Practicing Interdisciplinarity: Convergences and Contestations 1032195754, 9781032195759

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PRACTISING INTERDISCIPLINARITY CONVERGENCES AND CONTESTATIONS Edited by Babu P. Remesh and Ratheesh Kumar

Practising Interdisciplinarity

This book examines the epistemological, social and political dimensions of practising interdisciplinary approaches to enhance knowledge, pedagogy, and research in the South Asian context. The volume sets the context by bringing together a range of ideas, questions and reflections on the concept of interdisciplinarity, the numerous waves of interdisciplinarity in contemporary history of knowledge, which were radically different from each other in their epistemological and political orientations. The book revisits the concept of interdisciplinarity and takes into cognizance the importance of the mutual shaping of knowledge and politics in our search for inclusive and sustainable future(s). The book offers a blend of both conceptual and institutional discourses on interdisciplinarity and the personal experiences of leading practitioners, bringing together critical engagements from different vantage points on practising it. It will be of interest to researchers, scholars and practitioners of social sciences and humanities disciplines as well as interdisciplinary fields such as educational studies, development studies, women’s studies, media studies, cultural studies, urban studies, labour studies, legal studies, public health, disability studies, global/international studies and performing arts. It will also be useful for policy planners, development practitioners, activists and social organizers working in related fields. Babu P. Remesh is currently Professor, School of Development Studies; Dean (Research & Development) and Director, Centre for Research Methods at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Earlier he worked as Associate Fellow/Fellow at V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA; and as Associate Professor and Director, School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi. Ratheesh Kumar currently works as Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has previously taught at the Department of Anthropology, University of Hyderabad and at the School of Interdisciplinary and Trans-disciplinary Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi. He was a Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge (2021–2022).

Practising Interdisciplinarity Convergences and Contestations

Edited by Babu P. Remesh and Ratheesh Kumar

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Babu P. Remesh and Ratheesh Kumar individual chapters, the contributors The right of Babu P. Remesh and Ratheesh Kumar to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Routledge. Authors are responsible for all contents in their articles including accuracy of the facts, statements, and citations. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-19575-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-35944-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32942-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

List of Contributors Preface and Acknowledgements 1 Interdisciplinarity Matters: Convergences and Contestations of Interdisciplinary Trajectories

viii xii

1

RATHEESH KUMAR AND BABU P. REMESH

2 Interdisciplinarity: Unpredictable Transitions and Uncommon Encounters

24

GEORGE VARGHESE K.

3 Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge: Notes on the Politics of Interdisciplinarity

41

SHIJU SAM VARUGHESE

4 Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity: The Possibilities and Challenges of Liberal Arts Spaces in India

61

SHUBHA RANGANATHAN

5 Being Interdisciplinary: The Problem of Method and the Practice of Indian Philosophy

75

SAMUEL G. NGAIHTE

6 To Translation We All Belong

87

SOWMYA DECHAMMA C. C.

7 Education as a Discipline in India: Foundations and Histories NIDHI GULATI AND MANISH JAIN

102

vi Contents 8 Indispensability of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Society: On Philosophy and Science in Sociology

123

VIVEK KUMAR

9 Border Crossings between the Legal and the Social: On the Interface of Law, Sociology and Anthropology in India

135

MANISHA SETHI

10 Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work

146

NEETHA N.

11 Engaging with Interdisciplinarity through Disability Studies

161

SHUBHANGI VAIDYA

12 Desires and Fears of Heterodoxies: Notes on Disciplining Media Studies

173

VIBODH PARTHASARATHI

13 Media and Cultural Studies: Text, Subject, and Perception

186

SUJITH KUMAR PARAYIL

14 ‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations: The Needs, Perils and Limits of Border-Crossings

198

APARNA DEVARE

15 A New “Discipline” or a “Conversational Community”: Reflections on Doing and Building Childhood Studies

210

ANANDINI DAR

16 Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist!: Autobiographical Notes of a Researcher in Labour Studies

223

BABU P. REMESH

17 Positioning Emotions in an Interdisciplinary Perspective

237

NITA MATHUR

18 Researching the ‘Urban Turn’: Interdisciplinary Methods to Study Cities and Regions ROHIT NEGI, RACHNA MEHRA, AND PRITPAL RANDHAWA

249

Contents vii 19 Multiple Personas of Social Scientists in Public Health: Challenges in Interdisciplinarity

262

N. NAKKEERAN

Index269

List of Contributors

Anandini Dar is an Associate Professor, School of Liberal Studies, BML Munjal University, India. She is the co-founder and co-convenor of the Critical Childhoods and Youth Studies Collective (CCYSC) and serves as the advisory board member of The Childism Institute, at the Rutgers University, USA. Her research is in childhood studies, youth geographies, migration and diasporas, feminist pedagogy, and ethnographic research methods for young subjects. She recently co-edited a special issue “Southern Theories and De-colonial Childhood Studies” (2022) for the journal Childhood by SAGE, along with Tatek Abebe and Ida M. Lysa. Her recent chapters and articles include “De-colonizing Children’s Suffrage”, “Childhood Youth and Identity: A Roundtable Conversation from the Global South” and “Co-designing Urban Play Spaces to Improve Migrant Children’s Wellbeing”. Sowmya Dechamma C.C. teaches at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India. Apart from teaching Comparative Indian Literature and Cultural Discourses in Contemporary India, her research interests include Literatures of India, Translation Studies, Minority Languages and Cultural Discourse, Kodava performative cultures. Aparna Devare is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in International Relations. She has introduced a course titled Colonialism and International Relations, which looks at the colonial origins of International Relations. Her research interests are varied as reflected in her publications and cover the disciplines of International Relations, political theory, history, religion, post-colonialism (including literature) and Indian political thought. She has a book titled History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self (Routledge, 2011) and has published in several journals. Nidhi Gulati is a Professor in Teacher Education at the Institute of Home Economics, University of Delhi. She engages with education at the levels of field, policy and pedagogy. Nidhi has been a Fulbright Fellow affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published in areas of children’s lives and learning, teacher identity and the nature of childhood. Her research interests span childhood studies, popular culture and teacher education.

List of Contributors ix Manish Jain is an Associate Professor at the School of Education Studies (SES), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. His teaching and research interests lie at the intersections of history, politics and sociology of education to understand education in post-colonial societies, education policy, teacher education and social science curriculum. He has been a member of various textbook, syllabus and teacher education reform committees in India. Ratheesh Kumar currently works as Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has previously taught at the Department of Anthropology, University of Hyderabad and at the School of Interdisciplinary and Trans-disciplinary Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi. He was a Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge (2021–2022). Vivek Kumar (PhD) is a Professor of Sociology and Chairperson of Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is also Ambedkar Chair Professor in Sociology, and co-coordinator of Global Studies Programme. He has been Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology, Columbia University, USA and a visiting faculty at Humboldt University, Germany. His publications include Caste and Democracy in India, India’s Roaring Revolution and Dalit Leadership in India. His seminal article is, “How Egalitarian is Indian Sociology?” He completed a research project with Harvard University and University of British Columbia. Nita Mathur is a Professor of Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi. She has been Visiting Scholar at Maison des sciences de l’homme (MSH) Paris, and Visiting Faculty at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, School of Environmental Studies, University of Delhi and Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi. Her books Cultural Rhythms in Emotions, Narratives and Dance, Santhal Worldview (ed.) and Consumer Culture, Modernity and Identity (ed) deal with the central issue of social construction of identity. Rachna Mehra is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. She is trained in Modern Indian History and her research interests include partition of the Indian subcontinent, gender and refugee rehabilitation policies, urban history of small towns and cities. Neetha N. is a Professor at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi. Her research focuses on women’s employment, women workers in the informal sector, domestic workers, unpaid domestic and care work, labour migration and gender statistics. Her recent edited books are Working at Others Homes: The Specifies and Challenges of Paid Domestic Work, Tulika Books (2018) and Migration, Gender and Care Economy (2019), co-edited with Irudaya Rajan), Routledge. She is one of the lead authors of the chapter on “Pluralising Family” of the International Panel on Social Progress Report, 2018.

x  List of Contributors N. Nakkeeran is with the School of Global Affairs & Deputy Director of Centre for Research Methods, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). He has taught in various public health programmes in the country; worked, published and undertaken funded research in the areas of health social sciences, health equity, child malnutrition, qualitative research methodology and ethnography. Rohit Negi is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. He has researched subterranean, built and atmospheric urban processes in Southern Africa and India. He is the co-author of Atmosphere of Collaboration (Routledge, 2021) and co-editor of Space, Planning and Everyday Contestations in Delhi (Springer, 2016). Samuel G. Ngaihte is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests include the comparative study of traditions, Continental and Indian philosophy, Philosophical Anthropology, Borderland Studies and Dialogic Methodology. He is the author of Vedic Practice, Ritual Studies and Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsāsūtras: Dharma and the Enjoined Subject (Routledge, 2019). Sujith Kumar Parayil is a Professor at the Department of History, University of Hyderabad. He previously taught at the Centre for Media Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS), Calcutta. His teaching and research interests are visual history and cultural histories of modern India. Vibodh Parthasarathi maintains a multidisciplinary interest in media policy, digital transitions and policy literacy. He is Associate Professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Queensland, KU Leuven, University of Helsinki and IIT Bombay. Widely published in leading journals in his field, his co-edited works include Pedagogy in Practice (Bloomsbury), Platform Capitalism in India (Palgrave) and the double-volume The Indian Media Economy (OUP). Pritpal Randhawa is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. He is trained as a social scientist in science policy studies and has more than 10 years of research and teaching experience on diverse urban issues in various national and international institutes. His areas of interest include politics of urban infrastructures, urban planning and policy, and ruralurban linkages. Shubha Ranganathan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Drawing on a range of disciplines such as anthropology, gender studies, disability studies, and critical psychology, she works on health and disability-related projects from critical and social justice perspectives. Currently, she is researching parenting and care in the context of autism as part of her engagement with the neurodiversity discourse in India.

List of Contributors xi Babu P. Remesh is currently Professor, School of Development Studies; Dean (Research & Development) and Director, Centre for Research Methods at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Previously, he worked as Associate Fellow/Fellow at V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA and as Associate Professor and Director, School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi. Manisha Sethi teaches at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She has also taught sociology at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Most recently, she is the editor of Courts and Communities: Religion and Law in Modern India (Routledge, 2022). Shubhangi Vaidya is presently a Professor at the School of Interdisciplinary and Trans-disciplinary Studies, IGNOU. Her areas of research interest include disability studies and gender studies. She is the author of two books – Autism and the Family in Urban India: Looking Back, Looking Forward (Springer, 2016) and Embodying Motherhood: Perspectives from Contemporary India (SageYoda, 2016 – co-authored). George Varghese K. was former faculty at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH) of the Manipal University, India. He is presently the President of the Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective (DGSIC). His research mainly centres around the anthropology of gold, Vishwakarma community and the Syrian Christians of Kerala, and the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Shiju Sam Varughese is an assistant professor at the Centre for Studies and Research in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSSTIP) in the School of Social Sciences of the Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India. His research interests include public engagement with science and technology, science communication studies, and social history of knowledge.

Preface and Acknowledgements

“Being interdisciplinary” has become one of the most available and celebrated claims of present-day academic enunciations. At the same time the idea of being interdisciplinary in the humanities and social sciences quite often remains selfexplanatory and thus taken for granted in its understanding and practices. However, the idea of crossing the assigned borders of knowledge domains in academic discourses was never a recent phenomenon within the human sciences since the theoretical interventions of Marx, Hegel, Freud, Foucault, Arendt and Bourdieu – to list a few – were often taught and debated across the humanities and social science disciplines, irrespective of these scholars’ formal and informal association and affiliation to particular disciplines. When it comes to methodology, most disciplines in the social sciences showed their staggering character in terms of fixing their trade between positivism and hermeneutics. Although predominantly qualitative in nature, ethnography has been adopted by almost all social sciences as a key approach in recent years and it has become an emerging practice even in the fields of management and market research. The emergence of (new) disciplines at different historical contexts, brought along with them, the significance and uniqueness of the subject matters and methodologies that they dealt with. The late twentieth century transformations at the disciplinary boundaries and the increasing desire for interdisciplinarity in the domains of social sciences have gathered further crisis. These points of crisis are specific to state policy, socio-economic and historic contexts, regional and linguistic variations and thus can be understood only in specific national/regional settings. Though the idea of being interdisciplinary is valued and celebrated in contemporary academic practices and overwhelmingly encouraged by funding bodies, certain institutional traditions and rigidities bring academic constraints and make both pedagogy and research a complex task entangled with a great amount of ambiguity. By locating such ambivalence in the processes of doing and undoing with disciplines, this book brings together critical engagements from different vantage points on practising interdisciplinarity with reference to humanities and social sciences in India today through contributions of 22 scholars, who have been following interdisciplinary routes in their respective fields of academic practices. These various fields of research include Epistemology, Pedagogy, University/Higher Education, Research Methods, Institutional History, Development Studies, Labour Studies,

Preface and Acknowledgements xiii Public Health, Law, Liberal Arts, Women’s Studies, Gender, Religion, Language, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, Disability Studies, Childhood Studies, International Relations, Auto-ethnography and Personal History. As the book adequately blends both conceptual/academic discourses on interdisciplinarity and the personal experiences of the pioneer practitioners, it is expected to attract a wide range of audience. How debates on the disciplinary crises in the 1990s in social sciences and humanities in India can be revisited in light of the most recent reclassifications of knowledge domains? How do the global restructuring of disciplines and the increasing demand for interdisciplinarity get reflected in the reconfiguring of knowledge domains in both new and old institutions of India’s higher education, the universities in particular? How one can trace the modes and meanings of convergence and contradictions in conceptualizing and implementing the principles of interdisciplinarity in policy and practice, respectively, with reference to select institutions/universities? What are the qualitative differences that brought under new nomenclatures such as “liberal arts” when it comes to the acts of convergences and collaborations among individuals, institutions and ideas? How the indistinctness in conceptualizing and comprehending ideas on subject matters and methodologies within the old social sciences and humanities and the new liberal arts can be mapped for a critical scrutiny? It is in a bid to answer these questions, we thought of bringing this book, which offers fresh intellectual rigour towards new orientations in thinking and doing through the idea of interdisciplinarity. Now, after close to three years of our travelling and efforts with this idea, while looking back, we vividly remember some of the well-wishers and supporters, without whom we could not have brought out this book in its present form, and what follows is a brief and incomplete attempt to recollect some of them. It was in 2009, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) established a School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies (SOITS), perhaps the first of its sort in India. And, we both were among the first set of faculty members to join this new school. From that time onwards, there have been many occasions where we had to teach and think on “interdisciplinarity” as a core theme in social research and research methodology. Though, by then, we were actively practising interdisciplinarity in our respective fields of research – namely labour studies and sociology of education (gradually moving away from the comfort and constraints our parental disciplines – economics and sociology, respectively), it is only after joining SOITS/IGNOU, we really began our focused efforts in thinking and teaching interdisciplinarity, with due attention on its methodological relevance and epistemological positioning. The major task for the first set of faculty members who joined SOITS in 2009 was to quickly design and institute interdisciplinary courses and programmes, which duly gel with the mandated objectives of the school. And, accordingly, we took the task of designing two new academic programmes as the flagship programmes of the school, namely, Master’s in Labour and Development and Master’s in Social Anthropology. For the first time in the history of IGNOU, which by then has already become the world’s largest university in terms of enrolment (with

xiv  Preface and Acknowledgements close to 3 million students in open and distance education mode), our programmes were to be launched in regular, face-to-face mode. Accordingly, we had a series of consultative meetings to conceptualize and design these programmes as well as to prepare detailed perspective plan for the school to move forward in the domain of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies. In these consultative meetings and the seminar series of the school, we got deep insights on the idea of practising interdisciplinarity, from many eminent Professors including Rajan Gurukkal, Late R.S. Mann, Late Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Navin Chandra, K.P. Kannan, D. Narasimha Reddy, Padmini Swaminathan, Indu Agnihotri, S.M. Patnaik, G. Omkarnath, Prabhu Mohapatra and Kamala Sankaran. Needless to state that learning from these researchers on the value and utility of practising interdisciplinarity provided us the initial base in the new terrain, which helped us to boldly and purposively continue with our academic journey in the eclectic disciplinary path. Subsequently, as part of teaching courses related to research methods, we took the task of orienting our students in the interdisciplinary stream, explaining the prospects and contours of this non-conventional methodology. It is in these classes where we polished, tested and crystallized our conceptualizations apropos interdisciplinary studies. Thus, we will be failing in our duty, if we are not thanking our students of MA programmes (in Labour and Development and Social Anthropology, respectively) and our fellow-faculty members at IGNOU. During this phase, we also got invitations to deliver talks and special sessions on interdisciplinarity in various academic institutions and universities, which undoubtedly, helped us to sharpen our thinking on the theme. We would like to specially mention some of these institutions, such as: Bhagat Phool Singh Women’s University (BPSWU), Sonepat; V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA; Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), New Delhi; Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady; M.G. University, Kottayam; Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati; DPS Society’s HRD Centre, New Delhi; and the Academic Staff Colleges (Now UGCHRDC) of Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Hyderabad. Dr. Rani Tokas and Dr. Ashish Kumar in BPSWU deserve special mention here, as they were actively organizing methodology programmes in interdisciplinary research at the HRDC of the university. These research methodology programmes also helped us to get connected with some of the eminent experts, like Late Prof. Vinay Kumar Srivastava who valued and advocated for interdisciplinary methods in social research. Though we left IGNOU after a few years and moved to other academic spaces such as Central University of Hyderabad and JNU (in the case of Ratheesh) and to Ambedkar University of Delhi (in the case of Babu), we kept on working and teaching on interdisciplinary research methods in the various academic courses/ programmes, in which we got involved. Notwithstanding the aforementioned backdrop, more precisely, the idea of writing a book on the prospects, possibilities and constraints of going the interdisciplinary way came to our mind with a strong urge only in October 2020, the time when the entire academic world was indulged in organizing webinars and online workshops, as a second best option, while the smooth running of on-campus and

Preface and Acknowledgements xv in-person sessions had been stalled indefinitely due to the unexpected advent and onslaught of Covid-19 pandemic. We both got an invitation from Dr. Saji Mathew, an alumnus of IGNOU, to deliver talks on interdisciplinary research in a four-day webinar titled Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Education: Approaches and Reflections, which was jointly planned by the School of Pedagogical Science, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam and the Coaching Centre for Minority Youth under Directorate Minority Welfare, Government of Kerala. Soon after delivering these talks, when we both discussed about this webinar, suddenly it came to our minds that it would be quite appropriate to plan a book on interdisciplinarity, including the views of experts in various streams of social sciences and humanities. As we both agreed with this idea, we quickly contacted another speaker of the same webinar, Prof. N.C. Narayanan (IIT, Mumbai), who happens to be a close friend for many years. Since N.C. (as we call Narayanan) also nodded positively, we did not look back afterwards. Though N.C. could not finally give us his paper on “interdisciplinary approaches to water resource management” due to unforeseen official preoccupations, we both really want to thank him for his time and ideas during the initial stage of conceptualization of this book. We need to specially thank all our contributing authors in this book, for readily accepting our invitation and providing whole-hearted support and encouragement, despite the fact that all of them were quite busy in their respective research/ teaching occupations. This book would not have been possible, but without their continuous support and untainted trust on us. Many younger researchers, mostly our own students, supported us by providing research assistance, literature gathering and assistance in proofreading, copy editing and so on. Specially, we would like to keep on record the excellent research support received from Anna Zacharias, Darshana S. Nair and Anjali Sharma. As part of their internship done with us during the course work for Master’s in Development Studies at the Ambedkar University Delhi, Aaromal DCruz and Melvin Kunjumon also helped us in collating some additional literature pertaining to interdisciplinary studies. Among our colleagues and academic friends from various institutions, we would like to specially thank Surinder S. Jodhka, Sanjay Srivastava, Anirban Sengupta, Nilika Mehrotra, Neetha N., Vijayabasker, C.P. Vinod, Shubhangi Vaidya, N. Nakkeeran, Nita Mathur, Shashibhushan Upadhyay and Jesim Pais for their time, interest and support during various stages of conceptualizing and crystallizing our thoughts on problems and prospects of interdisciplinary approaches to social science research and teaching. The team at Routledge, Riya Bhattacharya and the production team, Shoma Choudhury, Amit Kumar, Angelin Joy and Lubna Irfan (who was the contact person at the beginning of this book project), also deserve special mention, for their tireless support. Last but not the least, we both would like to thank our family members, our fellow travellers, during this entire period – Neetha, Semeena, Appunni and Kannunni. Babu P. Remesh and Ratheesh Kumar New Delhi, 1 December 2023

1

Interdisciplinarity Matters Convergences and Contestations of Interdisciplinary Trajectories Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh

Introduction The apothegm “…from an interdisciplinary perspective” has become one of the most common academic articulations of our time. Nonetheless, the idea of “being interdisciplinary” in the social sciences quite often remains self-explanatory and thus taken for granted in its understanding and practices. The late 20th century shifts and subsequent muddling at the disciplinary boundaries and the increasing desire for interdisciplinarity in the domains of the social sciences have garnered further ambiguities in conceptualising and comprehending ideas on subject matters, theories and methodologies in terms of practice. The questions of “what to know” and “how to know” have often been placed in a wide-open space accompanied with a methodological anarchism that celebrates the Feyerabendian assertion of “anything goes”.1 Certain institutional practices produced within particular frames of reference on interdisciplinarity make pedagogic practice a complex task with little sense of conceptual clarity. By locating such ambivalence in the processes of doing and undoing with disciplines, it is worth attempting a critique on the ongoing celebrations on practising interdisciplinarity with reference to the social sciences in India today. It seems appropriate to start out a discussion on academic disciplines and their boundaries with the concept of classification. The logic and practice of classification has a fascinating history beyond the frames of academic procedures and specific institutional traditions. Academic disciplines themselves are a product of this complex history of classification and the ongoing struggles embedded in that process (Bourdieu 2018). What is the history of academic disciplines that we find familiar in our academic institutions? How and with what logic were they arranged and rearranged? Why classification that was once found to be solid and logical could not maintain their stability? Why does interdisciplinarity become the key in contemporary academics? Several broad questions such as these concerning the boundaries of knowledge and disciplines will confront us when we start pondering on the division among disciplines in its historical and contemporary contexts. The quest for understanding the structure and form of different disciplines draws our attention towards the past of knowledge streams and disciplines.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-1

2  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh Classification is considered to be one of the fundamental principles of our social life. We make meaning of the world through the process of classifying it as we classify everything that we encounter (Bourdieu 2018). Plants, animals, material objects, non-material aspects, natural phenomenon and human-made institutions and ways of life have ever been the specimen for the act of classification. All modes of classification are historically contingent and subject to alterations and modifications from time to time. Here, our focus is to explore the field of knowledge and its dividing lines of specialization and the shifting territories in different contexts. In order to examine the principles, prospectus and practices that led to this classification and its aftermath, there is a need for a critical scrutiny of events that went into the making of disciplines at particular historic junctures. We tell here only a version of the story of classification concerning knowledge and academic disciplines with reference to the social sciences. The empirical description and analysis that follow from the conceptual issues of the theme are mostly gathered from the Indian context. Knowledge and Disciplines: A Historical Overview Tracing the trajectories of disciplines in specific historical junctures is a crucial task in the understanding of their present-day stature. In order to comprehend the nuances in the making of “epistemological republic” (Varghese 2011) and the present predicament of academic disciplines along with the political and ideological predilections involved in the whole affair, it is essential to trace the historical trajectory of disciplines. The medieval order of knowledge in Europe provides the background for an understanding of the present-day structuring of knowledge streams and disciplines in academic institutions worldwide. Ontogeny (the branch of biology that deals with ontogenesis) of disciplines, as George Varghese notes, is interesting as they like living beings emerge at a particular point of time, evolve, hybridize, die and also often return. The stature and values attached to the disciplines are also subject to variations from time to time. The story of theology and philosophy is a perfect citation for these changing dynamics as the supreme stature and importance that both these disciplines occupied in the West for a long time from the Greek intellectual era onwards, had declined significantly around the 16th century and thereafter.2 One can still find the spectre of this downfall haunting the humanities and social science disciplines in the present day (Varghese 2011: 94). Until the 17th century, there was another aggregation also in process that ordered the academic disciplines into two other broad camps, namely natural philosophy and natural history. All the abstract physical and mathematical sciences were classified under natural philosophy and all other ideas related to human life, organisms and nature came under natural history. It is interesting to note that Newton’s Principia Natura was subscribed as a treatise in natural philosophy. In the span of the two centuries that separated the classical episteme and the modern episteme, there occurred radical alterations in the form and tenor of individual disciplines (Foucault 1970). Theology lost its eminence as a discipline by the 18th century. The study of wealth transformed into political

Interdisciplinarity Matters 3 economy and later economics; alchemy became phlogiston chemistry and later proper chemistry; old rhetoric and grammar turned into general grammar and later philology; and botany, zoology and early medicine got integrated into biology by the last decades of the 19th century. Philosophy got restructured and became part of the arts faculty and shared its position beside a number of other so-called lesser disciplines such as fine arts, music, painting, language, literature and so on, within the present-day fold of humanities disciplines (Wallersterin et al. 1996; Varghese 2011). The consolidation of academic disciplines within the social sciences ensued around mid-19th century in the aftermath of all these developments. The categorization of knowledge streams took a crucial turn in the postenlightenment period in Europe, with the consolidation of a tripartite division consisting of the fields of natural sciences, the humanities and social sciences. With the publication of certain key texts such as Carl Linnaeus’s “Systema Naturae” (1735), Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” (1859), Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), E.B. Tylor’s “Primitive Culture” (1871), and Emile Durkheim’s “The Division of Labour in Society” (1893) and “The Rules of Sociological Method” (1895) had marked an event in the making of disciplines within the specific fields and their modes of operation. While these texts became foundational in specific disciplines in their novelty in theoretical and methodological uniqueness, the authors of those texts eventually became the founders of those disciplines. Disciplines in turn, claimed and celebrated the cannons and they remained foundational and therefore inevitable and undeniable. The logic of classification among disciplines is based on at least two dimensions, namely the subject matter and the method of inquiry. As is evident, when the natural sciences, namely physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, were founded on their unique subject matters, their common ground was developed over the idea of method, grounded in scientific objectivity, experimentation and causal explanation. The other end of the spectrum is characterized by the framework of subject matter and methods associated with the disciplines of humanities. Though the subject matter of disciplines such as literature, art, philosophy and aesthetics is relatively vast and indefinite to a large extent, the methodology is not that of the natural sciences which is based on empirical observation and factual verification. The ways of knowing are entrusted upon the potentiality of human thought and creative imagination of the human mind. This dichotomous position in the ways of knowing created mutually exclusive methodological traditions between the natural sciences and humanities disciplines. Pedagogic and research tools, rules and procedures were devised to fit into these traditions. “Western science has excluded certain expressive modes from its legitimate repertoire. For instance, the expressive modes of writing such as rhetoric (in the name of ‘plain,’ transparent signification), fiction (in the name of fact), and subjectivity (in the name of objectivity) were considered as antithetical to factual representation and thus recognized as unscientific. The qualities eliminated from science were localized in the domain of art and literature. Literary texts were deemed to be metaphoric and allegorical, composed of inventions rather than observed facts” (Clifford 1986: 5).

4  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh Social sciences on the other hand, stand close to the humanities in its subject matter (concerning the human affairs reflected in its prefix “social”) and to the natural sciences in its method (claiming to be scientific attached in its suffix “sciences”). This peculiar nature of the social sciences needs close attention while tracing the history of the specific disciplines within its fold and their overlaps and interfaces. Social sciences presumed to have a methodological approach that implies the perspective of a fledgling discipline anxiously presenting its credentials for full status in the fraternity of the natural sciences (Merton 1968). Social Sciences and Their Territories Of late, there has been a wider acceptance for interdisciplinary learning and research in the social sciences. This shift in emphasize from the utility of uni-disciplinary to a mixed-disciplinary learning path is also largely due to a rising realization about the ineptitude of single disciplines to capture some of the real-life problems. Increasingly, it is accepted that to understand many real-world problems, one has to have a toolbox backed by more than one disciplines. Accordingly, world over, different disciplinary learning streams are found eventually merging with other disciplinary/interdisciplinary tributaries. For quite a long time, higher learning and research meant a vertical growth path in an identified specialization. In a sense, delving deeper and deeper in one’s own discipline is considered as the path of advanced learning. However, in recent times, there is a realization that no subject or discipline can stand alone, as all are related in one way or the other. This realization is also due to a growing understanding that many of the extant research problems are not fully understood with the help of any uni-disciplinary approach/framework. When we are dealing with practical problems and issues, more than our disciplinary competence, what matters is the strength of our approach in fully capturing various dimensions of the research problem being examined. Historically tracing the question of disciplines, the rise of the social sciences as a consolidated unit of knowledge was a process that began in the 18th century, in the time of the Enlightenment and accomplished during the political and economic movements, namely the French and Industrial Revolutions. Scholars argue that it was the faith of the liberals in the administrative management of society that resulted in the growth and consolidation of the social sciences in the 19th century. The liberals took an ideologically median position between the status quoists belonging to the conservative camp and the radical groups of anarchists and communists, as the latter wanted to do away with all forms of social control and centralized power. The liberal logic of managerialism blended with a reconciliation to the conservatism of the church, and the resistance of the radicals turned the social sciences into a stream of knowledge filled with the ambiguities of antithetical ways of inquiry. This unevenness around the notions of the scientific and the subjective had stemmed from natural sciences and humanities, respectively. The ambivalence both in methodology and in subject matter had turned the social sciences into a stream of unsettled matters in the production of knowledge.

Interdisciplinarity Matters 5 The divergent epistemologies of nomothetic disciplines, such as sociology, economics and political science, and the idiographic disciplines, such as anthropology and history, became a ubiquitous feature of the social sciences, staggering between moments of convergence and separation when put into practice. Immanuel Wallerstein’s remarks become most relevant in this context: Social science was like someone tied to two horses galloping in opposite directions. Having developed no epistemological stance of its own, social science was torn apart by the struggle between the two colossi that were natural sciences and the humanities, neither of which tolerated a neutral stance. (Wallerstein 1999: 43) The growth of the social sciences from 1850 to 1945 was seen to be more focused and selective, which resulted in the process of standardization in terms of both theoretical and methodological orientations. Pedagogic unity was also found among the disciplines as the result of standardization within various institutional traditions. International and national associations of specific disciplines also helped to bring uniform patterns of teaching and research practices across nations and regions. Within the framework of the 19th century consolidation of disciplinary boundaries and in the fivefold division among the social sciences in particular, the given territories of each discipline were marked clearly in terms of their subject matter and methodological orientations with a strict sense of maintaining the borders of knowledge production and practice. There were five disciplines, namely economics, political science, sociology, history and anthropology, placed within the domain of the social sciences, plus oriental studies, which lost its relevance by the second half of the 20th century (Wallerstein et al. 1996). As Wallerstein et al. present in their account of the Gulbenkian Commission report and in their view, there were only six names that were very widely recognized throughout the scholarly world, and they highlighted three underlying cleavages that seemed reasonable in the making of such a classification in the late 19th century: [T]he split between past (history) and present (economics, political science, and sociology); the split between the Western ‘civilised’ world (the above four disciplines) and the rest of the world (anthropology for “primitive” peoples, the Oriental studies for non-Western “high civilisations”); and the split, valid only for the modern Western world, between the logic of the market (economics), the state (political science) and the civil society (sociology). (Ibid: 2–3) This particular way of boundary maintenance faced challenges after the Second World War since there emerged new ideas towards organizing knowledge categories, driven by the global political climate. It was then marked by the disintegration of the old structured disciplines such as sociology, political science,

6  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh economics and anthropology into new amorphous and hybridized forms. New disciplines also emerged and gained strength such as area studies and international studies. Scholars who belonged to the erstwhile third world and from the peripheries of the global south including the hitherto marginalized groups and sections also demanded their interest in constructing new disciplines to fit their intellectual and political concerns. By the 1970s, this movement resulted in the formation of women’s studies, minority studies, Dalit studies, Queer studies, African studies and so on. In the late 1980s and in the early 1990s, with the advent of globalization, more specialized disciplines such as cultural studies, post-colonial studies, development studies, film studies and media studies became part of university departments as independent disciplines. The disciplines that found their grounds between the humanities and social sciences adapted a new label of “The Liberal Arts”. Wallerstein notes the two most significant disciplines in this sequence are “cultural studies”, which located in the interface of social science/humanities and “complexity studies”, which is found in the milieu of the natural/physical sciences. Both these disciplines challenged the classical mode of nomothetic modes of inquiry and shifted their probe heads to the non-systemic and non-predictive dimensions of reality (Wallerstein 1996, Varghese 2011). The late 20th century crises and shifts in disciplinary boundaries and the increasing desire for interdisciplinarity in the domains of humanities and social sciences have gathered further crises and ambiguity in conceptualizing and comprehending ideas on subject matters, theories and methodologies in terms of practice. Another predicament apart from the blurring borders within social science disciplines was created by the increasing marginalization of the social sciences and humanities at the expense of promoting science disciplines throughout the globe. The situation has taken a dubious turn in the stature of the social sciences and humanities, which is palpable from the orchestrated drive unleashed against these disciplines by several elite centres of learning and certain governments and institutions of excellence. The evident marker of such a political debacle got reflected in the steep downfall of funding in the area of research and development in the so called “non-profitable disciplines”. The neoliberal market logic of academic affairs and employment dynamics contingent upon the hierarchy of disciplines also contributed to the further downfall of the social sciences and humanities. Social Sciences in India Though the social sciences in the developed countries faced a crisis in maintaining their popularity and credentials to a great extent, they continued to exist with a larger common sense that these disciplines are capable of enhancing the capacity to address human problems in a more realistic manner compared to the natural and technological sciences. Even when such realizations to nurture the capacity of “thinking” in a rational and critical manner is recognized as a prerequisite for a modern educational quest in theory, it simply remained more or less a pretentious articulation and gathers little attention towards practice.

