 35, 36 and 37. Borgatta, Edgar F. and Karen S. Cook, The Future of Sociology, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, 1988. Chatterjee, Partha, 'Institutional Context of Social Science Research in South Asia', Economic and Political Weekly, 31 August-6 September 2002, 37(35). Chatterjee, Partha, Ninnala Banerjee, Apurba K. Baruah, Satish Deshpande, Peter Ronald de Souza, Krishna Hachhethu, B.K. Jahangir, M.S.S. Pandian, Nira Wickramsinghe, S. Akbar Zaidi and Itty Abraham, Social Science Research Capacity in South Asia: A Report, Working Paper Series on Building Intellecutal Capital for the 21st Century, 6, Social Science Research Council, New York. Chaturvedi, H.R. and T.A. Menon, 'Nepal', in Atal (ed.) Social Sciences in Asia, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1974. Delanty, Gerard, Social Science: Beyond Constructivism and Realism, Open University Press, Buckingham, 1997. Dube, Leela, 'The Challenge of Indigenisation', Paper presented at the 10th World Congress of Sociology, Mexico City (Topic B: Theme B: Universalism versus Indigenisation in Sociological Theory), 1982 (unpublished). Dube, S.C., 'Social Sciences for the 1980s: From Rhetoric to Reality', ISS], 1982, UNESCO, 34(3). Fei Hsiao-tung, Re-reading Preface to the Economy of Jiang Cun, Daxue Xucbao, Beijing,

1996. Giddens, Anthony, Social Theory and Modern Sociology, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1987. Gore, M.S., 'Challenges to the Social Sciences in the 1980s: Professionalization of the Social Sciences in Asia', Social Sciences in South Asia in the 1980s: Tasks and Challenges, AASSREC, New Delhi, 1983. Hachhethu, Krishna, 'Social Sciences Research in Nepal', Economic and Political Weekly, 31(35). Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Rewlutions, second edition, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970. Mukherjee, D.P., 'Indian Tradition and Social Change', in Diversities, People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1958. Mukherjee, Ramkrishna, Sociology of Indian Sociology, Allied Publishers Ltd., Bombay,

1919. Mukherji, Partha N., 'Disciplined Eclecticism', Seminar, October 1980, 254. ___ , (ed.), Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, Popular Prakashan, Bombay,

1986. ___ , (ed.), Methodology in Social Research, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000. ___ , 'Indigeneity and Social Science', in Lotika Sarkar, Kumud Sharma, Leela Kasturi (eds), Between Tradition, Counter Tradition and Heresy, Rainbow Publishers, New Delhi, 2002. Mukherji, Partha N., Jacob Aikara and Chandan Sengupta, Sociology in South Asia: Heritage and Challenges (Proceedings for the ISA Regional Conference for South Asia, Mumbai, India, 25-27 March, 1997) Madrid, International Sociological Association, 1998.

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Oommen, T.K. and Mukherji, P.N., Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, 1986. Qadir, S.A., 'Bangladesh', in Atal (ed.), Social Sciences in Asia, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1974. Rajalingam, D.R., 'Sri Lanka', in Atal (ed.), Social Sciences in Asia, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1974. Saberwal, Satish, 'Sociologists and Inequality in India: The Historical Context', Economic and Political Weekly, 14 (7&8). Saran, A.K., Traditional Thought-Towards an Axiomatic Approach, Central Institute of Tibetan Higher Studies, Varanasi, 1996. Singh, Yogendra, Images of lvian, Chanakya Publications, New Delhi, 1983. Srinivas, M.N., 'Development of Sociology in India: An Overview,' Economic and Political WedJy, 22(4), Srinivas, M.N. and M.N. Panini, 'The Development of Sociology and Social Anthropology in India', Sociological Bulletin, 1973,22(2). Stiglitz, Joseph, Globalisation and Its Discontents, Allen Lane, London, 2002. Wallerstein, Immanuel, Open the Social Sciences, Vistaar Publications, New Delhi, 1996. ___ , 'Letter from the President', International Sociological Association, April 1997 (a). ___ , 'Eurocentrism and its Avatars', Sociological Bulletin, 1997(b) 46(1). Zaidi, Akbar, 'Dismal State of Social Sciences in Pakistan', Economic and Political Weekly, 31 August-6 September, 2002, 37(35).

1

Social Science and the Quest for a Just Society*!

----~----------

Immanuel Wallerstein Behind the current passionate debates about structure versus agency lies the ancient debate of determinism versus free will. This essay reviews the debate and its dilemmas in theology, philosophy, revolutionary theorising, and social science. The epistemological issues have been reopened and redefined by complexity studies in the natural sciences and cultural studies in the hu~ manities, both ofwhich involve a tum toward some central premises of social science. It is argued that social science will be epistemologically central to all knowledge and that utopistics will be a central responsibility of social scien~ tists. It is also argued that science is at its very begirmings, and that the future will be built on going beyond the antinomy detenuinism/free will. Macro and micro constitute an antinomy that has long been widely used throughout the social sciences, and indeed in the natural sciences as well. In the last 20 years, the antinomy globalllocal has also come into wide use in the social sciences. A third pair of tenus, structure/agency, has also come to be widely adopted, and is central to the recent literature of cultural studies. The three antinomies are not exactly the same, but in the minds of many scholars they overlap very heavily, and as shorthand phrases they are often used interchangeably. Macro/micro is a pair that has the tone merely of preference. Some per~ sons prefer to studymacrophenomena, others microphenomena. But giobaV local and, even more, structure/agency are pairs that have passions attached to them. Many persons feel that the only framework of analysis that makes *Title of the paper has been slightly modified here. The paper was presented as a keynote address to the South Asian Regional Conference on Future of Sociology in South Asia, held at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India on 25 March 1997 and was published in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 102, No.5 (Ma"h 1991), pp. 1241-51. 1

Social Science and the Quest for aJust Society

67

sense is one cast at the global level or, conversely, one cast at the local level. The tensions surrounding structure/agency are, if anything, stronger. The terms are often used as moral clarion calls; they are felt by many to indicate the sole legitimate rationale for scholarly work. Why should there be such intensity in this debate? It is not difficult to discern. We are collectively confronted with a dilemma that has been discussed by thinkers for several thousand years. Beneath these antinomies lies the debate of determinism versus free will, which has found countless avatars within theology, philosophy and science. It is therefore not a minor issue, nor is it one aoout which, over the thousands of years, consensus has been reached. I believe that our inability to find a way beyond this opposition constitutes a major obstacle to our collective ability to create a form of knowledge that is adequate for what I expect will be a quite transformed world in the present century and millermium. I therefore propose to look at how this long~standing debate has been conducted within our community, that is, within the frame~ work of that very recent construct, 'social science'. I intend to argue that the way the problem has been posed heretofore has made it insoluble. I intend also to argue that we are today at a point where we may be able to overcome the social constructions of the nineteenth century in ways that will allow us to move forward constructively, and collectively, on this question. Let me start with determinism and free will in theological discourse. The concept that everything is determined seems to derive quite directly from the concept of the omnipotence of God, which is cenaal to all the monothe~ istic religions at least. If there is an omnipotent God, then everything is deter~ mined by the will of God and to suggest otherwise would seem to be blasphemous. On the other hand, the churches of the world are in the business of regulating moral behaviour. And determinism provides an easy excuse for the sinner. Has God indeed detennined that we shall sin? And if so, should we try to counter the will of God? This is a conundrum that has plagued theologians from the beginning. One way out is to argue that God has be~ stowed upon us free will, that is, the option to sin or not to sin. It is however too easy a solution. Why would it have been necessary or desirable for God to have done this? It makes us seem like God's playthings. Furthermore, it does not provide a logically tight argument. If God has given us free will, can we exercise it in unpredictable ways? If so, is God omnipotent? And if not, can we really be said to have free will? Let me say once again how impressed I have always been with the astuteness ofJohn Calvin's attempt to resolve this dilemma. The Calvinist argument is very simple. Our destinies are indeed not predetermined, not because God could not predetermine everything, but because if humans

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Immanuel Wallerstein

assert that everything is predetennined, they are thereby limiting God's ability to determine. In effect, Calvin is saying, perhaps we cannot change our minds, but God can, or else God is not omnipotent. Still, as is well known, Calvinists were not persons to countenance immoral behaviour. How then could humans be induced to make the necessary effort to behave according to the norms which Calvinists believed they ought to observe? Remember, Calvin was part of the Reformation attempt to refute the doctrine of the Catholic Church that good deeds are rewarded by God (a view that, by derivation, justified the sale of indulgences) . To get out of the box, Calvinists resorted to the concept of negative grace, which is in reality a familiar and very modem device of science, the concept of disproof. While we could not have foreknowledge of who was saved, since that would limit God's decisions, we could have foreknowledge of who was not saved. It was argued that God displays the prospect of damnation in the sinful behaviour of humans, as sinful behaviour is defined by the church. Those who sin are surely not saved, because God would not permit the saved so to act. The Calvinist solution is so astute that it was subsequently adopted by its successor expression, the revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and tvventieth centuries. The analogous argument went like this. We carmot know for sure who is advancing the revolution, but we can know for sure who is not advancing it, those who act in ways that are sinful, that is, in ways that run counter to the decisions of the revolutionary organisation. Every member is a potential sirmer, even if the militant has behaved appropriately in the past. Members are thus continuously subject to the judgement of the revolution~ ary authorities as to whether or not they have gone against the will of God, that is, against the will of the revolutionary organisation. Nor was it only the revolutionary organisations that adopted the Calvinist solution. Essentially, modem science adopted it as well. We can never know with certainty whether a scientist has reached truth, but we can know when the scientist has sirmed. It is when he has failed to follow the norms of appropriate scientific methods, as defined by the community of scientists, and therefore has ceased to be 'rational', that is, when the scientist has stooped to politics, or to journalism, or to poetry, or to other such nefarious activities. The Calvinist solution is astute, but it has one enormous drawback. It confers inordinate power on those humans---church authorities, revolution~ ary authorities, scientific authorities-who are the interpreters of whether or not other human actors are showing signs of negative grace. And who will guard the guardians? Is there then a remedy to this drawback? The conse~ crated remedy is to proclaim the virtue of human freedom. That good Cal~ vinist, John Milton, wrote Paradise Lost, a marvellous poem extolling this

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remedy. There are many readers who have said that, behind Milton's osten~ sible vindication of God, his real hero was Lucifer, and that Lucifer's rebellion represented humanity's attempt to rise up against the constraint of the will of an unseeable and unknowable God. But the remedy seems almost as bad as the malady. Shall we praise Lucifer? After all, in whose interests does he act? I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Consider the Enlighten~ ment. What was the sermon? It seems to me the essential message was anti~ clerical: Humans were capable of rational judgement and hence had the ability to arrive at both truth and goodness directly, through their own best efforts. The Enlightenment represented the definitive rejection of religious authorities as judges of either truth or goodness. But who was substituted for them? I suppose one has to say the philosophers. Kant was anxious to take away from the theologians the right to judge either truth or goodness. He found it easy enough to do this for truth, but more difficult to do for goodness. Having decided that one cannot prove laws of morality as though they were laws of physics, he might have conceded goodness to the theologians. But he insisted that here too the philosophers could offer the answer, which for Kant was located in the concept of the categorical imperative. However, in the process of secularising knowledge, the philosophers en~ shrined doubt, and this proved to be their own subsequent undoing. For along came the scientists to proclaim that the philosophers were merely dis~ guised theologians. The scientists began to challenge the right of philoso~ phers as well as of theologians to proclaim truth, asserting very stridently that scientists were not philosophers. Is there anything, the scientists asked, that legitimates the speculations, the ratiocinations of the philosophers, anything that allows us to say that they are true? The scientists asserted that they, on the contrary, possessed a firm basis for truth, in which empirical investigation leads to testable and tested hypotheses and then to those provisional univer~ sals called 'scientific theorems'. The scientists, however, wiser or perhaps less courageous than Kant, wanted nothing to do with moral laws. They laid claim therefore to only one.half of the task the philosophers had inherited from the theologians. Scientists would search only for truth; goodness, they suggested, was not an area of interest since it was incapable of being an object of knowledge as science was defining that term. The claims of the scientists that science represented the unique path to locate truth gained wide cultural support, and they came to be the pre~ eminent constructors of knowledge in the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, at the beginning of this period, there was a small happening called the French Revolution, whose protagonists claimed to be acting in the furtherance of goodness. Ever since, the French

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Revolution has served as the source of a belief system at least as powerful as that provided by the rise of cultural predominance of science. As a result, we have spent the last 200 years trying to reunite the search for truth and the search for goodness. Social science, as it came to be established during the nineteenth century, was precisely the heir to both searches, and in some ways offered itself as the ground on which they could be reconciled. I must however admit that social science has not been very successful in its quest, rather than reunifying the two searches, it has itself been tom apart by the dissonance between them. The centrifugal pressure of the 'two cultures' (as we now call the two searches) has been impressively strong. It has provided the central themes of the rhetoric of public discourse about knowledge. It has determined the structures of the universities in the course of their being rebuilt and reinvigo~ rated in the nineteenth century. Its continuing strength explains the persistingly high degree of passion about the antinomies to which I referred. The gulf between the two cultures was the deliberate construction of Newtonian~Cartesian science. Science was very sure of itself in this struggle. This is well illustrated by two famous declarations of the Marquis de Laplace. One was his bon mot in replying to Napoleon's query about the absence of God in his physics: Sire, I have not found any need for that hypothesis' (cited in Koyre 1957, p. 276). The other was his unyielding statement about how much science could know: The present state of the system of nature is evidently a resultant of what it was in the preceding instant, and if we conceive of an Intelligence who, for a given moment, embraces all the relations of beings in the Universe, It will be able to determine for any instant of the past or future their respective positions, motions, and generally their affections' (cited in Hahn 1967, p. 15). Triumphant science was not prepared to admit any doubts or to share the stage with anyone else. Philosophy, and more generally, what came to be called in the nineteenth century 'the humanities', fell in public esteem and retreated to a defensive stance. Unable to deny science's capacity to explain the physical world, philosophy abandoned that domain entirely. Instead, it insisted that there existed another quite separate domain-the human, the spiritual, the moralwhich was as important as, ifnotmore important than, the domain of science. That is why, in English at least, philosophy assumed the label 'humanities' . From this hlITIlan domain philosophy sought to exclude science or, at the very least, to relegate it to a very secondary role. As long as the humanities en~ gaged in metaphysics or literature, science was quite willing to allow itself to

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be excluded, on the deprecatory grounds that these were non~scientific mat~ ters. But when the subject matter was the description and analysis of social reality, there was no accord, not even a tacit one, between the two camps. Both cultures laid claim to this arena. A cadre of professional specialists on the study of social reality emerged slowly and, be it said, unsurely. In many ways, the most interesting story is that of history. Of all the fields that constitute what we today call social science, history has the longest lineage. It was a concept and a term long before the nineteenth century. But the basis of the modem discipline of history was the historiographical revolution we associate with Leopold von Ranke. And the modem version of history, which Ranke and his colleagues called Geschichte and not Historie , was extraordinarily scientistic in its funda~ mental premises. Its practitioners asserted that social reality was knowable. They asserted that such knowledge could be objective; that is, that there were correct and incorrect statements about the past, and that historians were obliged to write history 'as it really happened', which is why they gave it the name of Geschichte. They asserted that scholars must not intrude their biases into the analysis of the data or its interpretation. Hence they asserted that scholars must offer evidence for their statements, evidence based on empirical research, evidence subject to control and verification by the com~ munity of scholars. Indeed, they even defined what kind of data would be acceptable evidence (primary documents in archives). In all these ways they sought to circumscribe the practices of the 'discipline' and eliminate from history anything that was 'philosophical', that is, speculative, deductive, mythi. caL I have called this attitude 'history in search of science' (Wallerstein

1996). But historians proved in practice to be timid scientists. They wished to stick extremely close to their data, and to restrict causal statements to state~ ments of immediate sequences~immediate particular sequences. They baulked at 'generalisations', which is what they called either inductions of patterns of behaviour from specific instances or assertions of causal sequences in which two variables were less immediately linked in time and space. We may be generous and say that the historians did this because they were sensitive to the thin basis the collected empirical data in the nineteenth century afforded them for sound inductions. In any case, they were haunted by the fear that to generalise was to philosophise, that is, to be anti~scientific. And so they came to idolise the particular, the idiographic, even the unique, and thereupon to shun, for the most part, the label of social science, despite the fact that they were 'in search of science'.

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Other practitioners were more audacious. The emerging disciplines of economics, sociology, and political science by and large wrapped themselves in the mantle and the mantra of'social science', appropriating the methods and the honours of triumphant science (often, be it noted, to the scorn or despair of the natural scientists). These social science disciplines considered themselves 'nomothetic', in search of universal laws, consciously modelling themselves on the good example of physics (as nearly as they could). They had, of course, to admit that the quality of their data and the plausibility/ validity of their theorems were far beneath the level achieved by their conferers in the physical sciences, but they defiantly asserted optimism about future progress in their scientific capacities. I should like to underline that this great Methodenstreit, as it was called, between idiographic history and the nomothetic trio of 'real' social sciences was in many ways huff and puff, since both sides of this disciplinary and methodological debate fully acknowledged the superiority of science over philosophy. Indeed, science might have won the battle for the soul of the social sciences hands down, were the natural scientists not rather snobbish in refusing to accept the importuning social scientists into full membership in the fraternity. History and the nomothetic trio remained up to 1945 very much social sciences of the civilised world, by the civilised world, and about the civilised world. To deal with the colonised world of what were called 'primitive peoples" a separate social science discipline was constructed, anthropology, with its separate set of methods and aaditions. And the remaining half of the world, that of non~Western, so~called high civilisations-that is, China, India, the Arabo~Islamic world among others-was left to a special group of persons engaged in something that was given the name of 'Oriental studies' a disci~ pline that insisted on its humanistic character and refused to be considered part of the social sciences. It is obvious today why a cleavage between a social science of and for the civilised world and a second social science of and for the rest of the world seemed so natural to nineteenth~century European scholars, and why it seems so absurd today. I shall not dwell on this issue (see Wallerstein 1996). I wish merely to note that both the anthropologists and the Orientalist scholars, by virtue of the logic of engaging in a social science about the others/the non~modern world/the barbarians, felt very much more com~ fortable on the idiographic side of the Methodenstreit, since the universalist implications of nomothetic social science seemed to leave no place for what they wanted to say. In the nineteenth century, the idiographers and the nomothetists were in great competition as to who could be more objective in their work, which had

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a strange consequence for the macro~micro distinction. If one looks at the earliest works and major figures in each ofthese emerging disciplines, one notices that they wrote about very large themes, such as universal history or stages of civilisation and the titles of their books tended to be all~encompassing. This fit very well with the tum that modern thought was taking in that century, the tum to evolution as the fundamental metaphor. These books were very 'macro' in the sweep of their subject matter, and they described the evolution of mankind. They were seldom monographic. But this macro quality of the research did not seem to last very long. In the interests of creating corporate structures, the various social science disciplines sought to control the training and career patterns of those who would enter the fraternity. They insisted on both originality and objectivity, and this turned them against macroscholarship. Originality required that each successive scholar say something new, and the easiest way to do that was to divide up the subject matter into subjects of ever smaller scope, in terms of time, of space, and ofvariables llllder consideration. The process of subdivision opened up endless possibilities of not repeating the work of earlier scholars. And by circumscribing the scope, social scientists believed they were making it more possible for scholars to be careful in their collection and analysis of data. It was the mentality of the microscope, and it pushed scholars to using ever more powerful microscopes. It conformed well with a reductionist ethos. This microscopisation of social science reinforced the gulfbetween ideo~ graphic and nomothetic social science. The two camps were equally in search of objectivity, but pursued diametrically opposite paths to achieving it, be~ cause they singled out opposite risks of subjectivity. The idiographic camp had two principal fears. They saw the danger of subjectivity deriving on the one hand from inadequate contextual understanding and on the other hand from the intrusion of self interest. Insofar as one was dependent upon primary documents, one was obliged to read them correctly, and not anachronistically or from the prism of another culture. This required considerable knowledge of the context: the empirical detail, the definition of boundaries, the use of the language (even in many cases the handwriting), the cultural allusions in the documents. The scholars hence sought to be hermeneutic, that is, they sought to enter into the mentality of persons and groups who were remote from them, in order to see the world as the persons under study saw it. This required long immersion in the language and culture under observation. For the historians, it seemed easiest therefore to study their own nation/culture, in which they were already immersed. For the anthropologists, who by defi~ nition could not follow this path, it required so great an investment to know enough to study a particular group of 'others' that it seemed sensible to

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devote one's life work to the study of one such people. And for the Orientalist scholars, doing well their philological exercises required a life~long improve~ ment of difficult linguistic skills. There were thus, for each field, objective pressures which led scholars to narrow the scope of their research, and to attain a level of specialisation at which there were at most a few other persons in the world who had a matching profile of skills. The problem of non~involvement was also a serious one for idiographic scholars. The historians solved it first of all by insisting that history could not be written about the present and then by ending the 'past' at a point relatively distant from the present. The argument was that we are all inevitably com~ mitted politically in the present, but that as we move backwards in time we may feel less involved. This was reinforced by the fact that historians made themselves dependent upon archives, and the states that provided the mate~ rials for the archives were (and are) unwilling to make the documents avail~ able about current happenings, for obvious reasons. The Orientalist scholars ensured their neutrality by avoiding real intercourse with the civilisations they studied. Theirs being primarily a philological discipline, they were im~ mersed in reading texts, a task they could and largely did conduct in their study. As for the anthropologists, the great fear of the discipline was that some colleagues would 'go native', and thereby be unable to continue to play the role of the scientific observer. The main control employed was ensuring that the anthropologist did not stay out in the 'field' too long. All of these solutions emphasised remoteness as the mechanism of controlling bias. In tum validity was guaranteed by the interpretative skills of carefully trained scholars. The nomothetic trio of economics, political science, and sociology turned these techniques on their head. In order to avoid bias, they emphasised not remoteness but a very particular kind of closeness. Objective data were de~ fined as replicable data, that is, precisely data that were not the result of an 'interpretation'. The more quantitative the data the easier it was to replicate them. But data from the past or from remote parts of the world lacked the infrastructural basis for the necessary guarantees of quality, or 'hardness'. Quite the opposite: the best data were the most recent, and those which had been collected in the countries with the best infrastructure for the recording of data. Older or remoter data were necessarily incomplete, approximate, perhaps even mythical. They might be sufficient for the purposes ofjoumal~ ism or travel reports but not for science. Furthermore, even newly collected data rapidly became obsolete, since the passing of time brought ever~ increased quality of data collection, especially in terms of the comparability of data collected in two or more sites. So the nomothetic trio retreated into the present, even into the immediate and instantaneous present.

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Furthermore, insofar as one wanted to perform sophisticated operations on quantitative data, it was optimal to reduce the number of variables and to use indicators about which one could collect good data, hard data. Thus reliability pushed these social scientists into constantly narrowing the time and space scope of the analyses and into testing only carefully limited propo~ sitions. One might wonder then about the validity of the results. But the epistemological premises solved this problem. Insofar as one believed that there existed universal laws of human behaviour, the locus of the research became irrelevant. One chose sites of data collection according to the quality of the data it was possible to obtain, not because of the sites' superior rel~ evance. I draw from this the conclusion that the great methodological debates that illustrated the historical construction of the social sciences were sham debates, which distracted us from realising the degree to which the 'divorce' between philosophy and science effectively eliminated the search for the good from the realm of knowledge, and circumscribed the search for truth into the form of microscopic positivism which took on many guises. The early hopes of social scientists that they could be modem philosopher-kings proved totally vain and social scientists settled into being the handmaidens ofgov~ emmental refonnism. When they did this openly, they called it 'applied social science'. But for the most part they did this abashedly, asserting that their role was merely to do the research, and that it was up to others-the political persons-to draw from this research the conclusions that seemed to derive from this research. In short, the neutrality of the scholar became the figleaf of their shame, in having eaten the apple of knowledge.

******* As long as the modem world seemed to be one long success story of techno~ logical triumph, the necessary political base to maintain a certain equilibrium in the system continued to exist. Amidst the success, the world of science was carried from honour to honour within this system, as though it were respon~ sible for the triumph. The social sciences were swept along in the tide. No one was seriously questioning the fundamental premises of knowledge. The many maladies of the system-from racism to sexism to colonialism as expressions of the manifestly growing polarisation of the world, from fascist movements to socialist gulags to liberal formalisms as alternative modes of suppressing democratisation-were all defined as transitory problems because they were all thought to be capable of being brought under control eventually, as so many turbulent deviations from the norm in a world in which the trajectory

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always returned to the curve of linear, upward~moving equilibrium. The political persons on all sides promised that goodness was coming at the end of the horizon, a prospect presumably guaranteed by the constant progress in the search for truth. This was an illusion, the illusion bred by the separation and reification of the two cultures. Indeed the separation of the two cultures was one of the main factors pushing the trajectories far from equilibrium. Knowledge is in fact a singular enterprise, and there are no fundamental contradictions between how we may pursue it in the natural and in the human world, for they are both integral parts of a singular universe. Nor is knowledge separate from creativity or adventure or the search for the gcxxl society. To be sure, knowledge will always remain a pursuit, never a point or arrival. It is this very fact, however, that permits us to see that macro and micro, global and local and above all, struc~ ture and agency are not unsurpassable antinomies but rather yin and yang. There have been two remarkable intellectual developments of the last two decades that constitute an entirely new trend, signs that the world may be now in the process of overcoming the two cultures. These trends are only marginally the doing of social scientists, but they are wonderfully encouraging about the future of social science. I refer to what has been called 'complexity studies' in the natural sciences and what has been called cultural studies in the humanities. I am not going to review the now immense literature in each of these two fields. Rather I shall try to situate each of these fields in terms of their epistemological implications for knowledge and their implications for the social sciences. Why are complexity studies given that name? It is because they reject one of the most basic premises of the modem scientific enterprise. Newtonian science assumed that there were simple underlying formulae that explained everything. Einstein was unhappy that e=mc2 explained only half the uni~ verse. He was searching for the unified field theory that would in an equally simple equation explain everything. Complexity studies argue that all such formulae can at best be partial, and at most explain the past, never the future. (We must of course be careful to distinguish between the dubious belief that truth is simple and the sound methodological injunction of Occam's razor, that we ought always to try to eliminate logical curlicues from our reasoning and include in our equations only the terms necessary to stating them clearly.) Why is truth complex? Because reality is complex. And reality is complex for one essential reason: the arrow of time. Everything affects everything, and, as time goes on, everything expands inexorably. In a sense, nothing is eliminated, although much fades or becomes blurred. The universe proceeds, it has a life in its orderly disorder or its disorderly order. There are of course

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endless provisional orderlypattems, self-established, holding things together, creating seeming coherence. But none is perfect, because of course perfect order is death, and in any case enduring order has never existed. Perfect order is what we may mean by God, which is by definition beyond the known universe. So the atoms, the galaxies, and the biota pursue their paths, their evolution if you will, lllltil the internal contradictions of their structures move them further and further away from whatever temporary equilibria they enjoy. These evolving structures repeatedly reach points at which their equilibria can no longer be restored, at points of bifurcation, and then new paths are found and new orders established, but we can never know in advance what these new orders will be. The picture of the universe that derives from this model is an intrinsically non~deterrninistic one, since the aleatory combinations and the number of small decisions are too many for us to predict where the universe will move. But it does not follow that the universe can therefore move in any direction whatsoever. It is the child of its own past, which has created the parameters within which these new paths are chosen. Statements about our present trajectories can of course be made, and can be made carefully, that is, can be stated quantitatively. But if we cry to overdo the accuracy of the data, the mathematicians tell us we get unstable results. 2 Ifphysical scientists and mathematicians are now telling us that truth in their arena is complex, indeterminate, and dependent on an arrow of time, what does that mean for social scientists? For, it is clear that, of all systems in the universe, human social systems are the most complex structures that exist, the ones with the briefest stable equilibria, the ones with the greatest number of outside variables to take into account, the ones that are most difficult to study. We can only do what the scientists can only do. We can search for inter~ pretative patterns, of two sorts. We can search for what might be calledfannal interpretative patterns, of the kind that state, for example, that all human social systems are historical social systems, not only in the sense that they follow historical trajectory, but in the sense that they are born or emerge at certain times and places for specific reasons, operate according to specific sets of rules for specific reasons, and come to a close or die or disintegrate at certain times and places because they are unable any longer to handle their l The crystal has been shattered, Ivar Ekeland (1988: 73) tells us: 'The qualitative approach is not a mere stand-in for quantitative methods. It may lead to great theoretical advances, as in fluid dynamics. It also has a significant advantage over quantitative methods, namely, stability.'

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contradictions for specific sets of reasons. Such formal interpretative patterns are of course themselves subject to a finite relevance. One day, a given particular formal pattern may no longer operate, though for the moment this day may seem remote. We can also search however for what might be called substantive interpre~ tative patterns, such as the description of the rules of a particular historical social system. For example, when I term the modem world~system a capitalist world~economy, I am laying claim to the existence of a particular substantive pattern. It is of course a debatable one, and it has been much debated. Furthermore, like a series of boxes within boxes, there are substantive pat~ terns within substantive patterns, such that, even if we all agree that the world in which we live is a capitalist world~economy, we may nonetheless differ about whether it has had discernible stages, or whether unequal ex~ change has been its norm, or about endless other aspects ofits functioning. What is crucial to note about complexity studies is that they have in no sense rejected scientific analysis, merely Newtonian determinism. But in turning some premises on their head, and in particular by rejecting the con~ cept of reversibility in favour of the concept of the arrow of time, the natural sciences are taking a giant's step in the direction of the traditional terrain of social science, the explanation of reality as a constructed reality. Ifwe now tum to cultural studies, let us start with the same question: why are they called cultural studies? For a group of scholars so taken with linguis~ tic analysis, to my knowledge this question has never been posed. The first thing I note is that cultural studies are not really studies of culture but studies of cultural products. This is the consequence of their deep root in the hu~ manities, and explains in tum their deep attraction to the humanities. For the humanities, in the division of the two cultures, were attributed above all the domain of cultural products. The humanities were also attributed the domain of goodness, but they were very reluctant to seize hold of it. It seemed so political, so uncultural, so fleeting and unsolid, so lacking in eternal continuities. The personal path of Wordsworth from poet of the French Revolution to poet of poetry illustrates the repeated flight of the artists and the scholars of cultural products to the surer group of 'art for art's sake,' an aesthetic turning inward. They com~ forted themselves with Keats's lines in Ode on a Grecian Urn, 'Beauty is truth; truth beauty'-that is all lYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.' To be sure, there were always those who asserted that cultural products were a product of the culture, and that this could be explained in terms of the structures of the system. Indeed, cultural studies as we know them today originated in England in the 1950s with persons who were arguing this long~

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standing theme. They were, let us remember, in search of a workers' culture. But then cultural studies took what has been called a linguistic turn or a hermeneutic turn, but which I think of as a 1968 tum. The revolutions of 1968 were against the liberal centre and put forward the argument that not only was the Old Lefi:part of this liberal centre, but also thatthis liberal centre was as dangerous as (ifnotmore dangerous than) the true conservatives. In terms of the study of cultural products, it meant that the enemy be~ came not merely those who would study cultural products according to conservative, traditional aesthetic norms (the so~called canons) but also those (the Old Left) who would analyse cultural products in terms of their presumed explanations in the political economy. An explosion followed in which everything was deconstructed. But what is this exercise? It seems to me the core of it is to assert the absence of absolute aesthetics, to insist that we have to explain how particular cultural products were produced, when they were produced and why in that form, and then to proceed to ask how they were and are being received by others and for what reasons. We are clearly involved here in a very complex activity, one in which equilibria (canons) are at best transient and one in which there can be no determinate future, since the aleatory elements are too vast. In the process, the study of cultural products has moved away from the traditional terrain of the humanities and onto the terrain of the social sciences, the explanation of reality as a constructed reality. This is of course one of the reasons why so many social scientists have been receptive to it. The move of natural scientists towards the social sciences (complexity studies) and the move of scholars in the humanities toward the social sciences (cultural studies) have not been without opposition within the natural sciences and within the humanities. The opposition has in fact been ferocious, but it seems to me that it has been largely a rearguard operation. Nor have the proponents of complexity studies or the proponents of cultural studies defined themselves as moving into the camp of the social sciences. Nor have all (or even most) social scientists analysed the situation in this way. But it is time that we call a spade a spade. We are in the process of overcoming the two cultures via the social scientisation of all knowledge, by the recognition that reality is a constructed reality, and that the purpose of scientific/philosophical activity is to arrive at usable, plausible interpretations of that reality, interpretations that will inevitably be transitory but nonethe~ less correct, or more correct, for their time, than alternative interpretations. But, if reality is a constructed reality, the constructors are the actors in the real world, and not the scholars. The role of the scholars is not to construct reality but to figure out how it has been constructed, and to test the multiple

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social constructions of reality against each other. In a sense, this is a game of never~ending mirrors. We seek to discover the reality on the basis of which we have constructed reality. And when we find this, we seek to understand how this underlying reality has in tum been socially constructed. In this naviga~ tion amidst the mirrors, there are however more correct and less correct scholarly analyses. Those scholarly analyses that are more correct are more socially useful in that they aid the world to construct a substantively more rational reality. Hence the search for truth and the search for goodness are inextricably linked the one to the other. We are all involved, and involved simultaneously, in both. In his latest book, Ilya Prigogine says two things very simply. 'The possible is richer than the reaL Nature presents us in effect with the image of creation, of the unforeseeable, of novelty.' And 'science is a dialogue with nature' (Prigogine 1996: 83, 177). I should like to take these two themes as the basis of my concluding remarks. The possible is richer than the real. Who should know this better than social scientists? Why are we so afraid of discussing the possible, of analysing the possible, or exploring the possible? Wemustmovenot utopias, bututopistics, to the centre of social science. Utopistics is the analysis of possible utopias, their limitations, and the constraints on achieving them. It is the analytic study of real historical alternatives in the present. It is the reconciliation of the search for truth and the search for goodness. Utopistics represents a continu~ ing responsibility of social scientists. But it represents a particularly urgent task when the range of choice is greatest. When is this? Precisely when the historical social system of which we are a part is furthest from equilibrium, when the fluctuations are greatest, when the bifurcations are nearest, when small input has great output. This is the moment in which we are now living and shall be living for the next 25-50 years.} If we are to be serious about utopistcs, we must stop fighting about non~ issues, and the foremost of these non~issues is determinism versus free will, or structure versus agency, or global versus local, or macro versus micro. It seems to me that what we can now see clearly is that these antinomies are not a matter of correctness, or even of preference, but of timing and depth of perspective. For very long and very short time spans, and from very deep and very shallow perspectives, things seem to be determined, but for the vast intermediate zone things seem to be a matter of free will. We can always shift our viewing angle to obtain the evidence of determinism or free will that we want. 3

I have no place to argue this here but I have articulated this elsewhere (see Wallerstein

1995).

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But what does it mean to say that something is determined? In the realm of theology, I can understand it. It means we believe that there is an omnipo~ tent god, and that he has determined everything. Even there, we get quickly into trouble as I have suggested. But at least, as Aristotle would have put it, we are dealing with an efficient cause. But if I say that the possibility of reducing unemployment in Europe in the next 10 years is determined, who or what is doing this determining, and how far back shall I trace it? Even if you were to convince me that this had some analytical meaning (and that would be difficult) does it have any practical relevance? But does it follow then that it is merely a matter of free will, and that, were Dutch or German or French politicians, or entrepreneurs, or trade~llllion leaders, or someone to do specific things, I could then assure you that unemployment would in fact be re~ duced? Even if they, or I, knew what these things were, or believed we knew, what would motivate us to do them now when we did not do them previ~ ously? And if there were an answer to this, does that mean that our free will is determined by something prior? And if so, what? This is an endless, point~ less, sequential chain. Starting with free will, we end up with determinism, and starting with determinism, we end up with free will. Can we not approach this another way? Let us agree that we are trying to make sense of the complexity, to 'interpret' it usefully and plausibly. We could start with the simple task oflocating seeming regularities. We could also try provisionally to assess the relative strength ofvarious constraints on individual and collective action. This task we might call locating structures of the longue duree. I call this a simple task, but of course it is not at all an easy task. It is simple rather in the sense that it explains little, and also in the sense that it is a prior task, prior, that is, to other more complex tasks. If we do not have the structures clearly in mind, we cannot go on to analyse anything more com~ plex, like for example so~called microhistories, or texts, or voting patterns. Analysing structures does not limit whatever agency exists. Indeed, it is only when we have mastered the structures, yes, have invented 'master narratives' that are plausible, relevant, and provisionally valid, that we can begin to exercise the kind of judgement that is implied by the concept of agency. Otherwise, our so~called agency is blind, and if blind it is manipu~ lated, if not directly then indirectly. We are watching the figures in Plato's cave, and we are thinking that we can affect them. This brings me to Prigogine's second apothegm: 'Science is a dialogue with nature.' A dialogue has tvvo partners. Who are they in this case? Is science a scientist or the community of scientists or some particular scientific organisation(s) or is it everyman insofar as he or she is a thinking being? Is nature a living entity, some sort of pantheistic god, or God omnipotent? I do

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not think we know for sure who is engaged in this dialogue. The search for the partners in the dialogue is part of the dialogue itself. What we must hold constant is the possibility of knowing more and of doing better. This remains only a possibility, but not an unattainable one. And the begirming of realising that possibility is ceasing to debate the false issues of the past erected to distract us from more fruitful paths. Science is at its very earliest moments. All knowledge is social knowledge. And social science lays claim to being the locus of self~reflection of knowledge, a claim it makes neither against philoso~ phy nor against the natural sciences, but at one with them. Much as I think that the next 25-50 years will be terrible ones in terms of human social relations-the period of disintegration of our existing historical social system and of transition toward an uncertain altemative-I also think that the next 25-50 years will be exceptionally exciting ones in the world of knowledge. The systemic crisis will force social reflection. I see the possibility of definitively ending the divorce between science and philosophy, and as I have stated above, I see social science as the inevitable ground of a reunited world of knowledge. We cannot know what that will produce. But I can only think, as did Wordsworth about the French Revolution in The Preludes: 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive./ But to be young was very Heaven!'