Interdisciplinarity Matters 7 It would be worthwhile to transpose the global scene of the social sciences to the Indian context in order to examine the trajectory of disciplinary modes of training and research to a more celebrated approach to interdisciplinarity. The postindependence phase of Indian higher education witnessed a commitment to a scientific and rational approach to higher education during the period of Nehruvian reforms. The Indian Constitution is specifically committed to the promotion of a so-called “scientific temper” and is obviously mute about developing a social science or humanities temper or sensibility. The government has instituted several policies and programmes to encourage science education while ignoring social sciences and humanities. This partisan approach in favour of science and technology education and institutions gathered criticism or protest neither from the general public nor from the practitioners of those disciplines in any demonstrative manner. This predicament of the social sciences and humanities delivered a deep-seated prejudice against these disciplines and they found their place at the bottom of the hierarchy of knowledge streams in the institutions of higher education. This in turn reflected in the popular perception about the hierarchy of the disciplines and thereby reinforcing the gradation and the subsequent devaluation of the social sciences and humanities. There are a number of crisis narratives on the status of social sciences in South Asia, with reference to particular disciplines such as sociology, history, anthropology and so on. However, the South Asia story of crisis is not as simple and uniform as scholars like Partha Chatterjee cite in his study on the institutional context of social science research in South Asia (Chatterjee 2002). Not all regions, institutions or disciplines share a sense of decline or crisis. In some countries such as Nepal, for instance, this is partly because the foundations of serious social science research have not been adequately created; and in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and some regions of India, existing institutions have declined because of the cumulative impact of the political circumstances in which they had to operate, the shortage in the assured government funding of established institutions and other factors. (Chatterjee 2002: 3604) The problem of funding is found to be crucial in the assessment of the crisis in social science education in India and in other South Asian countries. The crisis in funding, in turn, translates its effects in the domains of research; recruitment of sufficient faculty; in organizing academic events such as conferences, workshops and training programs; publications and in the overall development of particular disciplines. Interestingly, one can observe that the earlier dominance of particular disciplines within the field of social sciences in South Asia is seemingly shifting. For instance, in most parts of India as well as in Pakistan and Bangladesh, economics was by far the dominant and most respected discipline (Beteille 2000; Chatterjee 2002). In Sri Lanka and in North-East India, history enjoyed a prestigious place followed by anthropology. In Nepal, political science and history were the

8  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh dominant disciplines. In recent years, especially with shifting patterns of funding and new opportunities of employment, the demand for advanced education in history seems to have declined in most regions (Chatterjee 2002). A growing unevenness between different genders in the humanities and social science disciplines is another significant factor in the evaluation of specific disciplines and their importance. The gender balance among research students and faculty in the social sciences is clearly shifting in favour of women. In many institutions today, including in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the majority of students in postgraduate classes in the social sciences are women. There are many more women among the younger faculty today than would have been the case 20 or 30 years ago and it is not at all unusual to have women in positions of authority in academic institutions in South Asia today. It is often alleged that the shifting gender balance is itself an indication that the prestige of the social sciences is declining. But, like many other popular sayings, this one too is an oversimplification (Chatterjee 2002). A range of issues apart from policies of higher/university education impinge on reshaping the structure and fabric of social science and humanities disciplines over the past decades. These include the lack of funding, job markets, societal attitudes and viewpoints, political interests and changing international relations and market and corporate concerns. Due to increased recognition apropos the inefficacy of disciplinary approaches in capturing the totality of research problems, in the latter half of the previous century, there had been some changes in terms of visualizing university structures. While many universities transformed themselves into multi-disciplinary ways, where different disciplines are allowed work without losing their originality, many other universities had started accommodating enquiries that focus on a particular theme, from the viewpoints of different disciplinary frames. The emergence of area studies in many universities (like Jawaharlal Nehru University) in the 1970s needs to be seen from this viewpoint. Eventually, this move has matured into a situation where new streams of interdisciplinary studies got space in university systems. This trend, which is a more or less universal phenomenon, was visible in India too. In the last decade of the 20th century and in the subsequent one, many Indian universities have established centres/schools/departments which are essentially of an “interdisciplinary nature”. Commencement of exclusive departments on women’s studies, social exclusion, peace and conflict studies, environmental studies, labour studies, development studies and so on are testimonies for this disciplinary shift in the approach of Indian universities like their global counterparts. Given the shifts in the boundary maintenance of disciplines become imminent, it has brought the demand for learning the trade of other disciplines including their domains of theory, method and substantive fields of knowledge. Simultaneously, terminologies that represent such attempts also multiplied and they often tend to invite ambiguities both at the conceptual and practical levels. Though the idea of interdisciplinarity was widely accepted by policy makers and academic critiques, the much-required clarity over the parallel concepts and terms remained due and it demanded further unpacking at the level of application in both pedagogy and research. An examination of such parallel concepts on “going beyond the discipline”

Interdisciplinarity Matters 9 would yield context-specific outputs while introducing the various aspects of “going the interdisciplinary way”. Disciplinarity, Multi-disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity: Concepts, Contours and Concerns Essentially, interdisciplinary learning and research imply integration of information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts and/or theories from multiple disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge. Accordingly, it involves blending of two or more academic fields. This merging of disciplines can be seen as crossing of traditional boundaries between disciplines or schools of thoughts in the pursuit of a common task. In order to understand the concept of interdisciplinary studies, it is useful to learn the differences between some of the terms such as disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. In its simplest way, disciplinarity can be seen as adhering to the frameworks and approaches of a single discipline. If a researcher examines the researchable problem, strictly using the tools, techniques and approaches of a particular discipline in which he or she is well versed, the approach of the person can be seen as disciplinary. Contrary to the approach of uni-disciplinary research, if one uses tools and techniques and frameworks of more than one discipline, to understand a research problem, that path of enquiry becomes that of multi- or interdisciplinary research. Here, it is important to understand the difference between these two approaches – i.e. multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. The terms “multi-disciplinary” and “interdisciplinary” are often used interchangeably, despite considerable differences between these. The approach of multi-disciplinary enquiries can be best explained using the typical “committee methods”, usually followed by governments. In a committee, though the experts have an opportunity to come and work together, there is not much time to work together and to arrive at a gelled understanding of the problem. So, essentially a multi-disciplinary approach is the study of a common problem with different disciplinary frameworks but without much scope for merging or unifying these disciplinary streams. As opposed to the non-merging collaboration of disciplines in multi-disciplinary research, in interdisciplinary research/studies, experts from different disciplines work together, merge their methodologies and theoretical frameworks to create new concepts to address the unique problem at hand and to find the most effective solutions. Thus, here various disciplines are getting merged and the confluence or fusion to provide a new integrated viewpoint, which allows us to see the research problem in a more holistic way. Given this understanding about the difference between multi- and interdisciplinary approaches, we can see that having experts from different disciplines does not make a university/department or research institution interdisciplinary in nature. If there is no disciplinary merging happening in these institutions and if all the experts are zealously and strictly maintaining their disciplinary boundaries, at best, we can only visualize these institutions as those with a multi-disciplinary orientation. In such learning environments, understanding social issues in a complete way

10  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh may is not be possible. And, for such institutions, the famous quote of Garry D. Brewer, “the world has problems and the universities have departments”, will be quite appropriate.3 Approving the importance of interdisciplinarity is also an agreement regarding the existence of multiple realities. The beginning of interdisciplinarity is also the beginning of recognizing the coexistence of multiple meanings/realities apropos a research issue, under consideration. Quite often, we tend to see social issues from a particular viewpoint of discipline or framework and tend to believe that it is the only reasonable and viable way to understand the social world. Similarly, those who are very loyal to their disciplines of specialization often instinctively follow certain theories or methods or tools that are “acceptable” as per their discipline and by doing so, they also tend to ignore alternative theories, methods or views (Szostak 2002). Here, strong disciplinary bindings are found effectively pushing the researcher into a “disciplinary trap”. Disciplines are often equipped with a shared set of perspectives, in terms of topics, epistemological assumptions, theories and methods – which are unique to that particular discipline. Disciplines often do have a shared set of ideological assumptions and often a shared understanding about what is appropriate and what is undesirable. These can also be seen as “disciplinary constraints”, which breeds some sort of freedom or rigidities for the researchers. In such a context, going interdisciplinary means liberating the researcher from disciplinary chains.4 Broadly, there are at least two ways to become interdisciplinary. The first one is the “personal way”, where an individual gains competence in the tools and techniques of more than one discipline, uses them in a mixed manner, as his/her core concern is to tackle the problem at hand. There are many such individual researchers moving in the interdisciplinary path, blending different disciplinary approaches. Often, they gain deep insights in various disciplines and merge them in a way that these disciplines have gelled together, and it is difficult for anyone to see any strong uni-disciplinary inclination in this individualist way of practising interdisciplinarity. Though being interdisciplinary is a personal transformation of the researcher, this individual way of becoming interdisciplinary is not a widely used method, as it is quite an expensive path for an individual, especially when its opportunity costs are taken into account. The other method is an “institutional way”, which is a more realist, feasible and popular approach. There are many instances where a group of individuals from distinct disciplines work on a common problem for many years together. Eventually, all the members will become equally equipped with the tools and techniques of many related disciplines to address a common research problem. Many examples can be given for this institutional way of becoming an interdisciplinary researcher. For instance, take the case of an economist joining a labour institute – but working with historians, anthropologists, legal studies experts, public administration persons, behavioural scientists, sociologists and so on. After some time, he/she does not know whether he/she is a legal expert or an economist or sociologist. The person will be fairly competent in different methods owing to multiple disciplines, due to his/her continuous experience of working together in an interdisciplinary team. Similarly, we can visualize the case of a person who is a specialist in a particular

Interdisciplinarity Matters 11 discipline and working in a water research institute with experts from many other disciplines. In all such institutionally designed teamwork situations, interdisciplinarity comes in a natural way and the researcher gets transformed even without immediately realizing this gradual advent of change in perspective. There are no such prescribed or standard ways of becoming interdisciplinary. It is hard to see two interdisciplinary practitioners who are more or less similar in their approaches and their disciplinary compositions. For instance, let us consider a few researchers who are using tools, techniques and approaches of two disciplines in an interdisciplinary way (where one cannot bifurcate one discipline from other, as these disciplines have got gelled together). Even in such a situation, these researchers will be different from others in the group, as the proportion of disciplinary ingredients keep varying from person to person. Interdisciplinarity has happened or been acquired in their respective cases, at different stages, perhaps through distinct processes and experiences. So, each one will be unique in their own way. This situation is akin to the observation of C. Wright Mills in the Sociological Imagination that each scholar is a theorist in his or her own right (Mills 1959). This observation will be reflected in the various chapters of the volume where different authors bring in distinct ways of dealing with the questions on disciplines and interdisciplinarity along with their distinct biographic sketches. Multi- and Interdisciplinary Approaches through Metaphors and Analogues To clarify the distinction between multi- and interdisciplinary approaches, often many metaphors were engaged in literature. Often an analogy of lenses is used to explain the concepts of uni-, multi- and interdisciplinary approaches. Here, to put it in simple terms, single-lens demonstrates a uni-disciplinary approach, whereas different lenses used in discrete ways indicate a multidisciplinary approach. And, wherever there is a merging or confluence of two or more lenses, this merger of different perspectives is considered as the space of interdisciplinary understanding. At times, the metaphor of a river is used to denote the interdisciplinary journey of a research. A river normally starts from an original stream (like the researcher starts from a parental discipline). Afterwards, many other tributaries join the river (as in the case of other disciplinary thoughts and techniques get merged with the original discipline of the researcher), thereby making the river more resourceful and richer in terms of depth and flow. When eventually the river joins the ocean or a larger lake, it loses the total identity of a river as such. Many point out that it is a similar process in interdisciplinarity, as when the researcher graduates to a phase of transdisciplinary research, she/he transcends disciplinary domains and attains some level where extra disciplinary knowledge is also being incorporated in the knowledge matrix. Another metaphor which can be used is that of a banyan tree, with its prop roots. Similar to the case of this tree, which initially grows taller and thicker with its main trunk; initially the researchers also grow deeper and stronger in their own parental disciplines. Afterwards, similar to the prop roots, new roots of wisdom (or new (in)disciplinary orientations) will evolve and emerge, when the researcher

12  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh moves to the next phase of interdisciplinary research and learning. When prop roots grow and touch the ground, these roots provide more and more anchorage to the tree, in such a way that even without specifically relying on the main trunk, the tree can continue to spread out and stand without proper support, with the help of the prop roots. Yet another similar metaphor is that of an aircraft taking off. As the aircraft can take off only after acquiring a particular momentum on the ground, it is often felt that to take off into the space of interdisciplinarity, it is essential to have a proper grounding in a disciplinary terrain. In both these metaphors, interdisciplinarity is viewed as the next stage for the uni-disciplinary followers to graduate and attain. And, here, interdisciplinarity is considered as a phase where the uni-disciplinary researcher matures and becomes open to alternative and supplementary viewpoints, while pursuing a research problem under concern. Here, it is worth mentioning that many path-breaking interdisciplinary works, so far, have been done by people who have their definite disciplinary academic homes! The beginning of interdisciplinarity is often pointed out as an act of “crossing the borders of parental disciplines”. While just crossing the borders is a beginning of going interdisciplinary, it is widely understood that the adaptability and agility of teachers and researchers in frequently crossing the borders of disciplines and reaching at a borderless/mixed-disciplinary land might be the most ideal way to visualize interdisciplinarity. There are many more analogues/metaphors that can be considered to bring in various dimensions of interdisciplinarity. While a uni-disciplinary path is often compared to deep diving into the sea or going into the space in a straight line as in the case of a rocket, interdisciplinarity is explained as sailing across the sea in a ship or moving up and then travelling more and more horizontally in the sky, as in the case of an aircraft. Such examples of vertical versus horizontal travelling also underscores the basic difference in approaches of uni- and interdisciplinary enquiries, wherein the former is more focussed on a domain expertise in a specialized field and the latter involves a process of integration of information, theories and methods from different fields/disciplines – which is essentially an act of “broad-basing”. Implications of Being Interdisciplinary Being interdisciplinary is a way of breaking disciplinary silos and mixing tools from different disciplinary boxes. Obviously, such an approach amends the drawbacks of the single lensed vision provided by uni-disciplinary enquiries. The harmful effects of excessive specialization, where a learning path proceeds in a vertical and narrowly focused way, until the learner knows “everything about nothing” is also avoided in interdisciplinary methodologies. By providing a more balanced format for conversations and connections that lead to new knowledge, interdisciplinarity essentially allows for the intermingling of knowledge from different disciplinary perspectives, thereby dissolving academic/departmental boundaries. Accordingly, in this approach, social issues or research concerns come to the centre stage, thereby pushing the narrow-disciplinary considerations to the margins.

Interdisciplinarity Matters 13 Often interdisciplinary pursuits also effectively serve as bridges between the natural, behavioural and social sciences. Thus, interdisciplinarity can be viewed even as a philosophy that enables traditional disciplines to appreciate/accommodate differing perspectives and methods. Despite the many advantages of interdisciplinary approaches explained earlier, it needs to be highlighted that there exist many hurdles and practical issues too for an interdisciplinary researcher. It is often pointed out that when you become interdisciplinary, you will gradually get disconnected from your parental disciplines. This is quite expected as for those who decide to go the interdisciplinary way, the concerns of the problem identified for the study become more central compared to disciplinary loyalties. As Karl Popper remarked, “We are not Students of some subject matter, but students of problems. And problems may cut across the borders of any subject matter or discipline” (Popper 1963: 67). While the problem and its considerations dominate over disciplinary concerns, the researcher may become equally proficient in more than one discipline, at the cost of losing a focused rigor and strength in his/her own initial/parental discipline. Accordingly, interdisciplinary researchers are often blamed for lack of strength in a core discipline that affects his/her competence in approaching the research problem with a coherent disciplinary approach. Accordingly, from strict disciplinary perspectives, interdisciplinary works may be seen as “soft”, lacking in rigor or ideologically motivated. In practice, interdisciplinary collaborations can also fail. At times, the “disciplinary inertia” of the team members can scuttle the true interdisciplinary nature of the work. If certain members still continue to hold strong uni-disciplinary loyalties, despite their positioning in an interdisciplinary team, the situation may lead to interdisciplinarity being practiced for namesake! For instance, in many interdisciplinary schools and departments of universities, we still find faculty members who believe that they are economists, sociologists or historians. Interdisciplinarity in its true sense will be attained only when we find a situation where all these single-discipline trained persons identify them and their colleagues as one tribe depending upon the interest/domain of that interdisciplinary team. In such cases, all members will find that they are experts on development studies, cultural studies, labour studies, gender studies and so on. Thus, teamwork through active interactions and exchange of tools, techniques and approaches also assume centrality in interdisciplinary pursuits of knowledge. In terms of employment prospects, often those who practice strict disciplinary streams are provided with more opportunities. For instance, in the Indian scenario, many prominent universities still have strong disciplinary departments and weak interdisciplinary departments. Interdisciplinary schools working on themes such as women studies, social exclusion and so on are often funded in the project mode or as pilot initiatives – and the faculty members in these departments have to continue in their job in a “temporarily permanent mode” for quite a long time. This discriminatory treatment is also visible in many other areas such as publication opportunities (where journal publication opportunities are more readily available to strict-disciplinary practitioners) and funding possibilities (where funding of projects/research is often routed through disciplinary streams). Right at the incipient

14  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh stage of research training also, one can visualize the added weightage given to uni-disciplinary practioners. Often, doctoral positions are offered in specific disciplines, leaving no scope for interdisciplinary pursuits for interested candidates, by design itself. The fact that in the Indian academic context, UGC-JRF options are mostly not available for interdisciplinary subjects (e.g. development economics, social exclusion, Dalit studies and so on) itself shows how difficult it is for the interdisciplinary practitioners to initially squeeze in and limit their enquiries to prescribed structures of the system before gradually and covertly branching out and expanding towards interdisciplinary routes.5 Here also, it is widely known that candidates from interdisciplinary streams find themselves in a disadvantageous position. Firstly, they are not so welcome in discipline-based departments (and thus find it very difficult to get an entry). Further to this, in the interdisciplinary schools/departments/projects, the candidates from other disciplines can easily enter. If one takes the stock and details of the disciplinary training of interdisciplinary practitioners in various academic institutions in India, it will be very clear that most of the faculty members/experts in these interdisciplinary streams have had their initial training in uni-disciplinary set-ups. “A-one-size-fits-all” approach followed in universities and higher learning institutions is also a problem faced by followers of interdisciplinarity. Unlike the case of disciplinary research (where given, ready to apply templates are often available), interdisciplinary research may at times take more time and resources with relatively less output. But, often the output and contribution of these explorers are compared with those of the settlers in established disciplines. In most of the cases, for promotions and for rating the institutional ranking, the number of papers published and projects completed by faculty members/experts are counted. Obviously, the performance of experimenting experts will be much less than those who travel smoothly in established disciplinary paths. Thus, going via an interdisciplinary path will be difficult if the institutions lack enabling environments. Interdisciplinarity can flourish only when there are favourable conditions such as flexibility, freedom, supportive resources and after all the “freedom to fail”. Equally important is the readiness of the practitioners to adapt, innovate and integrate tools, techniques and approaches from multiple disciplines. The dilemma of interdisciplinary travellers is akin to the confusion of three wise men, who visited infant Jesus immediately after his birth in Bethlehem, as explained in the well-known poem of T.S. Eliot, The Journey of the Magi. The poet explains that after these three kings understood the ultimate truth about God and the world, while returning to their respective kingdoms, they were in a state of utter confusion, as to how they would be able to convince their own people about what they have realized and experienced. Here goes the description of the dilemma in the poet’s own lines: We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. (T.S. Eliot, The Journey of the Magi, 1927)

Interdisciplinarity Matters 15 Often, those who deviate from their parental disciplines will also have to face punitive actions from their own home disciplines and its practitioners. In Academic Tribes and Territories, Becher (1989) explains the intolerance of disciplinary fundamentalists in the following manner: When patriotic feelings within a discipline are high, deviations from the common cultural norms will be penalised and attempts to modify them from outside will be rejected. …Any systematic questioning of the accepted disciplinary ideology will be seen as heresy and may be punished by expulsion. (Becher 1989: 37) Given all these, going the interdisciplinary way is not by any means an easy decision, especially for those scholars who are in the initial stages of their academic journey. Still, many enthusiasts and researchers are found coming forwards to question their own disciplinary understandings and transgress disciplinary boundaries, with a mind to accommodate new ways of learning. They are also embracing non-conventional data sets by engaging tools, techniques and approaches to feel the thrill of going by “roads not taken”, as explained by Robert Frost in his celebrated poem! Practising Interdisciplinarity: A Preamble This volume, Practising Interdisciplinarity: Convergences and Contestations, does not attempt to make a prescriptive toolkit to offer a common and uniform path of being interdisciplinary. Rather it makes an attempt to collect a range of experiences and issues that individual scholars bring in while choosing to become interdisciplinary in different institutional locations. The volume brings together a wide range of ideas, questions and reflections on the concepts and practice of interdisciplinarity in the academic discourses in contemporary India. One of the core concerns of the book is to discuss the temporal shifts in the structuring of academic disciplines, which has at least two distinct dimensions. One is the creation of new disciplines such as area studies, post-colonial studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, media studies, labour studies and so on. The other is the relatively inconsistent and never-ending movement of subject matters and methodologies of conventional disciplines entering into other territories. This process of interfacing and expansion resulted in the restructuring of disciplines and made their conventional definitions redundant. Accordingly, defining disciplines in their current structures and practices and drawing strict boundaries became challenging and less possible in present-day academic practices. The book also aims to capture the crises and dilemmas that surfaced along with an increasing desire for interdisciplinarity in the domains of the social sciences and humanities, since the last decades of the previous century. The centrality of understanding national/regional settings as determinants of the issues concerning disciplinary expeditions will also be captured adequately in the book, with due attention on state policies governing academic engagements, socio-economic,

16  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh historical contexts as well as regional and linguistic variations. The discussions in the book clearly illustrate that though the idea of being interdisciplinary is valued and often “celebrated” in contemporary academic practices, there are many rigidities in institutional academic traditions that pose constraints in interdisciplinary pathways, which inter alia makes both pedagogy and research a complex task. The essays in this volume offer critical engagements from different vantage points on practising interdisciplinarity with reference to the humanities and social sciences in India today through contributions of around 20 scholars who have been following interdisciplinary routes in their respective fields of academic practice. In the foregoing introductory chapter, there is an attempt to provide a platform where the ideas, concepts and debates on the classification of knowledge fields, namely disciplines and their boundaries that are subject to institutional structures and practices at different historical junctures, are charted out for critical scrutiny. Subsequently, the opening sets of chapters delve into critical questions pertaining to theoretical and conceptual matters related to disciplines and their trajectories of convergences and contestations. Writing about the unpredictable trajectories and uncommon encounters in the movements of disciplines, George Varghese (Chapter 2) offers an exciting account of the genealogy and ontology of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and the politics of knowledge. The major thrust of the paper lies in the understanding of the evolution of normal science to post-normal science that gave birth to a multitude of technological and environmental issues that we encounter today. The chapter in its latter half focuses on post-normal science and the politics of knowledge that restructures it in particular ways. “Post-normal science” here is taken as the critique of the much famous “normal science” and “paradigm analysis” of Thomas Kuhn (1962), an offshoot of the contradictory growth of normal science. Having established that the schemes of interdisciplinary studies analysis are coloured by political discourses, the author goes on to discuss the revolutionary mutation that normal science went through in the recent past. The historicity of interdisciplinarity is foregrounded in Shiju Sam Varughese’s (Chapter 3) essay, where he examines some of the historical factors that have to be assessed to throw more light on the debate on disciplines and their restructuring. The chapter discusses three major transitions that have shaped the contemporary discourse on interdisciplinarity. These are the shifts from printing technology to digitalization, the change of the institutional structure of the university from the Humboldtian model of the industrial era to the neoliberal administrative university and the arrival of post-industrial society that has common paths in earlier modes of transition; multiple facets vis-à-vis the cultural locations we encounter. This transitional phase is yet to be complete and still unfolding as the author narrates these developments. Shubha Ranganathan (Chapter 4) offers an account of the possibilities and challenges of liberal arts spaces in Indian academia with a focus on teaching and research in the IITs. What makes the chapter unique is how the author addresses questions of practising interdisciplinarity through the different meanings it entails for a teacher, a supervisor, a student and an administrator. Rather than posing these as mere challenges, the author seeks to transform them into possibilities that could

Interdisciplinarity Matters 17 be capitalized on, given a critical framework of analysis. There is a special focus on the New Education Policy and several humanities and social sciences/liberal arts programmes at IITs have been explored to reinforce her observations and arguments. The persisting tension between systems of knowledge of the West and its others was an ongoing theme in the practices of disciplines worldwide. Samuel Ngaihte’s chapter (Chapter 5) brings fresh and critical insights into this domain of debate, while focusing on the methodological questions pertaining to philosophies of different traditions. The chapter opens with an exploration of the relationship between philosophical enquiry and interdisciplinarity as seen through the debasing of disciplinary sciences and traditional university spaces in the West. The author proceeds to a discussion that traces the emergence of differentiation and disciplinary orientations in the West from the critiques of the inductive and reductionist feature of disciplinarity to calling out their growing detachment from everyday life. In the later sections, it aims to provide the Indian philosophical alternative of samvadaas against Western concepts to create a holistic and integrative environment for a mutual coexistence of disciplines. Rather than being an account that examines the discourses of interdisciplinarity within the paradigm of a subject, it seeks to find non-Western philosophical alternatives to the challenges of interdisciplinarity. Language and translation are at the centre of affairs in Sowmya Dechamma C.C.’s nuanced account on the production of ethnographic knowledge on cultures in Chapter 6. Translation when understood as to how one culture knows the other or as an imitation of what we see and hear necessitates the recognition of interdisciplinarity and the binding of multiple disciplines. It is enmeshed in Comparative Literature as translation in practice and theory requires distinct modes of comparison. Translation is shown not only as a need that arises out of deficits in language as used in anthropology and sociology but also as a result of the blurring of disciplinary boundaries. Making crucial observations on the question of objectivity in the social sciences and the problem of subjectivity in the humanities, the author traverses through the works of the likes of Edward Said and Talal Asad to point out the importance of language and translation in anthropology and sociology. She goes into a brief discussion on how the making of the Indian nation itself relied heavily on the collaborative work of European orientalists and Indian nationalists via translation. There are a set of chapters which focus on questions of education, pedagogy and method in the sites of disciplinary convergences. In Chapter 7, Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain take us through the evolution of education as a discipline from the viewpoint of movements that sprung up in the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as its offshoots in colonial and post-colonial India. It lays out the importance of placing the child and the adolescent at the centre of the discussion by tracking its interaction with family systems, the external environment, changes in emotions and so on. It focuses on the application of family studies, psychology and sociology within the discourses of education. The chapter on the whole hopes to trace the historical trajectory and debates on the status of education as a body of knowledge, its interlinkages and boundaries in the spectrum of disciplines and

18  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh methodologies employed. In a similar vein, transposing questions of pedagogy and method in the spheres of university education, Vivek Kumar (Chapter 8) emphasizes on the question of interfacing the teaching of methodological concerns in philosophy, science and sociology. He argues how social sciences and the sciences, all in their pursuit of “reality” and “truth” have gone through transformations, much like philosophy. The author presents the interlinkages between philosophy, sciences and social sciences, especially with respect to the impact of the physical sciences on the understanding of the natural and social world. It records the emergence and (later) dissociation of offshoots (natural sciences) from philosophy chronologically, underlining the fact that the parent science itself underwent changes, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries. Philosophy transformed from a culmination of definite axioms, deductions and abstract thinking to a practical stream of knowledge which provided the bases to all natural and spiritual phenomena. Defining the social sciences as an attempt of the modern world to develop systematic, secular and empirically validated knowledge about reality, Kumar confirms that the social sciences and the sciences intersect in their adoption of the natural science model (mentioned here are the Newtonian model and Cartesian dualism). Tracking the politics of interdisciplinarity in the sites of legal studies and social sciences, Manisha Sethi (Chapter 9) brings the question of border crossings in the domains of the legal and the social. The paper seeks to map the evolution of sociology and law in India while establishing the mutualities and hostilities that underlie this three-dimensional relationship – making a case for interdisciplinarity. The first section of the paper deals with the relationship between the legal and the social. The author starts off with an appraisal of Maine’s Ancient Society, with a special focus on the role of law in early social theory and the intersection of law in sociology (by Weber and Durkheim). In the second part, she talks of the ways in which law makes an appearance in sociology departments, and the imprint of sociology in institutions of legal education. The chapter also seeks to understand the teaching of social sciences, sociology in particular, of law in Indian universities. One of the key sites of interdisciplinarity or a truly interdisciplinary domain; i.e. women’s studies sparks crucial thoughts on aspects of both theory and method. The chapters by Neetha N. and Shubhangi Vaidya (Chapters 10 and 11) raise pertinent questions from the spheres of women’s studies, concerning research and teaching. Neetha’s account on “researching women’s work” is a clarion call for a synthetic and interdisciplinary approach towards research in women’s studies. It follows the limitations of labour statistics from time immemorial in capturing the work of women in domestic, informal and subsidiary (especially agricultural) sectors. Rather than focusing on an economic or sociological framework, it calls for a fluid approach grounded in field surveys, ethnographic accounts and mixed methodologies in understanding qualitative aspects of work. Biases inherent in the above methodologies are revealed through the responses received in the case study of the knitwear industry in Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu. However, the question remains; how does one quantify these qualitative factors and how will it achieve the sort of legitimacy that numericals provide in the current academic setting. Vaidya’s chapter aims to establish a connection

Interdisciplinarity Matters 19 to interdisciplinarity through the emerging discipline of disability studies (DS) with a focus on gender dynamics. What sets the chapter apart from its contemporaries is how it unveils two critical features of interdisciplinarity – firstly, the transcending of traditional boundaries and secondly, the scope of an interplay between the lived experiences of the researcher and theories across disciplines (here, gender, sociology, disability studies and psychology). The chapter follows a definition-based approach to the subject concerned with frequent interjections of personal experiences, case studies, inferences and trans-disciplinary theories. The chapter follows the shifts of focus on disability studies from one based on medicine and psychology alone to an interdisciplinary field that cuts across cultural studies, film studies, psychology, medicine, gender studies, political science, history, family systems and anthropology. The shift in foci to that of an interdisciplinary field has been explained through the mushrooming of movements in the United Kingdom and the United States, and further on in the form of collectives and NGOs in India. Media studies and communication studies constitute key sites for the convergences of both conventional and relatively new disciplinary domains that demand critical enquiries into those knowledge areas. Cultural studies, as a relatively new discipline, offers significant intersections to the fields of media, communication and culture. Vibodh Parthasarathi and Sujith Parayil (Chapters 12 and 13) bring enriching accounts from the fields of media and cultural studies. Vibodh focuses on mainly two points, the extent to which media studies can be established as a discipline and what impedes media policy. The first point is explained through the inherently interdisciplinary nature of media studies which makes it difficult to give it an independent standing. The second aspect is elucidated through the domination of two disciplines – economics and law – and how it changes the course of policies. He rightly identifies both the intellectual heterodoxies and disciplinary demarcations that exist within the social sciences. The case is solidified with a note on how economics and law, with reference to others, have received a far greater impetus in terms of grants, demand and resources. The take-over of the economics of media by the economists thus poses a great challenge to media studies even though the latter is widely recognized as a tool for nation-building and modernization. Parayil’s chapter is an attempt to address the methodological and conceptual questions related to media studies and the problematization of its critical epistemic terrains. The author states that the aspects of institutionalized knowledge, ideological interconnectedness, and socio-cultural changes are often contextualized in the sites of production, circulation and consumption. The chapter places media discourse and visual subjectivity within the realm of cultural studies, sensory studies, in the backdrop of emergent socio-political and technological spheres in the recent decades. With frequent references to technological determinism, the chapter highlights the interdisciplinarity of the field through its ability to make the subject act and react to sensory stimuli. “Belonging” to the discipline of international relations (IR) in one’s own terms, Aparna Devare (Chapter 14) seeks to establish IR as an inherently interdisciplinary domain of critical inquiry. It traces the differences in the Western and Indian

20  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh understandings of disciplines and the formalization of it, and how it has affected the realm of IR and academia. She interrogates the origins of IR, its disciplinary boundaries, the challenges of uni-disciplinarity and the sites of knowledge creation. Globally, IR might have come a long way in opening up to interdisciplinary material, accepting multiple diversities and encouraging non-Eurocentric perspectives, but in India, it still continues to teach its students mainstream conventional approaches. Devare observes that the experimentation of Indian academia with interdisciplinary courses seems to have improved with courses on gender studies, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, urban and development studies and so on being encouraged. However, IR is still regarded as a part of political science, generally. This relationship IR enjoys with political science brings with it advantages as well as disadvantages with regard to its concentration on the “outside” realm and the chapter navigates through such nuances in the practice of IR. Anandini Dar (Chapter 15) opens up a fresh debate on the new discipline/interdisciplinary domain called “childhood studies (CS)”. The chapter discusses the evolution of CS in the Euro-American, Indian and South-East Asian contexts along with a brief historiography of the same in contemporary times and the extent of interdisciplinarity within it. The chapter focuses on understanding the peculiarities of CS with reference to it being an inter-/multi-disciplinary field. CS on a global level is in a constant tussle about establishing itself as a standalone discipline and breaking away from the traditional structures. The author has chosen literature reviews and auto-ethnography to understand the epistemological, ontological and methodological framings and contemporary debates on the inter-/multi-/cross-disciplinary nature of the field. The highlight of the paper is how it brings Euro-American, Indian and South-East Asian contexts to the forefront. It discusses the scope of CS as an interdisciplinary field in India through an analysis of programmes and departments in higher education even though the field hasn’t received importance like other social sciences. Through an autobiographical account, in Chapter 16, Babu P. Remesh explains the disciplinary shifts in his academic journey in labour studies. It discusses his methodological transformation from a young researcher, who was originally baptized into rigorous disciplinary approaches in economics, to one who currently works with tools gathered from many “other” disciplines and perspectives, for studying aspects on labour and development. Relying on self-reflective and autoethnographical narratives, the chapter tries to show how standard conceptualizations in economics (based on notions of optimization, efficiency, supply-demand and marginal productivity) are grossly inadequate in understanding the dynamics of labour in its totality. In Chapter 17, Nita Mathur takes a distinct register to problematize the question of disciplines and interdisciplinarity. Her chapter stands out from the rest on interdisciplinarity in the sense that it tries to understand interdisciplinarity with regard to emotions and why emotions form a necessary crux of the latter. Through the case study of the Tamil Brahmin diaspora in Delhi and their understanding of dance-based emotions, the author conveys how the perception of emotions differs with the cultural setting and how it facilitates the recognition of objectivity and

Interdisciplinarity Matters 21 subjectivity in the social sciences. In their paper on the “urban turn” to explore the cityscapes, Rohit Negi, Rachna Mehra and Pritpal Randhawa (Chapter 18) trace the interfaces of sociology, economics, geography, political science, anthropology, history, psychology and law with urban studies (US). It tries to break away from the economic and political (Marxist) understanding of land as a material factor of production into an emotionally powered part of human existence. This is furthered through a case study of Himachal Pradesh which highlights the class, caste and gendered dimensions of urban spaces. We also identify how methodology and vocabulary in US have gained traction through global urbanization, popular journals and activism and other urban processes. Additionally, it highlights the need for oral history documentation of the marginalized in understanding data that archives cannot provide, for they are nothing but privileged experiences and emotions. The account aims to deliberate upon three methodological concerns of vital importance to US, understanding urban processes through the built environment and assembled infrastructures, policy process analysis as a method to render the dynamic of urban policy-making effective, and understanding the importance of oral history documentation in linking experiences of space and society. Following the deliberation, the reader is left with firstly, a clear understanding of interdisciplinary methodologies (such as the intersections of sociology, economics, geography, political science, anthropology, history, psychology and law) that cut across several dimensions of US and secondly, an understanding of the need to open a dialogue regarding the formulation of a heterodox methodology grounded in experimentation that is a perfect mix of traditional knowledge and oral, grounded knowledge. The opening of the paper deals with the interaction between different disciplines in recognizing identities and socialities within US that arose out of concerns regarding city life in India. Powered by global urbanization, popular journals and activism, urban processes have gained traction in terms of methodology and vocabulary. What lays ahead of a US researcher is a journey to understand the infinite ways in which society and space are entangled and co-produce each other. Public health is portrayed as a convergence of academic disciplines spread over medicine, social sciences, management, technology, public policy and law among others. The interdisciplinarity within public health varies according to the social and political patronage enjoyed by these disciplines. This calls for context-specific mixed methodologies thus shaping the academic and professional trajectory of individual disciplines as well as that of the researcher. Against this backdrop, Nakkeeran’s account (Chapter 19) places the social sciences within the paradigm of public health and vice versa, highlights three roles that the social sciences can take within the interdisciplinary space of the latter – as an auxiliary discipline, as an equal constituent/partner or as a challenging and reflexive discipline. The emphasis of the social sciences on the “social” and the “collective” mixed with the scientific objectivity of public health ensures better results. On the whole, the present volume offers a comprehensive understanding of the temporal shifts in the structuring of academic disciplines and the crises and

22  Ratheesh Kumar and Babu P. Remesh dilemmas of “being interdisciplinary” and “practising interdisciplinarity” in specific intellectual and institutional territories. With an adequate blending of academic discourses with autobiographical notes of practitioners from a range of interdisciplinary streams, the book also attempts to unleash the pleasures and pains of travelling on “roads not taken”! Notes 1 In his rhetoric text “Against Method”, Paul K. Feyerabend notes that science is an essentially anarchistic enterprise and therefore theoretical anarchism is found to be more humanitarian and more likely to augment progress than its law-and-order alternatives (see Feyerabend 1975). 2 For a detailed account of the epistemic transformation from the Renaissance period to the Classical Age or the Age of Enlightenment in depth and range, see Foucault’s “Order of Things”. In the place of the medieval similitude, Foucault notes that new principle of ordering knowledge emerged. It was constituted of three axes: taxonomy (taxinomia), mathematization (mathesis universalis) and the search for origin (genesis) (see Foucault 1970: 46–50). 3 In the Indian context, compartmentalization of academia with little scope for dialogue across disciplines was a core concern pointed out by the Yashpal Committee in 2009. The committee even suggested that the existing system of multiple regulatory bodies can be replaced by an apex platform, National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER), which enables an exchange of dialogue across academic disciplines and professions. 4 Rick Szostak provides a detailed account on interdisciplinary research, which essentially allows freedom for researchers from these disciplinary constraints (see Szostak 2002 and Hegde, 2014). 5 In Indian scenario, since many of the interdisciplinary subjects (e.g. development studies and cultural studies) are not included in the list of subjects for UGC-JRF and NET examinations, which enable students to secure a research fellowship or teaching eligibility. The students from these streams are found attempting and clearing their NET/JRF in one of the established single disciplines and then trying to route their interdisciplinary research pursuits from such disciplinary beginnings. However, certain interdisciplinary domains have been included in the UGC NET examination such as women’s studies, mass communication and journalism, visual arts, performing arts, social medicine and community health and so on. For a list of disciplinary and interdisciplinary subjects in the list meant for UGC-NET, see University Grants Commission – NET (ugcnetonline. in) (last accessed on 6 July 2023).

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Interdisciplinarity Matters 23 Clifford, James. 1986. Introduction: Partial Truths, in Clifford, James and Marcus, George (ed). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray. Durkheim, Emile. 1933. The Division of Labour in Society. Illinois: The Free Press of Glencoe. Durkheim, Emile. 1982/1895. The Rules of Sociological Method. London and New York: The Free Press. Eliot, T.S. 1927. Journey of the Magi. London: Faber & Gwyer. Feyerabend, Paul K. 1975. Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, 4th ed. London, England: Verso Books. Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock Publications. Hegde, Sasheej 2014. Recontextualizing Disciplines Three Lectures On Method. Shimla. Indian Institute for Advanced Study. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Linné, Carl von, 1739. Systema Naturae, 10th ed. Tomus II: Vegetabilia. Facsimile. Merton, R.K. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York, NY: Free Press. Mills, C.W. 1959. Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford University Press. Popper, K.R. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Smith, Adam. 1776/2002. The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith; Introduction by Robert Reich; Edited, With Notes, Marginal Summary, and Enlarged Index by Edwin Cannan. New York: Modern Library. Szostak, Rick. 2002. How to Do Interdisciplinarity: Integrating the Debate. Issues in Integrative Studies. No. 20. pp. 103–122. Tylor, Edward Burnett. 1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom. 1st American, from the 2d English ed. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. Varghese, George A. 2011. Rethinking Social Sciences and Humanities in the Contemporary World. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. xlvi, No. 31. pp. 91–98. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1999. Social Sciences in the Twenty-first Century, World Social Science Report, pp 42-49; https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000116325. Wallerstein, I., Juma, C., Keller, E.F., Kocka, J., Lecourt, D., Mudkimbe, V.Y., Miushakoji, K., Prigogine, I., Taylor, P.J., & Trouillot, M.-R. 1996. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

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Interdisciplinarity Unpredictable Transitions and Uncommon Encounters George Varghese K.

Disciplinarity has turned out to be an elusive theoretical object at present with the proliferation of knowledge regimes in a huge scale. Perhaps the most important hitch in this regard is its dismemberment into numberless fragments, which in turn are striking up all sorts of alliances under the rubric of what is termed “interdisciplinarity” (ID). The latter has posed serious problems of categorization to which a significant response was made by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1970. It classified cross-disciplinary practices into categories of multi-, pluri-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity, to be followed by many (Klein 2017: 21). Among them three got stabilized as a naturalized trio: inter-, trans-, and multidisciplinarity. Again, among these three, the first two became more proximate and almost synonymous (Gibbons et al. 1994: 28). Certain scholars impute national identity also to these categories. Accordingly, ID is more dominant in the Anglo-American milieu while transdisciplinarity is more popular in the French and German speaking worlds (Barry and Born 2013: 8). Our further analysis centers on ID and by default on trans-disciplinarity also. A cogent definition of ID could be as follows: Interdisciplinarity (ID) is typically characterized by integration of information, data, methods, tools, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge. Proactive focusing, blending, and linking of disciplinary inputs foster a more holistic understanding of a question, topic, theme, or problem by individuals or teams ( Klein 2015:15). The conceptual landscape of ID is an irregular one with different sorts of epistemological formations laid out unevenly over it. There is an “epistemological distance” that separates them, as certain scholars observe (Choi and Pak 2008: E42). On the ground of epistemological proximity certain disciplines get clustered into closer groups of systems and subsystems. Three broad groups are natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology), the social sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics), and the humanities (e.g., languages, music, visual arts). Disciplines within the same subsystems are closer to one another epistemologically, compared to those belonging to distant ones. But the relation between the near ones has a lesser value than the relation between the distant ones. For example, the relation between biology and history which are distant yields more valuable insights than DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-2

Interdisciplinarity 25 biology and chemistry which are systemically closer. A painting by Giotto can be studied by the visual arts, but may be more worthy if studied by an interdisciplinary perspective developed from two distant disciplines like European history and geometry. Likewise, combining two alien disciplines like nuclear physics and medicine leads to very effective treatments for cancer (Choi and Pak 2008: E42–E43). Interdisciplinary relations are not historical givens or disinterested mergers. On the other hand, they manifest as certain forms of relation with varying intensity. Andrew Barry and Georgina Born recognize three modes of such relations: (1) integrative-synthesis mode; (2) subordination-service mode; and (3) agonistic-antagonistic mode. The integrative-synthetic type correlates disciplines of equivalent nature. For example, in making an interdisciplinary study of climate change, two mutually complementary disciplines like sociology or economics are brought into association with a natural science discipline like ecology or hydrology. The social scientific and natural scientific accounts of impact are correlated through mathematical models. In the subordination-service type one of the disciplines assumes a service role within a hierarchical structure. Here the service discipline is supposed to make up for the lacks of the dominant one and enhance its visibility and prestige. For example, in certain instances, social sciences take up the role of furnishing the “social factors” involved in the relation between the natural sciences and society, which otherwise remain unexpressed. This relation can get reversed in certain instances of the association between the sciences and arts. Here, the scientists can play the service role to the artists by providing equipment and resources for executing a project that is conceived largely in artistic terms. In the third and last mode, the nature of the relation becomes agonistic and antagonistic. The role of the one is rejected by the other. An example is the ethnography of the IT industry. In a complex relationship of ethnography, engineering, and ethics the analysis of the ethnographer is normally dismissed as not of any utility or value to the engineers or the corporation (Barry and Born 2013: 11–12). Again, when ID is spoken of it is generally assumed to be the relation between two disciplines. But sociologists, Jerry A. Jacobs and Scott Frickel, unravel certain other constitutive levels at which ID is at work. They locate it at the level of concepts and methods also. They argue that influential concepts like “postmodernism” or “actor-network theory” are interdisciplinary in the sense that they are spread over hundreds of disciplines and become a point of interconnection between them. Postmodernism appears in thousands of journal articles that belong to different disciplinary clusters. For example, it could be found in the humanities (e.g., literature, philosophy, religion), the social sciences (e.g., sociology, political science, psychology), and even in applied fields like education. In a rough count, postmodernism appears in journals from over 100 disciplines. Similarly, actor-network theory has been the subject of 317 journal articles, diffused over a wide range of disciplines, that include environmental science, sociology, economics, anthropology, business, ethics, law, public health, urban studies, and so on (Jacobs and Frickel 2009: 50). In the case of methods, statistics is one of the most interdisciplinary ones. For example, “survival analysis”, an important statistical technique has been used in thousands of published journal articles since the 1990s. These papers appeared in

26  George Varghese K. journals from oncology, cardiology, surgery, computer science, demography, economics, ecology, and so on (Jacobs and Frickel 2009: 51). Besides concepts and methods, there is a subjective/individual level also where ID is at work. Ian Hacking, the philosopher of science is a perfect example. He has conducted research on a wide range of areas like the history of probability and statistics, the history of physics, multiple personality disorder, child abuse, and the philosophy of language. Yet he claims that he is doing only analytic philosophy in all these areas. In fact, he “is being disciplinary and interdisciplinary at the same time. And this sort of work requires a disciplinary outlook precisely in order to be interdisciplinary” (Osborne 2013: 88). Disciplinarity Examined: Form and History ID is dependent on disciplinarity and without analyzing the latter, the specifics of the former cannot be brought to light. The causal connection is obvious since ID is a reaction to disciplinarity in most cases. As Uskali Mäki makes it clear: “Regarding the causal connection, calls for, and actual implementations of, ID often (but not always) appear as reactions to disciplinarity. In these situations, specialization (narrowing) and disciplining (tightening of disciplinary “law and order”) engender needs for broadening the perspectives by trespassing and transgressing disciplinary boundaries in attempting to serve some otherwise hard to serve goals or needs—such as the epistemic needs of novel theoretical innovation, or of reliable and accurate prediction; or the practical needs of finding solutions to some challenging complex social problems” (Mäki 2016: 331). Disciplinarity and ID are mostly portrayed as antagonists. Peter Weingart substantiates it by culling out the pejorative expressions each one’s upholders hurl at the other. From the side of ID, disciplines are represented in terms of rule, defense, attack, private property with no trespassing notices, empire, territory, feudal fiefdoms, academic nationalism, balkanized region of research principalities, etc. Conversely, ID gets portrayed by the opposite camp in terms of ventures to the borderlands, frontiers of knowledge, breaching boundaries, crossing no man’s land between the disciplines, cross-cultural exploration, and so on (Weingart 2000: 28). Certain other nuances are also in order. Thomas Osborne argues that there is nothing like a pristine disciplinarity or ID. For him, disciplines are like the English people in history, who are composites of Vikings, Celts, and Normans. That doesn’t mean there is none like an English person. Likewise, disciplines, though constituted of multiple strands, nonetheless have an identity of their own (Osborne 2013: 85). These strands within certain disciplines are complexly organized so that working within it can lead to ID. For example, a human geographer working with a physical geographer within the discipline of geography is in fact striking up an interdisciplinary relationship, since both are compositionally lying far apart. On the other hand, a situation in which a sociologist working with a human geographer is hardly interdisciplinary (Osborne 2013: 86). Another notable feature in this context is that certain disciplines have a tendency for more exportation, and vice versa in interdisciplinary relationships. The identity

Interdisciplinarity 27 of certain disciplines as regards theories, techniques, evidence, results of research, etc. becomes more importation-based. Examples are archaeology, cognitive science, systems biology, medical humanities, astrobiology, human geography, and development studies. On the other hand, certain other disciplines like game theory, computational science, economics, evolutionary theory, etc. are marked by a strong tendency for exportation; they are on the lookout for the transfer of their own ideas or techniques across the disciplinary borders (Mäki 2016: 332). Despite noting certain inherent peculiarities in the disciplinary-interdisciplinary interphase, we are still not clear about what disciplines are. What is their definition? What is their genealogy? What is their ontology? Let us turn to that. The genealogy of the word discipline goes back to the Greco-Roman period. The word discipline denotes a branch of knowledge, instruction, learning, teaching, or education. The Latin root, discere, “to learn”, authorizes this meaning. Therefore, “discipline” becomes a body of knowledge or skills that can be taught or learned. This is the meaning behind Martianus Capella’s De Septem Disciplinis which appeared in the fifth century. Again, at the core of teaching or learning there exists the relationship between the master and his disciples. It becomes a “disciplined” relationship in fact. The word for disciple or discipulus also has the same Latin root of discere (Alvargonzález 2011: 387). Disciplines are a specific form of knowledge formation marked by two important features. In the old sense disciplines are characterized by the rituals of certification that assert their inviolable autonomy as knowledge systems. In the recent sense, they are products of university organization that stitches together research and teaching as well as their production and reproduction (Turner 2017: 9). Legitimacy and autonomy are two important attributes of any discipline. They are realized through setting standards, certification practices, licensing, and forging authorized channels of communication. Other supportive factors are the setting up of professional associations, specialized journals, organization of seminars, and conferences, etc. But the decisive underlying force behind all these features is the market structure. Scholars as professionals definitely carry an economic value and their exchange between departments becomes a market transaction. Departments are buyers through hiring and sellers through producing. There automatically arises a hierarchy of value, with scholars from more reputed universities bearing higher economic value compared to the less prestigious ones (Turner 2017: 13). Stephan Turner summarizes this phenomenon sharply: “Disciplines are shotgun marriages, either of specialties, … or of multiple and conflicting purposes, and are kept together by the reality of the market and the value of the protection of the market that has been created by employment requirements and expectations” (Turner 2000: 55). Turner forcefully argues that disciplines congeal into their proper form only when the market factor is at work. He cites the case of statistics. Statistics had all the trappings of a proper discipline in the 19th century but it never became one. As it is understood now, it was an influential discipline associated with data collection and mathematical inference. It generated many conferences and became a genuine international body by the middle of the 19th century. But it didn’t become

28  George Varghese K. a discipline at that time, mainly because of its association with official statistical bureaucracies, and its on-the-job training for national statistical offices. But it succeeded later when it was dismembered into its mathematical and subject area components like public health statistics, social statistics, mathematical theory of statistics, and so on. For Turner, “becoming discipline” of statistics was not ruled by any disciplinary essentialism, but by the creation of a genuine internal market (Turner 2000: 48–49). Geology is another parallel case. “When an academic market for geologists developed toward the end of the century, everything changed. To a large extent the demands of this market came to shape the contents and meaning of the disciplinary identity ‘geology’” (Turner 2000: 50). Now we need to look into the history of the transformation of disciplinarity into ID in the long course from the late 18th century to the present. We shall follow Mitchell G. Ash’s paper “Interdisciplinarity in Historical Perspective” (2019) mainly in this regard with timely interpolations from other sources wherever necessary. Ash formulates a three-phase model in his analysis. In the first one, which runs from the late 18th to early 20th century, he studies the conversion of universities into institutions that combine research and teaching. This happened first in the German Universities. The crucial development in this regard was the transformation of the philosophical faculty from a supplier of “general education” to the provider of science-based research and training for the higher-level secondary schools (called Gymnasium in the German speaking areas). This process got extended to medical and law faculties as well. There are multiple markers that can indicate this crucial transformation and the emergence of disciplines as institutions. The first one was the segregation of science from the non-sciences like religion or psychical research, and establishing clear demarcating boundaries. The second one was the differentiation within the field of science itself which led to multiple “specializations”. An example from the humanities is the separation of “modern” history from the “general” history, which in turn became “ancient” history. In languages, “modern” language and literature got separated from philology. The cases from natural science include the differentiation of organic and inorganic chemistries, as well as the splitting off of botany and zoology from “natural history”. In medicine, physiology got differentiated from anatomy, while in clinical medicine a host of new specialties like ophthalmology, neurology, orthopedics, psychiatry, etc. emerged by 1900 (Ash 2019: 624–625). A notable development in this regard was the emergence of modern universities in which research and teaching were combined. This started in Germany with the universities of Halle and Göttingen. This also triggered a new model of disciplinarization. At Geissen, the chemist Wilhelm Liebig trained many students and showed them how their research could be made useful economically. He started fertilizer and meat extraction units which became the model for combining teaching, research, and economic investment within a strong disciplinary structure. This model was readily transportable also which in turn reached the Land-grant universities of United States by the second half of the 19th century. This model is also behind the 20th century notion of the professor contributing to teaching, research as well as service (Turner 2017: 18).

Interdisciplinarity 29 None of these developments occurred automatically or uniformly everywhere. The salient factor was the market demand for the new specialties and the funding they secured. Government funding came through, not because of the merit of the scholarly arguments put forward by the professors, but because of the economic value of the new disciplines and specialties. The evaluation for the funding was mainly done by the state officials in 19th-century Europe. It was only with their help that professorships and laboratories for the new disciplines could be established (Ash 2019: 625). The specialization into narrower disciplinary boxes also incited adverse reactions by the second half of the 19th century. An early one to react was the physiologist and physicist Hermann Helmholtz. For him, narrower specializations will prevent scholars from developing a respectful view of allied fields and disciplines. From this angle, the development of certain interdisciplines toward the end of the 19th century could be seen as the precursor of the more predominant forms that emerged in the 20th century. Hybridization was the basic dynamic behind these interdisciplines. An important one was physical chemistry which is a hybrid of physics and chemistry. It is the study of the macroscopic and particulate phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, etc. Another interdiscipline that emerged in this period was experimental psychology (Ash 2019: 626). The second phase charted by Mitchell Ash runs from the early 20th century to the last third. The noticeable character of this phase is the rise of funding agencies who started supporting research in universities and institutes. If, till then, research was conducted on a mono-disciplinary basis, thereafter the funding agencies began to encourage interdisciplinary research tied with problem-solving. Two of the earliest funding agencies were the Carnegie Foundation in the United States and the Emergency Society for German Science in Germany. Some of these institutes had certification functions also in a limited scale. Economic aspect of the research was also important (Ash 2019: 628). In the 1920s, project-oriented research institutes that adopted an interdisciplinary approach started emerging in the United States. An important one in this group was those specialized in child study, and funded in a major way by the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial fund. This fund went to institutes at Cornell University, the University of Iowa, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. Their support also went to Jean Piaget’s work at the University of Geneva and Karl and Charlotte Bühler at the University of Vienna. The child study centers were not single institutions but organized in an elaborately connected network. Though developmental psychology was the lead discipline, others like pediatrics, nutrition, and pedagogy also joined this interdisciplinary combination. The overall goal was clearly stated: to provide foundations for science-based educational policy and thus help create a rational society. Two features that stand out are the problem-oriented approach and the commitment to providing a scientific basis for policy-making (Ash 2019: 629).

30  George Varghese K. With the Second World War there occurred a spurt in the collaborative projects with an interdisciplinary structure. Weapon projects of large scale like the Manhattan project and the German rocket program are examples. Again, a series of new hybrids came into existence. Molecular biology, which combined aspects of biochemistry, genetics, and biophysics perhaps becomes the most important example. Other disciplines like geophysics, astrophysics, cognitive science, behavioral sciences, computer science, neurophysiology, etc. were also combinations of more than one discipline. From the social sciences and humanities side the important examples are Area Studies, African-American Studies, Women’s Studies, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) (Ash 2019: 631–632). Mode 2 Knowledge and the Third Phase Interdisciplinarity Now we move on to the third phase, which stretches from the late 20th century to the present. We shall also leave Mitchell Ash’s schemata here and follow the analyses of certain other scholars. This phase is much more complex than the previous ones since ID gets unfolded in a very complex epistemic, social and political milieu. It can be addressed only in relation to a radical mutation that occurred to the knowledge system itself which is represented as “Mode 2 knowledge” and “postnormal science” by Gibbons et al. and Funtowicz and Ravetz, respectively. Before addressing this mutation in detail let us acquaint ourselves with certain outstanding features of this period as listed by Peter Weingart: 1 University lost its monopoly as the institution of knowledge production since it was taken over by many other institutions. 2 Transitory networks and contexts are formed which replace traditional disciplines. 3 Knowledge production outside disciplines is no longer a search for basic laws, but takes place in the context of application. 4 Disciplines are no longer the frames of orientation for the articulation of research problems. Instead, research is characterized by inter-transdisciplinarity. 5 The norms of quality control are no longer set exclusively by disciplines; on the other hand, political, social, and economic parameters are also taken into account (Weingart 2010: 12). Now let us look into the socio-epistemic transformation that occurred which is captured by the concepts of Mode 2 knowledge and post-normal science one by one. The relation between Mode 2 knowledge and ID first of all needs a terminological clarification. The conceptual scene of ID is occupied by a variety of typologies and concepts whose connotations many times meld and overlap. As Uskali Mäki tells us, there is no uniform or agreed-upon or well-designed notion of ID. “Categories such as multi-, inter-, cross-, pluri-, trans-, and other kinds of Xdisciplinarity have received multiple definitions in literature, but they often lack sufficient analytical rigor”(Mäki 2016: 331). This observation is made because in the third phase we analyze, inter- and transdisciplinarity are often used synonymously,

Interdisciplinarity 31 while at the same time multi- and pluridisciplinarity reveal a closer kinship (Gibbons et al. 1994: 28). We use ID mostly in the following parts of this chapter. Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge are given a cogent definition by Gibbons et al. in their book, The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, published in 1994. Mode 1 stands for traditional science which is in clear contrast to the contemporary Mode 2 science on many aspects. Some of them can be listed as follows: (1) In Mode 1, scientific problems are set and resolved by a close-knit academic community, while in Mode 2 they are articulated in the contexts of application in the larger milieu of society; (2) Mode 1 is disciplinary, while Mode 2 is trans-/interdisciplinary; (3) Mode 1 is homogeneous while Mode 2 is heterogeneous; (4) Mode 1 is hierarchical while Mode 2 is heterarchical; (5) Mode 1 is more inward-looking and autonomous, while Mode 2 is socially accountable and reflexive (Gibbons et al. 1994: 3). Going into the details, the most important difference between them perhaps is the social and application nature of Mode 2 knowledge. In Mode 1, knowledge is generated in a specialized milieu where rules and norms of production are set by a group of experts and communicated among them through specialized journals. Contrastingly, in Mode 2 knowledge is produced according to a different set of priorities. Chiefly, the knowledge should be applicable, useful, and capable of solving certain problems whether for the government, industry, or society at large. This social character makes knowledge production an act of negotiation between the interests of various actors. Knowledge will be produced only after a consensus is reached between them. Application in this sense does not mean product development for the industry; it goes beyond commercial and market considerations in fact. That is why Mode 2 is identified with the socially distributed form of knowledge and also becomes political in nature (Gibbons et al. 1994: 3–4). Mode 2 knowledge is interdisciplinary, which has four important features: 1 First it develops a framework that is creative and variable. It is developed in the very context of problem-solving, and not something readymade which is applied to a situation or problem later. 2 Though Mode 2 knowledge is developed in a milieu of application, it develops its own theoretical structures, modes of practice, and research protocols which might not fall in line with the standards of disciplinarity. Its cumulative outputs, derived from the problem-solving situations, may travel in a number of different directions. 3 The knowledge in Mode 2 is not communicated through institutional channels like journals, conferences, etc. as in the case of Mode 1. The knowledge as it is developed in the process of the problem solution automatically gets communicated to the participants within the milieu of production itself. Subsequent diffusion of knowledge occurs through the movement of these producers to other contexts. 4 As we noted before, knowledge is produced through ID in Mode 2. But the knowledge produced as solutions to problems can become the springboards from which further knowledge can be generated. But where this knowledge will be applied later is difficult to predict (Gibbons et al. 1994: 5).

32  George Varghese K. Mode 2 knowledge is produced in a heterogeneous manner since the problemsolving team is constituted of different kinds of actors. The composition is provisional also and changes as the requirements evolve. There is no such transcendental coordination by a central body. Consequent to it, Mode 2 knowledge is created at different kinds of sites. Other than universities and laboratories, it is also produced in unconventional locations like non-university institutes, research centers, multinational firms, government agencies, consultancies, think-tanks, and so on. These sites are linked in a variety of ways: organizationally, socially, informally, electronically, and so on. The provisional and autonomous nature of production generates a multitude of solutions which in turn can be recombined to be applied in new problem situations. Therefore, with the passage of time, the production of Mode 2 knowledge moves away from the traditional bastions of the Mode 1 knowledge and get domiciled in the midst of societal contexts (Gibbons et al. 1994: 6). In Mode 1, individual creativity forms the driving force of the production of knowledge and the quality control is exercised by a scientific community functioning as a sort of transcendental operator. In Mode 2, on the other hand, creativity is manifest as a group phenomenon in which the individual’s contribution becomes unidentifiably concealed; and the quality control in turn gets articulated in a social nexus in which multiple interests get accommodated. If in Mode 1 knowledge gets accumulated through professional disciplinary institutions, mainly located in the universities, in the case of Mode 2, knowledge is accumulated through provisional organizational forms constituted for resolving problems in social contexts. What results is a socially responsible and reflexive form of science. Biomedicine and environmental sciences provide many examples (Gibbons et al. 1994: 9). With the social percolation of knowledge among a more educated public, the negotiation between the scientific community and the public as regards the impact of science and technology in society has achieved a new intensity. In the olden days of Mode 1, the communication between science and the people was essentially unilateral; the knowledgeable scientist talks to the ignorant public and enlightens them about the secrets of nature. With the Mode 2, the situation changed, since the educated public showed enough grit to assert the financial and social accountability of science. This demand was raised in the context of a host of techno-political controversies. From the public debates around these controversies a strong convention of the social assessment of science and technology emerged. This subverted the previous pattern of the one-way communication of scientist to people, and in its place instated a new “vernacular science” which enhanced a two-way communication with genuine parity. A host of controversial issues like biodiversity, ozone layer depletion, potential dangers associated with biotechnology and genetic engineering are put to debate, and attempts made to resolve them within an expeditious techno-political framework. With this percolation of science into the deeper layers of society a controversial reversal also occurred in which, “it is no longer possible to contain scientific and technical experiments in the laboratories properly speaking and that society itself has become a laboratory for experiments that ought to be controlled in a more societal and tighter way” (emphasis mine; Gibbons et al. 1994: 36).