References Ekeland, Ivar, Mathematics and the Unexpected, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,

1988. Hahn, Roger, 'Laplace as a Newtonian Scientist', Paper presented to the Seminar of the Newtonian Influence, University of California, Los Angeles, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 8 April, 1967. Koyre, Alexander, From the Closed \X0r1d to the Infinite Universe, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore,1957. Prigogine, Ilya, in Odile Jacob (ed.), La fin des certitudes, Paris, 1996. Wallerstein, Immanuel, Open the Social Sciences; Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1995. - - - , 'Peace, Stability, and Legitimacy, 1990-2025/2050', in After Liberalism, New Press, New York, 1995. - - - , 'History in Search of Science', Review, 1996, (Winter), 19(1).

2

The Captive Mind and Creative Development!

~------------------

Syed Hussein Alatas What is a captive mind? Confining ourselves to the Asian context for conve~ nience, a captive mind possesses the following characteristics: A captive mind is the product of higher institutions of learning, either at home or abroad, whose way of thinking is dominated by Western thought in an imitative and uncritical manner. A captive mind is uncreative and incapable of raising original problems. It is incapable of devising an analytical method independent of current stereotypes. It is incapable of separating the particular from the universal in science and thereby properly adapting the universally valid corpus of scientific knowledge to the particular local situation. It is fragmented in outlook. It is alienated from the major issues of society. It is alienated from its O\VTl. national tradition, if it exists, in the field of its intellectual pursuit. It is unconscious of its O\VTl. captivity and the conditioning factors making it what it is. It is not amenable to an adequate quantitative analysis but it can be studied by empirical observation. It is a result of the Western dominance over the rest of the world.

Each of these characteristics can be the subject of an exhaustive study; they are not exhaustive and further research may increase their numbers. For our purpose it is sufficient to identify the subject of discourse. Due to the passion This paper was first published by the International Social Science Journal (ISSJ) , Vol. 26 (4), 1974. Volume 24(1), 1972, of ISSJ was devoted to 'Development Studies' and contained an article by the present author on 'The Captive Mind in Development Studies'. Here, S.H. Alatas enlarges on this question. 1

84 Syed Hussein Alatas for generalisation, the suggestion has been offered in the course of discussion of my earlier papers on the theme, that the phenomenon of the captive mind is also found in the West. I replied that this was not so. No doubt we can find uncreative, imitative, fragmented and alienated minds everywhere but they are not identical with what is discussed here and which we hope to introduce into the conceptual apparatus of the kind of social science that should tackle the problems of Asian societies and the rest of the developing world. Where in Western civilisation do we come across even a single mind trained entirely in the sciences from the Orient, reading books from the Orient by Oriental authors, going to a university run along an Oriental tradi~ tion, taught predominantly by Oriental teachers, directly or indirectly by means of their books, dependent on libraries overwhelmingly stocked with Oriental books, using an Oriental language for higher study? The counter~ part of the captive mind does not exist in the West. Should they exist, the problems selected for attention at home would be determined by influences from the Orient. The hypothetical captive mind in the West would be more familiar with Oriental history than his own. Yet even those Europeans who adopt Oriental cults or philosophy do so in an original manner. They select that portion of the Oriental belief system which suits their purpose. They do not transfer whole institutions to their societies. There is hardly a European Hindu, Buddhist or Moslem whose thinking on Euro~ pean day~to~day issues is predominantly Asianised. When it comes to matters of science, politics, plarming, education, economics and so forth, his thinking is completely European as far as the fundamental categories of thought are concerned. That is to say, he remains an autonomous intellectual personality. Once again, let me stress the fact that a captive mind is not merely an uncritical and imitative mind. It is an uncritical and imitative mind dominated by an external source, whose thinking is deflected from an independent perspective. To clarify this we shall have to offer concrete illustrations. The imitativeness of the captive mind and its uncritical approach operate the definite levels of thought. First let us distinguish between two type of imitation, the constructive and the negative. Let us assume that an Asian student studies the method and organisation of taxation in the West. \X1hen he returns, he discovers that the situations differ. He realises that it is very difficult to collect taxes from far~flungvillages with inadequate administrative facilities. Thus he becomes critical of the method of tax collection he was taught. But his critical awareness does not extend to the fundamentals of taxation. He does not ask whether tax deductions should be allowed only for the wife and children. Should it not be allowed also for parents if they are supported by the taxpayer? The Asian system of values enjoins maintaining your parents. Asia

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has no social security system that enables parents who are no longer working to obtain financial support. If our Asian student, returning from abroad, sets about to devise a taxation system in harrnonywith his own cultural tradition and the dictates of the local situation, involving a reappraisal of the current taxation system in its fundamentals, then we shall consider him an independent, not a captive mind. The captive mind is found in all fields of knowledge, but I shall confine myself here to the social sciences and the humanities. Take history. A scholar of history assimilates the modem techniques of historiography developed in the West. These techniques possess general, universal validity. If a European historian gets his facts wrong on Asian history, our captive Asian historian is able to correct him. But what he cannot do is to reappraise the fundamental presuppositions of historical interpretations. One instance I have in mind concerns Southeast Asian history. It is the general view that, no matter what negative effects Western colonialism had on Southeast Asia, it introduced modem science and technology to the area. A historian with a captive mind does not challenge this presupposition. He takes it as axiomatic. However, my own research into the history and sociology of colonialism in SoutheastAsia revealed that colonialism was a retarding factor in the assimilation of modem science and technology from the West. Details of this are discussed in a forthcoming publication. 2 The assimilation through imitation of technology and scientific proce~ dures and knowledge valid for the development of Asian society can be highly constructive. Imitation saves time and energy. No society can develop by inventing everything on its own. When something is found effective and useful, it is desirable that it should be adopted and assimilated, whether it be an artifact or an attitude of mind. Constructive imitation is a feature of social life. It is characterised by the following: (a) it is based on a conscious and rational choice; (b) it supports existing and sound values; (c) it considers the problems, if any, surrounding the adoption of the innovation; (d) its non~ adoption would be inhibiting to society; (e) it increases the understanding of phenomena surrounding the innovation; if) it does not disrupt other aspects of social life considered more valuable; (g) it does not create great strains detrimental to the purpose of the undertaking; (h) it enters the collective value system in the sense that it is recognised as valuable by large groups of people; and (i) it is not the effect of manipulation by external groups moti~ vated by their own interests to the detriment of the adopter.

l

Alatas S. H., The Myth of the LazY Native (forthcoming).

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Syed Hussein Alatas

The concept of the captive mind as one dominated by negative imitation, that is imitation which exhibits the opposite characteristics, is neither political nor ideological but phenomenological. An Asian may adopt commllllism but as a communist he can be a captive mind or an independent mind. Ifhe is independent he will adapt communist philosophy to the Asian setting, extri~ catingwhat is culturally Western from the general philosophical components of communism. The same may be said of those who uphold the liberal~ capitalist philosophy. Similarly an Asian who is vehemently opposed to colo~ nialism may yet be a captive mind. What defines the captive mind is the state of intellectual bondage and dependence on an external group through the operation of media such as books, institutions, the radio, the press, television, conferences and meetings. The empirical manifestations of the captive mind are too numerous to set down. They are not subject to quantitative analysis. If three copies of a given book are sold, we carmot know exactly how each reader reacts. We can hardly ask him whether he is an uncritical, imitative reader, and we are prevented from conducting a survey on captive minds. Who wishes to be regarded as a captive mind? The best we can do is to observe its empirical manifestations. At the undergraduate, and even at more advanced levels, the phenom~ enon of the captive mind is real and pervasive. The great problem for devel~ oping societies is that graduates do not function properly in their own societ~ ies. They are not able to translate into their context of values the social sciences and humanities they have studied. Students of political science, for instance, are taught that the freedom of the press is an essential feature of democracy. This is so in Western democracy, but is not the case in Malaysia. Yet it is difficult not to classify Malaysia as a democracy because it conducts elections. Yet the press in Malaysia is controlled through a system of annual renewal oflicences to operate. A graduate who functions adequately should describe the system accurately, ifhe is called upon to do so by the nature of his work. Suppose he becomes a university lecturer, what will he say in class? The situation should force him to conceptualise the system, if he is aware of it. The fact is that many of our trained people do not arrive at such levels of awareness. Let me offer another illustration of the effect of the captive mind, this time in planning. In unemployment analysis, the Malaysian Government has, for the last 16 years, used only one type of unemployment figures for major planning purposes: that is, aggregate unemployment of residents, both male and female. Yet the employment figures of each sex should be presented separately, the reason being that male unemployment presents a more serious

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problem than female unemployment, especially between the ages of 16 and 24. This is due to the nature of the social system. When a woman is not employed, she depends on her family and assists it in household work. When a man is not employed, there is less absorptive capacity for him in household work. Hence we see significantly more unemployed men loitering around than women. The fact that household work can absorb fewer men than women poses a problem. Male unemployment tends to be more parasitic on the family. Fur~ thermore the women are most likely to get married before reaching the age of 24 and continue as housewives, whether employed or not. Men are not likely to get married if unemployed. That the man is the breadwinner is still a cherished value in Malaysian society. Hence male unemployment is more serious than female unemployment. Furthermore, upon marriage, it is the woman who stays at home to manage the household and care for the chil~ dren. Hence the exit of women from the labour force into the home is an important factor in the employment situation: it decreases the number of those urgently needing a job. At a given time it is therefore important for us to know whether more males or females are unemployed. If there are more males then the urgency for employment is greater. If there are more females then the urgency of employment is not as great, while that of marriage is. A government that does not plan on the basis of this differentiation urmecessar~ ily invites an additional difficulty. It blurs its own vision as to the differential gravity of the unemployment situation. We may note that the concept of employment can be further modified. There is no reason why we should not include unpaid labour such as that of housewives and students as employment. Implicitly the Malaysian Government excludes those in educational institutions from the unemployed category. Similarly convicts are not considered as belonging to the unem~ ployed. Yet they do not earn wages in the conventional sense. Nothing is more revealing of the influence of the captive mind than the inconsistency surrounding the use of the employment concept. In one instance non~wage earners are classified as unemployed (housewives), in another instance they are not so classified (students and convicts). A more genuine concept of unemployment should be based on the notion of unproductive and enforced dependence on others for livelihood. As opposed to this is the notion of productive and intended dependence, like that of a housewife. Wage earning need not be the criterion of employment but only of one major and significant type of employment. Hence if we extend the concept of employment along the lines suggested above, we shall obtain an entirely different picture. Farm help and shop assistants among family members,

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housewives, and even students and convicts would then not be considered unemployed. 3 As indicated earlier, a captive mind dealing with a problem may yet be critical at a certain level. In the case of unemployment he is taught by his foreign mentors to be critical of the figures and the problems around the organisation of the census. He does not go further than what he is taught. In other words his thinking is not inventive. He does not pose new problems and offer new solutions. It is this attitude, more than anything else, which ex~ plains why the overwhelming majority of the developing countries have not succeeded in narrowing the scientific and technological gap between them and the advanced industrial countries after more than half a century. I do not suggest this to be the only cause but in the matrix of causation it is an important segment. We can go on enumerating instances of the empirical manifestations of the captive mind. So pervasive is its influence that it is difficult to convince people even of its existence. It is one of those phenom~ ena which are likely to become obvious only to those who spend years in the region observing what is going on. I am afraid, that at this juncture, I cannot do more than to describe and conceptualise it, unsupported by a comprehen~ sive empirical study in the form of a book, the absence of which is indeed further proof of its prevalence. The problem of the captive mind has several dimensions which will not be discussed here. Amongst these are its origins in the interaction between the The Malaysian definition of employment is the following: 'A. person was considered to be employed if he had been gainfully at work on any day during the week previous to the survey, whether as a salaried employee, employer, own-account worker, or unpaid family worker.' The term 'gainfully at work' is understood as all activities covered in the estimates of gross national product.

3

Hence, house-work would not be included as gainful employment so that housewives, unless they had a secondary occupation or were actively looking for work, were regarded as outside the labour force, with labour force defined, in the conventional manner, as the total employed plus unemployed. Students too were regarded as outside the labour force unless they had a secondary occupation or were actively seeking employment. Sick persons and those on vacation were reported as employed if still on the payroll of the employer; so were those away from work during the reference period because of industrial action. (Report on Employment and Unemployment in Metropolitan Towns States of Malaya 1965: 1) How would this definition consider the convicts? They are not employed, not destitute, not seeking employment, and yet not unemployed for they are not part of the labour force. The Malaysian Government, and for that matter perhaps all Asian governments, do not know the number of wives in the country because the infonnation is not deemed significant.

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West and the Third World accompanying Western imperialism, the unaware ~ ness of the governing elites of the Third World regarding the problem, and the failure of the higher institutions oflearning in the Third World to generate its opposite, the creative mind. The higher institutions oflearning in fact promote the increasing influence of the captive mind. This is further aggra~ vated by circumstances surrounding the universities in the Third World. We shall restrict our discussion here to Asia. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked the beginning of general modernisation in Asia, a crucial problem of which is the discrepancy between ideal and reality. In university education this discrepancy has taken an alarming tum. In numerous universities and higher institutions of learning in some Asian countries the discrepancy between ideal and reality is such that it takes the form of corruption and decadence. The discrepancy here is not merely in the realm of intellectual and professional attainment but also in the realm of ethics and morality. To such universities students are admitted on the basis of bribery. Different faculties have different prices. Examination results can be influenced through corruption. Parents are given to staff members. Students with powerful parental backgrounds exert a dominating influence on staff members. This state of affairs affects an entire generation of students in at least one Southeast Asian country I know of. In the face of such problems one is stimulated to renew interest in the mission of the university. It has been generally recognised that the mission of the university is to provide trained manpower for the country's need, to extend the intellectual depth and horizon of successive generations, and to ensure maximum, all~round personality development. However, in the developing societies the mission of the university must also include the moral and intellectual reform of the society which sustains the university. In the West the modernisation of the university took place as part and parcel of overall modernisation. Many creative personalities and inventors were not university teachers. The initial modernisation process of Western society was not very dependent on the university. The case is different in developing societies. Dependence on the university is far greater. Hence the university should not be considered in isolation from the other essential con~ ditions of modernisation and progress to be found in the society of which it forms a part. To date, interest in university development has primarily been focused on growth problems and structural educational planning. The con~ tent of university courses has received less attention. By content is meant what actually transpires in classes, not just the name of the course printed in the syllabus. The content of courses can be a serious problem if insufficient

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attention is given to it. It can breed a dysfunctional generation of graduates, especially in the social sciences and humanities. If courses are not closely related to the problems and mentality of the surrounding society, the role of the university degenerates to that of a status factory. As the universities develop more and more into centres of professional training or status factories, the likelihood of detecting the captive mind diminishes. The universities are too busy with other problems. Furthermore the universities themselves are captive in outlook. There is not a single uni~ versity in Asia that realises the need to introduce a special course on captive thinking in the sciences to make students aware of the need to adapt the sciences which they imbibe from Western sources. What happens is the mere transplantation of thought. 4 Again I do not mean here a simple adaptation of techniques and methodologies but of the conceptual apparatus, systems of analysis, and selection ofproblems.5 ].P. Singh Uberoi, of Delhi University, expressed his concern over the

problem as follows (1968: 11): The aim and method of science are no doubt uniform throughout the world but the problem of science in relation to society is not. The problem or problems of science in a rich, technologically satiated society are different from, even opposed to, its problems in a society of poverty lately liberated from colonial bondage. The two sets of problems and two situations cannot, without serious falsification, be placed upon a single continuum. It is scientism and not science which conceives of them along the single line of unilinear evolutionism. Our understanding of the proper content of science, its prob~ lems and its priorities in relation to a specific society will depend on our attitude toward this question.

Theoretically this is readily enough accepted but there is little practical follow~up. A great number of Asian scholars are imitative in their approach and problem selection. To write about Asia does not mean writing with an Asian approach. What is the Asian approach in the social sciences? It is tackling Asian society in a social scientific maImer around specifically Asian problems and developing concepts and methods suitable to the occasion. We shall again have recourse to empirical illustrations. Two years ago I read out a page from a research paper on education and national development in class. I was talking about Singapore. Not one of my students suspected that I was reading an article by an Indian or India. I simply substituted for the word 'India' the word 'Singapore' and the whole material ~ 5

Significant aspects of this problem are discussed in Ralph Pieris (1969). For further discussion around this theme (see Syed Hussein Alatas 1972).