Interdisciplinarity 33 Post-Normal Science and the Politics of Knowledge The “becoming social” of science as analyzed by Gibbons et al. was preceded by a similar version which employed the concept of the “post-normal science”, as developed by Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993). It is a critique of the much famous “normal science” and “paradigm analysis” of Thomas Kuhn. What is important for us is that ID assumes a more subtle political and democratic shade in their scheme of analysis; it becomes much more than an integration or dialogue between two or more disciplines. For them, the post-normal science issues out of the extreme success of the previous normal science which in its drive for the conquest of nature and the interpretation of facts has also brought in a troop of technological and environmental hazards. As a consequence, both the epistemological and political makeup of the normal science has undergone a revolutionary mutation at the scale of the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Let us look into this transformation in detail. First of all, post-normal science is an offshoot of the contradictory growth of normal science. This contradiction derives out of the overwhelming fact that “our science-based technology produces environmental problems which may well be beyond the capacity of science-based technology to solve” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993: 117). This contradictory ontology transmutes many vital concepts of science and knowledge, even reversing some of them. Two such important reversals are the “uncertainty” that substitutes “predictability” as well as “ignorance” that substitutes an “understanding” of normal science. Uncertainty which was positioned in the periphery of knowledge moved to the heart of scientific methodology as the important integrating concept. Whereas certainty, derived through understanding, operated as the driving force of the earlier science, it got replaced by uncertainty and unpredictability of facts. The role of the scientists became the management of such uncertainties through appropriate decisions. As mentioned, the uncertainties issued out of the successful application of previous normal science, which resulted in resource depletion, environmental imbalances, and technological hazards. An important feature of this science was that it cannot provide rationally derived theories based on experiments for explanation and prediction. What it could do was only mathematical modeling and computer simulations which were empirically unverifiable and untestable. Hence uncertainty became a constitutive principle of this science. Such uncertainty in the application eventually led to a series of environmentally damaging and socially perilous technological failures and catastrophes. The problems and their solutions which characterized normal science gave way to issues and their management in the postnormal science. “Instead of the traditional images of conquering or managing, now it is better to think of coping and ameliorating” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993: 99). The unbridled success of the earlier science finally led to the imperilment of civilization and the destruction of life in the planet. In this context, an example of a paradigm response/solution of post-normal science would be the designing of a nuclear waste repository that can control radiation for the next 10,000 years (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993: 101).

34  George Varghese K. If uncertainty functions at the application or operational level of science it is ontologized as ignorance at the epistemological level. Our failure to cope with the disastrous consequences of advanced science, has elevated ignorance as the antidote to its undoing. “Effective ignorance” has metamorphosed into a valid functional concept in the domain of post-normal science. So, to consider ignorance as negativity and a threat is to remain stuck in the old paradigm. On the other hand, it has become the driving force of progress. Ignorance functions as an equivalent of the infinite in mathematics. By definition, the infinite cannot be known or tracked down completely. “In such a context we can genuinely speak of “usable ignorance”, with the understanding that this is very different from “usable knowledge”. For ignorance is usable when it is an object of awareness, and shows its dynamic interaction with knowledge” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993: 102). For Funtowicz and Ravetz, the solution to such a dystopic situation is the democratization of knowledge. This experiment becomes expeditious since there is a large educated public who can debate, deliberate, and propose a solution to the evils of techno-science. Knowledge has to be taken out of the classroom and the laboratory and posited in the midst of the people and their natural environment. In this aspect the new epistemology becomes political, in the sense of the organization of the Greek polis, where democracy meant the direct participation of the citizens in the affairs of the polis through active debate and exchange of ideas. So, democratization of science means the communal participation of the people in the affairs of science and the active influencing of its function in the society and environment (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993: 119–120). If we recall, such discussions were present in the “pre-normal science” of the Kuhnian paradigm, where amateurs debated vigorously on all aspects of science and knowledge like the nature of application, data, methodology, etc. But with the advent of normal science this community was divided into an ingroup of experts and an outgroup of non-specialists. The outgroup/outsiders were effectively barred from any possible dialogue. The result was the application of science and technology carelessly that ended up in environmental and social hazards. In this context there is an argument from the side of the ingroup that the knowledge of the outgroup is amateurish and unusable. But this is countered by the outgroup. There are many examples in which the knowledge of the outsiders has better viability and effectivity. A case in point is the study conducted by Brian Wynne of the University of Lancaster among the sheep farmers of Cumbria in England. He found that these farmers have a better understanding of the ecology of the radioactive depositions in their area than the scientists. Africa gives another example. The local agricultural methods had to give way to advanced Western technology-based agriculture brought in by the colonialists. But the Western methods proved to be inefficient and ecologically damaging so that after a period the local methods were revived (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993: 115). The above cases clearly underline the importance of academic science interacting with local methods, technologies, and know-how. The hitches in the one-sided application of Western scientific methods derive in a major way from the lack of

Interdisciplinarity 35 communication with the local people, and the failure to adopt their culturally determined skills and expertise. In the case of post-normal science these local experts should be accommodated as peers in the model of normal science. In the Kuhnian normal science the peer review authorizes the efficacy and authenticity of a scientific method or technology. These peers are normally the colleagues with similar degrees and similar levels of academic accomplishments. For the post-normal science, which asserts the importance of indigenous knowledge and skills, the local community should be also deemed as peers as in the normal science tradition. In opposition to the factual “knowing-that” of the normal science, they possess an indigenous “know-how” reinforced by the local traditions and cultural structures. In another sense they become the “extended peer communities” in possession of “extended facts” with their knowledge on the issues of environment, society, and ethics at the local level (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993: 114–115). Then, where is ID coming into the scene? We observe that two kinds of ID are at work here. Needless to say, the present situation is one in which both normal and post-normal sciences coexist side by side with neither enjoying a singular predominance. In the normal everyday functioning of society, normal science and technology are definitely required. For example, in the case of the production of cars or washing machines or cell phones which are absolute necessaries of modern life. There is no rural or urban or national divide here. But even here it should be carefully managed so as not to become environmentally damaging and socially harmful. ID definitely becomes important here, in shaping the operational technology, which is mostly designed by the integration of more than one discipline drawn from normal science. On the other hand, there emerges another kind of ID with the post-normal science. Here the scientific framework and technological models are more sophisticated, large-scale, and mostly environmentally and socially fatal (e.g., building of a dam or a nuclear plant). Again, technologies that depend on extensive use of natural resources also come under this category. For example, a soft drink plant located in a rural area that uses up a lot of natural water, which eventually makes this natural resource scarce for the local community. In such situations, local knowledge and skills have to be incorporated in an interdisciplinary manner. The integration is definitely different qualitatively from that of normal science. Here, the persons from the local community become peers with a difference, or more precisely, “extended peers”, while their knowledge becomes the sum of “extended facts”. The case of the sheep farmers of Cumbria, and the local agriculturists of Africa, which we referred to above, become sound examples. Toward a Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity The above analysis tries to chart the expansion of ID from the narrow confines of the academy and universities in its early historical phase to the wider world and society at large later, which still continues. At the center of it is the transformation of its object from the early science’s “problem” into the modern world’s “issues”.

36  George Varghese K. The mode of action also changed from research and the unraveling of the secrets of nature to that of coping up with and amelioration of the problems created by early science. Traveling along with science and knowledge, ID’s portfolio has also extended considerably so that a situation has reached in which it is everywhere and nowhere at present. It has become a common label for innumerable research programs of various kinds, from that of the national organizations and multinational corporations to the local level education programs of village schools. Going after ID’s nomadic circuits would be a less rewarding exercise. At the same time, we can perceive certain strongly embedded structures within its ontology. Jan C. Schmidt’s philosophical analysis of ID becomes helpful in this context, to which we will turn here. For Schmidt there are two versions of ID, one strong and the other weak. The strong one is related to the restoration of the unity of knowledge in the face of its fragmentation especially in contemporary times. Such unification has a genealogy that goes back to the notion of mathesis universalis of Leibniz and the concept of the whole in Hegel (Schmidt 2008: 56–57). Although the mode of the problem has changed during the modern age, still the yearning for an integrated system of knowledge is very strong. In contrast to this strong version there is a weak one also, which we have discussed above in the context of post-normal science and the Mode 2 knowledge. This version of ID engages a local and contextual unity with regard to one in contrast to the transcendental unity at the global level of the stronger version. These weak positions are linked to problems in the real world at a local community level. These problems are so complex that a disciplinary answer cannot be mooted, and therefore, an interdisciplinary approach is resorted to. As of the relation between these two versions Schmidt observes: “A local monism concerning objects and problems seems to be in accordance with a global pluralism concerning methods, concepts, propositions and theories” (Schmidt 2008: 57). Despite the plural versions and their respective objects, ID also reveals a philosophic profile which Schmidt analyses as its four dimensions: (1) objects (ontology), (2) knowledge/theories (epistemology), (3) methods/practices (methodology), and (4) problem perception/problem solution (Schmidt 2008: 59). We shall look into two of these dimensions, the ontological and the epistemological very briefly. Ontological dimension of ID looks into objects or entities that lie at the border between two layers of reality which can be categorized as micro-, meso-, macro-; or within the border zones between disciplines. Examples could be brain-mind objects, nano objects or hole in the ozone layer. Nano research becomes prominent here. Richard Feynman, its important architect, located non-disciplinary objects between the microscale of physics, and the mesoscale of chemistry and biology. These objects are created on disciplinary borders and reflect a deeper ontological structure of reality. Nanotechnology is articulated on such interdisciplinary objects and processes. Some other examples are electron-beam and ion-beam fabrication, nanoimprint lithography, quantum-effect electronics, and semiconductor technology. Similarly, objects in neurosciences. Mostly these nanoobjects are constructed

Interdisciplinarity 37 between physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering sciences and are of technoscientific nature. Similarly, the objects in neurosciences are also mostly interdisciplinary in nature that lie between natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities (Schmidt 2008: 62–63). Coming to the epistemological dimension, the important question is the nature of the phenomena that demand interdisciplinary theories. Such phenomena exist and they are composed of many components of diverse nature. Examples are global climate, organisms, power grid, transportation systems, ecosystem, living cell, and ultimately the entire universe. Theories that have to tackle them are equally complex and some of them are self-organization theory, dissipative structures, synergetics, chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, fractal geometry, and catastrophe theory. Most of these theories were established in the 1960s and early 1970s. Perhaps the most representative of the interdisciplinary theories is the complex system theory. It investigates phenomena like pattern formation, self-organization, critical behavior, bifurcations, phase transitions, structure breaking, and catastrophes. The most important message it gives is about the fundamental instability in nature, technology, and even in the social processes. Hence a structure-based interdisciplinary unification becomes imperative (Schmidt 2008: 64). Interdisciplinarity and the State: The Case of Biology From the analysis made so far, it becomes evident that ID is not a coherent and static entity, but an emergent assemblage or multiplicity in the Deleuzo-Guattarian sense(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 503–505). It has undergone many modifications and is always linked with a certain form of social and epistemic politics. The broad outline of its growth reveals a subtle movement from the confines of the academy and university to the open world and people’s midst. Again, it has revealed a strong state and other institutional interests intervening and controlling it time and again. This interest is becoming more visible nowadays. It is Deleuze and Guattari who spoke of the “state science” and the “nomad science” as part of a pointed critique of the former (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 370–374). We can see the state stepping into ID’s corridor and even speaking on its behalf. The case of biology reveals the complex intervention of the state into its ID and we have a significant example from the United States. The history of biology has been a succession of one “new biology” after another in the 1910s, 1930s, 1950s, and 1980s. Most of them were interdisciplinary like genetic biology biochemistry, and molecular biology which were also considered “revolutionary”. All had given rise to fierce dissent regarding disciplinarization and departmentalization, and were distributed among the science departments, agricultural colleges, and medical schools (Graff 2015: 218). The interdisciplinary scenario in biology at present is abuzz with different games of mergers and territorial conquests. State also becomes a player in this game. We get a glimpse of this phenomenon in the report titled A New Biology for

38  George Varghese K. the 21st Century published by the National Research Council (NRC) of the United States in 2009. As the report says, … the essence of the New Biology is integration-reintegration of the many subdisciplines of biology, and the integration into biology of physicists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to create a research community with the capacity to tackle a broad range of scientific and societal problems. The committee chose biological approaches to solving problems in the areas of food, environment, energy and health as the most inspiring goals to drive the development of the New Biology. But these are not the only problems that we both hope and expect a thriving New Biology to be able to address; fundamental questions in all areas of biology, from understanding the brain to carbon cycling in the ocean, will all be more tractable as the New Biology grows into a flourishing reality (A New Biology for the 21st Century, 2009, pp. vii–viii) Equally important is the figure of the “New Biologist” whose definition is given in the report. He/she is an interdisciplinarian or integrator par excellence, … the New Biologist is not a scientist who knows a little bit about all disciplines, but a scientist with deep knowledge in one discipline and basic “fluency” in several. One implication of this is that not all “New Biologists” are now, or will in the future be, biologists! The physicists who study how the laws of physics play out in the crowded and decidedly non-equilibrium environment of the cell, or the mathematicians who derive new equations to describe the complex network interactions that characterize living systems are New Biologists as well as being physicists or mathematicians. In fact, the New Biology includes any scientist, mathematician, or engineer striving to apply his or her expertise to the understanding and application of living systems (A New Biology for the 21st Century, 2009, p. 20) What is the logic behind the interdisciplinary integration of the New Biology? Evolutionary theory experts John S. Torday and William B. Miller Jr., envisage a grand theory of integration of physics, chemistry, and biology basing on the groundbreaking equation of Einstein’s E=MC2, which proved the equivalency of mass and energy. For them, the equivalency of mass and energy in Einstein’s equation is applicable to all the sciences and inevitably encompasses physics, chemistry, and biology also. Essentially, they are all characterized by the relation between energy and mass. Then the formidable challenge is how to place biology within the same matrix of physics and chemistry with the same predictive rigor. The answer is to look into the dynamics of the development of life from the unicellular domain to the multicellular levels. This is best revealed in the embryologic growth in which the primordial germ cells communicate with one another through signaling mechanisms that determine the growth and differentiation of

Interdisciplinarity 39 the fetus. These processes are mediated by high-energy phosphates as second messengers. They change the genetic readout of the cell. “When seen as a series of linked energy and information transfers, from cell to cell, and from generation to generation, ontogeny and phylogeny can stand alongside physics and chemistry as being based within understandable and reiterative rules that govern life on the planet, and then might equally apply to any other life in our universe” (Torday and Miller 2021: 1–2). Issuing out of this ambitious plan of integration is the effort to develop a Periodic Table and quantum mechanics for biology that makes it less of a science of empirical observation than one of prediction (Burggren et al. 2017: 103). To end briefly, we have seen that ID has described a rectilinear path of evolution. There is no one location or institution to which its birth and development can be attributed. It has different names and modes of emergence as the physical location as well as the disciplinary clusters in which it is embedded change. Again, like infinity, its future remains indefinite and elusive. Despite the ontological incertitude about its future and incomplete knowledge about the past, its present is a promising one of prolific growth with tremendous intensity. Let us hope it will sail forward at this pace. References Alvargonzález, David. 2011. ‘Multidisciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity, Transdisciplinarity, and the Sciences’, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (4), pp. 387–403. Ash, Mitchell G. 2019. ‘Interdisciplinarity in Historical Perspective’, Perspectives on Science 27 (4), pp. 619–642. Barry, Andrew and Georgina Born. 2013. ‘Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences’, in Andrew Barry and Georgina Born (eds), Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences (Oxford: Routledge), pp. 1–56. Burggren, Warren et al. 2017. ‘Interdisciplinarity in the Biological Sciences’, in Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Robert C. S. Pacheco (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 101–113. Choi, Bernard C.K. and Anita W.P. Pak. 2008. ‘Multidisciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity, and Transdisciplinarity in Health Research, Services, Education and Policy: 3. Discipline Inter-Discipline Distance, and Selection of Discipline’, Clinical and Investigative Medicine 31 (1), pp. E41–E48. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Funtowicz, Silvio O. and Jerome R. Ravetz. 1993. ‘The Emergence of Post-Normal Science’, in René Von Schomberg (ed), Science, Politics, and Morality: Scientific Uncertainty and Decision Making (Dordrecht: Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.), pp. 85–123. Gibbons, Michael et al. 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (Los Angeles: Sage Publications Ltd). Graff, Harvey J. 2015. Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Jacobs, Jerry A. and Scott Frickel. 2009. ‘Interdisciplinarity: A Critical Assessment’, Annual Review of Sociology 35, pp. 43–65.

40  George Varghese K. Klein, Julie Thompson. 2015. Interdisciplining Digital Humanities: Boundary Work in an Emerging Field (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Klein, Julie Thompson. 2017. ‘Typologies of Interdisciplinarity: The Boundary Work of Definition’, in Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein and Robert C. S. Pacheco (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 21–34. Mäki, Uskali. 2016. ‘Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity: What? Why? How?, European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (3), pp. 327–342. Osborne, Thomas. 2013. ‘Inter That Discipline’, in Andrew Barry and Georgina Born (eds), Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences (Oxford: Routledge), pp. 82–98. Schmidt, Jan C. 2008. ‘Towards a Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity: An Attempt to Provide a Classification and Clarification’, Poesis and Praxis 5 (1), pp. 53–69. Torday, John S. and William B. Miller Jr. 2021. The Singularity of Nature: A Convergence of Biology, Chemistry and Physics (London: Royal Society of Chemistry). Turner, Stephen. 2000. ‘What Are Disciplines? And How Is Interdisciplinarity Different?’’ Interdisciplinarity: The Paradoxical Discourse’, in Peter Weingart and Nico Stehr (eds), Practising Interdisciplinarity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 46–65. Turner, Stephen. 2017. ‘Knowledge Formations: An Analytic Framework’, in Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein and Robert C. S. Pacheco (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 9–20. Weingart, Peter. 2000. ‘Interdisciplinarity: The Paradoxical Discourse’, in Peter Weingart and Nico Stehr (eds), Practising Interdisciplinarity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 25–41. Weingart, Peter. 2010. ‘A Short History of Knowledge Formations’, in Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein and Carl Mitcham (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 3–14. Report A New Biology for the 21st Century (2009): Report submitted by the Committee on a New Biology for the 21st century of the National Research Council of the United States: Printed at the the National Academies Press, Washington, DC.

3

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge Notes on the Politics of Interdisciplinarity Shiju Sam Varughese

Introduction The debate on the importance of interdisciplinarity is an ongoing one, even after achieving a general consensus that it is a robust practice in research and a guiding principle in the organisation of knowledge. In this chapter, my intention is to neither endorse nor challenge the sanguinity of the claim but to examine some of the historical factors that have to be reckoned with to throw more light on the debate. The standpoint of this chapter is that interdisciplinarity as a notion and practice has a long history that goes back to the late nineteenth century and that this history is important to understand the contemporary context that necessitates a debate on interdisciplinarity at the closing of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The aim of this chapter is to discuss some of these important contexts and conditions, which might contribute to our effort to reimagine academia at a time of crisis. I will mainly discuss three important transitions that have been shaping the contemporary discourse on interdisciplinarity. These are the shift from printing technology to digitalisation, the change in the institutional structure of university from the Humboldtian model of the industrial era to the neoliberal administrative university and finally, the advent of post-industrial society. These transitions, as you know, are yet to be completed and have multiple facets vis-à-vis the cultural locations we examine. Print technology, the teaching and research university, and the industrial social structure were three strong pillars of the modern organisation of knowledge. However, it is important to acknowledge that these three imperatives are now slowly giving way to fresh ones. We are at a very early stage of these transitions. Therefore, we can only make tentative propositions about their impact on the contemporary culture of knowledge. I will examine these transitions with reference to interdisciplinarity along two axes. The first is the Indian context of manifestation of these transforming factors. While these transitions are global in reach, their cultural manifestations are unique to different social contexts. ‘Cultures of knowledge’ hence become fundamental to assess the social shaping of these transitions. As a country with a long colonial past that shaped its contemporary status as a post colony, analysing the ‘cultural redefinition’ (Raina and Habib 2004) of these processes in the Indian context(s) becomes important to get a better picture. This is a point that does not require DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-3

42  Shiju Sam Varughese further substantiation in the wake of long theoretical discussions in social theory. The second axis is about contextualising knowledge. What is knowledge? Often, we presume that it is not a contestable idea: we mistake the modern organisation of knowledge for knowledge itself. Like ‘culture’, knowledge is one of the most elusive terms in history, to paraphrase Raymond Williams (2015). What claims of truth are considered to be ‘knowledge’ at a particular historical juncture? How are these claims validated? Which are the forms of knowledge considered less authentic and therefore occluded? Whose knowledge is legitimised and delegitimised? How did the process of differentiation shape diverse fields and disciplines, institutions, communities of custodians of knowledge (epistemological agents) and their audiences (publics of knowledge), practices such as codification of knowledge, pedagogic devices (curriculum, learning strategies, textbooks, etc.)? What are the sites of knowledge (where it is produced and learned, such as libraries, classrooms, digital repositories, observatories, museums, laboratories and conferences)? How does knowledge travel? We should remember that occluded forms of knowledge are also practiced in an organised manner, though their forms and practices might be different or invisible. Within the epistemologically legitimate forms of knowledge themselves there are great diversity and boundary negotiations. These two axes are hence important for the discussion on the three transitions mentioned earlier. Defining Interdisciplinarity Before venturing into discussing the aforementioned transitions, it is important to have a working definition of interdisciplinarity. What does it mean to be interdisciplinary? The term appears for the first time in the Social Sciences in the mid-1920s (Moran 2010: 15) and it always carried with it a wide spectrum of conflicting and confusing sets of meanings.1 We can streamline this assortment from two vantage points—based on its purpose and the dimension in which it is practiced. A brief description of these typologies may be helpful in clarifying some of the conceptual difficulties involved. Based on the purpose, interdisciplinary approaches are of four kinds. The first is its status as an interactional strategy that engages specialised fields in dialogue. This was a strong movement in the first half of the twentieth century that gained momentum in connection with the concern about fragmentation of knowledge caused by disciplinary differentiation and over-specialisation as well as a strong desire for unification of knowledge. This perspective on the inevitability of interdisciplinary approaches against disciplinary conservatism that threatens the life of disciplines has been strong in all fields of knowledge. Interdisciplinarity is hence understood as the practice of engaging with other fields of knowledge to enable cross-fertilisation. Scholars who engage in this cross-disciplinary exercise could do it only by developing a familiarity with the concepts, theories and methods of the collaborator’s field of expertise. The interacting fields hence develop a ‘pidgin’ to converse with each other, or a ‘trading zone’ between them (Galison 1996). In other words, scholars have to develop some degree of ‘interactional expertise’ to facilitate a fruitful engagement (Collins and Evans 2015). However, the

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge 43 relationship between disciplines varied in intensity.2 If it is just a juxtaposition of two or more fields, it is called multidisciplinarity. If the engagement bridges the fields or makes them overlap, intersect, or blend, it is interdisciplinarity. However, if the interaction transcends the individual fields involved, it is transdisciplinarity.3 This understanding sometimes acquires a teleological perspective: the organisation of knowledge advances from disciplinary differentiation to more and more interdisciplinary integration, culminating in transdisciplinarity. ‘Interdisciplinary activities’, in this sense, ‘are rooted in the ideas of unity and synthesis, evoking a common epistemology of convergence’ (Klein 1990: 11). A second perspective on interdisciplinarity is its presence as a productive and chaotic epistemological turbulence that triggers the genesis of a new field of knowledge. That is to say, interdisciplinarity is the infant phase of any discipline. In the beginning, there are problems which cannot be resolved with the methods of any one particular discipline. Enthusiastic scholars interested in such problems try to investigate them from multidisciplinary standpoints. The best example for such a churning is the emergence of my own field, Science and Technology Studies (STS). In the 1970s, sociologists, historians and philosophers started exploring the social relations of scientific knowledge production against the conventional positivist and realist approaches. These scholars tried to engage with disciplines other than their own to develop new methodologies to analyse the socially embedded character of science. This chaos churned out a set of studies which developed new perspectives on the social construction of scientific knowledge, gradually constituting the interdisciplinary field of STS in the 1980s.4 And now, after fifty years, STS has its own methodologies and conceptual tools to study diverse social dimensions of modern science. It has all the key characteristics of a ‘discipline’—there are a set of canonical texts, major theoretical trends, university departments, textbooks, undergraduate and graduate programmes, etc., like any conventional discipline. From this point of view, STS is no more an ‘interdisciplinary field’; it is rather a discipline on its own merits. Third, interdisciplinarity can be understood as the frontier of any discipline. For any field of knowledge, its epistemological core has a disciplinary traction while the frontier research is interdisciplinary in nature. That is to say, interdisciplinarity is an essential epistemological quality of the disciplinary frontiers of any field. Sociology is a classic case in point. Its core is moulded by a set of central methodological trends developed by classical thinkers such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Without learning this core, no student can claim to have mastered the discipline. However, this is not adequate to do research in sociology; you need to go interdisciplinary to be a competent researcher and engage in conversation with other fields. This is how historical sociology, environmental sociology, sociology of gender, etc. emerged as exciting interdisciplinary fields of research in sociology. In the course of time, the methodologies and concepts from the interdisciplinary frontier become absorbed into the canonical core of the discipline and the frontier moves into fresh interdisciplinary conversations. Today’s interdisciplinary research is tomorrow’s stabilised knowledge that recasts the disciplinary core, according to this perspective.

44  Shiju Sam Varughese The fourth approach is explicitly political. It is the recognition of interdisciplinarity as a democratic value to be upheld by the scholars in all knowledge-related practices. Interdisciplinarity hence is recognised as the ethic of academic culture. This specific connotation became powerful with debates in the 1960s and 1970s, when the new social movements of marginalised communities critiqued the conventional practices of knowledge production as elitist and exclusive of their social experiences and contented that disciplinarity was a hindrance to think about the pressing problems of the times. It was also alleged that disciplinary organisation of institutions creates ‘glass ceilings’ for scholars from underprivileged sections. This critique led to the adoption of interdisciplinarity as a core democratic value that makes knowledge production more inclusive and makes scholars conscious about the politics of knowledge production. The second vantagepoint foregrounds the dimension of interdisciplinarity. Jon C. Schmidt (2008) identifies four different dimensions of interdisciplinary practices from a philosophical point of view. In some cases, according to Schmidt, the practice of interdisciplinarity refers to the object of study (‘ontological dimension’). In this case the object itself is interdisciplinary in nature, for it cannot be neatly fit into the boundaries of any single field of inquiry. Objects such as the hole in the ozone layer and Nano objects belong to this category, which demands interdisciplinary approaches to study them. The second is the ‘epistemological dimension’; here interdisciplinarity works with regard to the theories and concepts, which cannot be reduced to any one field. Chaos theory is a good example. Similarly, the shifting of one method to another field or the creation of an interdisciplinary method can be the emphasis, which Schmidt calls as ‘methodological dimension’. Development of bionics as a field is provided by him as an example. Here the basis of the coupling between biology and engineering sciences that constituted bionics as an interdisciplinary field is its ‘transfer methodology’ that imitates biological mechanisms to engineer technological innovations such as robots (ibid: 64–65). The fourth is the ‘problem dimension’, wherein a problem itself does not fit into the existing disciplinary matrix (hence it is sometimes called ‘transdisciplinary’). It is mainly because the framing of the problem is mostly happening in society rather than within the scholarly community. Global warming is a good example for such ‘worldly problems’ that call for interdisciplinary treatment (ibid). A Brief History of Interdisciplinary Organisation of Knowledge From a historical point of view, it is possible to identify at least three waves of debates on interdisciplinarity (if we avoid the temptation to extend the concept back into history to argue that even the ancient Greek and/or Indian scholars were ‘interdisciplinary’ in their approaches!). It should be noted that the term ‘interdisciplinarity’ was not used consistently and consensually at any historical moment; among the other terms which have been in currency, ‘multidisciplinarity’ and ‘transdisciplinarity’ are the prominent ones. These concepts along with interdisciplinarity are understood as specific species within the genus, ‘interdisciplinarity’ (Klein 2010: 15). Interdisciplinarity hence refers to both the particular (as one

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge  45 among the three concepts) and the general (as a basket term that refers to all the three).5 Also, as we have discussed in the previous section, the concept always existed in multiple, representing a host of connotations. Therefore, in the following discussion I use interdisciplinarity as an analyst’s category—as a generic term that signifies the spectrum of meanings and terms, including interdisciplinarity as a particular term. Though the waves of interdisciplinarity consisted of a plethora of meanings, categories and practices, each of these waves embodied a certain politics of knowledge, deeply shaped by the historical moment of its manifestation.6 Each of these waves deeply configured the organisation of knowledge during the period of its strength. Understanding this relationship between the waves of debates and the corresponding organisation of knowledge, I hope, shall bring some clarity into the contemporary discussion on interdisciplinarity at a crucial moment of ‘crisis’ of the university. The first wave of interdisciplinarity, in hindsight, began in the nineteenth century with the intellectual campaign for unification of science. Peter Galison (1996: 3) suggests that the debate started in the political context of unification of the German speaking regions into a single nation-state, though it was primarily a debate within sciences. The attempts to accomplish the unity of science continued in the early decades of the twentieth century, though there was no consensus on what the unification actually meant (ibid: 4–5). The logical positivists’ (the Vienna Circle) aspiration for unity of science that culminated in the incomplete project of the publication of the International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science (1938–1969) bolstered the movement (ibid; Klein 1990: 25). In the same vein, many leading social scientists at Chicago University such as John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, G.H. Mead and Charles E. Merriam employed cross-disciplinary perspectives against the ‘craft exclusiveness’ of the specialised fields that causes disciplinary fragmentation (Klein 1990: 24). In 1923, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) was established under the leadership of Merriam to enhance the integration of social sciences (ibid). The ‘interactionist’ framework developed by the Chicago school as well as the ‘culture and personality movement’ of the 1930s and 1940s strongly facilitated cross-disciplinary interactions (ibid). Similar attempts were abundant among scientists, philosophers and social scientists throughout the century. Even Albert Einstein spent the final years of his life working on a unified field theory (Galison 1996: 6). It was also a major imperative for the educational reforms of the mid-century that addressed the need to design ‘holistic’ curriculums. The publication of a report on general education by Harvard University in 1945 titled General Education in a Free Society was a milestone (Klein 1990: 28). Columbia and Chicago universities along with the Harvard University spearheaded the holistic education movement in the United States (ibid). Attempts to develop grand theoretical systems with the capacity to analyse social reality as a whole were another significant move to achieve synthetic knowledge. Marxism, general systems theory and structuralism were prominent among the endeavours to find a common methodological plank for the social sciences and humanities (ibid: 29). Interdisciplinarity was understood either as a limited integration of the theories and methods of different fields, or the desire for a grand unification of knowledge (ibid).

46  Shiju Sam Varughese The second wave began with an acknowledgement of interdisciplinarity as a useful tool for the state in the Cold War period with the establishment of area studies mainly in the U.S. academia to study other regions to help diplomacy and international relations. Decolonisation of African and Asian countries (along with some South American colonies under the British) added impetus to the development of area studies. Parallel to this, large-scale technological projects in the Cold War period proved the importance of multidisciplinary engineering, a trend that became established with the Manhattan project to make the first atomic bomb during the Second World War (ibid: 34). This trend continued with military and space research during the twentieth century, bringing together science, industry and the military (ibid). Most of these mission-oriented projects were multidisciplinary, including those from area studies: experts from diverse fields participated in analysing and/or solving the problem at hand from their own disciplinary vantage points. Researchers within the universities were lured to the heavy funding available for such projects.7Another important intervention was from the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) in the 1970s that raised the problem of interdisciplinary teaching and research in the university (ibid: 36). OECD concluded that ‘there is an increased demand for interdisciplinarity outside the university’, suggesting interdisciplinarity as the suitable approach to solve real-world problems which cannot be reduced to any disciplinary ambit (ibid: 37).8 Interdisciplinarity as an effective practical approach for the state and its technocrats to address social and technical problems thus turned out to be a major practice in the second half of the twentieth century. This understanding of interdisciplinarity was exogenous to the university but immediately appropriated by scholars within the university (ibid). Yet another wave started hitting the academia in the latter part of the decade. This wave highlighted the democratic potential of interdisciplinarity to shape knowledge production. As mentioned earlier, the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s and their thinkers strongly staged this new discourse. On the one hand, this new wave shared the exogenous character of interdisciplinarity in its emphasis on socially relevant problems. On the other hand, the proponents of this view challenged the epistemological foundations of the dominant paradigms in the natural and social sciences and pointed out the exclusion of the experiences, visions and knowledges of marginalised communities from university, the prime site of knowledge production. This was a call for cognitive justice (Viswanathan 2009)9 and social inclusion in HIgher Education Institutions (HEIs). Following this critique, new interdisciplinary methodologies and analytical tools and concepts were developed to study marginalisation and exclusion, and new interdisciplinary fields started taking shape. Women Studies and Environmental Studies are two examples. Similarly, a growing scepticism on science’s role in society catalysed the establishment of STS as an interdisciplinary field of research. Some of the new universities in India established during these decades embraced this trend within their institutional structure. Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi (established in 1969) is a case in point. Departing from the conventional institutional structure of universities as consisting of departments under faculties, this new university

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge 47 was an embodiment of the ideal of interdisciplinarity in the 1970s. In lieu of departments organised around well-defined disciplines, JNU adopted a new design that envisaged multidisciplinary centres under schools ‘around clearly identified problems or areas of study’ (Batabyal 2014: 120).10 This institutional structure was soon adapted by many other universities in the country as a better, flexible structure to enable academic research by surpassing the rigidity and fixity of disciplinary and departmental boundaries. Interdisciplinarity thus turned out to be reflecting the democratic politics of knowledge production. These waves of interdisciplinarity indicate that the concept is deeply political and its epistemological connotations change according to the historical context the discourse is ensconced in. It should be noted that each of these waves indicates the intensity of the debate at a given historical moment. When a particular wave was domineering, other waves were either receding or taking form. This brief history of interdisciplinarity draws us to the central problem of this chapter—what is the political-epistemological milieu that informs the contemporary debate on interdisciplinarity? The rest of the chapter attempts to respond to this question and to suggest that a new wave of interdisciplinarity is now taking shape against the backdrop of three strong transitions, which the HEIs are currently witnessing. From Printing to Digitalisation of Knowledge

The arrival of the mechanical moveable type revolutionised printing technology in Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century. This led to a radical transformation in the way in which knowledge was preserved and circulated (Burke 2000).11 Unlike the handwritten copies of manuscripts, there emerged the new possibility of mass production of their copies in the form of books. This nurtured new practices in academia. Now, scholars can easily verify the accuracy of information by comparing its different versions available in printed form, and the books opened up the prospect of everybody accessing the same knowledge (ibid). Oral knowledge of artisans and local communities too started appearing in print. Also, the advent of printed books reshaped the library’s significance in universities (ibid). Libraries are now a competitor to the classrooms and professors, for learners could avail knowledge by reading books in the library without attending classroom lectures (ibid). Another major transformation brought about by the new technology was the possibility to collect, classify and record all the available knowledge in the form of encyclopaedias (ibid). This has helped create a consensual understanding of the fields of knowledge. Printed knowledge became more visible and the authors endeavoured to publish their research and make it available to a large readership. This was also connected with publishing books in regional languages unlike the scholastic practice of writing in classical languages. These changes gradually contributed to disciplinary differentiation by constituting scholarly communities in specific fields, a process that was completed only by the end of the nineteenth century (Stichweh 2015). With disciplinary differentiation, the practice of technical publication that targeted specialists in a field of enquiry became common, although this practice widely varied across fields and

48  Shiju Sam Varughese disciplines. For example, even by the end of the nineteenth century, geologists and natural historians continued to write for general readers, while physicists and chemists addressed fellow researchers in their technical publications (Cantor and Shuttleworth 2004). Printing also helped occluded knowledges find readership outside formal academia. Textbooks successfully contoured the disciplines and presented justified and stabilised knowledge (Kuhn 1996). The essential role of printing technology in shaping knowledge and its organisation in the form of disciplines and specialised fields continued throughout the twentieth century until the advent of internet. Digital technologies by the end of the twentieth century drastically transformed the codification and propagation of knowledge (see Burke 2012). The importance of printed books and documents as well as their collections in libraries and archives diminished and archives and textual collections went online in digitalised format. Internet encyclopaedias and online digital repositories (Wikipedia is the best example) made knowledge a thousand times more accessible than printing technology. The speed of circulation of knowledge increased manifold, though the digital divide is still a serious problem, especially in the global south. There were also new hurdles being created in accessing e-resources in the form of online subscriptions and copyright regulations; nevertheless, pirate websites, preprint archives and open access publications resolve the accessibility blockade to a great extent. Consequences of this transition from print to digital technology are yet to be understood in full magnitude. The importance of libraries and archives as physical sites for accessing knowledge has been in decline. Even museums have started responding to this challenge and by going online, promoting digital tours and so on. The availability of knowledge on our smart screens has radically transformed the way we access knowledge and shape the practices of knowledge production. Peer review process is surpassed by the new practice of public sharing of prepublication drafts in internet repositories like arxiv.org. Indexing in the form of hyperlinks in digital repositories and e-Books are transforming the conventional ways of textual presentation of knowledge and the way readers engage with the text (Renn 1995: 247–248). Digital repositories help the scholar to scrutinise a larger corpus of primary source materials in a short span of time (ibid: 247). The availability of software tools which can perform several baseline technical tasks such as translation or keyword search makes it easy for the non-specialist also to analyse the data (ibid). The recent introduction of artificial intelligence for assisting academic writing (ChatGPT, for instance) is going to transform the way scholars compose research papers. Such emergent practices are rapidly changing the ecology of knowledge. This has also created the possibility of an extended peer review of research by sharing the knowledge to a wider network of experts of diverse specialisations. At the same time this has made the validation of knowledge really difficult and chaotic too. Seemingly digital technology works in favour of interdisciplinarity by creating avenues for more intense and wider interaction among experts from diverse fields. A good example is the recent development of the twin interdisciplinary fields of econophysics and sociophysics, which attempt to employ ‘the tools of statistical physics’ to analyse ‘the global behaviour of socioeconomic

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge 49 systems’.12 From the earlier concern of analysing market dynamics and networks, ‘to address[ing] complex social systems and phenomena that extended beyond market dynamics and networks’ (Raina and Chakraborty 2017: 255) based on big data has become the dominant trend in these nascent fields. After the COVID-19 Pandemic hit the world, the online mode of learning has evolved rapidly to transform the way learning was organised. Educational institutions now feel the pressure to reconfigure themselves to respond to the power of the digital mode of learning that demands more learner-centric approaches. What would be the redefined roles of universities in general and classrooms and libraries in particular in the post-Pandemic world are yet to be clearly understood. Whatever be the direction in which online education is evolving, policy makers and administrators strongly endorse it by linking it with the rhetoric of interdisciplinarity as a positive ethic. The New Education Policy of 2021 as well as governmentowned e-learning portals such as SWAYAM promotes the image of an autonomous learner who curates her own learning process by selecting interested courses from diverse fields and disciplines. So is the case of a mushrooming of such educational platforms during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Even elite American universities such as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) endorse this trend through their online courses.13 Terms such as interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, cross-disciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are generously used interchangeably in contemporary policy discourses without much conceptual clarity.14 Nevertheless, what is important to note is the shift in the semantic field under the concept of interdisciplinarity. The new wave seems to be recasting the term sans its democratic political content (acquired in the last wave) into a neoliberal ethic to sell education for profit. This new interdisciplinary imagination of education within the emergent administrative university model is deeply entangled with the technological transition in the educational sector. From the Humboldtian Model to Administrative University

The medieval European universities since their inception in the twelfth century were primarily teaching institutions, organisationally different from the modern universities. ‘Research’ as a fresh, systematic search for new knowledge (as opposed to ‘curiosity’)15 in the modern universities was coeval with the advent of printed books. The University of Gottingen (1734) was the first of its kind with research as a component in the History Department (Burke 2000: 46).16 However, it was only by the establishment of the University of Berlin in 1810 by the Prussian statesman and educator Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) that a new model of university where teaching and research were given equal credence was born. That is to say, it took almost a century to establish the modern teaching and research university in Germany. Eventually this model travelled to other parts of Europe and to other regions through colonial channels. In some places it flourished in the twentieth century to an extent to be considered as radically different models as in the case of the research universities in the United States.17 The key focus of the Humboldtian model was general education for the holistic development of the individual

50  Shiju Sam Varughese (‘Bildung’) against the notion of ‘Ausbildung’ (vocational training) expressed in technical educational institutions such as academies18 and other grandes écoles19 and colleges in central Europe20 (see Burke 2000: 44–45; Moran 2010: 10). While the higher education ecosystem diversified and expanded since then, especially in the twentieth century, they all shared the Enlightenment ideal of the university epitomised in the Humboldtian model. Even the universities of mediaeval origin like Oxford and Cambridge modernised themselves by the second half of the nineteenth century. In the Humboldtian model, teaching and research were considered as nourishing each other. Departments were organised around disciplines and the modern administrative structure of the university gradually got established with the idea that the state would provide financial resources as the society benefitted from the knowledge produced and the scholars serving in bureaucracy and business. At the same time, the state withdrew itself from intervening in the daily management of the affairs of the university, which was the responsibility of the academic community. This institutional arrangement was somewhat intact until recently, granting scholars the autonomy to decide what to teach and what to research.21 However, in colonial India, when the first three universities were established in 1857 in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras Presidencies, they were just degree awarding institutions. Teaching was mainly happening in the colleges. Teaching eventually began in the universities but research departments were established only in the early decades of the twentieth century. Research in India was initially carried out outside the universities by amateur scholars and their associations.22 In other words, it took more than a century to get the Humboldtian model established in the colony. In spite of all these problems and crises in domesticating the modern university, as Andre Béteille (2005) pointed out, the advent of modern universities in India brought in radically new possibilities for cultivating the mind. Disciplinary boundaries were well defined by the early twentieth century with each discipline having its own research community, journals, conferences and seminars, textbooks and curriculums. Disciplines developed their own core methodologies, theories and concepts to study research problems related to their subject matters. The disciplinary organisation of knowledge corresponded to a certain institutional structure of the university based on academic departments. Gradually, the waves of interdisciplinarity hit the organisational structure of the university in the twentieth century. The post-World War period, especially since the 1960s, was a period of democratisation of education; universities were decolonised and their elite status was lost when students from across social strata began to access higher education. This was the second round of modernisation that the university had undergone since the European Enlightenment (Wernick 2006: 561). This phenomenon radically changed the nature of the university with first-generation learners entering the HEIs in the global South. In the decade of 1960s alone about 40 universities were newly established in India (Béteille 1981: 282). In the next decade, 29 more new universities were added (ibid: 283). This process got a fillip in the new millennium when the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (2004–2009) initiated the expansion of the higher education sector with the establishment of

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge  51 new public universities (‘Central Universities’) and by increasing financial aid to the sector. Granting a monthly fellowship to all research students (‘UGC non-NET fellowship’) helped students from underprivileged backgrounds to join the university. The expansion of higher education since the 1960s was coterminous with the growth of interdisciplinary fields all over the world. The growth of interdisciplinarity had great significance for first-generation learners in India; scholars from underprivileged backgrounds brought into the university spaces a new political imagination that broke away from the conservative and elite academic practices. Linking this new politics with the discourse on interdisciplinarity the academia was warming up to help them with its academic articulation. The new research projects initiated by these scholars were previously being largely neglected in the elite academia. The excitement in studying new problems pertinent to their life world necessitated an interdisciplinary approach, a process that was entangled with the development of new social movements as we discussed elsewhere. This was also a period in which biological sciences started emerging after the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. The discovery led to the emergence of new fields of inquiry such as molecular biology, genetic engineering and biotechnology. Also, interdisciplinary fields that blended old disciplines which had been vast apart as in the case of biochemistry and biophysics, became common. The establishment of such interdisciplinary fields inspired by the ‘molecularisation of life’ (Rose 2007) also caused social, ethical, legal and political uncertainties, demanding interdisciplinary approaches in social sciences and humanities. Also, as Ulrich Beck (1992) suggested, the emergence of a risk society made the disciplinary compartmentalisation of social and environmental problems redundant and naturally the new approaches were interdisciplinary in nature. The ecological crises further accentuated this inclination towards interdisciplinary research. As discussed earlier, the interdisciplinary imagination of research on its third wave demanded a deepening of democracy in terms of inclusion and participation at the epistemological and organisational levels of knowledge production. It has led to a reformation of the Humboldtian model of university without compromising its Enlightenment values and industrial social imagination in India. The idea of Bildung continued to be intact; so did the social contract between the nation-state and the university. Universities were still expected to shape good citizens and to provide creative minds for running the democracy. The state regulated the political domain while experts took control over the technical and extended their expert advice and technical solutions to governments. The advent of interdisciplinarity challenged the Humboldtian model to be more inclusive and democratic without relinquishing its fundamental characteristics. However, this scenario is now changing. The neoliberal market facilitated the emergence of the administrative model of university that currently threatens the age-old Humboldtian model. The administrative university replaced the old contract between state and university with a collaborative relationship between government, industries and academia. Often known as the ‘triple helix model’,23 this new organisational arrangement assisted commercial and governmental interests in directly influencing research agenda. Bildung is no more an ethic of education;

52  Shiju Sam Varughese students are expected to learn new skills and expertise wanted by the market. The HEIs are forced to develop commercially viable programmes and courses, and many of the conventional subjects (especially in social sciences and humanities) are now considered obsolete. The university is no longer autonomous in terms of its research and teaching agendas. At the same time, it is supposed to be financially self-sustainable by being dependent on student fee and revenue generated from research.24 This demands a complete overhaul of the organisation of knowledge and the research and teaching practices in these institutions. The New Public Management (NPM) practices are now employed in their governance wherein students are perceived as consumers and quantification of teaching and research outcomes are expected to ensure greater accountability from the academic community and transparency in institutional practices. Among the wide range of readjustments being suggested, the most important is the corporate work environment that is expected to be followed, financial viability of institutions, the participation of private actors in academic research and institutional management, privatisation of education and most importantly, the identification of students as consumers and faculty as service providers. The administrative universities follow quantification of every aspect of academic life and now knowledge production and learning have to be reinvented to suit the emergent organisational structure under the new model.25 Whether the administrative university is the right place to hold the nascent post-academic culture is a question which is too early to be answered at this juncture. Interdisciplinarity, as we have seen, is the buzzword for the neoliberal administrative university as well. However, the new political and epistemological context the concept refers to shares nothing much in common with its earlier wave. The imperative of interdisciplinarity is highly valued in the administrative university model but without the democratic political drives the concept had assimilated. The characteristics of these changes are not yet clearly manifested. On the one hand, social sciences and humanities are considered to be of lesser importance except for certain fields which can directly cater to the market demands. Integration of social science and humanities subjects into ‘liberal arts’ in the new HEIs indicates the new set of meanings interdisciplinarity is gaining in the neoliberal era. On the other hand, in the contemporary political context of right-wing populism, interdisciplinarity has suddenly become an apt ideological devise to overthrow the existing organisation of knowledge that resists the intrusion of right-wing agendas into education. How are these policy interventions going to shape the idea and practices of interdisciplinarity is not yet clear. However, it is almost evident that the semantic field of the concept has changed. Let us call it the fourth and oncoming wave of interdisciplinarity. Unlike the earlier waves, the new wave is going to transform HEIs more profoundly and precipitate a radically new organisation of knowledge. This semantic shift was marked by the suicide of Rohith C. Vemula, a Dalit research student at the University of Hyderabad in 2016—his suicide made explicit the gradual demise of social inclusion and cognitive justice within the university.26 The earlier recognition that the university was a place ‘for the cultivation of democratic citizenship and dissidence’ (Raina 2015: 115) developed parallel to the third wave of interdisciplinarity is largely compromised in contemporary India with the

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge  53 right-wing populist assault on student politics and the direct statist interventions in the everyday functioning of the universities. The emergent wave of interdisciplinarity is deeply connected to this crisis of Indian universities. From Industrial to Post-Industrial Social Imagination

A gradual transformation of social imagination from the industrial to post-industrial society is the third. While stating this, there is no claim that diverse societies of the world became industrialised or are becoming post-industrial with the same intensity or speed, or in the same direction. The social dynamics is diverse, complex and global (Urry 2003) and hence we cannot make any blanket statement in this regard. What is possible to say is that as a hegemonic collective imagination about how the world ought to be, industrialisation was ubiquitous. Now that organisational imperative is giving way to a post-industrial social imagination. The end of the Cold War and the process of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation played a central role in shattering the industrial social imagination, a point well discussed in literature. As in the case of the other transitions, the trend is not yet consolidated but still some of its dominant tendencies can be examined with regard to the organisation of knowledge. The end of the Cold War and the triumph of neoliberalism exerted its pressure on academia too. The new unipolar world order has been revolving around the global expansion of the market. This has led to a change in the state-academia relationship as we have noticed, allowing corporate interests to shape the academia. State funding of research has decreased and private agencies and corporations are investing more in research today. The basic nature of knowledge production is changing. There is a new configuration of knowledge production that is emerging, which is theorised as a new mode (Mode II) of knowledge (Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001) or as ‘post-academic science’ (Ziman 1996). The old (Mode I), ‘academic science’ was organised into basic research carried out at university departments and applied science in research institutes and Research and Development (R&D) laboratories. Basic science researchers at the university departments invested their time on long-term projects without expecting any immediate commercial application; research was more driven by a desire to understand physical reality. The funding for such endeavours came mainly from government agencies. R&D was the primary focus of commercial firms which developed new technological products for the market. The academic (Mode I) science was organised around the institutional norms identified by Robert K. Merton (1973) as the CUDOS of science: Communitarianism (knowledge production as a collective enterprise of the research community), Universalism (the knowledge produced is universal in scope and application), Disinterestedness (researchers are not under the influence of vested interests or personal beliefs and ideology while doing research), and Organised Scepticism (the questioning attitude which is organised in the form of peerreview system). Though Merton was referring to the natural sciences, these norms were relevant in the context of social sciences and humanities too. Contrastingly, under the new mode of knowledge production, many of the features of industrial

54  Shiju Sam Varughese R&D become dominant. The new academic culture consists of a heterogeneous and wider network of actors; they are experts from diverse fields of research coming together to solve a problem (which is defined within this heterogeneous network) that requires immediate solutions. This network also includes non-scientist actors such as politicians, industrialists, policy makers, social scientists and activists, for the problems post-academic science demand attention to are ethical, legal, social, ecological and economic uncertainties and consequences (Nowotny et al. 2001).27 Research is no more confined to the walls of a university department or laboratory, but practiced via complex interactions and collaborations between actors of a wide spectrum with reference to a context of application. John Ziman (1996) suggests that now knowledge production is increasingly becoming ‘trans-epistemic’; thanks to the complexity of reality that we are forced to acknowledge due to the proliferation of risks and uncertainties we experience today. This new culture of knowledge production is gradually evolving within the Mode I and has not yet attained an independent status.28 With the post-industrial practices of knowledge production, science and technology are no more two clearly defined entities. Their presumed linear relationship has collapsed, for science and technology are rapidly merging together to lose their identities to form ‘technoscience’. This is quite evident in the context of recent fields such as nanosciences and genomics—these fields have blurred any separation between basic and applied research. The same group of experts may end up discovering foundational aspects of nature while focusing on applied research and vice versa in these fields. The academia-industry-government collaborations (triple helix model) have thus become central to the organisation of knowledge in the postindustrial environment. These developments noticed in the context of natural sciences seem to have great significance for social sciences and humanities too. This is evident in the context of a great pressure to make these domains of knowledge ‘useful’ to the market and train students with certain skills required by the market.29 The current reorganisation of social sciences and humanities under the fancy term, ‘liberal arts’, indicates this trend. A gradual disappearance of departments of philosophy and history from the new HEIs adds to the story. It also indicates that the administrative university’s development is concurrent to the emergence of Mode II knowledge. However, it is too early to suggest if the administrative model of university suits the new mode of knowledge production. The post-industrial society is a knowledge society. The predominance of a service sector in the global economy and the centrality of ‘cognitive labour’ in the contemporary post-Fordist organisation of industrial production as well as biocapitalist commercial activities are factors which are shaping the post-industrial society. The post-industrial social imagination is equally shaped by climate change and ecological destruction and the resultant pandemics and disasters. The rise of rightwing politics all over the world adds another dimension to this. In this context, it is quite evident that the organisation of knowledge cannot be continued within the contexts, conditions and norms set by the Humboldtian model of university which addressed the needs and problems of the industrial society. A new social imagination demands new forms of knowledge and institutional arrangements.

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge  55 What is the nature of this changing configuration is not yet clear. The debate on interdisciplinarity hence needs a fresh start, taking into cognisance these recent transformations.30 Conclusion My intention in this chapter was to examine some of the major cultural trends that might help us situate the debate on interdisciplinarity. We have discussed three transitions in knowledge culture in recent times, which offer a fresh context to discuss interdisciplinarity. I have identified four waves of interdisciplinarity, which belong to specific semantic fields shaped by unique political processes. A lack of understanding of these backdrops may lead to situating interdisciplinarity as a transcendental political-epistemological ideal that positively orients the organisation of knowledge. Among the four waves of interdisciplinarity, the third strongly demanded a democratic reorganisation of the academia and underscored the significance of social justice for a robust organisation of knowledge. However, while engaging with the fourth wave that is gradually taking shape under the complex socio-political pulls, it is important for us to historicise interdisciplinarity in order to actively intervene in and redirect its development. As Dhruv Raina (2015: 115) pointed out, ‘[t]he university embraces many ideas and theories of knowledge today’ and hence a new ethical vantage point is required to reform the university to be an important site of knowledge production and cognitive justice. The question is about rethinking interdisciplinarity as a democratic ideal at the crossroads of the turbulent transitions we have discussed in the previous sections. It is also important to examine whether interdisciplinary organisation of knowledge is competent enough to address the challenges of the present. Knowledge production and dissemination as well as the structure and functioning of academic institutions have to be reconfigured in order to resist the onslaught of ideologies which undermine our search for a democratic and just collective future(s). What ought to be the knowledge that fosters those inclusive and sustainable futures? Is our conventional understanding of knowledge and its social and political relations adequate enough to build such a future? If not, what is going to be the new understanding of knowledge? A case in point could be the failure of our authentic knowledge practices in resolving climate change; it seems that we need to have a dialogue between diverse knowledges (this includes indigenous and local practices along with modern natural and social scientific traditions) to enter into conversations in order to generate new knowledge practices, which will facilitate ecological restoration and social well-being. Can all the claims of knowledge be acknowledged as equally valid and capable of entering into such a conversation to build an inclusive and just future? Can we envisage a new organisation of knowledge that will be open and flexible enough to accommodate such a dialogue? The question of interdisciplinary organisation of knowledge becomes politically and epistemologically important today against these pertinent questions.

56  Shiju Sam Varughese Notes 1 For a detailed description of the proposed typologies to understand the range of meanings associated with interdisciplinarity, see Klein (2010). 2 The discussion here is based on Julie Thompson Klein’s observations. See Klein (2010). 3 This understanding came into prominence with the interventions of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in the 1970s. See the discussion given below. 4 STS as an interdisciplinary field came into existence in the 1980s with the intertwining of three distinct streams: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK), Postcolonial Studies of Science and Feminist Studies of Science. Scholars in these fields demonstrated that the cognitive kernel of science itself is socially and culturally shaped against the earlier consensus that the outer shell of science (scientific community, institutions, policy frameworks, funding, etc.) is social but the kernel is purely cognitive and without social influences. Eventually the social constructivist approach of STS inspired inquiries into the history and philosophy of science as well. 5 According to the Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (2010), ‘“interdisciplinarity” covers both the integration of knowledge across disciplines, narrow and wide, and the intercourse between (inter)disciplines and society. The latter often goes by the name of transdisciplinarity, particularly in Europe’ (‘Introduction’, Frodeman 2010: xxx, ft. no. 1). 6 Epistemology itself is understood here as social, for it is impossible to separate the ‘cognitive’ processes from the ‘political’ influences at any historical moment. 7 In India, the research institutes under the academic councils such as CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) and ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Science Research) received the major chunk of research funding from the government to carry out short-term mission oriented projects, and this throttled research in universities (Raina and Jain 1997; Béteille 2009: 38). 8 In 1970, a seminar was organised by the centre, and the proceedings were published in 1972 as a book titled Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities. OECD continued with their promotion of interdisciplinary education in the later decades. 9 Cognitive justice denotes the ‘cognitive validity’ of a wider range of knowledge streams to coexist and non-hierarchically engage with each other (Viswanathan 2009). 10 For instance, the tentative agreement in the advisory committee of JNU was that the school of social sciences ‘would consists of the centre for the study of social systems which would also study tribal societies and backward classes; the centre for the study of scientific and technological advances which would focus on developing societies with special reference to their economic and social implications, including problems connected with international transfers of technology; the centre for disarmament studies; the centre for regional planning; the centre for educational studies; the centre for historical studies, and the centre for linguistics’ (Batabyal 2014: 120). The discussion on the proposed school of environmental sciences was another example. It was suggested by the renowned scientist M.G.K. Menon that the school ‘should be established with a “character of its own with applied mathematicians, physicists, geophysicists, geochemists, meteorologists, hydrologists and oceanographers” working together…. JNU, he suggested, could link certain core areas and diverse programmes like “meteorology, oceanography, hydrology and ecology (pollution of air and water)”’ (ibid: 122). 11 The development of printing technology and its evolution into the digital age has been a sociotechnical process. However, in this section, we limit our focus to what transformations are being effected by printing/digital technologies on the organisation of knowledge. Also we should not forget that the organisation of knowledge and the development of printing/digital technologies shape each other in a complex manner, which cannot be addressed in detail in this chapter.

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge  57 12 ‘Preface’ (p. v) to Abergel et al. 2017. 13 It should be noted that online courses offered by them (on the platform EdX) are not considered equivalent to the campus courses these ivy-league universities offer. Online teaching increases their revenue manifold while still ensuring the special status of an elite minority who can directly access campus education. 14 These terms are used interchangeably in the NEP 2021. Nevertheless, ‘holistic and multidisciplinary education’ is the emphasis of the document. By implementing a multidisciplinary learning environment, NEP 2021 claims to be upholding the principle of flexibility (‘so that learners have the ability to choose their learning trajectories and programmes’) and insists ‘no hard separations between the arts and sciences, between curricular and extra-curricular activities, between vocational and academic streams, etc. in order to eliminate harmful hierarchies among, and silos between different areas of learning’ (p. 5). It promotes ‘multidisciplinarity and a holistic education across the sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities, and sports for a multidisciplinary world in order to ensure the unity and integrity of all knowledge’ (p. 5). A similar lack of clarity exists in the proposed STIP Policy (see the Draft STIP Document 1.4, Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, December 2020). 15 See Burke (2000: 46). 16 Before the modernisation of the University in Post-Enlightenment Europe, most of the ‘new science’ was developing outside the Universities. Learned societies, guilds, salons and coffee clubs played crucial roles in shaping new learning in natural sciences, arts and literature in the Enlightenment period (Wernick 2006). It is in the post-Enlightenment period that ‘the university was revamped so as to become a central institution… of modern society’ (ibid: 560). 17 In the United States, Johns Hopkins University was established as a research-oriented university in 1876, drawing inspiration from the Humboldtian model. Many of the existing universities in the country were restructured afterwards based on this model. The U.S. model now serves as the neoliberal model of the contemporary global R&D university that resulted from a ‘deep enmeshing of academic research of a staggering variety in the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex’ (Bishop 2006: 563). 18 Tübingen (1589), Brussels (1711) and London (1768) are examples. 19 They were the early institutional forms of technical institutes. The most important institutions among these ‘great schools’ established by Napoleon Bonaparte immediately after the French Revolution were École Polytechnique (1794) for training engineers for civil and military services and École Normale Superieure (1795) for training secondary school teachers (Béteille 2005: 3377). 20 Karlschule at Stuttgart, for example. 21 As we have discussed earlier, this agreement started getting compromised in the Cold War period. The freedom to teach and research has heavily been scuttled of late with the rise of populism all over the world. The right-wing onslaught on the universities in India heavily bulldozed academic freedom and public intellectual life in the country. 22 Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) established in 1876 in Kolkata, for example. 23 See Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1995) for a detailed discussion of the concept. 24 Interestingly, this has been a significant part of the U.S. model in the twentieth century, which India is trying to emulate now with an ambition to become a global power like the United States. The close linkages universities have with the military-industrial complex in the United States inspire administrators all over the world as the base for developing the neo-liberal, administrative university. Ironically, the U.S. higher education system itself is under immense pressure to change. 25 For a detailed analysis of the toxic manifestations of this transformation on the faculty, see Gill (2010).

58  Shiju Sam Varughese 26 Indian universities had been in the process of becoming an inclusive space with an ever-widening social base since the 1960s. Rohit Vemula, a PhD scholar on January 17, 2016 committed suicide at the University of Hyderabad, after he was suspended from the university along with four other Dalit students. Following his suicide, a strong wave of student movements shook the country. This led to violent police action in major universities. 27 Hence it is generally referred to as ‘transdiciplinary research’. 28 Two extremes of this new mode of knowledge production are represented by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project (2009) of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) that studied the properties of the Higgs Boson particle and the cloning of Dolly, the sheep in 1996 by Dr. Ian Wilmut and team at the University of Edinburgh. 29 This pressure on the humanities has initiated a debate on its contemporary relevance. See for example, Nussbaum (2010). 30 Recent attempts to address this problem are Braidotti and Gilory (2016) and Braidotti (2019).

References Abergel, Frédéric, Hideaki Aoyama, Bikas K. Chakrabarti, Anirban Chakraborti, Nivedita Deo, Dhruv Raina and Irena Vodenska eds. 2017. Econophysics and Sociophysics: Recent Progress and Future Directions. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Batabyal, Rakesh. 2014. JNU: The Making of a University. Noida: Harper Collins Publishers India. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London, New Bury Park, and New Delhi: Sage Publications. Béteille, Andre. 1981. “The Indian University: Academic Standards and the Pursuit of Equality”. Minerva 19(2): 282–310. Béteille, Andre. 2005. “Universities as Public Institutions”. Economic and Political Weekly 40(31), July 30–August 5: 3377–3381. Béteille, Andre. 2009. Universities in the Twenty-First Century. The Third Foundation Day Lecture of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), New Delhi, delivered on August 11. Bishop, Ryan. 2006. “The Global University”. Theory, Culture & Society 23(2–3): 563–566. Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press. Braidotti, Rosi and Paul Gilory eds. 2016. Conflicting Humanities. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Burke, Peter. 2000. A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Burke, Peter. 2012. A Social History of Knowledge II: From the Encyclopaedia to Wikipedia. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Cantor, Geoffrey and Sally Shuttleworth. 2004. Science Serialised: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press. Collins, H.M. and Robert Evans. 2015. “Expertise Revisited, Part I–Interactional Expertise”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 54, December: 113–123. Etzkowitz, Henry and Loet Leydesdorff. 1995. “The Triple Helix: University-Industry-Government Relations: A Laboratory for Knowledge Based Economic Development”. EASST Review 14(1): 14–19.