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was suddenly equally valid for Singapore. The habit of using general concepts such as 'modern', 'achievement', 'goals" 'planning' and so forth has given birth to a body of scholars' literature (I refrain from using 'scholarly') comparable to Diner's Club cards. They can be used everywhere. It is the preoccupation of the captive mind to indulge in the use of such imported concepts without a proper and meaningful linkage to the objective situation. Another great problem of the captive mind is that it is not able to differen~ tiate the universal from the particular; it subsumes both under the universal. When a captive mind studies the sciences from the West, phenomena which are distinctly Western are often considered to be universal. This is a trend which, for lack of better terms, I would suggest we call 'methodological imperialism'. It assumes that what is good in one place is good in another also and what is valid in one is valid in another. Further it is expected that other parts of the world develop in the same manner as the modem Western world. For instance, in the case of urbanisation, it is suggested that all the non~ Western world will pass through the same stages and phases of urbanisation as those experienced in the Western world. If the people of a certain city have time for entertainment and hospitality, if they do not rush from bus to bus, this means they are not yet very 'urbanised'. When they attain New York's stage of urbanisation, then they will exhibit the characteristics of New Yorkers. It is a matter of time and stages. This reasoning is not only confined to urbanisation, but it is broadly ap~ plied to other areas, such as economic development, or religious life. There is a tendency in modem urbanised Western society for people to lose their sense of the sacred increasingly. Since the religious sentiment of the sacred is alleged to be gradually losing ground, therefore, it is argued, sooner or later, the non~Western world will also forget its religions. When they have developed in the industrial sense as the West did, they will also, thanks to the introduction of modem science and technology, disintegrate religiously. The development of the non~Western world is considered as parallel to that of the West. The captive mind does not consider another possible alternative, that is, methodological non~alignment. One can, after all, choose one's own problems independently, develop methodology according to local needs, with· out being dictated to by external forces. Owing to its indoctrination, the possessor of a captive mind is not able to assess critically whether the suggestion of parallel development is true. At home he will do research oriented towards the decline and destruction of traditional cultural elements because this orientation is popular abroad in the lands of the captors. That there is both survival and destruction of culture elements in each period is a generally valid proposition but its precise features

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depend on the context of each situation. Furthermore, a balanced outlook will pay attention also to the surviving elements. Each phenomenon must refer to its opposite. Thus, research on the generation gap in Asia must refer to inter~generation links. Is Asian society dominated by the gap or the links? What is the nature of each in Asia, assuming that the gap has been defined and established in the Asian context? Another instance of the operation of the captive mind is the notion of value~free social science. Many captive Asian political scientists believe that they should avoid using value~loaded terminologies in their discourse on the ground that this enhances the objectivity of their approach. This attitude is not the consequence of years of effort in studying the problem of value~ judgement but the result ofmere conditioning. They fail to sense the distinction between legitimate value~judgement and disguised partiality. An example of a legitimate value~judgement is Sarton's view on science and his motivation for writing the history of science. According to Sarton, apart from religious, political and economic imperialism, there is a subtler kind of imperialism derived from the notion that our ways are the best ways, our manners the finest manners, our taste the good taste (1947: vi-vii). Such a state of mind is hopeless. In the field of rationality and science, however, free from sentiment and from cant, some degree of objectivity is attainable, and there can be a consensus of opinion. It is for that very reason that science is the basis of unity and peace. There may come a time when such a consensus will be so evident and compelling that there will be no room lefi:, at least among good people, for injustice. Scientific truth can be checked, and when it has been checked and found to conform with reality, it is easy enough for every person of any nation to accept it without loss of face, and the acceptance can be continued as long as the truth itselfis not refuted by new facts. No basis is more certain and more secure upon which to establish the agreement of mankind and its unity. There have been, of course, discordant and hateful voices in every period not only in our own, but it is the rational and peaceful ones which have carried humanity forward. Though this book occasionally mentions evil men and describes evil deeds, it is very largely dedicated to the good men of the fourteenth century-saints and thinkers, men of science and men of peacethe very men who, being interested in truth above aught else, transcended their own parochial or national limitations and worked, consciously or not, for the whole of mankind. Here Sarton expresses his preference for the good, for the truth as a desir~ able objective. That is the kind of value to which science is inextricably tied. We promote the science of healing but not the science of torture despite the

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fact that the latter does exist. 6 Intrinsically science is associated with the good and the significant, although it can also be associated with the bad or the trivial. Amongst contemporary captive minds it is often associated with the trivial. The subject of study chosen by captive minds is often trivial owing to its fragmented nature. In political science captive minds avoided major problems in Asia, such as: what should be good government for Asia? Has Asian leadership succeeded or failed to initiate national progress, with the concepts of success, failure and progress appropriately defined? What is the effect of corruption on Asian society? What classes dominate in the countries of Asia? Why have the majority of the Asian countries remained backward after a quarter of a century of independence? What is the degree of criminal~ ity amongst Asian rulers? The last question would horrify those whose terminological choice is timid: they would be horrified by its value~loadedness. How can one speak of a 'criminal government' in an Asian country? The conventional terminology of political scientists admits of such expressions as 'conservative', 'inefficient', 'backward', and so forth but not 'criminal'. They were taught by their foreign mentors that it is not proper to use terms like 'criminal' to describe a govern~ ment. The root of all this is the unconsciousness of sophisticated value~ judgement and its related philosophical foundation. There are two possible criteria of value~judgement, the external and the internal. The external refers to a set of objective criteria as the basis of judgement. When we say a government is 'stable' we refer to a set of criteria independent of the nature of the government in question. Yet a government may consider itself to be unstable and if we accept this without reference to objective criteria we are judging on the basis of the internal criteria. Social scientists whose minds are captive unconsciously use both criteria uncritically and inconsistendy. To return to the political scientists, they would call the president of a country its president even though he acquired office through an unconstitu~ donal seizure of power, using the internal criteria of judgement even ifmost countries do not recognise the regime. I have no quarrel with them here. But 6 It is true that torture has been scientifically studied but it has not been promoted as a science with its attendant institutions and social approval. There is no university course on torture, no professor of torture, no journal of torture, no doctor of torture, no book advocating the practice of torture. The torture practised in some places was done often in secret. It did not have the status and prestige of a science. There is no academy of torture just as there is no academy of prostitution although prostitution may also be a craft deserving scientific attention. They are not given scientific status and development owing to our system of values. Hence what constitutes science at a given period is determined by our system of values.

94 Syed Hussein Alatas suppose the regime is corrupt and the law of the country considers corruption a crime. Are they now prepared to call it a 'criminal' regime? In their works they never talk about 'criminal' governments although criminal governments have been known to exist. The books on political science written by their mentors abroad at most talked about 'good' and 'bad' governments, not of 'criminal' governments. Hence, there is no place in their vocabulary for the words 'criminal government'. Captive minds are not able to create a new conceptual vocabulary. Thus we have a vocabulary describing types of gov~ ernments as democracy, autocracy, theocracy, and so forth. We should intro~ duce yet another term, ignocracy, the government by the ignorant. There are several ignocratic governments in the world. There is no reason why political scientists should not attempt to conceptualise it in demonstrably operational terms. So far I have exclusively concentrated on the description of the captive mind and related phenomena. As indicated earlier several dimensions of the problem are not treated here. A major dimension is the captive mind as an instrument of the reigning ideology. If we debunk the captive mind eventu~ ally we will have to reach its foundation, the ideology to which the scientific tradition of the captive mind is inextricably tied. For the moment our problem is, what can we do to prevent the proliferation of captive minds? How can foreign institutions contribute to solve this problem? Should students be sent abroad or study at home? There can be no general answer as it depends on the subject of study and the condition of the country. As to the problem of captivity it makes hardly any difference. The choice is one of being converted by the master abroad or by the disciple at home. Both operate as the recruiting agents of captivity. An Indian economist trained in Delhi is no less captive than one trained in London, if his Indian teachers and the surrounding intellectual infrastructure are captive to the Western metropolitan world oflearning. As I see it the problem is not to avoid the Western world oflearning but to assimilate it in a selective and constructive manner. The sciences have been developed in contemporary Western civilisation. The generally valid, universal aspects of these sciences have to be separated from their particular association with Western society. To take an example from psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex is a generally valid scientific concept but its incidence and manifestation differ in different societies. 7 Thus when an Asian student studies 7 The Oedipus complex as a psychological phenomenon exists and in some instances operates amongst a noticeable segment of the population. In Asian societies its incidence is rare, and its form also may differ. The mechanism of child rearing in Asia does not produce an Oedipal situation. The case of Iran reflects the rest of Asia. The fact

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Freudian psychoanalysis in Amsterdam he should adopt the following attitude: to learn psychoanalysis as a system; to understand its application to Western society; to distinguish critically the components of psychoanalysis, those which are universally valid and those which are derived from the cultural background of the West; to consider what aspects of psychoanalysis can be applied at home in Asia; to increase the conceptual and methodological repertoire of psychoanalysis based on the Asian setting as to make it at home and effective in Asia. Students should be consciously introduced into this way of thinking through courses specially designed for the purpose of promoting selective assimilation. These courses should deal with the problems of llllcritical imita~ tion as an aspect of the international movement of thought. They should be taught by people from different disciplines who are well versed in the prob~ lems of imitative thinking, who are familiar with the sociology of knowledge, and do not themselves have captive minds. They should be taught in a language suitable for a class composed of students from different disciplines. As to the level, offhand I would say the second and third years. Each class should be composed of students from the same broad grouping of the sci~ ences, such as medicine, the social sciences, the biological sciences, the physical sciences or the botanical sciences. The teachers are also to be se~ lected from these groupings. Which country should be responsible to furnish these courses? Should, for instance, Australia furnish these courses for Asian students in Australia, or should the Asian country from which the students come provide them? It is clear that the responsibility lies with the Asian countries themselves. If Aus~ tralian institutions take up the matter, it would be a generous gesture but it is certainly not their duty to concern themselves with the special problem of preventing Asian students from becoming uncritical, imitative, passive con~ sumers of knowledge. What can the Asian governments do for their students abroad? For those at home they can introduce university courses around the problem of the captive mind. For those abroad, their foreign missions can all combine to finance and sponsor a summer course of short duration with the assistance of the host government. The teachers must be carefully selected from a pool of emancipated scholars from Asia and the host country: books that the child is being taught by the mother that the father should be respected and feared not only prevents rivalry between son and father, but on the contrary precipitates the process of identification. Ai, a corollary, no preconditions exist in Iranian culture favouring Oedipal situations; when the male child is in his early teens, he is already fully identified with the father (Harutian Davidian 1973: 539).

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should be prepared on the subject. Journals should be published devoted to the phenomenon of the captive mind. As far as possible the works of non~ captive scholars should be disseminated in the campuses. To start with, a conference on the captive mind could be initiated. But all this would be of no avail if those who are responsible for planning and organising are themselves captive or captors. This brings us to the cOllllterpart of the captive mind-the captor mind. Who and what is the captor mind? The captor mind is the Western scholar or his Asian disciple who imparts knowledge through books or lectures in a manner which does not promote consciousness of the fundamentals of scientific thinking and reasoning. The main characteristics of the captor mind are that its presentation of the sci~ ences is not contextual, philosophical, relational, and inter~cultural. The captor mind does not necessarily become such by intention, just as the cap~ tive mind does not necessarily seek captivity consciously. They are the instru~ ments of a gigantic and imposing intellectual superstructure. When a captor mind teaches psychology, for instance, he does not use materials from non~Western cultures though these are extremely relevant to his theme. He is usually not interested in the philosophical foundation of psychology which would make his students appreciate the cultural biases of psychology. He is not interested in the problems of the non~Western world even from the point of view oflimited comparative reference. In the case of the Asian disciple, ifhe functions as the captor mind, he is at the same time a captive mind. A clear instance is an Asian teacher of political thought who teaches his Asian students the political thought of Ancient Greece and Rome, but not of China, India and the Islamic world, though this is extremely relevant to contemporary Asian society. The concept of the captive mind refers only to a segment of the entire mental make~up of the individual. It co~exists with different other elements. What are apparent manifestations of the captive mind may be a consciously designed conformity or docility adopted for motives of self interest. This may be most striking llllder oppressive, totalitarian regimes where it revolves around issues of llllquestionable importance to the regime, such as its political ideology or its position of power. Scholars and intellectuals may inhibit their originality if it comes into conflict with the regime, though they are not necessarily captive minds, but this does not reflect the situation of the great majority of the captive minds. 8This great majority is captive without being in the situation \X1hile admitting the operation of numerous conditions unfavourable to the development of creativity in science, the fact remains that the nature of the individual himself is partly to blame. The captive mind is greatly responsible for the prevalence of mediocrity

8

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97

where it is compelled by circumstances to suppress creativity and to exhibit instead conformity and docility. Even for the purpose of gratifying the 'powers ~ that~be), an emancipated mind can more effectively serve its own egoistic interests than a captive one. Aside from issues touching upon the political and ideological sensitivities of the rules in non~democratic regimes there is a vast range of issues where the emancipated mind can fully express its contributions. In various totalitar~ ian situations, there has been no lack of creative expression amongst scholars and scientists as long as they avoided conflict with the ruling power or ideol~ ogy. In many post~war Asian countries despite the absence of totalitarian regimes, the prevalence of captive minds has nevertheless been great. Even non~democratic Asian regimes do not prevent a social scientist from becoming creative in his field. In day~to~day affairs he may adopt the out~ ward trappings of conformity but this does not make it necessary for him to conform to the economic thought of his mentors in Oxford, Moscow or Ber~ keley, concerning issues which have no bearing on the ruling power in his country.9 As to my suggestion concerning the educational measures we can take to check the growth of the captive intellectual community, it should be weighed against various other factors. The two most important ones are the attitude of the ruling elites and the maintenance of a group of emancipated thinkers, sufficiently influential to direct attention and effort towards the reform of the captive minds. These two complementary conditions for a successful campaign against mental captivity are conspicuously lacking in the Third in science. Mediocrity appears to be the general characteristic in the Third World. The situation in the Middle East, discussed by Zahlan, is a reflection of the Third World. He said: 'The mediocre academic who is willing (and happy) to attribute the blame for his poor perfonnance to the system is a common phenomenon. Few indeed are those who are capable of extracting some advantage from the system and of achieving significant scientific results' (parentheses original) (Zahlan 1970: 15). 9 It is this inner captivity, arising from foreign conditioning among those who study abroad, which led to the alienation of interest from the problems of the graduate's or scholar's own country. A doctor specializes in a rich man's diseases. At home the poor man's intestinal, eye and bone diseases go unresearched. A chemist is educated to fit as a component in a team. A graduate student in an advanced country is educated to believe that certain activities are important and worthwhile, while others are not. Working in a large corporation on the servomechanism of a missile, or developing the electronics for anti-jamming devices to render guided missiles an effective weapon are worthy enough. Teaching in a small college or at a new university in a developing country is not perceived as an equally desirable occupation (Zahlan 1968: 306-7).

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World, which is at the present stage of its intellectual and scientific history in the era of the captive mind.

References Alatas, Syed Hussein, 'Some Problems of Asian Studies', in Modernisation and Social Change, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1972. - - - , The Myth of the LazY Native, Frank Cass London, (forthcoming). Davidian, Harutian, 'The Application of Some Basic Psychological Theories in the Iranian Cultural Context', International Social Science Journal, 1973, 25(4). Pieris, Ralph, 'The Implantation of Sociology in Asia', International Social Science Journal, 1969,21(3). Report on Employment and Unemployment in Metropolitan Towns States of Malaya 1965, Department of Statistics, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), 1965. Sarton, George, Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. 3, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1947. Uberoi, J.P. Singh, 'Science and Swarai', Contributions to Indian Sociology, new series, 1968, 2 December. Zahlan, A.B., 'Problems of Educational Manpower and Institutional Development', in Claire Nader and A.B. Zahlan (eds), Science and Technology in Developing Countries, Cambridge University Press, London, 1968. - - - , 'Science in the Arab Middle East', Minerva, 1970, 8(1).

3

The Call for Indigenisation Yogesh AtaP Social science growth in the Third World is to be seen in the context of the twin processes of decolonisation and development that are simultaneously in operation. Born together in the same historical moment, capitalism, colonialism, and social sciences arrived from the West and became implanted in those cOlllltries that became colonies of the Western powers. Academic colonialism, in fact went beyond the boundaries of political colonies; countries that managed to retain their political autonomy could not prevent the vicarious colonisation of their academia. The Westemisation/modemisation package had a much wider clientele. The relationship of Ide pendency, deference and servility' created and maintained through these processes is now under attack. Planners and policy~makers of the developing world are finding faults with the Western paradigm of development, and social scientists are articulating their dissatisfaction with Western theories and methodologies. There is a certain revolution of relevance. Development strategies are sloganising the need for endogenous development; social scientists are agonising about indigenisation. The question ofindigenisation has been discussed in several national and international meetings organised under different auspices. The movement began to gain momentum in the early 1970s when indigenous scholars from the Third World raised their voice against the implantation of social sciences perpetuating 'captivity' of mind; they were joined by a number of social scientists from Western countries sharing this concern. In Asia, the concern was most eloquently expressed at the first Asian Conference on Teaching and Research in Social Sciences, organised under UNESCO auspices in 1973 at Simla, India. Again, in a meeting on Interregional Cooperation in the

1 The author was the ISS] correspondent in Bangkok and UNESCO Regional Adviser for Social Sciences in Asia and the Pacific. This paper was published in the International Social Science1ournal, Vol. 33, No.1, 1981, pp. 189-97.

100 Yogesh Atal field of Social Sciences, organised by UNESCO in Paris in 1976, the participants underlined the fact that 90 per cent of the social scientists of the world came from the developed countries. To quote from the Report of the meeting (UNESCO 1977: 8): It is not merely the fact of a linkage that is noteworthy, but more so the fact that in the case of the developing regions, it is a relationship of dependency to put it in other words (repeatedly used at the meeting), it is a 'vertical' rela~ tionship between the donors and recipients, between patrons and clients Though practically all the Third World Countries are now politically inde~ pendent, 'selfrule' in the field of social sciences remains still to be achieved .. [The] numbers of indigenous social scientists have undoubtedly increased but they are more in contact with their Western colleagues than with their coun~ terparts in the Third World or, for that matter, even within their o\VTl. region; the question these social scientists ask, the paradigms and research techniques they employ, the vision they have of the future of their countries-all these are for the most part imported from the West, or at best adapted from the work of Western thinkers including social scientists. No wonder, then, that social sciences in the Third World are often judged to be irrelevant and the social scientists accused of being alienated from their societies (parentheses original).

The question of indigenisation was also taken up by the Conference of National Social Science Councils and analogous bodies (CNSSC), at its 1977 meeting. In 1978, the Wenner~Gren Foundation organised a Confer~ ence on indigenous anthropology. The Korean Social Science Research Collll~ cil convened a seminar to discuss 'Koreanisation of Western Approaches to Social Sciences' in early 1979. In September 1979, the Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils (MSSREC) organised in collaboration with CNSSC-now renamed International Federation of Social Science Organisations (IFSSO)-a special panel discussion during its Third Conference held in Manila. There is, thus, worldwide concern with this problem. This essay attempts to synthesise the major trends of thinking and articulate key concerns related to the call for indigenisation. The call for indigenisation of social sciences in Asia has not yet gone beyond the reactive phase. Since these reactions come from different sources, albeit all from the professional social scientists, they emphasise different as~ pects ofindigenisation. Even the definitional crisis has not yet been resolved: indigenisation means different things to different people. The social sciences in Asia and the Pacific are at different stages of development. Their introduction to individual countries was determined by their respective colonial masters. The period of their entry, the relative emphasis

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given to different disciplines, the 'external' orientation of the first generation of native social scientists, and the literature on the society and culture of these countries are all influenced by the colonial heritage. Even those countries that were not colonised politically have gone through a process of what may be called vicarious colonisation through which external influences permeated their societies and cultures. Under the colonial regime, a single~aperture model was in operation: influences from outside came largely through a single gateway, namely the metropolitan country. The postcolonial phase saw an attempt to establish a multi~aperture model: while not fully closing the previous aperture, a con~ scious effort was made to be receptive to several sources of inspiration and influence. An effort to break the links with the former coloniser and yet not to become completely insulated from the outside was then attempted. An essential ingredient of the process of decolonisation is the emphasis on endogeniety and on acceleration of the pace of development in the direction supposedly determined by the national government. In some countries this process of decolonisation started long before the attainment of indepen~ dence, in others it began much later, even after independence. This differ~ ence notwithstanding, all of them display a certain degree of ambivalence towards their former rulers. Such a love~hate relationship is to be noticed even in the case of the social sciences. While the need for the upgrading of social scientists and the improvement of the quality of social science is recognised, the former colonies have at~ tempted to locate overseas academic capitals, mainly in the English~speaking world. Such a transition was easier for those countries who had English~ speaking rulers; for others, this posed problems, particularly of communica~ tion. The initiation of the development era attracted foreign experts, both as part of'aid' packages and scholars interested in the study of directed change in societies other than their own. This put an end to the monopoly enjoyed by the social anthropologists who were previously alone among social scientists in specialising in the study of'other cultures'. At the political level, the decolonisation process was spelt out as the pro~ cess oflocalisation ornativisation. It is this sense in which Jawaharlal Nehru, and his compatriots, for example, raised the slogan for Indianisation during the freedom struggle. At present, such demands are most vociferously made by the small island nations of the Pacific. Although they have attained independence, their services are mostly maImed by outsiders, generally coming from a single country. As a part of their localisation drive they have started putting severe restrictions on expatriate research; they do not wish to remain subjects of study, like museum specimens. Rather than being portrayed by an

102 Yogesh Atal outsider, they would prefer their own scholars to provide an insider's view of the reality. Instead of encouraging research on esoteric aspects of their cul~ ture by outsiders, they would prefer a systematic investigation of relevant problems that are assigned priority by themselves. The evaluation of proposals for research submitted by expatriates is now being made by many Asian countries and is regarded by them as a necessary step towards promotion of 'relevant research'. Thus, at the political level, indigenisation stands for localisation, control and monitoring of expatriate research, and promotion of research on relevant themes. Academics have also joined the chorus in favour ofindigenisation. In its extreme formulation the demand appears almost like a revolt against the dominance of Western concepts, theories and methodologies, which are de~ cried as 'unsuitable' and 'irrelevant' in the Asian context. They criticise, on the one hand, the quality of work done by foreigners on their societies, and,

on the other, the blind imitation of foreign models by local scholars who have been trained abroad. It is argued that there is considerable distortion of facts and misrepresentation of reality in the writings of outsiders: seeing it with a different cultural lens, they are unable to go beyond the surface and detect deeper meanings. Worse still, political and ideological motivations are im~ puted to foreign scholars-as promoters of a homogenising, convergence model, as practitioners of some kind of 'Project Camelot', as maintenance engineers of a superordinate/subordinate relationship. Western social science is viewed by some as a kind of octopus. Severe criticism of 'borrowed con~ sciousness' is to be found in the writings of those social scientists who have attempted forcefully to articulate the demand for indigenisation. In a 1968 symposium on 'The Relevance of Social Sciences in Contempo~ rary Asia' (organised by the World Student Christian Federation), several speakers dwelt on this theme. For example, Kikuo Yamaoka Oapan) (1968: 4) remarked: We Asian scholars have done little more than import the several social sci~ ences directly from the West, and use them to prepare and deliver our lec~ tures, but have failed to give birth to creative theories designed for, and derived from, Asian realities.

In much stronger language, c.T. Kurien (India) (1968: 17-18) declared: We are neither Asian nor scientists. Our knowledge about the problems of our o\VTl. societies is largely bookish, and the books that we read are mainly from the West. ... We are beggars, all of us-we sneak under many an aca~ demic table to gather the crumbs under them. And we mix these bits and make a hash which we pretend to relish, but which we can hardly digest. We

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have hardly made a contribution to academic cuisine, and have thought it impossible to prepare a dish of our O\VTl., with a recipe we have made, using ingredients we have. Suggesting that an uncritical acceptance of the 'traditional social sciences which have been developed as part of the totality ofleaming in the West' is

not desirable, A.c. Espiritu (Philippines) (1968: 43) had this to say: It is of the highest priority that the teachers and practitioners in the social sciences in Asia emancipate themselves from the value bias of western con~ cepts and postulates of reasoning .... Asian social scientists should undergo a truly creative engagement with their o\VTl. culture and society, making use, in the process, of frameworks that provide standards of relevance to the experi~ ence and aspirations of their own people.

John Samy (Fiji) (1978: 30), speaking about the need of Pacific nations boldly asserted: We need, amongst other things, a relevant social science with appropriate analytical tools, in order to articulate and transform the 'Pacific way' into a reality in this rapidly changing and shrinking world. Quite clearly, this is a task not for anyone single person, academic, or discipline, and least, if at all, for foreign social scientists.

In his Keynote address to the tenth World Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (1978), S.c. Dube (1979: 6) castigated Third World anthropologists for not playing a more decisive role of emiching 'the disci~ pline with the articulation of a grassroots consciousness'. He observed: Some of the self~proclaimed leaders of the profession in these countries have not been able to decolonize their minds either in respect of theory and method or in the choice of themes for research and analytical treatment. They have failed to assert their individuality and autonomy. High prestige centres of learning continue to provide them their academic stimulation and models. Their intellectual styles continue to be imitative. The fa~ade of international science hides their interaction only with the select in a charmed circle .... This false notion of internationalism turns them into a highly alienated group. The new consciousness of the Third World can find only a distorted reflection in the products of their prodigious research industry. Their lopsided values result in cultivation of conceptual trivia to the neglect of purposive research on the vital and live issues of the day .... A curious aspect of international social science is that some operators of little academic worth, who are the subject of endless private jokes and a favourite theme of discussion at cocktail parties, can get catapulated to dizzy heights. It is tragic that the Third World

104 Yogesh Atal should see itself largely through western eyes .... And of course, anthropolo~ gists of the Third World do not address themselves to the people they study. Writing in a foreign language they communicate only with their profession.

Another anthropologist, P. L. Bennagen (1977: 48) of the Philippines, emphasises the need to smash an anachronistic mirror as a much delayed celebration of the death of old~type colonialism, the decisive historical condition which accelerated the growth of anthropology as a discipline. It is to speak of a new responsibilitythat of natives constructing their O\VTl. mirror to reflect new realities.

Apart from the criticism of the outward~oriented academic elite by the mem~ bers of that very class which has become increasingly disenchanted by the lure of the West, there is also a demand made by the non~elite in the profes~ sion: the less~known practitioners of the discipline, and also the students. Because of their location on the periphery, and because of their lack of competence in communication through an alien language, the larger group of teachers feel deprived and regard themselves victims of the conspiracy of the country's academic elite. Their attitude towards indigenisation is less articulate and quite ambivalent. In stronger terms they ask for literature in the native language; at the same time, they doubt the intentions of the vociferous advocates of indigenisation. Aren't these the very people who have reaped the benefits of outside exposure and become part of an intema~ tional caucus? What have they themselves done to indigenise the social sciences, besides noise~making? Is not the advocacy of indigenisation just a posture for keeping the non~elite in the country insulated from the outside, but keeping themselves in the international circuit? Is not the following hidden curriculum of the campaign for indigenisation: 'Let those who are ignorant of Western social science remain so and thus ill~trained; let us, who know, continue the contact and earn more recognition by assuming a critical posture and performing the role of spokesmen for the underdog'? It is my feeling that the demand for indigenisation is not yet fully regionalised, nor is it possible. It is largely raised in the national and the disciplinary contexts. Countries that are relative late~comers to the social science field are not in a position to make such a demand; the preconditions for it do not exist. They are still in the phase ofintrooucing the social sciences, and they have to depend for it on centres of excellence located elsewhere. Even the change of reference groups from the West to those countries in the region that have a well~developed social science enterprise will not serve the

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cause of indigenisation; after all, they too are outsiders. In the late~comer countries, books, the faculty and other material support are still sought from outside; there has been very little 'application' of social sciences to cause dissatisfaction with them. The only demand to emerge is for literature in the national language chosen as the medium of instruction. But even this de~ mand does not exist in the small nations of the Pacific which have opted for an intemationallanguage as their medium ofinstruction. The countries that had the advantage of an early start and thus have more than three genera~ tions of social scientists are the ones where the call for indigenisation has been the strongest, and on several counts: localisation, language shift, paradigm replacement, return to native categories of thought, glorification of tradition, and condemnation of foreign academic colonialism. Proponents ofindigenisation are aware of the dangers of a mere rhetoric of counter~attack. They do not wish to appear as 'courageous natives talking back to alien masters', or as chauvinists. Some of the positive aspects of indigenisation being emphasised by its exponents are: 1. Indigenisation is a plea for self~awareness and rejection of a borrowed consciousness. It emphasises the need for an inside view. Its proponents wish to stimulate such scholarly endeavour so as to promote thoughtful analysis of their own societies to replace the existing trend of knowing these via the West. 2. Indigenisation advocates the desirability for alternative perspectives on human societies with a view to making the social sciences less parochial and enriching them. This would, it is believed, emancipate the mind and improve the quality of professional praxis, so that society can be examined through new lenses. 3. Indigenisation draws attention to historical and cultural specificities and argues for the redefinition of focus, with a view to developing dynamic perspectives on national problems. 4. Indigenisation should not lead to narrow parochialism, or to the fragmen~ tation of a single discipline into several insulated systems of thought based on geographical boundaries. It is opposed not only to false universalism but also to false nationalism. Reduced to the level of national narcissism, indigenisation would be rendered futile.

In his article, 'Indigenisation and Transnational Co~operation in the Social Sciences', Krishna Kumar (1979) differentiates between three types of indigenisation: structural, substantive and theoretical. To cite his definitions: (a) 'structural indigenisation can be defined with reference to the institutional and organisational capabilities of a nation for the production and diffusion of social science knowledge' (p. 104); (b) 'substantive indigenisation can be

106 Yogesh Atal conceptualised within the content focus of the social sciences. The essential premise is that the main thrust of these disciplines in a country should be on its own society, people and economic and political institutions' (p. 104); (c) 'theoretic indigenisation indicates a condition in which the social scientists of a nation are involved in constructing distinctive conceptual frameworks and metatheories which reflect their worldviews, social and cultural experience, and perceived goals' (p.lOS). Krishna Kumar does not regard structural and content indigenisation as problematic, and dwells at length on the problem of theoretic indigenisation and comes to the 'right' conclusion that it is not indigenisation but 'transnational co~operation) that ought to be encouraged (pp. 114-16). In doing so, he touches only one aspect of the dilemma. Although relayed in high accent, indigenisation invites thinking about a strategy to match the twin concerns of diffusion of a universal social science culture and the need for roots in different cultural settings. It is not without significance that in this debate the word 'indigenisation' is generally preferred to 'endogenous devel~ opment'. Taken literally, endogenous development signifies development generated from within and orthogenetically, which would, thus, have no place for any exogenous influence. In fact, it was in strong reaction to an externally produced and directed strategy of development that the slogan for endogenous development was coined; it is a different matter that so much outside interest continues to pervade endogenous development, making the newer slogan somewhat redundant. Indigenisation, by contrast, at least hon~ estly alludes to outside contact by emphasising the need for indigenising the exogenous elements to suit local requirements; whether this is done by the 'indigenous' or by 'outsiders' is a mere detail. It is also clear from current academic trends that the concern for indigenisation is spreading globally. It is not only the countries of the Third World that are talking about indigenisation, one can even find articles on 'Canadisation'! The concern for indigenisation among researchers from the developed world is received with a certain pinch of salt. This is how John Samy of Fiji reporting on the discussion on 'Theory and Methods' at the recent Young Nations Conference (Mamak and McCall 1978: 242-43) describes a familiar situation: The Conference received and entertained a barrage of attractive and emo~ tionally persuasive developmentalist jargon. Some of these words were local products while others were carefully inJigenized to suit the Pacific taste [italics supplied]. But even more importantly, much of the talking at the Conference was at cross~purposes, arising from a very sharp dichotomy between foreigners (that

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is, Australians, New Zealanders and other metropolitan researchers) and the locals (that is, Pacific Islanders, or the researched) Most of the so~called foreign or expatriate researchers ... wanted to know how their research could be of benefit to Pacific people. On the other hand, most Pacific Islanders, once they settled do\VTl., seemed to enjoy the privilege of being brought to Sydney to advise and guide the foreigners on relevant research. In the Asian context, indigenisation has been pursued along four fronts: (a) teaching in the national language and use oflocal materials; (b) research by insiders; (c) determination of research priorities; and (d) theoretical and methodological reorientation. A word on each is in order.

Teaching in the National Language and Use of Local Materials Several countries of the region are taking steps to introduce the national language as the medium of instruction at higher levels of learning; this is a logical second step after the introduction of the national language as a me~ dium of instruction at primary and secondary levels of education. In the case ofIndia, the problem is further compollllded by the fact that the constitution recognises 14 regional languages, and the various states are moving towards the adoption of regional languages for purposes of instruction. The implica~ tions of this policy on the growth of social sciences may be noted. In those countries where social sciences are a relatively recent implant, most teachers have been trained abroad and do not possess the competence to conduct classes in the national language. In countries with a longer social science tradition, faculties are broadly stratified between the senior professo~ riate, with linguistic competence in a foreign language only, middle~level faculty members possessing a good command over a foreign language, but also some competence in the national language, and younger facultymem~ bers with poor competence in a foreign language but facility in the national language. Such a situation creates a communication crisis. Students are deprived of the training that can only be provided by senior faculty, and receive instruction only from junior teachers who generally lack experience. Acceptance of a national language as the medium of instruction requires the production of literature in that language. Most of the books available in non~ Asian languages are beyond the comprehension of the majority of students

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now entering postgraduate departments. As they received their education in the vernacular language, they are at a disadvantage when asked to consult material or listen to lectures in a foreign language. They therefore demand books in the national language. But the demand for books in the vernacular cannot be fulfilled by the seniors who, though experts in the field, lack communication skills in the vernacular. This has given rise to a class of saviours. In terms of their authorship, the books produced in vernacular languages can be classified into the following five categories: (a) books of a tolerable scientific level but poorly written; (b) books whose scientific level is low, written in non~ technical language; (c) books that contain a fair balance betvveen language and content; (d) those that are simply bad-in content as well as in language; (e) books (very few) that are competently done, most of these being translations. As I have written elsewhere (AtaI1976: 138): It must be said that many of the so~called 'original' textbooks are at best examples of plagiarism. The craft of \VTiting a textbook has certain distin~ guishing features: the subject matter of these books is determined by the university syllabi; considerable distortion is introduced during the process of translation; mostly one foreign book is made the base and a vernacular ver~ sion is prepared in which footnotes are made a part of the text; the emphasis is laid more on definitions and quotations, and less on examples and illustra~ tions from the local setting. Produced cheaply, and in large quantities, these books, like bad money, keep good books out of circulation. Question~answer~ type essays, 'key's and 'an hour before the examination' series flood the market and the vulnerable student falls an easy prey to these allurements. The beneficiaries are mainly the publishers; the sufferer is social science. The damage done this way is beyond repair; after a habit of short~cut journeys a long and circuitous route of hard work cannot attract traffic. The existing system of examination, emphasising memorising, has fostered this tendency. Induction into social sciences through such a back door has had a telling effect on the teaching standards. It is the riff~raff social science that is taught and learnt in our colleges. Those centres which have stuck to English or any other foreign language have, in the process, become elite centres; a class~structure has thus emerged in the profession, where the elites are mostly alienated from the cultural context, and the non~elite are ill~prepared to respond to the new challenges.

The new generation of social scientists, because of their lack of competence in an intemationallanguage, are likely to remain unexposed to the recent developments in the discipline in other countries. Likewise, their own work will not reach foreign researchers and colleagues. Such an insulation will isolate the national social scientists from the world community. The same

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thing may happen within the country if regional (provincial) languages are made the medium of instruction. Senior faculty's continuous insistence on a foreign language, disregarding the reality of the switch~over to the national language, has already created a hiatus between faculty and students. The students disapprove of the dis~ crimination against them because of their inability to command a foreign language. They might argue that they cannot be held responsible for their lack of competence in the international language. It was not their fault that they studied in the national language; it was the government's decision. They naively complain that it is the fault of the social science faculty in neglecting the important and ramifying change in the educational system, initiated by the government's language policy. They should have responded to the change and been prepared to meet the new challenge. Students of change have, in a way, failed in their own field of specialisation.

Research by Insiders One significant step towards indigenisation taken by most countries is the promotion of research by the 'locals', and putting curbs on 'expatriate' re~ search. Several methodological problems concerning research by insiders versus outsiders have come to the fore. It may, however, be maintained that restricting outsiders' research has not always been guided by academic con~ siderations; political considerations have also prevented insiders from doing research on certain themes. Cases can be cited where governments allowed expatriates to carry out research on the most 'relevant' areas while insiders were not permitted to do research on those very themes. Curbs on the publi~ cation of research findings is yet another problem; while the foreign research~ ers enjoy relative freedom to collect material and publish the findings, the locals may never be allowed to do so.

The Question of Priorities One dimension of indigenisation is promotion of research on themes re~ garded nationally important and relevant. In the developing countries of Asia this revolution of relevances has pervaded all sectors. In planning activi~ ties, and in the allocation of resources, relevance is used as the key criterion. Priorities are attempted in terms of relevance. Both the introduction of social

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science teaching and the promotion of research are determined in accor~ dance with this criterion. However, this is not a simple matter. Although everybody seems to agree on the general principle of relevance, it has not been easy to identify its parameters. Not only do these differ from country to country, even within a country, it is hard to reach a consensus on them. Different political platforms provide different sets of priorities for national development. Depending on the nature of 'commitment' of social scientists, they may side with one or another political group. The problem is further compounded when research priorities are to be determined for a given social science discipline. The set~ ring up of priorities for a scientific discipline depends on a number of factors, both intrinsic to the discipline and within the external social and political milieu. The existing body of knowledge relative to society, available theoretical tools and methodological apparatus, availability of trained manpower, and an infrastructure of research, are the internal elements of the situation. To these may be added external factors, both social and ideological. Viewed in this light, one can easily locate the potential for value conflict. Thus, in the name ofindigenisation, different scholarly groups have tried to promote different sets of priorities. There are those who regard only indigenous categories of thought important and consider all imported theories and models irrelevant. There are others who dismiss all the work done so far, either by locals or by foreigners, because it is not in line with their mode of thinking (which may be their own or borrowed). Still others would like social scientists to do commit~ ted research and give up all claims to objectivity. One offshoot of this demand for indigenisation has been the undertaking of surveys of existing researches with a view to identifying, on the one hand, the least researched topics and ethnic groups and, on the other, taking an inventory of the theoretical and methodological contributions made by in~ digenous scholars. A review of such studies can reveal the extent to which indigenisation has actually been practised.

Theoretical and Methodological Reorientation This is happening at a much slower pace. While there is too much iconoclas~ tic talk about the 'domination' of alien models and theories and their inappropriateness, there is very little to commend by way of an acceptable alternative. Along with criticism of so~called 'capitalist', 'status quo' or 'West~ em' social science one may come across those who press the claims of Marxist

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alternatives. But such alternatives in the name of indigenisation are hardly justifiable. By being a 'more desirable' perspective Marxism does not shed its 'alien' character and become indigenous. Efforts are still needed to test the alleged universality of established theories and models in a variety of settings. It is not so much an alternative which is really needed if one is to pursue the goal of a universal science-and not the setting up of ' schools of thought', like sects, creating a priesthood and a blind following. Genuine efforts, which go beyond reactive rhapsodies, are rare. But some effort is being made. One can cite, as an example, the work of the well~known Pakistani economist, Mahbub-ul Haq, whose collection of essays in Poverty Curtain (1976) gives clear evidence of reconsideration of basic premises of a development para~ digm learnt at Harvard and Yale, and an attempt at reformulation of the strategy in the light of new facts. Though written in a somewhat belligerent style to attract attention and overcome resistance, Haq is constructive in his approach. He finds that the 'academic community in the Western world' which 'reacted in shocked disbelief because 'one ofits own products had suddenly gone berserk' has now accepted his formulations and premises. More work of this nature is perhaps needed.