Transitions in the Organisation of Knowledge  59 Frodeman, Robert ed. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Galison, Peter. 1996. “Introduction: The Context of Disunity”. In The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power, edited by Peter Galison and David J. Stump, 1–33. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gibbons, Michael, Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott and Martin Trow. 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage Publications. Gill, Rosalind. 2010. “Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Injuries of the Neoliberal University”. In Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections, edited by Róisín Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill, 228–244. London and New York: Routledge. Klein, Julie Thompson. 1990. Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Klein, Julie Thompson. 2010. “A Taxonomy of Interdisciplinarity”. In The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, edited by Robert Frodeman, 15–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuhn, Thomas. 1996 [1962]. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Merton, Robert K. 1973. The Sociology of Science. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Moran, Joe. 2010. “Introduction”, in idem. Interdisciplinarity, Second Edition, London and New York: Routledge. Nowotny, H., P. Scott and M. Gibbons. 2001. Rethinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2010. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Raina, Dhruv. 2015. “Transformations in the World of Higher Learning: Changing Norms and Values of Universities and Research Institutes in India”. In Science, Technology and Development in India: Encountering Values, edited by Rajeswari S. Raina, 104–118. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. Raina, Dhruv and Anirban Chakraborty. 2017. “Epilogue”. In Econophysics and Sociophysics: Recent Progress and Future Directions, edited by Abergel et al., 255–256. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Raina, Dhruv and Syed Irfan Habib. 2004. Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of Science and Culture in Colonial India. New Delhi: Tulika Books. Raina, Dhruv and Ashok Jain. 1997. “Big Science and the University in India”. In Science in the Twentieth Century, edited by John Crege and Dominique Pestre, 859–878. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Renn, Jürgen. 1995. “Historical Epistemology and Interdisciplinarity”. In Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community: Essays in the Philosophy and History of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Honour of Robert S. Cohen, edited by Kostas Gavroglu, John Stachel and Marx W. Wartofsky, 241–251. Dordrecht: Springer. Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Schmidt, Jan C. 2008. “Towards a Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity: An Attempt to Provide a Classification and Clarification”. Poiesis & Praxis 5(1): 53–69. Stichweh, Rudolf. 2015. “Transformations in the Interrelation between Science and Nation-States: The Theoretical Perspective of Functional Differentiation”. In Legitimising

60  Shiju Sam Varughese Science: National and Global Public, 1800–2010, edited by Andreas Franzmann, Axel Jansen and Peter Munte, 35–48. Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag. Urry, John. 2003. Global Complexity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Viswanathan, Shiv. 2009. “The Search for Cognitive Justice”. Seminar 597, May: 45–49. Wernick, Andrew. 2006. “University”. Theory, Culture & Society 23(2–3): 557–579. Williams, Raymond. 2015. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press. Ziman, John. 1996. “‘Postacademic Science’: Constructing Knowledge With Networks and Norms”. Science Studies 9(1): 67–80.

4

Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity The Possibilities and Challenges of Liberal Arts Spaces in India Shubha Ranganathan

Writing about interdisciplinarity from the position of an academic working on questions of health, gender, and disability, is, by nature, an interdisciplinary act itself! For someone with neither qualifications nor expertise in either education or philosophy, ‘interdisciplinarity’ is as much a practical matter as an abstract or theoretical one. And it is from this location as an academic engaged in interdisciplinarity teaching and research that this chapter is written. Thus, rather than engaging in abstract theoretical discussions on what interdisciplinarity means and how it may be (differently) defined, I prefer to write about specific issues and challenges confronting the practice of interdisciplinarity. This chapter emerges from my own particular social and academic locations, reflecting on how these inform my own practice of interdisciplinarity. As an academic trained in a specific discipline (psychology) but drawing on a range of disciplines (primarily anthropology and psychology, but also additionally disability studies and medical humanities) in teaching and research in a Liberal Arts (LA) department of a technological institution, the practice of ‘interdisciplinarity’ entails several challenges even while opening up possibilities. Although these reflections draw from my own specific locations and contexts, the endeavor is to cull out implications for the practice of interdisciplinarity in academia in India more generally. This chapter is divided into three main sections, which I have titled Contexts, Practices, and Disciplining interdisciplinarity’: What’s in a name?. In the first section, Contexts, I employ a funnel approach of sorts, beginning by discussing the broader contexts about the value and place of a LA-based education. Ultimately, these feed into reflections on interdisciplinarity and its particular relevance in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). I then move on to the national contexts that shape interdisciplinary work in the HSS in India. Finally, I look at academic and institutional contexts for the practice of interdisciplinarity in LA spaces, drawing on the perspectives of academics working in HSS departments in IITs. In the second section, Practices, I draw from my own experiences with engaging in teaching and research in an LA department located within a technological institute. While this section is autobiographical in nature (necessarily so), the endeavor is to ground the discussion of interdisciplinarity in specific contexts. Finally, by way of a conclusion of sorts, I end with reflections on strategies that have been useful as an DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-4

62  Shubha Ranganathan academic committed to the interdisciplinary endeavor, with the hope that the particular moment that we are in can be leveraged to further meaningful academic work that is geared toward critical thinking and public engagement. Contexts Global Contexts: The Place of the Liberal Arts in Education

Thinking about interdisciplinarity from the vantage of the LA inevitably entails thinking about the core assumptions and purposes for which interdisciplinary endeavors in teaching and research are undertaken. It means asking questions about the place of the HSS itself. No doubt, this raises further questions about how value is and should be accorded to different knowledges. For instance, many have argued that interdisciplinary domains of inquiry need to be valued for their fundamental contribution to knowledge, and not just for instrumental reasons such as perceived relevance to policy and practice. For example, in the field of medical or health humanities, Goldberg (2013) argues that this scholarship needs to be valued in its own right and not just because it results in more humane medical practice or health providers with more empathy. In the Indian context, Prabhu (2019) has also emphasized the need for equal recognition of the importance of both the ‘medical’ as well as the ‘humanities’ in the interdisciplinary field of medical humanities. Like other scholars who have deplored instrumental approaches toward interdisciplinarity, Prabhu (2018, 2019) has argued for taking seriously the humanities scholarship relevant to questions of illness, health and medicine and not just the deployment of the humanities for imparting humane ‘values’ or ‘attitudes’ to practitioners or for teaching them ‘communication’.1 Similarly, Varghese (2011) makes a case for the HSS, arguing that they are essential for critical thinking and social development. Lyon (1992) highlights that interdisciplinarity is important not just for methodological and instrumental purposes but for fostering cultural critique. Madan (2011) argues that most of the problems plaguing higher education in India arise from the absence of the importance accorded to ‘critical and human knowledges’. It is useful here to turn to the work of philosophers and thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Sundar Sarukkai who have been seriously concerned with the crises that the humanities, arts, and social sciences have been facing in the last few decades, both globally as well as in India. They have deplored the radical cuts and austerity measures in education that have disproportionately affected the humanities and the arts (Nussbaum, 2010, 2012; Sarukkai, 2017). While reiterating – on multiple occasions – the central place of liberal education in sustaining critical thinking that is required to ‘keep democracies alive’ (Nussbaum, 2012), they have also repeatedly called for the need for humanities scholarship to ground itself in everyday local realities and contexts (Nussbaum, 2010, 2012; Sarukkai, 2019). In Not for profit, Nussbaum (2012) makes a powerful and eloquent case for an education system that is geared not toward profit motives but toward bringing about inclusive citizenship. In her rendering, a truly liberal education, with its emphasis

Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity 63 on inculcating critical and independent thinking, works toward democratic citizenship. Such a form of education is attuned to social and development contexts and not just profit motives, even while Nussbaum accedes that profit motives do have value in liberal education, stating ‘we are not forced to choose between a form of education that promotes profit and a form of education that promotes good citizenship’ (Nussbaum, 2012, p. 10). Undoubtedly, what is most appealing and powerful about Nussbaum’s arguments is the central place accorded to questions of social justice in her vision of liberal education. No doubt, this emerges from her engagement with development work, including in India. Thus, her critique of models of education that prioritize education for economic growth rather than education for democratic citizenship also emerges as a critique of growth-oriented development paradigms that disregard questions of inequality and social justice. Along similar lines, Sarukkai (2019) calls for the need for grounding humanities scholarship in specific local contexts, so that the scholarship becomes socially relevant and meaningful, particularly for the vast majority of the populace that comes from disadvantaged backgrounds. National Contexts: Interdisciplinarity and the Liberal Arts

In the social sciences and humanities, ‘interdisciplinarity’ has become a buzz word that is increasingly encountered. Whether one looks at the webpage of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), or at the New Education Policy (NEP), or various calls for research proposals by national and international funding agencies, there is frequent propagation of interdisciplinarity in method and approach. In the United Kingdom, there is evidence that building interdisciplinarity into research proposals and projects is emphasized by funders, research councils, and institutions, many of whom look for an ‘interdisciplinary component’ when evaluating curriculum and research proposals (see, e.g. Chettiparamb, 2007). In the Indian context, the NEP of 2020 specifically mentions the need for revamping higher education so that it becomes more inclusive, holistic, multidisciplinary, and flexible. Through strategies such as flexible credit structures, credit transfers, interdisciplinary programs, multiple-entry and multiple-exit programs, etc. the NEP conjures an ambitious vision for education in the 21st century. The multiple references to the importance of a holistic liberal education and the need to focus on skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, along with values such as empathy, creativity, and ethical behaviors are a welcome departure from conventional imaginations of education (NEP, 2020). At the same time, there are questions as to whether the policy is more about rhetoric rather than practice. In his commentary on the Draft NEP, Sarukkai (2019) draws attention to the contradictions inherent in a policy that calls for significant inclusion of the LA in higher education without a concomitant emphasis on an LA-based curriculum in the education system overall. As he highlights, without an overarching emphasis and political will for HSS education in the country, the grand initiatives proposed in the NEP serve as little more than lip service.

64  Shubha Ranganathan It is here that it would be prudent to think about the relation between the ‘humanities and social science’ disciplines and the ‘liberal arts’. In the last few years, there has been a surge in references to an LA-based imagination of education in the NEP and such policy documents, even though, curiously, there is hardly any mention of the HSS in the same documents. Here, ‘liberal arts’ works rhetorically as a new buzz word that is central to the project of interdisciplinarity. LA curricula are typically extolled as furthering creativity and flexibility by allowing students to combine courses from the sciences, humanities, social sciences, design, and engineering in personalized combinations of their choice. LA, thus, becomes a route to interdisciplinary education and training. Despite these policy imperatives, conversations with academics suggest that while ‘interdisciplinarity’ is often touted in rhetoric, there are often several hurdles and challenges encountered in the practice of interdisciplinarity, which is what this particular volume focuses on. An emphasis on practice pays attention to the particular contexts and specificities within which this behavior plays out. Thus, in writing about interdisciplinarity, my concern is less on evaluating whether some work is ‘truly interdisciplinary’ or in defining interdisciplinarity. In surveying the literature on ‘interdisciplinarity’ what emerges is that several articles tend to speak of interdisciplinarity in abstraction, concerning themselves with theoretical discussions or definitions. Others tend to approach interdisciplinarity as a more technical or methodological issue. Thus, for Bammer (2017) interdisciplinarity involves the use of new methods to integrate, synthesize, and analyze findings from different disciplines. In many cases, ID is seen as a more marketable enterprise with greater potential for addressing industry problems. This is certainly observed in UK contexts where, for policy makers, ID is often largely conceived of in terms of its potential in solving problems in applied fields (see Chettiparamb, 2007). It is also true of the Indian context, as the example of the NEP illustrates. This chapter takes a different tack. Instead of getting mired in discussions on ‘authentic interdisciplinarity’ or in defining interdisciplinarity, I start from the assumption that there are multiple ways of practising interdisciplinarity and different meanings that interdisciplinarity occupies for different persons. I see these pluralities not as hindrances but as fruitful possibilities that could be capitalized on. Academic and Institutional Contexts: From the ‘Humanities and Social Sciences’ to ‘Liberal Arts’

In thinking about interdisciplinarity, the HSS departments in science and technological institutions such as IITs have conventionally been imagined as spaces that introduce a range of perspectives from psychology, anthropology, political science, economics, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, cognitive science, and so on to budding engineers. Until very recently, it was largely through HSS departments that engineers have been trained to think through the social, political, cultural, and psychological ramifications of technology and locate their understanding of science and technology in sociocultural and political contexts (Kaur, 2005; Deb, 2010; Sarukkai, 2019). Further, the introduction of humanities subjects in the

Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity  65 science and engineering curriculum has been framed as working to provide a more holistic and all-round perspective.2 Much has been written about the Nehruvian vision of technological higher education in India which imagined technology as the path to development. Despite this lofty vision, the IITs have recently come under considerable criticism for failing to contribute to thought and action related to the most pressing development concerns of the country (e.g. Mehta & Sharan, 2016; Hiremath & Komalesha, 2018). When it comes to the HSS in IITs, academic scholarship by social scientists on the experience of teaching social sciences in a technological institute is often characterized by an unwitting attempt to ‘prove’ the worth and validity of the social sciences and humanities. In the context of the IITs in India, Deb (2010) and Kaur (2005) lament that while the HSS are crucial for critical inquiry, these disciplines are often not recognized. Sarukkai (2019) also refers to the secondary position occupied by HSS departments in IITs, and the adoption of a ‘scientistic’ perspective on liberal education as reflected in policy documents such as the NEP. He emphasizes the need for recognizing the fundamental differences between the humanities, social sciences, and the sciences in their approaches to academic inquiry (Sarukkai, 2017). In talking about the contemporary crisis facing the humanities disciplines in an increasingly materialistic and ‘scientized’ world, Sarukkai (2017) advocates that humanities scholarship needs to respond to the crisis by actively demonstrating its applicability rather than utility. In Sarukkai’s rendering, the question of utility is approached from an instrumental perspective, while that of applicability, particularly applicability for its own sake, is not. Yet, today, it must be emphasized that the HSS disciplines have come a long way from their past secondhand status when HSS faculty felt unrecognized about teaching in a technological institute. With increasing emphasis on research, as well as their own Master’s-level degree programs, these departments have now come to have their own established identity so that recognition from peers in science and technology becomes (and should become) less of a concern than recognition from peers in HSS. The perspectives of both Deb (2010) and Kaur (2005) are drawn heavily from experiences in teaching HSS courses to engineering undergraduates. However, if the HSS departments are to establish their independent identity, it is far more important to shift the focus to quality research. In the final analysis, it is through Master’s-level degree programs and research that the HSS can truly make their mark. Importantly, these are also the avenues with the greatest promise for practising interdisciplinarity. While there is a long history of the HSS disciplines in technological institutions, ‘liberal arts’ is a fairly recent term that has captured the imagination of policy makers. Over the last few years, with the explosion of private universities taking over social science education, the importance and value of LA education has been touted in various platforms. Thus, for instance, the NEP emphasizes the need for greater flexibility in academic curricula. LA programs typically allow students to potentially draw on subjects from the sciences, the humanities, management, the social sciences, and the arts, thereby inscribing interdisciplinarity in the curriculum itself. As seen in several recent media articles, such programs have increasingly

66  Shubha Ranganathan become popular among students, particularly those who are keen to explore their options, even as parents might have lingering reservations about the job market value of them (Matta & Kaushik, 2021; Mitra, 2021). True LA programs focus on education for learning and not just for employment. They are sought after particularly by those seeking to broaden their horizons beyond conventional categories of the sciences, humanities, social sciences, arts, and commerce, and are instead looking toward novel and creative ways of combining varied interests and hobbies that might cut across disciplines (India Today, 2021). Yet, in the way in which LA programs have been promoted recently, it becomes evident that understandings of human behavior, society, economy, and polity from HSS perspectives are being reframed as marketable skills and not just in terms of their value in shaping wellrounded personalities (Kaur, 2005). At the same time, some have raised concerns about the elitism that often characterizes LA programs and the need for building LA programs that are truly inclusive and accessible to all, as well as responsive to social issues (Kalia, 2021). Where does that leave the HSS disciplines? Within technological institutions such as the IITs, the transition from the HSS to the LA has the potential for a greater degree of interdisciplinarity. The LA curricula that have been announced in recent times bring out this feature strongly. Thus, for instance, in IIT Bombay’s proposed liberal arts, science, and engineering (LASE) program, undergraduate engineering students can opt for concentrations in engineering sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, art and design (Rao, 2021). Here, interdisciplinarity cuts across the domains of the sciences, engineering, humanities, social sciences, art and design. Typically, from the perspective of the Institute, interdisciplinarity is understood in such terms. On the other hand, for HSS scholars, it is interdisciplinary engagements across the HSS disciplines that typically have more meaning. For instance, IIT Guwahati’s Master’s in LA program (F.E. Online, 2022; India Today News Desk, 2022) seeks to implement the philosophy of interdisciplinarity and critical thinking across the HSS disciplines. 3,4 These examples illustrate that interdisciplinarity may be imagined at different levels. Where does that leave HSS or LA departments in IITs? In large part, these departments were initially established not so much as spaces for interdisciplinary research and teaching but as catchall departments that could provide HSS perspectives to science engineering students. Therefore, these departments have been constituted with different academic disciplines within an umbrella that has conventionally been termed as ‘Humanities and Social Sciences’. More recently, in some of the newer IITs, this umbrella term has shifted to ‘Liberal Arts’. This transition from HSS to LA itself heralds a new era wherein interdisciplinarity may be practiced not just across the varied HSS disciplines but across the humanities, social sciences, engineering, sciences, arts and design fields. On the one hand, many cases might be viewed as examples of ‘multidisciplinarity’ rather than interdisciplinarity, wherein different disciplines are simply lumped together without sufficient exploration of cross-disciplinary learnings. Yet, this very lumping together of several disciplines in one departmental space (as ‘HSS’ or ‘LA’) has the practical consequence of potentially bringing several disciplines in conversation with each other.

Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity 67 Thus, such departments offer possibilities for interdisciplinary research and teaching. ‘Practising interdisciplinarity’, however, has different implications for the different domains of academic work, and the next section delves into the possibilities and challenges in implementing interdisciplinarity in different domains. Practices Practising Interdisciplinarity: Teaching, Research, Supervision, and Administration

Conventionally, the three pillars of academia may be thought of as: teaching, research, and applied work (such as, practice). Given that this paper focuses on HSS/ LA departments in IITs which are typically not characterized by a strong applied component (unlike other fields such as medicine, public health, engineering, design, to name a few), I have added ‘supervision’ and ‘administration’ to the list. Teaching

One of the key advantages of teaching in IITs is the relative freedom to conceptualize, design, and teach courses of one’s choice, whether to undergraduate engineering students or to Master’s and PhD students in the HSS. Speaking of undergraduate teaching, the fact that undergraduate engineering students have little prior exposure to the HSS allows for the possibility of creatively introducing courses on experimental and interdisciplinary topics. Thus, over the last few years, I have been teaching courses on medical humanities and disability studies to undergraduate engineering students, both of which have provided opportunities to learn together about interdisciplinary domains of inquiry into questions of health, illness, social justice, and medicine. I have found that teaching introductory-level courses in interdisciplinary domains are far more enjoyable than courses located within a particular discipline. It certainly helps the case here that ‘medical humanities’ and ‘disability studies’ are established domains of knowledge (legitimate ‘interdisciplines’, as it were). In terms of postgraduate teaching, the nature of the academic program in which one is teaching becomes crucial. Postgraduate teaching programs in HSS/LA departments are often discipline-specific, thereby limiting possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement. Here, having an interdisciplinary teaching program, particularly at the Master’s level, becomes crucial in practising interdisciplinarity. While it is true that ID courses can be – and are – also introduced in discipline-specific Master’s programs, teaching in an ID MA program inherently demands a willingness to move outside the comfort zone of one’s discipline to explore new domains of inquiry. As someone deeply invested in the Master’s program in Development Studies in IIT Hyderabad, I can attest to the benefit and fulfillment experienced from teaching ID courses to students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and social locations. Master’s level teaching, in particular, demands an engagement very different from that required by PhD and BTech teaching. In the case of the former, most courses taught by faculty in HSS/

68  Shubha Ranganathan LA departments in IITs draw from their research expertise, and therefore often tend to be specialized. PhD-level courses in IITs are typically imagined as stand-alone pieces that do not have to bear the burden of fitting into a larger academic program structure. While this offers tremendous freedom and flexibility, it also implies that PhD-level courses often tend to be within the comfort zone of one’s expertise, unlike courses in interdisciplinary Master’s programs, which are becoming increasingly popular in India. In general, the tremendous freedom and flexibility that faculty in the IIT system enjoy in designing and teaching courses of their choice certainly provides a conducive environment for practising interdisciplinarity. At the same time, when it comes to designing of curricula at the Institute level, what often emerges is that there are diverse interpretations of interdisciplinarity. As earlier mentioned, in the context of IITs, for the Institute, interdisciplinarity is often defined by treating academic departments as the equivalent of disciplines. Thus, for instance, in IIT Hyderabad, an academic program put together by scholars from the Department of Liberal Arts and scholars from the Department of Biotechnology would qualify as interdisciplinary. However, an interdisciplinary program bringing together scholars from cultural studies, psychology, anthropology, and so on is typically not regarded as worthy of bearing the ‘interdisciplinary’ tag. Clearly, here, the structure of academic departments in technological institutions dominates to prevail over assumptions about what the legitimate disciplines are to contend with. To put it more clearly, while it is evident within the HSS that economics and psychology are distinct disciplines, in a technological institution in which they are housed within one department, they occupy the same disciplinary space in the imaginations of institutional leadership. Such observations raise questions about which departments might be favored by such a reading of interdisciplinarity. Given the pressures to demonstrate movement toward radical and interdisciplinary teaching programs in line with the NEP, if ‘interdisciplinary’ is defined in this ‘interdepartment’ sense, then it would automatically rule out all forms of interdisciplinary programs that might draw on a range of HSS disciplines but have no engagement with other departments. Research

Practising interdisciplinarity in research is, in many ways, the lesser of the challenges, assuming that in HSS/LA departments, there is considerable freedom for academics to pursue the research of their choice. Further, given that many of the research-related activities such as publishing or writing research grants are pitched at international scholars and funders, where interdisciplinarity is often built into academic departments and curricula more centrally, practising interdisciplinarity in independent research becomes relatively easier. In my own experience, practising interdisciplinary research is rarely a concern for international scholars. I have found that questions about the disciplinary location of the research or researcher rarely come to the fore at the international scene. On the other hand, in India, evaluations of research in the HSS are dominated by questions about the (in)appropriate disciplinary location of scholarship. Collaborating with colleagues on interdisciplinary

Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity 69 projects in IITs is also facilitated by the mere proximity of different disciplines. The fact that core HSS disciplines are co-located within a department, and not across departments as they are in university spaces definitely facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration. At the same time, when faculty from different disciplines come together for research purposes, there is often a tension stemming from the different approaches and methodologies employed by different disciplines. Thus, what often emerges is multidisciplinary work, rather than truly interdisciplinary work. To engage in research that is truly interdisciplinary is also a humbling experience for one has to be willing to admit the limits of one’s knowledge and expertise. Supervision

Student supervision is the third important component of academic work, and in many ways, this remains the more challenging aspect in terms of practising interdisciplinarity. Many scholars find it challenging to shed the baggage of their training to embark on projects that are truly interdisciplinary. Here, it should be noted that in the Indian context, many scholars who practice interdisciplinary work have themselves received academic training grounded in conventional disciplines and that any interdisciplinary explorations typically embarked on are done so with little formal training. Systematic training in interdisciplinary domains is considerably lacking in higher education in India. This gap is reflected in approaches toward student supervision. When it comes to doctoral-level projects, the challenges of having to meet the requirements of a doctoral thesis, as well as the implications of experimental approaches for student careers, often means that interdisciplinary work becomes a more risky proposition. While academics are often willing to (and do) take on such risks for themselves, when it comes to students’ work, there is often hesitation, given the doubts about being able to find examiners who would be appreciative of interdisciplinary work. This trepidation about exploring new territories is itself an indication of the tenuous academic climate for interdisciplinary work. The larger question emerging from this observation has to do with the career implications of interdisciplinary research. Doctoral research influences one’s job prospects in important ways, given that it is the first exhaustive research training that one receives and that one’s first publications often stem from doctoral-level research. In crucial ways, thus, doctoral research shapes one’s identity as a researcher, and affects career-related decisions such as the nature of academic departments one chooses to apply to or work in, how one pitches oneself as an academic, and what kinds of research projects one takes on. Administration

An important component of academic work that often fails to find mention in discussions of interdisciplinarity is administrative work. In many ways, HSS/ LA departments in IITs operate on the unwritten principle of disciplinary autonomy. Within IITs, the HSS/LA department is often structured as a ‘department of

70  Shubha Ranganathan departments’, with decisions about recruitment, admissions, courses, academic programs, and so on largely being driven by conversations within disciplines. What this means in practice is that conversations around criteria for faculty recruitment or PhD admission process end up being discipline-specific. In fact, faculty recruitment in interdisciplinary areas is often impeded by such a disciplinary approach, thus raising larger questions about how interdisciplinary work in IITs may be fostered. Often, it is only through an interdisciplinary teaching program that a case can be made for faculty recruitment in interdisciplinary fields, given that faculty recruitment is often closely tied up with the requirements posed by teaching programs. Quite often, following the establishment of Master’s programs in interdisciplinary domains, it becomes possible to actively push for faculty recruitment in these interdisciplinary domains. In turn, the establishment of such interdisciplinary domains allows for conversations around disciplinary identities and boundaries. The larger question emerging here might be: what does it mean to provide a concrete identity to an interdisciplinary domain such as ‘development studies’ or ‘gender studies’ within an HSS/LA department? What are the implications of such ‘disciplining of interdisciplines’? Can interdisciplinary research and teaching only be carried out by formalizing it under a category, such as ‘development studies’, ‘gender studies’, etc.? In large part, this disciplining of interdisciplines occurs because although interdisciplinary teaching programs (at the bachelor’s and Master’s level) might be more easily imagined implemented, when it comes to doctoral research, there is typically a return to one’s home discipline. Thus, for instance, in IIT Hyderabad, following the introduction of a Master’s program in Development Studies, the interdisciplinary domain of ‘development studies’ has assumed the concrete identity of a discipline on par with conventional disciplines such as, for example, economics, sociology, psychology, literature, etc. Subsequently, through processes such as faculty recruitment in development studies and the initiation of PhD programs in development studies, it has become possible to establish the identity of this domain in a separate category. One can imagine similar developments with interdisciplinary domains such as cognitive science in some IITs: while ‘cognitive science’ is a broad umbrella term that in itself houses a range of disciplines (e.g. psychology, artificial intelligence, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, etc.), the establishment of Master’s programs in cognitive science has made it possible to give it a particular identity within HSS or LA departments. In a way, thus, what this process achieves is an expansion of the domains of knowledge that might be considered as legitimate within the context of technological institutions. Paradoxically, within the context of technological institutions, such disciplining of interdisciplines might be the only route to allow interdisciplinarity to flourish within IITs. In the final section, by way of conclusion, I look at strategies that are sometimes useful in making a case for interdisciplinary research. I turn to the question about how interdisciplinarity may be ‘disciplined’, focusing primarily on labels, names, categories, and the legitimizing functions they serve.

Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity 71 ‘Disciplining Interdisciplinarity’: What’s in a Name? One of the key challenges that many social science scholars engaged in interdisciplinary work face is the question of having to justify their work. Such justifications are not just pertaining to their capacity, training or expertise in ID research; they are often addressed at the value of interdisciplinary work in itself. These become evident in the form of questions about the disciplinary significance of research findings. Thus, I have experienced (my) doctoral students being required to answer ‘how is your thesis a psychology thesis?’ Inherent in this question lies an assumption that meaningful academic work must be squarely located within, and not across, disciplines. Even as one recognizes that such questions – particularly of doctoral theses – are not unusual, they suggest that doctoral work must necessarily fall back within the conventional disciplines in the HSS. In this context, I have found it useful to locate the research by drawing on a label or name that works to legitimize the research. Thus, in some contexts, I have referred to the work that I carry out as ‘critical psychology’. Critical psychology refers to approaches that seek to address ‘mainstream psychology’s’ purported lack of attention to questions of power, social justice, inequality, reflexivity, etc. The primary contention of critical psychology is that despite its claims to an objective, value-free, and universal science of human behavior, much of ‘mainstream psychology’ largely reflects white, middle-class, heteronormative values, thereby contributing to the privileging of dominant discourses and practices in psychology. Traditional psychology is criticized for its excessively narrow focus on individual behavior, to the exclusion of broader social, cultural, and historical contexts. Critical psychologists seek to enhance the emancipatory potential of psychology by incorporating a politics of social justice so that psychologists can serve as agents of social change rather than social control (Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2009). Thus, when seeking to legitimize interdisciplinary research among psychologists, it has been useful to peg one’s work on disciplinary labels such as ‘critical psychology’ that are already well-established modes of critique within psychology. In other contexts and for other audiences, the work that I am engaged in finds greater resonance with other disciplinary labels such as ‘medical anthropology’, or interdisciplinary domains such as ‘public health’ or ‘medical humanities’, or ‘disability studies’. What these strategies illustrate is that finding an appropriate name for interdisciplinarity – which could be either a disciplinary name or an interdisciplinary domain –works to discipline and legitimize interdisciplinarity. Thus, for instance, domains of inquiry such as gender studies, development studies, disability studies, women’s studies, medical humanities, are, by definition, ‘interdisciplinary disciplines’. In such spaces, the burden of legitimizing one’s practice might be lesser. Thus, I have found it useful to locate my work in conversation with these domains, even if not precisely within them. In other cases, it helps to think of interdisciplinarity as a methodological tool that helps to further certain kinds of research. In such a rendering, interdisciplinarity becomes important not (only) because of a need to bring together different domains of knowledge but because it allows for new modalities of critical engagement.