Conclusion The concern shown for indigenisation has made it necessary to examine coolly and carefully all its implications. The demand for indigenisation is an invitation to re~examine the very structure of social sciences and to evolve suitable strategies for their promotion in the differing and challenging situations of modem times. Although the word has gained considerable currency, there appears to be a lack of consensus on its meaning and desirability. The thorny dilenrrna of lllliversality of science and specificities of cultures is the key issue; the demand for deparochialisation of Western social sciences perhaps sums up the current social science crisis. One also notices an alarming gap between profession and practice; most of those who have articulated their discontent with Western social science and have advocated indigenisation have not given proof of their seriousness by either discarding so~called Western theories, concepts and methods in their work or developing alternative models. The present phase seems still to be one of reaction and resistance. A need exists to distinguish carefully between indigenous and indigenised, between endogenous development and indigenisation, and between universalistic and particularistic aspects of

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indigenisation. It must also be recognised that different countries are at different stages of social science development and this determines the extent of their readiness to accept the 'ideology' ofindigenisation. The preconditions for the indigenisation of social sciences will have to be identified, for in their absence the call for indigenisation will have no real meaning. The preconditions will have to be determined at the individual, professional, institutional, national and regional levels. For this, it may be necessary to take the debate to national, provincial, and local forums of social scientists. Systematic survey of the social science literature generated in the developing countries may provide leads to the attempts made to indigenise disciplines and the problems encountered in such a pursuit.

References Alatas, Syed Hussein, 'The Captive Mind in Development Studies', ISS], 1972, 24(1). Atal, Yogesh, Social Sciences: The Indian Scene, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1916. Bennagen, Ponciano L., 'Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Are We Human After All?' in A.C. Carlos and A.R. Magno (eds), The Social Responsibilities of the Social Scientist as an Intellectual, Division of Social Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, 1977. Dube, S.C., 'A.nthropology and the Challenge of Development', Research Bulletin, (2) Association of Third World Anthropologists, Williamsburg, 1979. Espiritu, A. Cesar., 'The Limits of Applicability of Western Concepts, Values and Methods in the Social Sciences to the Concrete Realities of Asian Societies', The Relevance of the Social Sciences in Contemporary Asia, World Student Christian Federation, Tokyo, 1968. Hag, Mahbub-ul The POtJerty Curtain: Choices for the Third World, Columbia University Press, New York, 1976. Kumar, Krishna (ed.), Bonds Without Bondage, East-West Cultural Learning Institute, Honolulu, 1979. - - - , 'Indigenization and Transnational Cooperation in the Social Sciences', in Bonds Without Bondage, East-West Cultural Learning Institute, Honolulu, 1979. Kurien, Christopher T., 'Planning in Asian Countries: A Critique', The Relevance of the Social Sciences in Contemporary Asia, World Student Christian Federation, Tokyo, 1965. Know, T'ae-Hwan, 'Seminar on Koreanizing Western Approaches to Social Sciences', K""ajoumai. 1919,19(11). Mamak, Alexandar and Grant McCall, (eds), Paradise Postponed: Essays on Research and Development in the South Pacific, Pergamon Press, Rushcutters Bay, New South Wales, 1918.

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Samy, John, 'Development and Research for \X1hom? Towards a Critique of Economism in the Pacific, and Session on Theory and Methods', in Alexandra Mamak and Grant McCall (eds), Paradise Postponed: Essays on Research and Development in the South Pacific, Pergamon Press, Rushcutters Bay, NSW, 1978. UNESCO, Inter-Regional Co-operation in the Social Sciences, Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences, 36, Paris, 1977. Yamaoka, Kikuo, 'Introduction', The Relevance of the Social Sciences in Contemporary Asia, World Student Christian Federation, Tokyo, 1968.

4

Economic Theory and Development Practice: Stiglitz's Critique and the Sri Lankan Experience Saman Kelegama and Chris Rodrigo Introduction With the publication of Joseph Stiglitz's recent book Globalisation and its Discontents, an acrimonious debate has opened up in Washington and beyond on the competence of the IMP to set economic policy for developing countries, particularly in times of financial crisis. While the Bretton Woods institutions have been subject to a range of criticism over the last two decades, never before has anyone with such powerful intellectual credentials and insider

knowledge joined the battle on behalf of the world's

crisis~ridden nations.

Stiglitz was awarded a Nobel Prize in 200l for a lifetime's work on the implications of departures from the assumptions of the standard Arrow~ Debreau framework; in particular, the consequences of imperfect and incomplete information. Such departures are one of the many sources of market failure, which then provide the economic rationale for intervention by the public authority to redress market failure. In fact, Stiglitz is widely known throughout the world as the author of the best~selling book on the economics of the public sector. Stiglitz, however, is nota mere irmovative economic theorist. From 1993, he worked for seven years in Washington's highest echelons, formulating and implementing national and international policy. After being first drawn into President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, Stiglitz eventually be~ came its chairman. Here, he was actively involved in policy relating to Russia's transition to a market economy. In 1997 he became the chief economist of the World Bank, and was also involved in formulating measures relating to the East Asian financial crisis of1997-98. It was during his tenure as Chief Economist that Stiglitz's sharp conflicts with the policies of the IMF, and the

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'Washington Consensus' in general, burst out into the open in a series ofhard~ hitting speeches and articles over the 1997-2000 period. In the preface to Globalisation and its Discontents, he states that at the IMF decisions were made on 'the basis of what seemed a curious blend of ideology and bad economics, dogma that seemed to be thinly veiling special interests'. Stiglitz's involvement with development issues goes back much further to 1969 when he took up an academic posting in Kenya. He says that some of his most important theoretical work derives from this experience of ill~ functioning or absent markets. His knowledge of transitional economies dates from 1980 when he discussed with China's leaders the problems of moving towards a market economy. In this and subsequent transitions in Eastern Europe, he has been an advocate of gradualist' policies like those followed in China, as opposed to the 'shock therapy' approach that has failed so badly in Russia and elsewhere. Furthennore, his criticisms of the IMF are explicit and forthright, describ~ ing in detail-with names and dates-how the problems of developing coun~ tries in distress have been successively mismanaged. Stiglitz's indictment of the IMF echoes the sharp criticisms of the Bank and the Fund made by, with increasing frequency, other front~rank economists such as Jeffrey Sachs and Dani Rodrik, and the financier George Soros who has given away billions to promote economic renewal in depressed economies. Many other thoughtful analysts, who are not against capitalism as a system, charge that the IMF fails because it operates under the influence of Wall Street and the US Treasury. Joseph Stiglitz has now joined these critics. We will examine the issues in economic theory fonnulation and applica~ tion that lie at the heart of the Stiglitz criticism. With the livelihood and the very lives of millions of people in developing countries threatened by bad policies, the essay starts from Stiglitz's fundamental premise that 'there is nothing more practical than sound theory'. Drawing from his criticisms and those made by other leading economists, we argue that many of the failures of the Fund and the Bank result from unscientific and mechanical concep~ tions of economic processes that are now commonly labelled as 'market fun~ damentalism'-an analogy to the various brands of religious flllldamentalism common in the West and the East. We summarise Stiglitz's arguments to show that market fundamentalists have failed to take on board some of the recent work in economic theory. Moreover, from the Sri Lankan experience we will show that market funda~ mentalism completely ignores 'non~economic' factors relevant to economic development. The essence of fundamentalism is the interpretation of reality based on dogma, rather than scientifically appropriated guidelines. In short,

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fundamentalists have failed to take on board the foundation principle of the Western enlightenment. Poverty is not the result of capitalist exploitation' per se, but the inability of political leaders, guided by international organisations like the Bank and the Fund, to direct industrial capitalism towards sustain~ able growth trajectories.

Trends in Development Practice and Theory after 1945 The post~1945 development practice combined trade protection with an expanded role for the state, following on the early success of planning in the USSR and nationalisation of key industries in Britain. Countries like India and Brazil saw state~led industrialisation as crucial to the task of nation building. The protection of domestic products was, of course, essential to the success of this policy, since poor countries could not match the price and quality of the products of mature industrial countries. This aspect ofimport~ substitution industrialisation (lSI) policies goes back to infant industry argu~ ments developed by Alexander Hamilton in the USA, and Friedrich List in Germany. The other element was the nationalisation of key sectors in Britain under the 1945 Labourgovemment. All these influences fed into lSI policies pursued by most developing countries since independence. From the 1950s to the 1970s, development economists worked out planning models for the implementation ofISI. The growth momentum started winding down in 1973, with the excep~ tion of India and China-who were largely autarchic, and the East Asian Tigers-who continued to grow at slightly diminished rates. The latter had switched very early from lSI policies to export promotion, though protective barriers were dismantled only gradually. It is important to note that industrial countries entered a period of slower growth rather abruptly after 1973; in fact this is seen as a major causal factor in the winding down of growth in the developing world. GDPper capita and total factor productivity growth (TFP) rates fell in Latin America, Sub~Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Many of these countries exhibited negative TFP growth, and trade and budget deficits widened alarmingly. These policies came to a head with the world debt crisis ofl982. The stricken countries could not adjust their macroeconomic policies to counter the external shocks that hit them from 1973. This led to inflation, growing trade and budget imbalances, debt and foreign exchange problems.

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Rodrik (1999) argues that governments could not manage the social conflicts associated with stabilisation and structural adjustment. South Korea adjusted quickly, but Turkey and Brazil could not. 'Development Economics' had rationalised the lSI policies on the basis of structural rigidities, which reduced responsiveness to price signals. As this approach was discredited, new policies based on a reassertion of the power of market forces re~emerged. Even from the early 1950s, a small group ofecono~ mists had argued for more open, outward~oriented policies. But with the appointment of Anne Krueger to the World Bank, the power of market forces was reasserted with a vengeance. This philosophy was first expressed most strongly in the 1987 World Development Report (WDR), which was put together by a team led by one of Krueger's students. WDR·1987 cited the success of the four East Asian economies as examples of the validity of this argument. It is important to start by emphasising the positive side of the Krueger arguments. The East Asian Newly Industrial Countries (NICs) had shown that successful strategies could be based on growing integration with world markets. The growth rates realised were higher and more sustainable. lSI had led to excessive rent~seeking and the expansion of bureaucratic obstacles to business activity. The East Asian strategy also resulted in a faster building up of technological capability, economic institutions, and living standards. The negative side of Krueger's position is that the enormous difficulties of building up institutions, human capital and other 'complementary accumulations' were practically ignored. What was emphasised was the power of market forces to bring about rapid growth, irrespective of the level of development offirms, institutions, human capital, entrepreneurship and non~ economic factors. The Krueger ideology expressed in WDR·1987 had a decidedly fundamentalist character. A later report-WDR-1991-did, however, rectifY this by dwelling at length on the role of the state and institutions. Despite the correction, official thinking at the Bank and the Fund, called the 'Washington Consensus', quickly setded into the simple formulae of macroeconomic stabilisation, privatisation, trade liberalisation, and deregulation of markets, especially financial markets. The overriding message was: get the state out of the way and market forces will spring into action. Although based, supposedly, on the East Asian example, this creed ignores the reality of East Asia's strategy: that the state played a very strong and sustained role in making the miracle possible, and markets were opened up and liberalised after domestic capability was built up or along with it. Many critics, including Stiglitz, have pointed this out. The

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essence of success was the role of the state in providing complementary public goods to private initiative. This is true not only in East Asia, but also in Japan and all advanced industrial countries, including the USA. The fundamentalist doctrine that Stiglitz decries grossly distorts the critical role of the state in building up market forces in all industrial societies. Before moving on to the criticisms made by Stiglitz, it is necessary to point out that the rise of'Kreugerism' in the Bank and the Fund is part of a larger trend-the rise ofneo~Austrian thinking in the Western World from around 1979. This was made possible by the failure of Keynesian demand managementpolicies in the 1970s, which led to the victories of Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the USA. The fascinating story of this ideological tectonic shifi: is brilliantly related in the book Commanding Heights, which was also made into a documentary in the USA. One should note for the record that it was also in 1979 that China, under Deng, began to experiment with market~oriented policies, first in agriculture and then in industry. Sri Lanka actually anticipated this trend in 1977 with the landslide victory of a government dedicated to opening up the economy, and dismantling constraints on private business activity.

The Evolution of Economic Theory: 'Nothing More Practical than Good Theory' Since Stiglitz's criticisms of the IMF and the 'Washington Consensus'policies in general relate to the interaction between economic practice and theory, it is necessary to consider how economic theory itself has been derived and developed. Unlike physical science which rests on a solid bedrock of experi~ mental results, economic theory has been derived in the abstract from highly stylised, but simplified assumptions about the behaviour of economic agents, consumers and producers. Some attempts have been made, especially in recent years, to provide experimental underpinnings to the behavioural as~ sumptions. However, in general, theory progresses in an evolutionary fashion with axiomatic modifications introduced step~wise into a standard model of market clearing behaviour to account for departures from 'perfect market behaviour'. Such departures are often called 'market failures' in relation to the idealised behaviour. Economics has come a long way from its first modem formulation by classical economists over 200 years ago. In more recent times, an impressive body of theory has been built up, modelled for the most part on Newtonian

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mechanics. There are a number of economists who believe that physics is the appropriate model for economics. However, since economics carmot aspire to the degree of precision achieved by physics, these people also view economics as a Isoft science'-much inferior to physics. We propose a different view: an intellectual discipline becomes a science when humans seriously and system~ atically investigate its underlying logic using the scientific method. The ex~ tent to which models can be used and outcomes predicted depends on the nature of the subject. There is even less predictability in biology, but that does not make it less important. In fact, it is argued that economics is far more complicated than physics because it deals with phenomena that are im~ mens ely more complex than physical phenomena. The frequent usage of the ceterns paribus and mutates mutandis assumptions in economics is due to this complexity. That is why science begins with physics-it is, perhaps, the easi~ est to deal with. The issues raised by Stiglitz relating to economic theory and practice are of the greatest importance for public policy, since the livelihoods of billions of disadvantaged people are at stake. It is clear that we can tremendously improve economic well~being, growth, equity, and the progress of humanity, if we can generate faster growth in developing and transitional economies. Stiglitz's main charge is that the IMP has ignored much of the recent work done on better models of economic processes, and retreated into a dogmatic interpretation of economic processes based on an extremely simplistic model. As a result, it imposes standardised lone~size~fits all' policies on all countries in distress, thereby making matters worse and, in some cases, even generating instability. Confronted with a succession offailures, the IBrahminic' response of the IMP has been to dig its heels in and blame the countries in question, rather than to examine why its policies fail to work. In an increas~ ingly complex world economy, this is the classic response of fundamentalist

ideology. Contemp:)fary economic theory starts with static equilibrilITIl models. These emphasise the self~regulating character of markets through price adjustments that change demand and supply. The behaviour of human agents and firms is modelled in highly stylised ways. But expectations enter into the determi~ nation of equilibrium outcomes: hence, attempts have been made to model expectations, such as Lucas' rational expectations models. Another major development is game theory where, once again, outcomes depend on infor~ mation sets and expectations. We get many possible equilibria, with some outcomes less desirable than others. Poverty traps can be modelled in this way. Even without game theory, we can get multiple equilibria if we assume functional forms that are slightly more complex than what is assumed in the

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simple theory. Stiglitz has done a considerable amount ofwork on this subject with many students, and these models are now finding their way even into undergraduate textbooks. But economics is not a matter of moving from one static equilibrium to another. Economic growth has now moved centrestage even in macroeco~ nomic textbooks. Growth is a messy disequilibrium process; market~clearing models are not of much use. The old neo~classical growth theory has been superseded by the new endogenous theories of growth, but even these are not very satisfactory. They do not help to formulate any policy conclusions. What we want are models that will help us understand how you achieve stellar growth like in East Asia. There is considerable work to be done on formulating better economic models. Many old ideas have to be abandoned. Early development economists argued that you save and invest to attain growth. Now we think savings~investrnent is an activity associated with growth, which consists of firms and individuals organising themselves to produce goods and services that other people want to buy. Perhaps the most important breakthrough in recent times is the emer~ gence of the evolutionary approach. Evolutionary models stress the learning processes involved in the development of technology, firms, organisations, and entire societies (Nelson and Winters 1982). The most successful organisations are the 'learning organisations'-those that are continuously learning and adapting. Darwin too said that the species that survive best are not the biggest or the strongest, but the most adaptable. This explains why market economies have done better than planned economies: competition promotes continualleaming and adaptation. The USSR was held back by a misconception-that Marx and Lenin had already said everything important on the subject. Stiglitz's most important theoretical contributions have been on the eco~ nomics of information-the role of asymmetric information in modifying economic outcomes. The classic models are Akerlofs 'market for lemons', moral hazard in insurance markets, and adverse selection. These ideas have been developed further by a new generation of development economists who have models of coordination failure, 'big push' models, and so on. Some of the most important applications of these ideas are in the behaviour of financial markets, in which Stiglitz has played a key role. The main issue evident in all this is that economics is itself a 'developing science" and development consultants have to be very cautious and modest about the extent of what can be said with certitude. Stiglitz has repeatedly pointed this out. He charges that the IMF has done the very opposite by ranrrning their highly simplistic prescriptions on poor countries in distress with

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the certainty of bible-belt preachers. They have refused to learn from mistakes. 'The IMP', says Stiglitz, 'is not a learning organisation.' Elsewhere he points out that when individuals or organisations keep making the same mistake again and again, you know they are operating under the guidance of some powerful ideology.

Market Failure and the Role of the State Contemporary economic theory rationalises the state as the socio~political response to market failure. There are many market failures, and as a result the functions of the public authority are many. Stiglitz is the author of what is, probably, the best textbook on the role of the public sector, and his work in this area is seminal (Stiglitz 20(0). The public sector is seen to produce public goods that are a necessary complement to private goods, which are produced by profit~ seeking companies. This is an important issue because the 'Wash~ ington Consensus' calls for the reduction of the role of the state everywhere, and this philosophy is powerfully contested by Stiglitz. Let us start with the theory of externalities. When prices do not reflect the full costs to market participants, we have an externality. Pollution is the classic example of negative externalities. If a company can freely dump efflu~ ent into a nearby river, the social cost is neither reflected in the cost to the company nor in the prices paid by consumers for its products. Some externali~ ties can be addressed by taxes and subsidies: a pollution tax that is sufficient to clean up the river, or a regulation that requires the company to dispose effluent without damaging the environment. The best~known positive exter~ nality is the effect of education and training within companies. Since its value to society is greater than the cost, it makes sense to subsidise education. Both positive and negative externalities call for a state, and, indeed, the role of the state in advanced industrial economies has evolved steadily to deal with externalities and other market failures. There are other kinds of market failures-for example, coordination problems. Market economies are continually subject to small and large crises, recessions, depressions, and even, bank failures. The history of the US economy shows how the role of the state has expanded to cope with these problems. Financial crises, panics, bank failures and so on were all the more common in the early history of the US. The biggest failure in this respect is the 'Great Depression', which followed from the 1929 Wall Street crash. The 'boom, bubble, bust' cycle is common. The major technological

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innovations of the 1920s led to high profits, which led to a sustained inflation of stock prices, which then led to the inevitable crash. This happened in Japan in 1989, and again, to some extent, in East Asia. It appears to be happening again in the USA today. But market economies recover and move on. However, recovery is not automatic. Societies set up institutions to reduce the likelihood of such crises. The USA now has the Federal Reserve System, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and a whole host of other institutions. Regulations are also set up to further regulate the behaviour of companies. Labour legislation, for instance, was introduced by the Franklyn D. Roosevelt administration during the Depression. At present, the US is setting up a body to oversee the accurate reporting of financial data in the wake of a wave of abuses that have brought down some US business giants such as Emon and WorldCom. In setting up public authorities to regulate the private sector so that it better serves public welfare as a whole, the state is producing a 'public good' which is essential for the more efficient functioning of market forces. A country such as the USA is considered a highly developed economy not only because of its technological strength and the high productivity of its companies, but also because of its high level supply of essential 'public goods'. With the growth of an international system of trade and finance, the possibility of market failures on an international scale has increased. The East Asian crises show very clearly how these have operated. In general, inter~ national financial crises derive from' contagion'-a herd~effect deriving from information failure in the financial markets. These international market failures call for international regulatory bodies and legislation, which are called 'global public goods'. In fact, the IMF and the World Bank were initially set up to provide such global public goods to make the international system work better. Stiglitz argues that the IMF was set up to reduce the likelihood of systemic failure (as in 1933), to extend credit to countries in difficulties, and to tide over liquidity problems. Hence, the IMF originated as a response to market failure on a grand scale, but today it has mutated into a body that denies the possibility of market failure anywhere. Apart from ensuring macrostability, the role of the state also encompasses directing economic processes and even stimulating them. The best example is the USA. Ruttan (2001) shows how public activity is crucial in promoting and guiding technological change both then and now.