72  Shubha Ranganathan Here, Prabhu’s (2018) remarks about the value of drawing on scholarship in medical humanities are pertinent. Drawing on examples from her experience with introducing medical humanities in a literature classroom, she argues for the need for drawing on medical humanities as methodology, rather than as a separate domain of inquiry that is cut off from the rest of medicine. For Prabhu, thus, interdisciplinarity becomes valuable for the methodological and pedagogical learnings that it makes possible, through opening oneself to critical learning approaches from different disciplines in a non-hierarchical way. Thinking about interdisciplinarity in the context of the LA, thus, means thinking about one’s vision for pedagogy and the place of interdisciplinarity in that vision. Here, the perspective of Haynes (2002) is worth recounting: Interdisciplinary studies fundamentally entail a movement away from an absolutist conception of truth to a conception of truth that is situated, perspectival, and discursive and that informs and is informed by the investigator’s own sense of self-authorship. The interdisciplinary perspective is not one that posits a pure relativism in which all knowledge claims are always equal. Instead it rests on the assumption that disciplines and its practitioners, as well as their activities and concepts, are already socially constituted. The task of the interdisciplinary investigator, then, is to invent a new discourse that critically combines key elements of several disciplinary discourses and that is in keeping with his or her own sense of self. (Haynes, 2002, p. xiv) From this position, interdisciplinarity becomes important not in an absolute or rhetorical sense; rather, a contextual and reflexive examination of disciplinary locations becomes central to interdisciplinary explorations. Notes 1 See Prabhu (2019) for her study of the new curriculum for undergraduate medical education in India brought out by the Medical Council of India in 2018 where she critiques the adoption of the AETCOM component that deals with ‘attitudes, ethics, and communication’, arguing for a more central inclusion of medical humanities scholarship. 2 See Kaur (2005) for a historical understanding of the US model of the integration of humanities and social science disciplines within the engineering curriculum post the Vietnam War. In large part, the IITs in India follow the MIT model of education where the humanities and social sciences are imagined as supplementing science and technology education keeping in mind the development needs of India. To some extent, as pointed out by an anonymous reviewer to whom I am grateful for this insight, the IITs have also drawn on the erstwhile USSR model of interfacing humanities and social sciences with engineering disciplines. 3 See F. E. Online (2022, February 16). IIT Guwahati launches MA in Liberal Arts, promoting multidisciplinary aspects of higher education. The Financial Express. https:// www.financialexpress.com/education-2/iit-guwahati-launches-ma-in-liberal-arts-promoting-multidisciplinary-aspects-of-higher-education/2435577/ 4 See India Today News Desk (2022, February 17). New Master’s programme in Liberal Arts launched by IIT Guwahati. India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/

Contextualizing Interdisciplinarity 73 education-today/news/story/new-master-s-programme-in-liberal-arts-launched-by-iitguwahati-1913985-2022-02-17

References Bammer, G. (2017). Should we discipline interdisciplinarity? Palgrave Communications, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-017-0039-7. Chettiparamb, A. (2007). Interdisciplinarity: A Literature Review. The Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Group, Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, School of Humanities, University of Southampton. Deb, K. (2010). The Challenges in Teaching Sociology at IIT: Are “Karl” and “Max” Relevant? In M. Chaudhuri (Ed.), Sociology in India: Intellectual and Institutional Practices (pp. 215–232). Rawat Publications. F.E. Online. (2022, February 16). IIT Guwahati launches MA in Liberal Arts, promoting multidisciplinary aspects of higher education. The Financial Express. https://www. financialexpress.com/education-2/iit-guwahati-launches-ma-in-liberal-arts-promotingmultidisciplinary-aspects-of-higher-education/2435577/ Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I., & Austin, S. (Eds.). (2009). Critical Psychology: An Introduction. Sage. Goldberg, D. (2013). Querying inter-disciplinary approaches. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 37(4), 681–685. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-013-9349-4 Haynes, C. (2002). Introduction: Laying a Foundation for Interdisciplinary Teaching. In C. Haynes (Ed.), Innovations in Interdisciplinary Teaching (pp. xi–xxii). AmericanCouncil on Education/Oryx Press. Hiremath, G.S., & Komalesha, H.S. (2018, November 14). How IITs Turned from Nehru’s Vision of Technology to Catering Engineers for MNCs. The Wire. https://thewire.in/ education/iits-nehru-coaching-mhrd India Today Web Desk. (2021, April 19). Why young India is talking about a liberal arts degree. India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/ why-liberal-arts-is-the-degree-young-is-india-talking-about-1792546-2021-04-19 India Today News Desk (2022, February 17). New Master’s programme in Liberal Arts launched by IIT Guwahati. India Today. https://www.indiatoday.in/ education-today/news/story/new-master-s-programme-in-liberal-arts-launched-by-iitguwahati-1913985-2022-02-17 Kalia, S. (2021, March 22). Liberal Arts Education Is Seen as “Less Than” in India, but It Teaches the Skills India Desperately Needs. The Swaddle. https://theswaddle.com/liberal-artseducation-is-seen-as-less-than-in-india-but-it-teaches-the-skills-india-desperately-needs/ Kaur, R. (2005). Locating the humanities and the social sciences in institutes of technology. Sociological Bulletin, 54(3), 412–427. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23620616 Lyon, A. (1992). Interdisciplinarity: Giving up territory. College English, 54(6), 681–693. https://doi.org/10.2307/377774 Madan, A. (2011). Indian higher education and the need for critical knowledges. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 8(2), 161–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 097318491100800203 Matta, A., & Kaushik, V. (2021, April 22). The state of liberal arts education in India. Forbes India. https://www.forbesindia.com/article/edtech-special/the-state-of-liberalarts-education-in-india/67547/1 Mehta, M.G., & Sharan, R. (2016, March 11). IITs and the Project of Indian Democracy. Economic and Political Weekly. https://www.epw.in/journal/2016/11/commentary/iitsand-project-indian-democracy.html

74  Shubha Ranganathan Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. (2020). New Education Policy. https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf Mitra, T. (2021, May 5). Changing mindsets: Liberal Arts education in India. Mid Day. https://www.mid-day.com/news/india-news/article/changing-mindsets-liberal-artseducation-in-india-23096217 Nussbaum, M.C. (2010). Democracy, education, and the liberal arts: Two Asian models. University California Davis Law Review, 44, 735–772. https://lawreview.law.ucdavis. edu/issues/44/3/keynote%20address/44-3_Nussbaum.pdf Nussbaum, M.C. (2012). Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (The Public Square) (1st ed.). Princeton University Press. Prabhu, G. (2018). Medical themes in a literature classroom: An alternate perspective on Medical Humanities pedagogy in India. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 4(1 (NS)), 35. https://doi.org/10.20529/IJME.2018.060 Prabhu, G. (2019). The disappearing act: Humanities in the medical curriculum in India. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 4(3), 194–197. https://doi.org/10.20529/ IJME.2019.044 Rao, Y. (2021, June 30). IIT Bombay launches Liberal Arts, Sciences and Engineering programme. The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/ news/iit-bombay-launches-liberal-arts-sciences-and-engineering-programme/articleshow/83984491.cms Sarukkai, S. (2017). Location of the humanities. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37(1), 151–161. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/657217 Sarukkai, S. (2019, August 10). A blinkered view of humanities education? Economic and Political Weekly, LIV(32), 10–12. https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/32/alternative-standpoint/blinkered-view-humanities-education.html Varghese, G.K. (2011, July 30). Rethinking humanities and social sciences in the contemporary world. Economic and Political Weekly, XLVI(31), 91–98. https://www.epw.in/ journal/2011/31/special-articles/rethinking-social-sciences-and-humanities-contemporaryworld.html

5

Being Interdisciplinary The Problem of Method and the Practice of Indian Philosophy Samuel G. Ngaihte

One of the characteristic features distinguishing the academia during the early years of the twentieth century was the growing exaltation and promotion of the idea of ‘interdisciplinarity’ in research and education.1 Beginning as a buzzword that became popular in research and university life, the discourse quickly shifted from the relevance of its practice as an approach or method to the possibility of its role in reimagining the very understanding of the academia itself.2 Many interdisciplinary research projects, research studies, and research degrees were subsequently introduced with the goal of making knowledge more ‘relevant’ and understanding more ‘holistic’.3 Based on the conviction that the pursuit of knowledge ‘should’ lead to ‘greater insight’ and ‘greater success at problem solving’,4 proponents of interdisciplinarity express their dissatisfaction with the current modes of knowledge production by arguing that the introduction of specializations and disciplinary boundaries have resulted in the hindering of the enquirer’s ability to see the ‘whole’.5 The expression of this dissatisfaction can be seen in their criticism and suspicion of universities that continue to uphold and maintain the disciplinary structures that were introduced from the nineteenth century onward. They argue that the insular focus on standards of excellence internal to specific disciplines have resulted in the avoidance of larger responsibilities such as the contribution of knowledge toward the creation of a ‘good and just society’.6 However, beyond their attempts to reimagine the nature of knowledge and the role of academia as centered around the production of technical knowledge (techné) and the ability to solve problems, a critical reflection and interrogation on the presuppositions of interdisciplinarity as a concept and method remains to be developed. In that absence, the proliferating interdisciplinary work continues to be accused of ‘dilettantism and shoddy standards’ in its practice, lacking the rigor that characterizes intellectual and academic activity.7 This chapter, while sympathetic to the interdisciplinary concern to make knowledge more relevant to contemporary contentions, nonetheless finds the universalizing tendencies of its proposal and the reduction of the pursuit of knowledge to their methodologies problematic, and seeks to shift the horizons of the discourse from a method-oriented disciplinary-interdisciplinary binary to an enquiry into the constitution of the being of interdisciplinarity itself. Rather than DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-5

76  Samuel G. Ngaihte seeing enquiries as primarily determined by (disciplinary or interdisciplinary) methods, this chapter seeks to expound the dialogic constitution that informs any enquiry. With this concern serving as a guide, the first section of this chapter highlights the underlying incommensurable philosophical tensions that undergird the claims of interdisciplinarity. This is followed in the next section by a discussion that attempts to advance the vitality of interdisciplinarity, by way of recovering the originary and philosophically grounded telos of interdisciplinarity. Having pointed out the close relation between philosophical enquiry and interdisciplinarity, the third section briefly discusses the gradual compartmentalizing and disciplining of the practice of philosophy in the Western intellectual tradition, which is argued to give rise to the universalist-relativist contentions that it struggles to move forward from. This contention, which modern Western philosophy shares with interdisciplinarity, is then highlighted in the last section as a problematic that the Indian philosophical tradition is able to offer a way forward from. The vāda tradition of discourse that forms the core of the Indian intellectual tradition is introduced as a philosophical practice that is not only able to engage the incommensurable tension between the universalist-relativist approaches, but one that allows us to see the structures that constitute an embodied dialogic rationality. It is the excavation of this embodied dialogic rationality of traditions that is proposed as the bedrock of any interdisciplinary enquiry [and lived-experience]. The Contextual Challenge of Interdisciplinarity The call for interdisciplinarity, or what Peter Weingart calls the ‘reunification’ of the ‘sciences’,8 has been a persistent theme throughout the nineteenth century that has taken the form of a ‘movement’ or struggle for what came to be known as the ‘unity of [the] science[s]’.9 According to Weingart, the movement was initiated in the 1930s by ‘philosophers of science and natural scientists’ which gathered momentum in the 1960s and 1970s in light of emerging debates about ‘technology gaps, technology forecasting, and protection of the environment’.10 The intention was to ‘diagnose the emergence of a new mode of knowledge’ where research is no longer defined by ‘the search for basic laws (fundamental research)’ but is characterized by its ability to offer ‘solutions to problems’ that appear ‘in contexts of application’.11 This was believed to not only signal ‘a fundamental change in knowledge production’ but additionally to make the ‘disciplinary mode of science’ redundant.12 The growing emergence of ‘transitory networks and organizations’ within the modern academic structures are taken as evidence that highlight the university’s loss of ‘monopoly as the institution of knowledge production’, and are argued as the basis upon which the ‘replacing’ of the traditional disciplines may be pursued.13 Such a shift in the understanding of knowledge in terms of relevance and practicality is not only presented as an inevitability in the context of an increasingly globalized and interconnected world but more interestingly, it is also seen as a return to a more originary understanding of knowledge, which is at once integrative and also relevant to the immediate society.

Being Interdisciplinary 77 Tracing the emergence of differentiation and disciplinary orientations to a particular history in the West that began in the latter half of the seventeenth century, proponents of interdisciplinarity argue that ‘the pursuit of specialization’ led to an increasingly ‘esoteric nature of knowledge production’ that in turn effected a division between ‘specialists’ and ‘laypersons’.14 The ‘essence’ of discipline-formation ultimately became ‘self-referential communication’ and was characterized by a form of evaluation of relevance and quality that is ‘limited to the members of the respective disciplinary community’.15 Disciplinarity became equated with an ‘inductive, reductionist view of understanding’ and is believed to ‘encourage mechanistic views of nature and society’.16 Henceforth, the ‘epistemological pretensions’ of ‘specialization’ and ‘expertise’ began to be heavily criticized for its assumption that ‘it is possible to study parts of the world in isolation from the world at large’,17 and that the epistemological aspects of scientific research is separable from the societal, ethical, political, economic, and religious causes and consequences of science. Disciplinary knowledge were no longer accepted as possessing ‘epistemological warrant’18 due to their growing detachment from the practical concerns of everyday life and their fragmented forms of understanding. Underlying this growing concern for ‘pertinent’ and ‘holistic’ knowledge pursued under the theme of interdisciplinarity is a two-fold presupposition that (a) disciplinary enquiries are identifiable by a theory-application disjunction that have reduced them to irrelevancy, because of their continuing insular and overtly theoretical concerns especially in the context of a rapidly innovating contemporary global society, and (b) the ‘solutions’ to the problems of the contemporary global era are contingent on a better understanding of the relations between fields of knowledge and their ability to coalesce methodologies into a single unified framework or approach. The interdisciplinary project is therefore identifiable through two interrelated stages that entail the rejection of the disciplinary boundaries in the first instance, which is accompanied by the attempt to return to a more originary form of enquiry, taken to be more encompassing and overarching in its perspective and approach in the second instance. While the interdisciplinary interest in ushering a corrective to the limitations of disciplinarity by seeking to bridge the theoryapplication disjunction with the introduction of ‘pertinent’ knowledge can be seen to be an instance of an understanding of the historical contingency of the nature of knowledge itself (as solutions are primarily context-specific in their application), the supposed ‘neutrality’ with which it assumes to ‘liberate us from the confines of narrow academic ghettos’ presupposes an Enlightenment universality whose popular claims for ‘objectivity’ and ‘scientificity’ have already been severely challenged by relativists’ accounts of knowledge. This attempt to introduce an overarching perspective and ‘universal methodology’ has often resulted in their being labeled ‘latter-day Encyclopedists’ or ‘unreconstructed positivists’, whose idea of a science is without ‘rigor’ and ‘standard’.19 Therefore, if the claim that interdisciplinarity represents an ‘innovation’20 in knowledge production that is pertinent to the current global context is to be taken seriously, it must realize and resolve the seemingly incommensurable tension between its proclamation for ushering contextual solutions and its universalizing

78  Samuel G. Ngaihte tendencies in developing ‘unified’ approaches to bring about that very solution. In other words, how can interdisciplinary research pursue and promote the integrative role of knowledge production and bridge the theory-application divide more purposefully, while being reflexively aware of their historical and cultural determination and specificity? It is this allegation of being uncritically universalist in the formulation and application of its method that interdisciplinarity must attend to, if it seeks to maintain that its proposals are sufficiently as rigorous as the disciplinary research enquiries. The path toward addressing this allegation and resolving the underlying philosophical tension that undergirds the interdisciplinarian’s quest must begin with a more elaborate exploration of the telos of interdisciplinarity as presented by its adherents. The Telos of Interdisciplinarity and Philosophical Enquiry While the criticism leveled against specialization and disciplinary formation has received its own share of critical response, many of which dismiss interdisciplinarity as an ‘agenda’ which flow from ‘the imperatives of left culturalist theory’ in the ongoing ideological tensions in the West between left and right,21 interdisciplinarians claim that they represent a resurgence of interest in ‘a larger view of things’ that distinguished enquiries before the introduction of disciplinary boundaries.22 According to them, the nature of knowledge production prior to the seventeenth century is an example of enquiries identifiable by its ‘holistic’ perspective, that is enquiries taken to encompass a wide range of methods aimed at characterizing complex system behavior. Such holistic approaches to enquiries are claimed to be inherently interdisciplinary, and it is this form of ‘holism’ that has often been resurrected as a perspective that can ‘offer a response to the familiar limits of disciplinary science’. Instead of demarcating ‘reality’ up ‘along disciplinary lines’ and constructing it from ‘different, necessarily incomplete, and sometimes competing or even contradictory disciplinary perspectives’, it offers a ‘unified account of all knowledge’ whose enquiry is ‘undifferentiated’ and is ‘integrative’ in nature.23 While the majority of proponents of interdisciplinarity continue to propose the constitution of a ‘unified field theory or methodology of all knowledge’, Robert Frodeman acknowledges that the attempt to introduce such an overarching methodology is a ‘chimerical’ dream that can never be fully realized.24 In an insightful observation, he pointed out that the attempt to ‘integrate different perspectives and types of knowledge’ for ‘increased insight’ and ‘greater purchase on a societal problem’ must instead be understood as a matter of ‘manner rather than of method [emphasis mine]’, where the ‘neutrality’ of the enquirer is interrogated to promote ‘a sensitivity to nuance and context, a flexibility of mind, and an adeptness at navigating and translating concepts’.25 Frodeman discusses a form of interdisciplinarity that he claims is ‘inherently philosophical’ by drawing upon the broad and incisive study of the relation between ‘knowledge and the good life’ that the humanities, and particularly philosophy–‘before it became an exercise in logic chopping and nook-dwelling expertise’–pursued.26 He carefully draws a distinction between philosophy as a [modern] discipline and philosophical enquiry, where the very form

Being Interdisciplinary 79 and nature of enquiry carried out in the latter, according to him, is necessarily interdisciplinary in its approach. Interdisciplinarity, understood in this sense, is presented as an implicit philosophy of knowledge which concerns itself primarily with the question of ‘whether and to what degree knowledge can help us achieve the perennial goal of living the good life’.27 Therefore, even though the criticism concerning the structure, standards, and agenda of interdisciplinary research is not without merit, particularly in the form of interdisciplinarity that has been popularized in the modern-day ‘result’or ‘solution’-oriented research (where insights are often carelessly adopted and borrowed across disciplines), its relentless endeavor to make knowledge more relevant by seeking to offer a more comprehensive or fundamental understanding of phenomena can be taken as a telos that bears resemblance to the understanding of the role of enquiry in the pre-Enlightenment period, especially as practiced by philosophers. It is thus pointed out that the telos of philosophical enquiry and interdisciplinarity are closely comparable, and indeed the resurgence of interdisciplinarity in contemporary academia itself can be seen as a re-emergence or a fresh expression of a very old [philosophical] question or existential concern, whose manner of explication may be drawn directly from the practice of philosophy. However, regardless of how insightful and significant Frodeman’s attempt to reclaim the vitality of interdisciplinary research by helping us shift our orientation from ‘method’ to ‘manner’ is, his attempt to resurrect a form of philosophical enquiry that is distinctive of the pre-modern era becomes problematic because of the challenge that such a resurrection poses for a now specialized discipline of philosophy. The Task of Philosophy and the Theory-Action Disjunction The turn to ‘practice’ – that is the contention that practice or action can be seen as fundamental for understanding the human condition – that followed the ‘linguistic turn’ of the last century is increasingly accepted as opening up new vistas of understanding.28 While the interdisciplinary concern for a knowledge that is more pertinent to contemporary concerns can be seen as an instance of that influence, and has led to the critical interrogation of the nature of disciplinary knowledge formation, it has also revived the dichotomy between what is more commonly known as action and theory. In contrast to Frodeman’s portrayal of an ideal holistic enquiry which was not only interdisciplinary in its approach but also whose theoryapplication disjunction is minimal in the pre-Enlightenment philosophical practice, Peter Sloterdijk maps the theory-action disjunction as a central problem in the humanities that originated within the western intellectual tradition and has plagued the academia ever since. In his book The Art of Philosophy, Sloterdijk traces the origination of the theoretical person among the Greeks of the classical and postclassical age by looking at the relationship between ‘theory’ and ‘polis’. He argues that ‘theory’ as a distinct category was developed primarily as a consequence of an estrangement from the polis. The estrangement was a result of the collapse of the Athenian polis model, which led to the sidelining of the concerns of ‘politics’ [or the political] as an intellectual pursuit. The founding of Plato’s Academy as a

80  Samuel G. Ngaihte consequence was thereby heralded as the event that led to the death of democracy and the birth of the academia. The active citizen of the polis was transformed into the contemplative cosmopolitan or the dispassionate theoretical person, who now lived a ‘life of [detached] observation’ at the cost of participative action.29 The attempt to retrieve the category of human practice is an ongoing negotiation that is further complicated by the compartmentalizing of philosophical enquiry into a specialized discipline in the modern period, where the Enlightenment quest for an ahistorical objective understanding of phenomena has sought to amplify the distinction between the vita activa and vita contemplativa. This led to the growing delineation of philosophical practice as a particular type of ‘mental activity’ – a detached practice, often described as ‘the systematic and rigorous exercise of rationality’ performed by a transcendental subjectivity.30 This understanding of objectivity became gradually based on a scientific orientation of knowledge, where the standard of ‘scientificity’ is taken to be closely related with the ‘verifiability’ and ‘justifiability’ of one’s claim.31 It is this increasingly scientific model that has influenced the transmutation of philosophy from a lived-practice to a methodology, and has served to gradually reduce philosophy to one of the specialized disciplines among other ‘sciences’. The modern era thus gave birth to the discipline of ‘professional philosophy’, that is ‘to a substantive academic discipline sanctioned by the institution of the modern university and practised by a group of professional academics …’.32 As Frodeman pointed out, twentieth-century philosophy became ‘a specialist’s domain’ and ‘a field disciplined’, becoming another regional expression of knowledge not distinguishable in principle from other fields.33 The methodology of the ‘sciences’ began to take the place of ‘fundamental ontology’34 in terms of interest and prominence, and the fundamental universality of philosophical enquiry that once interrogated and provided insights into the presuppositions of all enquiries, began to be increasingly understood in terms of the ahistoricity of the ‘bloodless’35 subject and the ‘neutrality’ of his rational faculty (rationality). It is this Enlightenment universality that has often accompanied the calls for interdisciplinarity, and has contributed to what Richard Bernstein calls the contention between ‘objectivism’ [universalism] and ‘relativism’ [perspectivalism].36 The growing recognition and assertion of a plurality of traditions in the post-colonial era, and the hermeneutical exposition of the notion that understanding is always historically contingent, further meant that the imposition of a universal or unified approach would be premised upon its ability to offer a way forward from the contentions it has found itself deeply enmeshed in. The increasing influence of the scientific method of enquiry and the continuing specialization accompanying it, coupled with the overwhelming Enlightenment tendency to conceive of rationality [or reason] as distinct from and opposed to ‘tradition’ meant that Western philosophical enquiry was unable to attend to the epistemological crises that confronted them, and offer a coherent alternative. Following Bernstein’s argument that the attempt to move beyond this standard opposition requires the introduction of a new conception of rationality that is grounded on the practical task of hermeneutical discourse as founded in ‘dialogical communities’,37 the Indian traditionary practice of samvāda is presented as an alternative from the

Being Interdisciplinary 81 Enlightenment universal rationality on the one hand, and the post-Enlightenment multiplicity of rationalities on the other hand. While located either at the margins of [Western] philosophical enquiry, or sidelined as ‘oriental studies’ or ‘religious studies’ rather than as philosophy in its own terms, the practice of Indian philosophy nonetheless continues to grapple with universal contentions whose ways forward they propound are relevant across contexts. Today, its status as an outlier among the disciplinary fragmentation of enquiries allows it to become the source of insights that are historically situated and integrative in nature. The Indian Philosophical Tradition, Saṃvāda and Dialogic Rationality Any introduction on the history of the development of the Indian philosophical tradition, that is the system of thought and reflection that were introduced by the civilizations of the Indian subcontinent, generally begins with a demarcation of the orthodox (āstika) systems of Hindu philosophy from the unorthodox (nāstika) systems such as the Buddhist and the Jainist philosophies. From the acceptance of the authority of the Vedas as a central characteristic that define this demarcation, the Indian philosophical interest in the nature of reality, logic, knowledge, ethics, and action are explored through themes such as the nature of the self, the doctrine of rebirth, the law of karma, the path toward liberation (or awakening), and so on. While the history of Indian philosophy is replete with examples of different forms of dialogues exhibiting a plurality of voices and culture,38 the concept of vāda and its practice (saṃvāda) have not been explored as a constitutive feature defining its historical development.39 This concluding section, which presents saṃvāda as one of the cornerstones of the Indian philosophical tradition, seeks to highlight the structures of one of its forms, with the goal of explicating insights for the larger contention concerning interdisciplinarity discussed in this chapter. To privilege the practice of saṃvāda is to presuppose the existence of a complex plurality of philosophical schools (darśanas) whose enquiries are often incommensurable and to claim that it is this traditionary practice that ties all these pluralities together within a shared framework. At the core of the enquiries of each darśana is an embedded structure of conversation between the pūrvapakṣin and the siddhāntin, saints and kings, teachers and disciples and so on. Though the primary meaning of the term saṃvāda ensues a set of pervasive metaphors that stand for conversation and discourse between two or more people, the nature and form of discourse is taken to be contextually defined. Laurie Patton characterizes saṃvāda in terms of the primary meaning of ‘speech together’, accompanied by ‘secondary meanings’ such as ‘dispute’, ‘agreement’, ‘accord’, and ‘acrimonious or harmonious dialogue’.40 This practice of discourse, which can be traced as far back as the Brahmanic discussions on the meaning of Vedic ritual texts, gradually developed into a tradition of formal public discussion for contesting the claims of competing perspectives across darśanas. According to Matilal, the understanding of vāda as it relates to conversational debate (and logic) is a time-honored tradition in ancient India where proponents of different darśanas

82  Samuel G. Ngaihte meet in a shared space (public sphere) to discuss contentious issues and incommensurable viewpoints. 41 By the beginning of the Śramaṇa period, particularly with the emergence of the Buddha and other renouncing ascetics whose teachings differed from the orthodox Hindu beliefs, these conversations developed into a method of constructive reflecting-together by dialogical selves, and gave rise to the growing significance of critical conversation as ‘a preferred form of rationality’.42 Richard King explicates the structure of saṃvāda by drawing upon a fifteenthcentury Tibetan Buddhist account that discusses some of the fundamental characteristics of such a critical conversation. He mentions that while a debate or discussion is primarily between two participants who hold a contradicting position on a similar subject matter, with the proponent (pūrvapakṣin) holding the initial position and the respondent (prativādin) holding the other position, the discussion itself is always done in the presence of a witness (sākṣin). He summarizes the manner of the discussion into eight basic steps which are reproduced as follows43: 1 The initial proponent is asked to put forward his thesis (pratijñā). 2 If the thesis is thought to be erroneous the respondent may refute it immediately, but if the thesis is accepted, then the respondent asks the proponent to outline the reason (hetu) for accepting the thesis. 3 The proponent then offers a proof outlining the reasons as to why the thesis should be accepted. 4 The respondent asks if the proof offered contains the logical relations required of a sound inference. 5 The proponent replies by ‘removing the thorns’, that is he negates the faulty relations and erroneous reasoning that may have occurred in the outlining of the proof of his thesis. 6 The respondent offers a statement of refutation of the proponent’s thesis which thereby constitutes the initial starting-point (pūrva-pakṣa) of his own exposition. The refutation that follows aims to demonstrate the errors and inconsistencies of the proponent’s position based upon the reasoning and evidence provided by the proponent. 7 The proponent responds with a rejoinder if it is thought that his critic’s refutation is in some way erroneous. However, if the proponent accepts the soundness of the refutation, the respondent is asked to state a formal proof of the refutation in a positive form, that is as an independent and formally stated inference. 8 Finally, the respondent offers a formal proof of the refutation in inferential form. While the steps presented above are by no means an exhaustive analysis of saṃvāda, and may at best be read as a stage in a long and tedious but critical and fruitful conversation, there are important insights that can be already be gleaned from this structure. According to King, the most important aspect to take heed is the purpose of the discussion itself, as it ‘provide[s] a forum for the exchange of opinions and the clarification of perspectives’.44 This mutual-respectability is developed through the presentation of each other’s position in their own terms and their own rationales, and is guided by the goal of learning-together, that is drawing

Being Interdisciplinary 83 insights from both positions to understand the issue [at hand] better.45 It is the pursuit of this purpose that results in the cultivation of a shared rationality in this conversation-toward-mutual-understanding. According to John Clayton, what is intriguing is the posture with which the rationality of the opponent was respectfully embodied and utilized as if it were one’s own, before proceeding to understand, and if necessary, deconstruct its presuppositions and foundations.46 This posturing, as an act before the presence of the other, is not subject to one’s own self-reflection but rather to the affirmation of the other. The other must affirm that the position embodied is a fair representation of their own positions. So the posture is a posture taken as if one is the other – an ‘as if’ that has to be affirmed and validated by the other.47 This structure pushes the participants to find common ground for meaningful conversation, without decentering or dislocating themselves from their own particularities. The ‘contestability’ of competing claims are negotiated and sharpened not within the ambit of an already set rationality, but within a negotiated rationality.48 Therefore, the shared rationality that emerges is not an ahistorical universality that is agreed beforehand for the sake of ‘neutrality’, but is one that is cultivated in and through the process of dialogue alone. There is no standard or viewpoint out of nowhere, and no privileged neutral perspective that serves as a meeting point; rather the meeting is in the dialogue itself. This openness toward dialogue with the intention of critically learning from the varied perspectives across traditions is a fundamental endeavor that constitutes the self-understanding of the Indian traditions and their internalization of the self-other relationship, and ultimately of selfhood. It is the vitality of dialogic conversation as an intrinsic characteristic of who they are and how they seek to engage, and the manner in which these conversations are embodied to impact the lives of the participants, their darśanas, and their shared concern for a deeper understanding, that allows us to present their insights as necessarily integral in nature, offering a rooted proposal that is inter-tradition in its applicability. At the heart of any enquiry in the Indian traditions is this dialogic constitution of the self. By way of concluding, the resolve of this chapter has been to point out the significance of pursuing this originary dialogic ground that underlies both the disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the investigation of any phenomenon. The challenge of interdisciplinarity is not primarily a question about how the already given and specialized methodologies of modern disciplines can somehow be reunited to tackle a shared concern, but about how we can excavate and develop the dialogic logic and shared rationality that inform the enquiry at hand. While disciplines may have their own ways of formulating questions and methods for ‘conducting’ any particular enquiry, the interdisciplinarian’s pursuit of ‘relevant’ or ‘pertinent’ knowledge must be located not in the methods or approaches primarily, but in the fundamental constitution of the enquirers themselves. As long as the telos of research is oriented toward increased understanding and wisdom, no enquiry can be strictly localized as disciplinary even if the enquiry is pursued through a specific discipline. There is a more fundamental constitution or state of being that already informs any enquirer

84  Samuel G. Ngaihte before they are introduced to a particular discipline. What constitutes the enquirer is the rationality that governs his/her conceptual framework, and what the Indian philosophical tradition discloses through saṃvāda is the possibility of the embodiment of a dialogic rationality. Seen through the lens of this shared rationality, disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity may be better understood as a spectrum that constitutes the serious enquirer in a fundamental sense. It is this fundamental ontological orientation that must constitute the practice or embodiment of interdisciplinarity. Therefore, to be interdisciplinary is to be necessarily dialogical. Notes 1 Repko and Szostak, Interdisciplinary Research, 27. 2 See for example, the symposium entitled ‘Interdisciplinarity Revisited’ that was held on the 3-4 October, 2019 by the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Germany, where the discussions on interdisciplinarity included topics as diverse as the opportunity that lies in ‘digitality and data science and thus in design and simulation’ for new interdisciplinary work, or even the proposal of ‘computational modeling’ as an interdisciplinary knowledge practice, among many others. 3 Repko and Szostak, Interdisciplinary Research, 27. 4 Frodeman, ‘Introduction’, xxxii. 5 Ibid., xxx. 6 Ibid., xxxiii. 7 Ibid., xxix. 8 Weingart, ‘A Short History of Knowledge Formations’, 11. 9 Ibid., 6. 10 Ibid., 12. 11 Ibid., 12. 12 Ibid., 12. 13 Ibid., 12. 14 Ibid., 6. 15 Ibid., 8. 16 Sarewitz, ‘Against Holism’, 65. 17 ‘This bias for the deep rather than for the broad is rarely defended. It is in fact indefensible. Nonetheless, specialization and expertise remain the coin of academic realm, for reasons of ease of measurement rather than any inherent virtue to the approach’. Frodeman, ‘Introduction’, xxxiv. 18 Frodeman, ‘Introduction’, xxxiii. 19 Ibid., xxx. 20 Krohn, ‘Interdisciplinary Cases and Disciplinary Knowledge’, 47–48. 21 Fish, ‘Being Interdisciplinary Is So Very Hard To Do’, 15. 22 Frodeman, ‘Introduction’, xxxi. 23 Ibid., xxx. 24 Ibid., xxxi. 25 Ibid., xxxi. 26 Ibid., xxxi. 27 Ibid., xxxii. 28 Bernstein mentions that ‘action’ and ‘praxis’ are central themes pursued in common by analytic philosophers, Marxist philosophers, existentialists, and pragmatists alike. See Bernstein, Praxis and Action, 1–9. Sloterdijk, in an attempt to revive the notion of human practice, argues that human beings are primarily self-forming and

Being Interdisciplinary 85 self-enhancing beings that have the power to change their lives and become ‘acrobats’ through practice and training. See Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life, 12–15. 29 Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life, 40–50. 30 King, Indian Philosophy, 2. 31 Ngaihte, Vedic Practice, Ritual Studies and Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsāsūtras, 95–97. 32 King, Indian Philosophy, 2. 33 Frodeman, ‘Introduction’, xxxi. 34 In positing what he calls ‘the fundamental question of philosophy’ in his lectures of 1928, Heidegger asks the question not of why is there anything, but rather, what it means for something to be? – or more simply, what is it to be? What is the meaning of being? See Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time, 18. 35 To stress the importance of understanding the subject as an embodied being, Dilthey uses this term to criticize Kant’s notion of the subject. He claims that Kant’s subject ‘isolates our thinking, representing faculties from the rest of our being’. See Nelson, Interpreting Dilthey, 242. 36 Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 1–49. 37 Ibid., 223–231. 38 For example, the Ṛig Veda contains few hymns with pronounced story element in dialogue forms, which were known traditionally as ‘Akhyana’ or ‘Saṃvāda’ sūktas (hymns). These hymns were in the form of dramatic soliloquy, dialogue, and chorus which typify fragments of the ancient art of narration. 39 Laurie Patton’s development of the genealogy of the term in the paper entitled Saṃvāda: A Literary Resource for Conflict Negotiation in Classical India can be considered a pioneering work in this regard. Developing the idea of samvāda as ‘interlogue’, Patton presents it as a ‘literary and philosophical genre’ that can serve as a model for public debate and conflict resolution for contemporary society. See Patton, ‘Saṃvāda’, 177–190. See also Ram-Prasad, Patton, and Acharya, ‘Hinduism with Others’, 288–298. 40 Patton notes that there are several different usages of the word in different ‘genres’ and while the primary meanings of the words are usually implied, secondary meanings can change depending on the context of their usages, and therefore the various ‘converse’ meanings of saṃvāda can imply each other ‘in creative ways’. For example, in the Brāhmaṇas, saṃvāda is taken to mean ‘bargain’; in the Dharma Sūtras, it is used as ‘conversation, discussion, dialogue’; in the Rāmāyaṇa (Yuddhakāṇḍa) it is used as ‘account’ (‘incident story’) with the ‘added connotation of dispute’ in the Mahābhārata; in the Mīmāṃsā and Sāṅkhya it is used as the achievement of ‘accord’ and ‘harmony’ in discussion. See Patton, ‘Saṃvāda’, 3. 41 Matilal, Ganeri, and Tiwari, The Character of Logic in India, 31. 42 Ibid., 32. 43 King, Indian Philosophy, 134–135. 44 Ibid., 135. 45 Ibid., 135. 46 Clayton draws his examples from the Buddhist-Hindu discourses found in Udayana’s eleventh century treatise entitled Atmatattvaviveka, which is an independent work of four chapters in varying lengths. Each of these chapters is devoted to refute different theories put forward to establish the non-existence of a permanent soul as conceived by the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas. See Clayton, Religions, Reasons and Gods, 54. 47 As Clayton points out, even in the citing of authorities, one had to use texts that were accepted as authoritative by the opponent, implying that one has to be thoroughly well-versed in the other’s tradition. See Clayton, Religions, Reasons and Gods, 57. 48 Matilal, Ganeri, and Tiwari, The Character of Logic in India, 39.