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The Mismanagement of Market-oriented Reform The collapse of strong alternatives to capitalism from 1990, and the progres~ sion of globalisation have undoubtedly made the task of building market economies easier in some ways, and more difficult in others. It is now easier to adopt and adapt the institutions and technology of modem capitalist societ~ ies. There is also a relatively large flow of private finance for investment in both developing and transitional economies. It is also more difficult to inte~ grate seamlessly into the global economy along East Asian lines on account of the more intense competition existent in international markets. Most economists agree that policies that promote a stable macroeconomy are conducive to healthy growth. These include low inflation, low budget deficits, realistic exchange rate policies, and so on. Governments also need to get out of the production of private goods as soon as it is feasible, and concen~ trate on the task of delivering essential public goods and services along the lines described above. The IMF has certainly promoted such policies, and used its power and influence to nudge governments towards the adoption of macro~policies that promote monetary and fiscal stability. A more detailed statement about such policies is contained in Rodrigo (2001). The way in which the IMF has advocated privatisation and liberalisation is what, Stiglitz argues, has brought about instability, industrial turmoil and unemployment, and discredited the integrity of market~oriented reforms. Privatisation of public corporations is a case in point. Stiglitz argues that hasty privatisation without the setting up of an effective competition policy and an adequate regulatory mechanism is no solution. At best, public monopolies are converted to private monopolies. At worst, public assets are sold to the cronies of politicians at knock~down prices as in the badly mismanaged Russian privatisation endeavour. Perermial'rent~seeking) through control of public corporations is now con~ verted into a massive pay~off for corrupt politicians and their cronies. Further~ more, since the simplest way to raise productivity is to layoff surplus workers, privatisation often leads to extensive lay offs without a social safety net. Stiglitz argues that moving people from low productivity jobs to zero produc~ tivity unemployment does nothing to improve the national product. In fact, job losses generate massive social costs such as urban violence, political umest, family breakdown, and loss of schooling for children. Moreover, the mani~ festly corrupt nature of privatisation in many countries seriously undermines

124 Saman Kelegama and Chris Rodrigo the legitimacy of the entire agenda ofmarket~oriented reform. Stiglitz argues that privatisation needs to be part of a comprehensive programme of job creation with some provision for unemployment insurance.

Evidence from the Sri Lankan Experience with Market Reform The solutions to the economic problems of different countries are country~ specific and varied. The Sri Lankan development experience of the post~ 1977 period can reveal some of the failures of the 'one~size~fits~all) strategy that Joseph Stiglitz has highlighted. Sri Lanka followed a stabilisation and structural adjustment policy package during various phases of its liberalisation programme during 1977-2002. It was observed during these 25 years of liberalisation that the overall institutional mechanism, as well as the social, cultural and political conditions did not adjust automatically to the needs of the liberalised market forces. The experience has been that the structural adjustment programmes influenced economic variables without paying the necessary attention to regulatory and institutional mechanisms that govern political, social and cultural aspects. Furthermore, varying rates of transfor~ mation have taken place in different social groups/classes. While economic variables were explicidy taken into account in the lone~ size ~fits~all)) strategy, the non~economic variables were placed in a subsidiary position, using the well known ceteris paribus or mutatis mutandis asslITIlptions. It was assumed that the non~economic variables would automatically take care of themselves; hence the favoured expression ceteris paribus-all other things being equal. This notion would lead one to assume, for example, that economic policies relating to labour reform would leave trade unions unar fected. According to ceteris paribus they would endure all changes in silence, and not voice their complaints. Thus while economic variables are explicitly taken into account, non~economic variables are often assumed to remain unchanged. Yet it is the latter, when improperly addressed, that can hinder or, worse still, defeat the developmental objectives of a policy. In implementing the strategy these assumptions were forgotten more ten than not. It was expected that adjusting the economic variables accord~ ing to the IMF prototype model, at least as closely as possible, would give the desirable developmental outcome. However, what actually took place was that the non~economic variables that were not in the model became a bind~ ing constraint, thus defeating the developmental objective of the policy model

or

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(Lakshman 2(01). In the context of structural adjustment, fundamental problems were visible in three areas, that is, slow adjustment ofnon~economic variables to market reform, resource allocation by market forces being subject to political interference, and the inability of the private sector to live up to expectation in the market economy. The Sri Lankan socio~political process is characterised by a fragile environment with respect to ethnic, religious and linguistic groups. Sri Lanka failed in her enterprise of nation building and promoting a national identity after independence from colonial rule. Consequently, there was ethnic disharmony and national disintegration at the time when market~friendly policies were implemented. There were also the consequences of the incompatibility of electoral democracy with social harmony in a multi~ethnic and multi~religious environment. In this milieu, it was clearly evident that social, cultural and political conditions of life, on which social cohesion depends, did not adjust immediately to the needs ofliberalised market forces. Second, conflict arose between the market and the political party system to acquire roles in resource allocation. This competition is a common phe~ nomenon in Sri Lanka's political party system, which derives its strength from extending patronage. Moreover, antagonistic political behaviour has created not only a permanent division in society on political party lines, but it has led to the politicisation of the bureaucracy. Thus it was clear that rule ~based behaviour is imperative for the successful operation of markets (Lakshman 2001). However, this was clearly impossible within a politicised bureaucracy. Third, the private sector has been idealised as the I engine of growth' even before it could prove its mettle, and little consideration was given to its size, nature and its sophistication. Sri Lanka is characterised by a risk~averse private sector that has a predilection for quick returns, guided by a quick~buck, 'rich·over.night'mentality (Moore 1992). Although recent trends have exhibited an expansion of manufacturing investments and a gradual diversification of the industrial base, the short~term~gain merchant capital mentality predominates (Fonseka 2001). Till the mid.1950s, industrial growth in Sri Lanka had been restricted to the exploitation of natural resources under the plantation economy-the legacy of her colonial past. Industrialists, nurtured in the culture of export agriculture, have now expanded into other low~technology products and services such as garments and tourism. Yet most of them have not ventured into projects requiring higher technology. The reason for this market failure is that moving into new and unfamiliar technologies is fraught with uncer~ tainty. It also requires greater investment and stronger business acumen, which are decidedly lacking. The fact that most Sri Lankan senior managers

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are trained as accountants before assuming general management responsi~ bilities makes them excessively risk~ averse by international standards. Given these parameters, the private sector has not lived up to expectation in driving the growth process in Sri Lanka. Private~sector driven growth did not occur automatically in countries such as Taiwan and South Korea. The build.up of industry along a 'technology· intensive trajectory' did not occur merely through the interaction ofliberalised market forces. As stated earlier, their governments played a crucial part in forging the necessary infrastructure, both human and technological. This brings us back to the argument that development is a holistic process not treatable within a stereotypical mutatis mutandis framework. Simply opening up to markets will not work because underlying market failures will persist. In this regard Lall (1990) states, [j]ust getting proper incentives in place will be better, cett:rus paribus, than having an inward oriented, uncompetitive regime, but not promote industrial upgrading and diversification if technical, managerial, technology and institu~ tional support are not simultaneously improved. Kenya will not become a Korea simply by adopting outward~oriented policies. The relationship between market liberalisation and social culture also needs examination. Social culture could be defined as patterns of behaviour of society at large, or of selected groups in society. Sri Lankan private establishments exclusively employ the English language as a medium for conducting business regardless of the official status of Sinhalese ;Tamil. The Sri Lankan business community promotes the idea of the 'indispensability of English for success in life' in a globalised world. A business culture centred on the English language has led to the exclusion of a large segment of society from the development process in postcolonial Sri Lanka. Moreover, the recent privatisation initiative has also raised the question of languagenamely, the place of English in society. State~run organisations, upon being privatised, have made redundant thousands already employed in the official languages. With the private sector setting the field of employment at the expense of the Sinhala;Tamil employing state organs, there can be serious consequences for the political system vis~a~vis the frustrated masses who, after being edu~ cated for so long in Sinhalese;Tamil and expecting employment, are 'shown the door' on the grounds of non~eligibility. The Sinhalese youth insurgency ofl971 and the Tamil separatist struggle of the late 1970s were both responses to such frustrations. Lalprema (2002) puts it aptly when he says that '[tlhe irony here is the inconsistency of the policy of education with that of changing

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economics. They are not designed to meet at any point in harmony to inte~ grate for producing desired results.' Socially binding pro~development responses to liberalisation require ex~ tensive institutional preparation of society prior to, or simultaneously with, liberalisation. Strong historic evidence from a wide range of countries sup~ ports economic policies of selective interventionism. Yet whenever it is advo~ cated in developing countries, it is met with resistance from the Bretton Woods institutions on account of the lack of state structures and institutions to produce the desired results. Many countries that had used intervention in their early phase of development bore the burden of insufficient institutions. It is through interventionist social and economic development that institu~ tional backwardness can be overcome-a necessary process given the failure of wholes ale liberalisation to produce development. However, government intervention should be very selective: it is important to distinguish between interventions that build market forces, and those that lock private companies into closeted inefficiency. It is thus clear that development constraints are structural and social, and cannot be overcome through economic stabilisation and policy adjustment alone; they require a holistic, broad~based approach. The shortcomings of the market should be dealt with by complimentary govemmentpolicies. The state plays a pivotal role in providing public gocxls and addressing externalities that are neglected by the private sector. The expression 'let market forces work' ignores the reality of East Asia's strategy, and the growth of current developed countries where the state played a prolonged and powerful role in making the 'miracle' work. Markets were only opened up when domestic capability was already built up, or con~ currently, with it (for example, institutions were built over a long period of 150 years in the UK and USA). Thus, the 'Washington Consensus' in itself cannot generate the socio~political preconditions of social cohesion and har~ mony for development. Most anti~development elements discussed manifest themselves through economic, social, and cultural change. There is also the view that market reforms will address these issues of politics, governance and social culture in the long run. This is definitively umealistic. Markets sometimes work well and sometimes not. Stiglitz is a pioneer in the research of market failure and the role of the public sector. Whenever there is imperfect information on markets, in principle, government interven~ tion can improve the outcome of market operations. Policy reform and insti~ tutional development cannot be imported or imposed; without domestic ownership, reforms and investments are not sustainable either. Different com~ munities have their own unique culture, and this will be, no doubt, reflected

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in the way they develop. However, nations are no longer closeted in the era of 'national exclusivity', and it is irrational to expect countries to shut the outside world out. In fact, this would be infeasible. In conclusion it is worth bearing in mind that we are not rejecting a market economy as a growth tool altogether. A nation cannot rejectmarke~ tisation-this would equate to rejecting the industrial revolution. A market economy has much strength and has the potential to enrich everyone. The problem is how the market economy is managed. The essence of our argu~ ment is that each country should tailor the market economy to its own needs and capacity. It should not be 'forced' on developing countries in a manner that suits the international donor community as it so far has been. One size most certainly doesn't fit all.

References Fonseka, T., 'Uncompetitive Trends in Sri Lankan Industries and Mind Sets of Industrialists', Sri Lanka Journal of Management, 2001, 6(1&2). Lall, S., 'Explaining Industrial Success in the Developing World', in Balasubramanyam, V. N. and S. Lall (eds), Current Issues in Development Economics, Macmillan, London,

1990. Lalprema, L., 'Language in a Changing Economy', The Island, 2002, 2 September. Lakshman, W.D., 'Development as a Holistic Process: Lessons from the Last Five Decades', Pravada, 2001, 7(1). Moore, M., 'What Type of Capitalism does Sri Lanka Need?, Institute of Policy Studies, Colombo, 1992. Nelson, R.R. and S.}. Winters, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Harvard University Press, MA Cambridge, 1982. Rodrik, D., The New Global Economy and Developing Countries: Making Openness Work, Overseas Development Council, Washington, D.C., 1999. Rodrigo, G.C., Technology, Economic Growth and Crises in East Asia, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, U.K., 2001. Ruttan, Technology, Growth and Development: An Induced Innooation Perspective, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001. Stiglitz, }., Economics of the Public Sector, WW Nortan & Co., New York, 2000. - - - , Globalization and its Discontents, Penguin Group, London, 2002.

v.,

5 Pseudo-modernisation and the Formation of Youth Identities in Sri Lanka* S.T. Hettige Introduction The modernisation paradigm which emerged as a dominant conceptual model in sociology in the 1950s offered many newly independent, ex~colonial coun~ tries the hope that they could achieve modernity by taking certain deliberate measures, particularly through state policies and progranrrnes. Mooemisation was conceptualised as a wide~ranging process encompassing economic, SO~ cial, political and cultural domains. It was hoped that, once exposed to the forces ofmodemisatioll, people in these counaies would merge into unified nation~states) broadly similar to those that emerged in many Western coun~ tries after the Second World War. However, as we know now, not many ex~ colonial countries emerged as thoroughly modem, unifiednation~states. In other words, the expected societal transition did not materialise. Why did such a transition not take place in most Third World countries? Alternative theoretical paradigms have sought to answer the above question. 1 The present essay, however, is not concerned directly with the above question or the pos~ sible answers to it. Rather, it is primarily concerned with the nature of the actual changes that have taken place in a particular country and their impli~ cations for the formation of social and cultural identities, in particular among the youth who were exposed to diverse forces ofmodemisation. In spite of radical and far~reaching changes in the pre~colonial, economic, political and social order that took place under Western colonial rule,

* This is a revised version of the paper published in Partha Nath Mukherji, Jacob Aikara and Chandan Sengupta (eds), Sociology in South Asia: Heritage and Challenges, Madrid, International Sociological Association, 1998. 1 For a wide-ranging discussion of such alternative paradigms, see Alavi and Shanin (1982).

130 S.T. Hettige particularly, during the British period (1796-1948), the colonial elite that came into being was not a homogeneous social stratum characterised by a common cultural identity. Though their lifestyles and material interests were broadly similar, they were nevertheless divided on caste, religious and ethnic lines (Kotalawala 1978). Though these divisions did not always surface in their day~to~day lives, they tended to persist as a powerful undercurrent influencing not only their social and cultural life but also their public life as professionals, bureaucrats, politicians and civil servants. The introduction of representative democracy towards the end of colonial rule made primordial identities of the members of the political elite even more significant in their public life as those identities helped them to build their popular political bases in their respective ethnic and local communities. It is a well~known historical fact that ethnic identity had become an important factor guiding political competition in Sri Lanka even before the country gained political independence. In spite of the presence of a vibrant, working-class movement, spearheaded by a Marxist political leadership which attempted to mobilise the masses on non~ethnic lines, leaders of the major political parties on both sides of the ethnic divide 2 were already closely iden~ tified with their respective ethnic communities and this acted as a barrier for them to emerge as truly national leaders following their more enlightened predecessors, with a popular base that transcended ethnic and other primor ~ dial identities. The anti~colonial, nationalist movement, which emerged as a significant socio~political movement in the late nineteenth century, was linked to the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community. In spite of its anti~westem, anti~ colonial rhetoric, it did not develop into a truly national movement that cut across ethnic and religious boundaries. On the other hand, there were influential and active national leaders who clearly transcended ethnic and religious boundaries. Though they were also products of colonial English education, their appreciation of the value and significance of native languages, national heritage and culture was clearly evident (Wickramasuriya 1978). It is owing to this appreciation that they became highly critical of the colonial educational practice which tended to alienate native youths from their own language, history, culture and even physical environment. The most important learning of all was a thorough knowledge of one's O\VTl. country, its history, and its language. The pupils moreover should be taught to l Though the Sri Lankan population comprised several distinct edmic communities, the most politically significant division was between Sinhalese and Tamil Communities.

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understand their own history, not merely the names, dates and incidents, but the philosophy of all the happenings in all those many hundreds of years, of their history during which their race has been in formation: they should learn to glory in the high achievements of their race, to be proud of its traditions, and of its history and vernacular, as becomes those who are born in the country and they should know, above all the people of the country (Arunachalam, as quoted in Wickramasuriya 1978). Anti~colonial, nationalist thinking which reflected in the nationalist move~ ment as well as in the writings of nationalist leaders had a decisive influence on the policies and programmes implemented after decolonisation. Yet, many of these policies and programmes often did not give expression to the substan~ tive ideas held by some of the more enlightened national leaders. Being subjected to pressures of popular politics within a newly established, demo~ cratic political framework, political leaders competing for power tended to advocate policies which were not necessarily in keeping with the high ideals of some of the earlier nationalist leaders. These policies in effect have acted as barriers to the emergence of a modem nation~state transcending primor~ dial identities and divisions. In this essay, it is argued that this was due to the fact that the so~called modernising forces operating in Sri Lanka, in fact led to a process of pseudo~modernisation that effectively undermined the modernisation project many national leaders were dreaming about, both before and after independence. As mentioned at the outset, modernisation theorists assumed that traditional societies, once exposed to modernising forces like modem educa~ tion, mass media, political participation and new technologies through extension services, would rapidly move towards modernity. It was also assumed that, on their way to modernity, these societies would gradually evolve into modem, nation~states based on principles of modem social organisation such as universalism, functional specialisation and affective neutrality (Parsons 1964). However, in spite of the introduction of mass edu~ cation and mass media, widespread political participation and the emer~ gence of modern forms of division of labour, many of these societies have not emerged as modem nation~states. At least, part of the explanation for this failure can be found in the fact that the potential modernising forces have been 'used' in these countries to reinforce rather that to soften traditional identities and primordial loyalties. How did this happen in the case of Sri Lanka? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to briefly look at the process of social structural change under colonial rule and afterwards.

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Colonialism and Social Structural Change Even though the new economic opportunities created by the Portuguese and the Dutch administrations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries facilitated the emergence of new elites and occupational groups in the coastal areas of the country under their control (Kotalawala 1978) it was during the British period that far~reaching social structural changes were effected by both direct state intervention as well as forces of change that were set in motion by colonial policies. The long established pre~capitalist system of production relations (pieris 1956) characterised by a largely caste~based service tenure system known as rajakariya had to give way to highly commercialised production relations in large parts of the economy. Consequently, land and labour became marketable commodities that could now be sold and bought in the market. The emergence of mooem professions such as law and medicine provided opportunities for upward social mobility for those who had the means to secure the necessary training abroad. 3 The expansion of the state bureau~ cracywith its legislative, judicial and executive branches since the late nine~ teenth century resulted in the creation of a host of prestigious, influential and lucrative positions which could, in tum be filled by those with the necessary credentials. The rapid expansion of state services such as education and health in the first half of the present century created many lower level posi~ tions in the state services. These positions became highly attractive to youths belonging to the lower social strata. The sole objective of many of these youths was to escape from their socially inferior backgrounds. Education naturally became the primary means of achieving this objective. During the early years of the British administration, formal education was polarised between elementary instruction in the vernacular and fee~levying secondary school education provided in the English medium. Later, most schools, both state as well as private, began to provide instruction in the vernacular (Sinhala and Tamil) while a few schools continued to provide instruction in the English medium (Fernando 1979). Yet, the polarisation of the 'educated' population into two groups, one, urban English educated and the other, mostly rural vernacular educated continued unabated. This

3 Before the establishment of the first local university several years prior to political independence in 1948, those persons who wished to secure professional and higher academic training had to go abroad, mostly to England. This was possible for a finite minority of youth belonging to the affluent native elite.

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bifurcation tended to follow broad social class divisions; while affluentpar~ ents in general could send their children to urban schools where English was the medium of instruction, the most the ordinary rural parents could do was to give their children a vernacular education in rural schools. So, the dream of early nationalist leaders like Ponnambalam Arunachalam to provide the native youths with a bilingual education was shattered by the policies that were implemented by policy~makers, both before and after independence. With the introduction of universal free education in the early 1940s, the ranks of the vernacular educated rural youth in the country swelled rapidly. The rapid expansion of the population oflower~age cohorts, at least since the late 1940s, also made a significant contribution to this trend. On the other hand, English continued to be the official language as well as the medium of instruction in the universities for nearly a decade since independence. Con~ sequently, access to higher positions in the state bureaucracy as well as mod~ em professions was restricted to those with an English education. Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of education gave birth to a vocal, rural intellegentsia representing the interests of the rural population, in particular, of rural youth aspiring to higher social positions. They, in tum began to use the newly created democratic space to articulate their grievances and mobilise popular support against the dominance of the privileged, Westemised elite that hith~ erto monopolised higher positions in the state bureaucracy and modern pro~ fessions. The rise of a centre-lerr coalition led by the SLFP in the early 19505 and its landslide electoral triumph in 1956 was largely a reflection of the growing ideological dominance of the new, nationalist intelligentsia associ~ ated with the majority Sinhala Buddhist rural population.

The Shattering of the Enlightened Nationalist Dream and the Triumph of Parochialism The enlightened nationalist dream of creating a bilingual patriotic national intelligentsia rooted in the local milieu and at the same time capable of transcending parochial and national boundaries was shattered by the emer~ gence of an ideologically dominant, monolingual rural intelligentsia. The introduction offree education in the early 1940s and its rapid expansion after independence did not help expand bilingual education as policy~makers adopted the most expedient strategy of extending monolingual education throughout the country. This, in effect confined the overwhelming majority of rural youths to ethno~linguistically segregated monolingual schools, while

134 S.T. Hettige a tiny minority of the youth from the more privileged social strata acquired a bilingual education from urban schools. Rapid expansion of education coupled with increasing competition for employment in keeping with educational qualifications led to an enhance~ ment of the instrumental value of education. This, in tum, had an adverse effect on the quality of education imparted by schools. A youthful population whose main objective is to obtain paper qualifications in order to compete for scarce employment opportunities cannot be expected to over~ whelmingly comprise individuals with an appetite for an all~round educa~ tion. On the other hand, being compelled to rely almost entirely on reading material available in one's native language much of which tended to deal with one's own ethnic history, culture and environment, many youths devel~ oped an identity which often did not transcend ethnic boundaries, let alone national ones. Another factor that retarded the potential homogenising influence of mass education was the establishment of schools by competing religious de~ nominations. Christian missionaries established many of the early schools. These schools tended to play an important part in the process ofproselytisation. In order to meet this challenge, Buddhist leaders took steps to establish Buddhist schools in areas where the Sinhalese people were predominant, while a few Hindu schools were established in predominantly Tamil areas. The idea was to allow children to attend school in their own religious environment. These tendencies were further reinforced when state schools were estab~ lished throughout the COlllltry and began to provide instruction to children in their own language. In areas where different ethnic communities co~existed, they had their separate schools that were, in tum labelled as such, i.e., Sinhala schools, Tamil schools, Muslim schools, Christian schools and so on. Another important feature of education under British colonialism was its bias towards liberal arts subjects. Early nationalist leaders identified this as a major hindrance to economic development. The need for a skill~oriented education based on science and technology was emphasised by them in an unambiguous manner. Policy~makers did not take up these ideas. Colonial administration wanted to produce an English~educated cadre of public offi~ cials and minor state functionaries such as clerks. For the native elite, educa~ tion was primarily a stepping~stone for their children to move into the state bureaucracy and modem, lucrative professions like law and medicine. The granting of self~rule did not reverse this trend. It was, in fact further rein~ forced when the lower strata of society wished to use education as an avenue for social mobility. As is well known, higher academic qualifications have also helped many people to find lucrative employment in the developed world. It

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is also a well-known fact that brain-drain has led to a depletion of skilled people with adverse consequences for economic and technological advance~ ment in countries like Sri Lanka. Expansion of education in Sri Lanka over the last 50 years has been phe~ nomenal. While the literacy rate has increased from 58 per cent in 1946 to nearly 90 per cent in the early 1990s, the proportion of the population with secondary education is also substantial. Yet, the state policies adopted over the last several decades coupled with other factors have led to the segrega~ tion of the young population in the country on ethno~linguistic grounds preventing them from forming a broad national identity.

Media Participation and Cultural Identity Modernisation theorists have identified increased media participation as an important factor ofmodemisation. While literacy enables ordinary people to read printed material such as newspapers, it also makes them more receptive to messages emanating from extension services, and so on. On the other hand, availability of national~level radio, telecommunication and other electronic communication services could potentially integrate an otherwise dispersed and segregated population. Moreover, since mooern communication media play an important part in the transmission of cultural artifacts, they also have a great potential for facilitating cultural interchange, both within and between countries. On the other hand, given the fact that language is by far the most importantmedilITIl of conrrnunication, the availability or otherwise of a common language becomes a critical factor in facilitating or impeding the formation of a broad cultural universe that transcends narrow cultural bmmdaries within a cmmtry. For instance, a national radio station broadcasting programmes in different languages, targeting different ethno~linguistic groups may help preserve the integrity of their respective cultures but cannot be expected to play the role of a cultural broker. The same can be said of the newspapers, the film and drama, though it would be only partly true of television. Even television could reinforce the above tendencies when the availability of ethnic channels allows different ethnic groups to bypass each other in selecting programmes. The expansion of mass media has been an important aspect of the process of social and cultural change in Sri Lanka in the recent past, (Hettige et al. 2001). Yet, given the expansion of monolingual education described earlier, and the continuing spatial segregation of ethnic conrrnunities

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in many parts of the country, modern mass media such as radio, film and the newspapers have not played a significant part in forging a national identity that transcends ethno~linguistic boundaries. Perhaps, their role in reinforcing ethnic identities has been far more significant than their integra~ rive influence.

Industrialisation and Urbanisation Social structural change leading to increasing differentiation and complexity was seen by early theorists as an important dimension ofmodemisation. This assertion was made on the basis of the historical experience of the developed, Western societies all of which underwent a process of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. People moving into the cities in large numbers were ab~ sorbed into an urban industrial complex. Though industrialisation initially proouced great inequalities in terms oflife chances, subsequent develop~ ments in social, economic, political and cultural fields had a considerable levelling effect on the population. So, in spite of persisting inequalities, and the continued marginalisation of certain sections of the population, certain social, political and cultural processes facilitated the formation ofbroad social and cultural identities that cut across pre~existing, primordial identities, par~ ticularly among youths. This is clearly evident from the fact that the youth culture that emerged in the West in the 1960s quite explicitly cut across national boundaries. As we all know, not many ex~colonial, Third World countries have undergone a process of rapid urban industrialisation. Contrary to the expec~ tations of the nationalist political elites who succeeded the colonial administration in these countries, and despite the pronouncement of mooernisation theorists about the prospects of mooernis ation of'traditional societies' (Lerner 1975) most of the ex~colonial cOlllltries have failed to emerge as 'mooern nation~states' through a process of rapid economic growth and mooernisation. In many countries, some of the pre~existing primordial loyalties and identities have been reinforced, manifesting themselves in the sphere of political competition, often leading to violent conflicts that threaten the integrity of the unified states that were created at the time of independence. How do we explain the above failures? Should they be explained in terms of the failure of modernisation strategies adopted by these countries? While there is no doubt that inadequate economic expansion coupled with

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rapid population growth has intensified competition for employment and conflicts over productive resources, the modernisation strategies which have been adopted have also contributed to the drawing of lines separating the groups competing for resources. These groups, in tum threw up their own political patrons whose duty it was to represent and promote the sectarian interests of the above groups in the context of the ensuing competition for public goods.

Popular Participation in 'National Politics' As is well known, universal adult franchise was introduced in Sri Lanka even before political independence, as far back as 1931. By the time the country gained independence in 1948, the rate of popular participation in national elections was already reasonably high (55.9 per cent in 1947) [Fernando and Kearney 1979]; the rate of participation increased steadily afterwards, reach~ ingnearly 90 per cent in the 1990s. Modernisation theorists have considered popular participation in national politics as an important index ofmodernisation in Third World societies. Yet, the question that comes to one's mind is whether the aggregate figures relat~ ing to electoral participation reflect the degree or the nature of modernisation. As many analysts of political developments in Sri Lanka since independence have indicated, regional, ethnic and caste factors have continued to shape voting patterns, at least at sub~nationalleve1s. In other words, increasing popular participation in electoral politics has not contributed to any signifi~ cant lessening of primordial identities, particularly among the youth. This is clearly evident from the emergence of youth political movements in recent years, of which the most significant ones are largely based on sub~national, primordial identities. As we all know, these youth movements have spear~ headed some of the most significant events in the political landscape of the country over the last three decades. Young people who are actively involved in these sectarian movements are clearly alienated from the larger, nation~ building project which some of the more enlightened nationalist leaders were clearly committed to. The kind of modernisation strategies that they wished to pursue in order to forge a vibrant nation~state transcending pre~existing divisions were abandoned by politically expedient nationalists who voluntar~ ily or involuntarily succumbed to the pressures generated from within a Third World polity. The strategies they vigorously pursued reinforced sub~national identities and sectarian interests to the point where the vast majority of

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young people, though living in the same country could no longer communi~ cate across ethno~linguistic lines which divided them into almost exclusive socio~cultural groups. On the other hand, the political significance of the youth increased steadily after independence due to both their growing numbers as well as their in~ creasingpoliticisation. The latter was inevitable because state power became critical after independence owing to the fact that the country's economy became more and more focused on the state. Since the allocation of material resources and public goods became the prerogative of state agencies, access to such resources became almost synonymous with access to seats of political power. Politicians, in tum tended to use scarce public goods to build their support base. This practice gradually evolved into a system of patron~client relations linking ruling~partypoliticians with some of their supporters. As mentioned before, owing to diverse circumstances, Sri Lanka did not experience rapid economic growth after independence. Under the influ~ ence of socialist economic policies, state control over the country's economy increased between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s. The welfare state ideology that became a dominant influence on post~independence politics persuaded governments to divert scarce resources into areas of social devel~ opment such as health and education as well as food and other subsidies. On the other hand, discouragement of private investment made the state the leading player in the economy and the unemployed youth had to rely on the state to secure more desirable employment. Substantial public investments in education accompanied by a rapid expansion of student population in the first few decades since independence created a large youthful population with aspirations for upward social mobility. Social prestige, job security, regu~ larity of income and other privileges associated with public~sector employ~ ment made the latter the target of many a youth, in particular those with higher educational certificates. Yet, a stagnant economy could not create state~sector employment to meet the rapidly growing demand. This soon created a wide gap between available employment opportunities on the one hand and youth aspirations on the other, leading to widespread discontent among the educated youth in the country. All frustrated youth, however, did not perceive the problem in the same manner. For their experiences varied depending on their relative social position as well as the nature of their rela~ tionship with the institutions of the political centre. As mentioned earlier, the way the forces of modemis ation were directed after independence had a decisive influence in shaping youth identities in the COlllltry. Vast sums of public funds were devoted to the promotion of mass education throughout the country, but the latter offered no opportunities to

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youth belonging to different ethno~religious conrrnunities to forge links across such divisions. Ahnost total segregation of schools on ethno~linguistic lines, in fact further reinforced pre~existing parochial tendencies. Similarly, the ex~ pansion of modem communication media such as radio and newspapers, due to language barriers, did not function as intermediaries between different ethno~linguistic groups; they, in fact have helped perpetuate the communi~ cation gaps that have long existed. On the political front, the mobilisation of masses by national and local leaders by and large tended to follow ethno~linguistic divisions and this made the competition for power and resources appear as one between ethnic groups as well. When the issues of political reform were being discussed in the 1920s, representation on ethnic and regional lines as against territorial representa~ tion emerged as the most favoured option, particularly from the point ofview of minorities. Many representatives of the latter appeared to have felt that in a centralised, territorially based representative system of government, minori~ ties would be placed in a disadvantageous position with respect to sharing of power and resources. Such perceptions continued to reinforce ethnic identi~ ties in the country and decisively influenced the process ofpolitical mobilisation ever since. Another important factor that contributed to ethnic cleavages has been the growing significance of the state in the national economy, particularly since the late 1950s. This pattem continued till 1977 when the economy was freed from the tight grip of the state through a package ofliberal economic policies involving the privatisation ofpublic enterprises and so on. During the same period, the central administration exercised considerable control over the allocation of productive resources and public goods. Since the corporate, private sector played a far less significant part in the national economy, most people had to depend almost entirely on state institutions for various needs. This was particularly significant for youths aspiring to upward social mobility as their life chances depended heavily on state policies on education and employment. A combination of factors such as state~domination over the economy, a hostile external environment as reflected in the continually worsening terms of trade, heavy expenditure on public consumption at the expense of productive investment, rapid population growth, and so on contributed to the stagnation of the economy at a time when free education had raised the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of underprivileged youth in the countryside. In the absence of rapid economic growth at a time when the population was rapidly expanding, the state could hardly satisfy the rising aspirations of these young people. While this naturally led to many among

140 S.T. Hettige the youth being disappointed, a number of those who were adversely affected perceived state policies as unjust and even discriminatory. On the other hand, the allocation of scarce resources and public goods by a highly politicised, state bureaucracy was bound to lead to corruption, favoritism and abuse. This practice alienated many young people who failed to reach their desired goals. Different groups of alienated, yet politically articulate youth interpreted the prevailing situation in the country from their own specific vantage points, depending on both their relative position within the socio~political structure as well as their specific ideological commitments. These interpretations can be comprehended only against the colonial and postcolonial historical back~ drop. In this regard, the spread of modernist ideas and values in conjunction with an almost simultaneous propagation of certain forms of particularism, and the rise of a centralised postcolonial state as the dominant player in the production and disttibution of public goods have been highly significant. The complex array of interest groups and identity groups that came into being in postcolonial Sri Lanka has been an almost inevitable outcome of the interplay between modernist and particularistic forces already referred to. As mentioned earlier, the rapid expansion of free education in the coun~ try gave rise to a large mass of rural youth with aspirations for social mobility. However, owing to the lack of employment opportunities, more and more of them joined the ranks of the unemployed. The growing competition for the few opportunities available often favoured those who were politically and socially connected to powerful people, leading to the marginalisation of oth~ ers. Persisting regional disparities in terms of social infrastructure such as educational facilities added another dimension to the sense of deprivation among the rural youth. The view that an urban elite continued to dominate the politico~economic establishment gained wide acceptance among politi~ cally articulate, rural youth who had been socialised into believing that they were the legitimate custodians of the motherland. From here, it was only a small step to argue that the urban (Westernised) elite had no legitimate claim to state power. Hence, the primary objective of the JVp4 was to capture state power. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna's political posture represents an inter~ esting blend ofinterest~grouppolitics and identity politics. While the former ~

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front) emerged as a radical Marxist party in the late 1960s representing the interests of vernacular-educated rural Sinhalese Youth. Since then, it has continued to playa significant part in national politics. Today, it also has a significant representation in the national parliament.

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is a reflection of its radical leftist orientation, which is critical for the mobilisation of the underprivileged, the latter is a product of the growing tension between ethnic groups within a centralised national polity. Rural Sinhalese youths who were socialised under the direct influence of a 'nationalised' education system, socialist politics and a stagnant national economy tended to feel threatened by 'external' forces including those that threaten the territorial integrity of the Sri Lankan state. On the other hand, the underprivileged youths belonging to ethnic mi~ norities, were socialised under the direct influence ofnationalist forces. Given the disadvantageous position their elite political leadership occupied in the national political arena, both the leaders as well as their youthful followers tended to articulate their grievances in terms of their minority status. Certain policies that were adopted by the political centre after independence in order to pacify the nationalist forces in the south and later to contain the growing restlessness among disadvantaged rural Sinhalese youth, were perceived by the educated minority youth as signs of racial discrimination. At a time when the centralised state was the dominant influence on the life chances of swabhasha~educated youth, policy measures taken by the former with little attention paid to their likely impact on the life chances of disadvan~ taged youth belonging to minority ethnic communities, in particular the Tamil minority in the North and East of the country, were bound to result in a political backlash. With the increasing significance of the nationalist discourse and the rising ethnic tension in the country, ethnic identities of disadvantaged youth groups tended to get hardened. Such groups, in tum, got drawn into liberation movements that promised to promote and safeguard their interests within a separate state. It is against this backdrop that we have to understand the commitment of disadvantaged northern Tamil youth to the idea of a separate state in the north and east for their community.

Conclusion So far in the present essay, an attempt has been made to examine how various modernisation strategies adopted by the state contributed to the segmenta~ tion of the young population into distinct identity groups. Therefore, in spite of the presence of almost all signs of modernisation, such as widespread literacy, extensive media participation, high rate of political participation and so on, distinct ethnic and social groups in the country could not be effectively integrated into a modem nation~state characterised by a broader national

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identity. It has been argued in the present essay that this is due to what has been termed a process ofpseudo~modemisation. In other words, almost all instruments of mooernisation in this instance have been employed to rein~ force rather than soften pre~existing) primordial identities.

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1964,29(3). Pieris, R., Sinhalese Social Organisation, The Ceylon University Press Board, Colombo, 1956. Pieris, R., (ed.), Some Aspects of Traditional Sinhalese Culture, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, 1956. Singh, Y., Essays on Modernization in India, Manohar, New Delhi, 1978. Warnapala, E.A.W., Civil Service Administration in Ceylon, Department of Cultural Affairs, Colombo, 1974. Wickramasuriya, S., 'Arunachalam and Colonial Education', Ceylon Historical Journal,

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