86  Samuel G. Ngaihte References Bernstein, Richard J. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Bernstein, Richard J. Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Action. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971. Chakravarthi, Ram-Prasad, Laurie L. Patton, and Kala Acharya. “Hinduism With Others: Interlogue.” In The Life of Hinduism, edited by John Stratton Hawley and Vasudha Narayanan, 288–299. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Clayton, John. Religions, Reasons and Gods: Essays in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Fish, Stanley. “Being Interdisciplinary Is So Very Hard To Do.” Profession (1989): 15–22. Frodeman, Robert. “Introduction.” In The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, edited by Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein and Carl Mitcham, xxix–xxxviii. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. King, Richard. Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Krishna, Daya. Saṃvāda: A Dialogue Between Two Philosophical Traditions. Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1983. Krohn, Wolfgang. “Interdisciplinary Cases and Disciplinary Knowledge.” In The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, edited by Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein and Carl Mitcham, 31–38. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Matilal, Bimal Krishna, Jonardon Ganeri, and Heeraman Tiwari, eds. The Character of Logic in India. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Mulhall, Stephen. Heidegger and Being and Time. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Nelson, Eric S., ed. Interpreting Dilthey: Critical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Ngaihte, Samuel G. Vedic Practice, Ritual Studies and Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsāsūtras: Dharma and the Enjoined Subject. Oxford: Routledge, 2020. Patton, Laurie L. “Saṃvāda: A Literary Resource for Conflict Negotiation in Classical India.” Evam: Forum on Indian Representations 3/1–2 (2003): 177–190. Repko, Allen F., and Rick Szostak, eds. Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2017. Sarewitz, Daniel. “Against Holism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, edited by Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein and Carl Mitcham, 65–75. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Sloterdijk, Peter. You Must Change Your Life. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013. Weingart, Peter. “A Short History of Knowledge Formations.” In The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, edited by Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein and Carl Mitcham, 3–14. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Winch, Peter. The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958.

6

To Translation We All Belong Sowmya Dechamma C. C.

This chapter is in two parts. The first part places translation at the centre of all academic discourses. My effort in the second part is to point out the power enmeshed in translation in the act of producing an ethnographic text using the established theory of Sanskritization. “What is Comparative Literature?” I have been asked this question when I was interviewed for the posts of assistant professor, associate professor and professor. I (and everyone in Comparative Literature) face this question all the time. Despite the knowledge that the emergence and institutionalization of Comparative Literature as a discipline happened much earlier than most other disciplines as we know them today,1 despite knowing that the nature and practice of disciplines have changed enormously over the last hundred years, despite understanding that our notions of knowledge itself has undergone drastic transformations over years, this question seems to be specific to disciplines such as Comparative Literature, only because they are interdisciplinary in nature and only because they do not cater to the neo-liberal markets like certain disciplines do. I say only because it would appear extremely amusing to ask “what is English literature?” or “what is Kannada literature?”, albeit recognizing that English, Kannada and all unitary literary disciplines have been undergoing changes and debates about what constitutes the discipline and its practice. There are times when discussions with friends, especially from the social sciences turn into heated debates. “What is the method of Comparative Literature”? They ask. Of course, it is ‘comparatism’. Comparison, needless to say, is an established method/means used in comparative philosophy, comparative politics, comparative theology and pretty much in all the disciplines one can think of, including the sciences – where various factors/ entities/categories that are studied are contextualized, understood as part of a pattern or understood as different, making it essentially interdisciplinary. But, for many in the social sciences, interdisciplinary suggests non-rootedness, without a method of one’s own. Do we know what ‘one’s own’ is? Does a method ‘originally’ belong to any discipline and has it remained unchanged ever since? How do we think about a sense of ownership in the practices of disciplines that almost amounts to territoriality? Comparative Literature breaks this territoriality, not just in its methods DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-6

88  Sowmya Dechamma C. C. but in its very conception itself. Early 19th century, a time when Europe was rife with national struggles was also the time when the need to consolidate a national language/literature/culture/history came about. This, contradictorily, was also a time when the need for a Comparative Literature that cut across the narrowness of national literatures was felt. From Goethe onwards who bemoaned the ‘lack’ of a strong unified Germany and an associated German literary culture and arguing for a weltliteratur that broke the cultural and national boundaries thereby envisioning a better world in a war-ridden Europe,2 we literally (and literarily too) see Comparative Literature’s irreverence for territories. This was articulated in times when the term ‘interdisciplinarity’ was yet to come into being by Henry Remak who saw Comparative Literature as: [The] study of the relationships between literature on the one hand, and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts (e.g. painting, sculpture, architecture, music), philosophy, history, the social science (e.g. politics, economics, sociology), the sciences, religions, etc. on the other. (1961: 3) I quote Remak so as to locate my own interdisciplinary training in the sciences, English, Translation Studies and Comparative Literature, suggesting a movement between disciplines, many movements between practice and theory – all that can be located in English and in Kodava, Kannada, Telugu and other languages I am familiar with. This movement in-between and among thoughts, languages, texts and practices is translation and this movement is indeed interdisciplinary. It is this interdisciplinary nature of our disciplines that I want to draw attention to, beginning with the inseparable relationship between Comparative Literature and translation, a relationship both disciplines cannot do without. This interdisciplinarity of Comparative Literature has come with a baggage that is too burdensome to our histories. From the Greco-Roman times until recently, comparison was an act carried out between entities that were powerful, albeit one entity recognizing (rarely questioning) the power of the other. Lucia Boldrini asks: [h]ow can the […] relationships between culture/knowledge and power, between translation and imperialism be illuminated by a renewed awareness of the link between translatiostudii and translatioimperii as it was formulated in the middle ages and early modern period to describe the transferral of culture and of power from east to west. (2010: 182) That the transfer of studies and the arts and the transfer of imperialism are inseparable and imperialism can be substituted by colonialism, racism, gender and casteism, is only too evident. It is within these powers of transfers and comparison that national cultures of most nations are consolidated – through the construction and homogenization of a particular literary history on which this national culture was/is imagined; through the standardization of a particular language and its

To Translation We All Belong 89 connection to the national culture; and through the constitution of a glorious national past that bought dominant language, literature, culture and history together. All these realms that made the nation possible essentially belonged to the privileged, thereby being selective in choosing histories and also selective in erasing histories, made national literatures what they are and made possible these imagined national literatures and cultures to be studied in juxtaposition to each other, thus bringing in the question of power in the making of the interdisciplinarity of Comparative Literature. The making of Comparative Literature and the violent making of nation-states have been a story that has been told. Likewise, the making of Comparative Literature and the strengthening of colonialism have also been told (Macaulay’s idea of an English library vs Sanskrit/Persian/Arabic is enough evidence). But then, the making of Comparative Literature in post-colonial nation-states and its relationship with socio-cultural histories of its own people and its relationship with numerous ‘minor’ languages and ‘minoritized’ people who are made invisible within nationalized cultures – among other representations and translations – needs a self-representation and needs a self-translation that is yet to be done and this chapter is an attempt towards that, with a heavy focus on ethnography, translation and representation. This chapter also stems from the idea that questions the objectivity of the social sciences as juxtaposed against the subjectivity of the humanities. Arguing that the social sciences have always trivialized the everyday, the lived experiences and focused on the extra-ordinary, be it rituals or customs, Pandian (2002) discusses how the distress and sorrows (and joys) are hardly ever part of social science theory (2008: 39). How this objectivity masks the subjective ideologies inherent in ethnography and how it erases the everyday and also the powers that play in our dayto-day lives, thereby making ethnography a translated, constructed narrative, are the focuses of this chapter. This binary between objective rational theory claimed by the social sciences and the subjective emotional humanities has to be rethought, given the role translation plays in all our disciplines. Further, the chapter argues that it is indeed translation that characterizes our thoughts, our fieldwork, our listening, our observations, our note-making, the power of our interpretations and writing, in fact everything that we inhabit and express. Octavio Paz expresses this beautifully: Every text is unique and, at the same time, it is the translation of another text. No text is entirely original because language itself, in its essence, is already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and every phrase is the translation of another sign and another phrase. However, this argument can be turned around without losing any of its validity: all texts are original because every translation is distinctive. Every translation, up to a certain point, is an invention and as such it constitutes a unique text. (qtd in Bassnett 1998: 46) In addition, it is translation that urges us to recognize and work with the interdisciplinarity that is embedded/enmeshed within networks of power that the world

90  Sowmya Dechamma C. C. and work of academics function. And, because translation both in practice and in theory necessitates comparison, involves more than one entity, be it language, be it culture, or be it representation – “Translation practice is a comparative practice” (Shankar 2012: 156) and comparatism, I repeat, is interdisciplinary. While translation is largely and popularly understood and conceived as a practice, as a practice in relation to two or more languages; increasingly and especially with the rise of post-colonial studies since the early 1980s, translation is understood as a political discourse closely connected to representation. Even if understanding translation as a bridge that brings two languages and cultures together is limiting, this in itself acknowledges the interdisciplinarity of the act of translating. “Translation is always a translation of meaning” (Barbara Johnson qtd in Niranjana 1992: 55). Since translation represents one culture and one society in other totally new contexts, in totally different languages, it brings various disciplines often contradicting each other but also working with each other. Beginning with Edward Said who showed us the centrality of literary representation in the consolidation of colonialism, and continuing with Talal Asad who brought to our notice the play of translation and “language of inequalities” in anthropological/sociological writings, the notion that all representations, ethnographic or literary, are translations that operate within many powers is now unquestionable. “Culture as text” and “ethnography as a type of literature” governed by certain conventions are ideas now widely accepted and this suggests that we look at ethnography as a narrative and anthropologists as authors. This blurring of disciplinary boundaries has enriched the interpretative nature of both anthropology and literature and places translation at the centre of all text-making and all representations. The making of the Indian nation as with all other nations relied heavily on the (un)intended collaborative work of the European orientalists and Indian nationalists via translation. The translation of Sanskrit texts, religious, political and literary, in addition to ethnographical writings that attempted at connecting disparate people, paved the way in constituting a body of Indian literature/Indian culture that went on to represent a continuous Indian-national (high-Hindu) culture on which the identity of India as a nation was/is built. In fact, translation is the only mode, the only method that brought/brings disparate languages and disparate people together as an imagined one. Tejaswini Niranjana’s seminal Siting Translation has furthered this clarity on the power of translation’s representation that aided the colonizer and how the “writing-up” (read translation) of field notes into an ethnographic narrative represents the colonized. What we need to note is the dominant ways in which the translation/representation of minoritized people, be it lower caste and/or women, or ethno-linguistic minorities, keep these very people and their languages outside these realms of power. This said, translation also works subversively, it resists and manipulates power and provides many alternatives. Using the myth of the “Pandora’s box”, Karin Littau, for example, points out how translation can enable multiple readings, especially feminist readings of texts and cultures that are transgressive, in effect, weaving mythology, pervasive patriarchy, literary interpretations, historical happenings and translations together. In the context of India, Rita Kothari argues how the translation of Dalit narratives into English has

To Translation We All Belong 91 made possible an archive, has pushed the experiences of caste into a language that does not have the burden of a ‘memory of caste’. Needless to mention, this archive is made possible only via translation and brings forth the heretofore invisiblized experiences of the individual. More importantly, it stands as testimonials for the collective experiences of the community and holds a mirror to the social and political life of our caste-society. This holding mirror to our society and to its vagaries has been the task of translation, thus locating translation at the centre of all studies on society. The many possibilities of translation and comparatism are thus eloquently expressed by S. Shankar: “[j]ust as with translation-as-interpretation, it is prudent to keep in mind that comparatism can be a form of knowing-in-solidarity or else of knowing-as-domination” (Shankar 2012: 156–157). It is with this background of the role of translation as both enmeshed in power and as subversive that this chapter looks at the centrality of translation in ethnographic texts. The chapter also attempts to see how notions culled from practices of ethnography are inescapably bound with translating the language of caste. Basing my arguments on M. N. Srinivas’s theory of Sanskritization, I argue how language and translation are central (albeit unrecognized) to this theory and how it has perpetuated an unequal language of caste within ethnography and by extension in our society. Sanskritization and Concerns around Language Not just that the idea of Sanskritization has been appropriated by contemporary politics, but it has been one of the major frameworks to understand caste-Hindu Indian society.3 Most models that are used to understand caste, be it colonialist, nationalist or Sanskritization, all “produced a consensual imagination of Indian society” (Ankit Kawade 2019: 20). The model of Sanskritization is seen as a valid process despite being a process that wrongly limits the people of lower castes to imitators of caste-Hindu ritual habits and makes Brahminical values as universal referents. Srinivas’s Sanskritization has been such a mainstay that there are few serious studies on caste without a reference to it (even in its rejection). This chapter sees Sanskritization as a notion that cannot be understood without bringing in issues of language and translation. Language, translation and representation, in its connection to Sanskritization, I argue, provide us with a platform from which Sanskritization can be scrutinized in a much more nuanced manner, simultaneously positing the centrality of these categories in any ethnographic text. As we now know, the idea of Sanskritization is a process which Srinivas understood as the lower caste (which he termed low caste) adopting/taking over, practices, rituals, beliefs and customs of Brahmins (1952: 30) and he based his theory initially on Kodavas or Coorgs. Many scholars from C. Parvathamma, Christophe Jaffrelot,4 M. S. S. Pandian, Veena Poonacha, Simon Charsley and T. K. Oommen have pointed out the many flaws in the methods and theorizations of Sanskritization. Especially because Sanskritization, as a concept, was initially based on the study of Kodavas (Coorgs) who, according to Srinivas, were Sanskritized by the Lingayat (Veerashaiva) kings who ruled Coorg for long. The theory falls flat from

92  Sowmya Dechamma C. C. its very beginning. Because, “it is protest and reform, not conformity with brahminical values, that have enabled the Veerasaivas to emerge as a dominant group” (Parvathamma 1978: 95). For our purposes here, the first thing to discuss is Sanskritization’s relation to language, starting with the etymology of this word. Does the word refer to ‘Sanskrit’ the language, or ‘Sanskriti’ which can have a range of overlapping meanings from religion to culture to civilization? Simon Charsley has noted that “this term ‘Samskritic’, of such significance […], slips into the discussion without introduction or definition […] (1998: 531). A. M. Shah in his “Sanskritisation Revisited” (2005) mentions how M. N. Srinivas (1952, 1956) and the linguist, historian Suniti Kumar Chatterjee (1950) both used the term Sanskritization around the same time without being aware of the other’s usage. According to Shah, both Srinivas and Chatterjee used the term Sanskritization as a concept that was/is “inextricably linked to the religious and cultural complex found in classical Sanskrit literature” (p. 239).5 Both Sanskrit and Sanskriti suggest an act that brings perfection, in matters of culture, language, literature, behaviour and so on. They are commonly used words for refinement, sophistication and perfection. What refined language, culture and behaviour translate into are the cultures and practices of the upper castes and this is precisely what Srinivas’s usage clearly meant. More interesting is the fact that this term itself is a hybrid of sorts, ‘chutnification’, following Salman Rushdie, Sanskrit-ization or Sanskriti-zation – the term Sanskrit in Sanskrit language added with an English suffix is at the very obvious level a translation that brings two languages, two ideas together for an audience presumably unfamiliar with Sanskrit. The concept, albeit referring to language, overarchingly encompasses all of caste Indian society and even people outside of caste structures. Studying a community, using a term whose references are vague, writing and translating a concept that is Sanskrit in language and essence into English and thereby integrating Sanskrit into the vocabulary of life-processes, interestingly in its ethnographical and English translation, is how complex the term and concept of Sanskritization is. Contradictorily, Srinivas notes that he preferred Sanskritization over the term ‘Brahminization’. Despite sections of influential Kodavas desiring a Kshatriya status, despite Kshatriyaization as a process is inherently contradictory to Sanskritization/Brahminization, Srinivas’s theory follows a unilinear path towards Sanskritization, with a unitary interpretation of Hinduism (Parvathamma, 1978: 92).6 Clearly, by locating Sanskritization within the realm of language and cultural practices, the term functions not just as a euphemism that masks the power of the high caste from its purview but by not using Brahminization, it is also extremely cautious in terming the mobility of people as not integrating into Brahmanic practices – a claim that can suggest an unacceptable equality between people of different castes.7 Even this minimal discussion on the connotations of the terms ‘Sanskrit’ and ‘Sanskritization’ tells us how this language and cultural complex around ‘Sanskrit’ and ‘Sanskriti’ are not easily translatable. In fact, the manner in which these terms are translated are always in relation to

To Translation We All Belong 93 caste, despite the apparent implication to language and culture. That Sanskritization via a specific translation represents the caste complex that at its core is constituted by language and culture, marked by layers of power is by now a foregone conclusion. By Sanskritization, Srinivas means adoption of aspects of culture of the upper castes by the lower castes. In particular, it refers to the adoption of vegetarianism, teetotalism, custom, rituals, rites, festivals and pantheon of gods – all belonging to the people who posit value in themselves and their practices in the hierarchy of the caste system. Rebutting Srinivas on factual errors is not at all difficult. Given the Kodavas’ pork and liquor’s legendary status, Kodavas are the anti-thesis of tee-totalers, and in effect reverse the concept of Sanskritization. Perhaps precisely because all these would turn Sanskritization into Kodavization (Dalitization in Ilaiah’s terms), we find analysis of meat-eating and liquor conveniently absent in Sanskritization. Charsley problematizes this one-sided comparison and movement by discussing how in the whole career of Sanskritization, it clearly overlooks other practices and engagements as major as colonial (p. 531). Although my effort here is not to counter Srinivas on factual grounds, which are many, it is not all difficult to observe how Srinivas literally translated the Kodavas, choosing to translate them in a particular manner. The term “adopt” that he uses, we are aware, is again not a straight-forward term with a singular meaning. By adapting, adopting, a term/practice acquires a new meaning, a new life,8 as in translation. This meaning re-presents a life, a practice that is not one’s own but reproduces (imitates is the word Srinivas uses). Translation in conventional terms is perceived as imitation of the original and this act of imitation of culture and ritual complex of the higher caste then essentially is a translation, an act that is rarely perceived as original or authentic. It is not considered a production of an identity where the subjects have a say, an agency that determines their self but is a reproduction whose values they can never lay claim to. In a translation that is one-way, Srinivas’s translation of the identity via adoption of practices can never reach the purity of the original, purity of the Brahminical. Like the act of translation that is considered secondary, neither original nor authentic, lower caste communities, indigenous communities, etc. are always, despite the imitation that Sanskritization assumes, secondary and not originally pure. This brings us to Karin Littau’s proposition where she charts out how translation demands equivalence, and feminist thought/practice demands equality (for us here, anti-caste thought that is inclusive of feminist thought). What is equivalence, equality Littau asks. Does this mean women and/or lower castes need to imitate men/privileged castes in order to be equal? Can the imitation/translation be equal to the original? Like a mirror’s reflection of the original? To the oppressive ideal? Or, is it difference that should mark translation and writing-up of ethnography? (Littau 2000: 31). That pure, original realm is only the realm of the Brahmin. That the translated subjects of ethnography may not aspire to this notion of purity and that the Brahmin subject’s translation into a Dalitized practice goes unaccounted for – is beside the point.

94  Sowmya Dechamma C. C. Language and Ethnography: A Problem of Subjectivity Although many ethnographers before, around and after M. N. Srinivas have posited language’s centrality within ethnography, Srinivas’s work unfortunately hardly pays any attention to language. Srinivas’s work, located in the paradigm of fieldwork, moving away from the established text-based studies of his time, betrays the field with its textual understanding of caste. Quoting Clinard and Elder, Vivek Kumar argues how, “those who stress the unity and continuity of civilisation sometimes view those written material as primary data from which analysis of contemporary Hindu society can be made” (2016: 35). What is the relationship between ethnography and language, be it colonial ethnography or contemporary ones? People’s lives and observations of their practices invariably use a range of signs and sign systems that are indeed characterized as language.9 The meanings of these speech utterances, sign systems, performative and ritual practices are interpretative and contextual and cannot be pinned to one particular meaning. At another level, because the ethnographer invariably uses the verbal form, i.e., only the written form in representing a community and its practices to other worlds, usually in a language that is more powerful and read by communities that are far removed from the ones that are studied, it becomes imperative that we address the language question head on. Way back in 1986 in his introduction to Writing Cultures, James Clifford laid bare the authoritative claims of writing: No longer a marginal, or occulted, dimension, writing has emerged as central to what anthropologists do both in the field and thereafter. The fact that it has not until recently been portrayed or seriously discussed reflects the persistence of an ideology claiming transparency of representation and immediacy of experience. Writing reduced to method: keeping good field notes, making accurate maps, “writing up” results. (Clifford 1986: 2) M. N. Srinivas trained with Evans-Pritchard who refuted that anthropology belonged to natural science and instead saw anthropology as a justifiable part of the humanities, especially history. For him, the most significant question for the anthropologists was that of translation – “finding a way to translate one’s own thoughts into the world of another culture and thus manage to come to understand it, and then to translate this understanding back so as to explain it to people of one’s own culture”.10 James Clifford in his “On Ethnographic Authority” points out how the many methods of ethnography cannot but do without a focus on language and translation and how, participant observation “obliges its practitioners to experience, at a bodily as well as intellectual level, the vicissitudes of translation” (1983: 119). Malinowski, writing a decade earlier than Srinivas also saw language as very crucial for ethnography, although as a separate entity. Srinivas himself notes that he was unable to carry out an intense fieldwork of months in Coorg and could spend only a few weeks (Oommen 2008: 64). So then,

To Translation We All Belong  95 how and where did he get all his material on Coorg based on which he wrote a fulllength book that is now canonized in sociology? In which language did he speak to his subjects? Obviously, he did not speak Kodava. People of Kodagu learn Kannada in schools and in the 1940s, this percentage would have been very less. Even if we assume that a significant number did speak Kannada, a Kannada in which a Kodava can respond to the anthropologist is hard to imagine. The same is true for English. That Srinivas acknowledges Shri H. Tirumala Chaar for hospitality in Mercara suggests that he stayed with someone with whom he shared a castecommunal space and not with the Kodavas. What kind of language then did the few educated Kodavas he kept in touch with use? What kinds of questions were asked? Did Kannada, a language with a caste memory, unlike Kodava, frame the responses within a caste framework? Were Kodavas to whom Srinivas spoke conscious that they were speaking to an Oxford returned Tamil Brahmin asking them questions about purity, pollution, caste and Hinduism? Did this force them to respond in a manner that translated their practices in the paradigm of caste, purity and pollution that showed them as no less in caste than the researcher? Or, did Srinivas in the process of translation to English translate all these non-caste practices into the language of caste? Parvathamma’s poignant observation is useful here. Whether it was Srinivas or the villagers who were obsessed with brahminical values is difficult to decide. In a field situation, villagers tend to be curious in the beginning, but if they are always haunted by the researcher’s social or caste status, the establishment of rapport may be hindered or even prevented. (1978: 94) For Srinivas, his field was a narrative listened to in English and in some Kannada from a few “privileged informants” who told him what he sought to listen. What were the questions asked, how were they framed, to whom were they addressed – there are no clues. Also, ethnography seldom attributes its voice to the individual(s) or a couple of individuals and the interpretation is always generalized at the cultural level, to that of the community and beyond. The Coorgs’/Kodava idea of kinship, religion and upward mobility – generalized from the words of some English and Kannada speaking Kodava friends during Srinivas’s few weeks of stay in Mercara, becomes the objective truth of Srinivas’s ethnography via a translation into academic English that further lays claim to the biggest marker of change in the caste-society through the idea of Sanskritization. This invention of culture, hand-in-hand with its translation, is an ideal type, based on the ‘extra’ordinary ritualist life of the Brahmin-self. The ideal type that desired an unequal integration of the newly independent Indian society that desired not to see the lived realities of people, of the caste system, but posit the Brahminic as the ideal. As Talal Asad points out, as early as 1954, Lienhardt saw notions of translation as central to the tasks of social anthropology. “The problem of describing to others how members of a remote tribe think then begins to appear largely as one of translation, of making the coherence primitive thought has in the languages it really lives in, as clearly as possible in our own” (qtd in Asad

96  Sowmya Dechamma C. C. 1986: 10). The problem with Sanskritization is that it translated the coherence that Kodavas had in their language, thought and practice, into a coherence that defined Hindu caste system in caste-laden English, a language without caste memory.11 Using caste-based terms, and terming the concept as Sanskritization, Srinivas uses the language of caste to understand something that is outside of caste. By using Sanskrit or Sanskriti, the language and culture of the Brahmin elite, irrespective of its irrelevance in the context of Kodagu, he not only framed the question of change in society in terms of lower castes’ aspiration to move up in the hierarchy but also set the model for aspiration as the culture of higher caste, the ‘authentic’ caste whom the lower ones could only imitate, such as conventional ideas of translation. Translation is reduced to reproduction; it is not the originary. Lower castes and the multiple practices/meanings they inhabit are reduced like translation to being a copy of the original, of the Brahminical castes. Differences that can disrupt, untranslatable practices that can challenge and render many interpretations, that can rupture, become incomprehensible. Sanskritization can only aspire for the ideal type, the extraordinary that lies somewhere, not here, not now. These methods not only placed communities like Kodavas in a particular theoretical framework but also into the structure of castes12and reinforced the language and ideology of caste inequality. Comparatist Lucia Boldrini uses Cheyfitz to argue this: “From its beginnings, the imperialist mission is, in short, one of translation: the translation of the ‘other’ into the terms of the empire (Cheyfitz 1997: 112). It makes perfect sense as to why the Brahmin-anthropologist found perfect reason in civilizing the “different, non-Brahmanic” Kodavas. This to me means that a community understood as ‘minority’ has to be translated by the dominant into terms that makes them legible within the dominant narrative of caste-Hindu. Not just this, T. K. Oommen and Veena Poonacha have also shown how the Kodava engagement with the colonial was very vibrant by the time Srinivas conducted his fieldwork and Kodavas even today are seen as undesirably aspiring for ‘English’ and “English ways” by caste-Hindus. Kodavas who were translating themselves much more into the ways of the English, including English education, became translated into Sanskrit. How a group that can be understood as tribal or semi-tribal is packaged into the idea of Sanskritization, is something that Charsley and Parvathamma have pointed out. Sanskritization is indeed “a brilliant exercise in making a small corner of India, which might well have seemed eccentric and semi-tribal, into an opportunity for interpreting the society of India as a whole” (Charsley, 1998: 537). In brief, Sanskritization translated the ideal of caste society into the ideal of nationhood. So then, instead of seeing the Kodava engagement with English and the colonial and other communitarian, egalitarian practices as modern or western, and instead of taking note of practices that have de-sanskritized Brahmins, Srinivas chose to see and translate very specific practices and chose to translate it as Sanskritization. Srinivas also hardly sees his subjects as agents who choose, who subvert, who manipulate and translate what they encounter. He sees them as faithful translators, imitators of upper-caste norms.

To Translation We All Belong 97 This imitation leaves no room for the subject’s translation of themselves or their differences and herein lies the challenge to ethnography – how does it ever bring in the subjectivity of the ethnographer and that of the people it studies? Language of Caste: Language of Inequality Despite arguments to see language as a knowledge system, as a knowledge-cultural system, in its written or spoken-practiced form, the tendency to see language as a medium to ‘gather’ information, worse not paying attention to it at all, is quite prevalence within practices of the social sciences, as can be gleaned from Srinivas. I see language as a dynamic practice that has multiple life-worlds and possibilities and argue for a need to consider the knowledge systems that are steeped in every spoken language – a knowledge system that has its own history, literature (oral or written), relationship with the local economy, with people’s lives, practices, the way they understand the world they inhabit and the relationships with other languages and people around them. Spivak, in her Death of a Discipline, makes a case for crossing borders using language. This crossing of borders is towards an interdisciplinarity that hopes for a ‘planetarity’. In her words, we need to: work to make the traditional linguistic sophistication of Comparative Literature supplement Area Studies (and history, anthropology, political theory, and sociology) by approaching the language of the other not as a “field” language …. Indeed, I am inviting the kind of language training that would disclose the irreducible hybridity of all languages. (2003: 9) What Spivak urges us to do is to have a much deeper engagement with what and how we listen and how we write about what we see, listen and ‘study’. In our understanding, language and writing thus need to move beyond its field function claiming a transparency of meanings. A transparency that invisibilizes while simultaneously visibilizing certain ideologies? If ethnography produces cultural interpretations through intense research experience, how is unruly experience transformed into an authoritative written account? […] This writing includes, minimally, a translation of experience into textual form. This involves multiple subjectivities and political constraints beyond the control of the writer. In response to these forces, ethnographic writing enacts a specific strategy of writing. (Clifford 1983: 120) Writing, as Paz so evocatively puts it, is always a translation, always original, but shot through power relations in its manner of circulation and production. All writing is a translation of what we see, hear, observe, feel and experience – which in ethnography is written for another audience – is translated all over again, in a

98  Sowmya Dechamma C. C. language that is usually different from the one that was experienced and studied. This multiple distancing of ethnography is also its beauty, also its challenge. And this multiple distancing of ethnography, being written-up is translation-proper and translation-representation-interpretation. For Asad, the anthropologist as a cultural translator need not be tolerant or charitable to the language and society he encounters. But, more crucially, the anthropologist has to test the tolerance of his/her own language and/or tolerance of his/ her own caste for assuming unaccustomed forms (p. 22). In the case of Srinivas, the touch-stone test for the language-people he studied was the universalized language of Brahminic-self, a language-culture he, the ethnographer, was part of. It is therefore crucial to bring into attention the process of text making, which highlights “the constructed, artificial nature of cultural accounts. It undermines overly transparent modes of authority, and it draws attention to the historical predicament of ethnography, the fact that it is always caught up in the invention, not the representation, of cultures” (Wagner qtd in Clifford 1986: 3). Because the authority of the anthropologist is so rooted in the powers of casteist language, academics encourages the “tendency to read the implicit” in alien cultures. The tendency by training is not to see the powers and authority at work, not to allow oneself, one’s language and thought, one’s caste to transform. The tendency is always to see how the anthropologist’s world view can transform the people who are studied (Asad 1986: 157). It is thus the anthropologist who creates meanings via translation. Meanings for the people who are objects of study. “The process of cultural translation is inevitably enmeshed in conditions of power – professional, national, international” (Asad 1986: 163). What for us is significant is not just to see how a culture is represented but also to see the relations of productions. And writing-up is one major way these texts are produced in a skilful, artistic manner, making “ethnography artisanal, tied to the worldly work of writing” (Clifford 1986: 6). Ethnography only has to follow the path of the Cree hunter who said “I’m not sure I can tell the truth. . . I can only tell what I know” (qtd in Clifford 1986: 8). By providing the logic of Sanskritization where none existed, and providing caste sense to non-caste sense, framing a Hindu order to a non-Hindu order that many of us see as a more egalitarian, open thought and practice, Srinivas translates the Kodava/Coorg with the logic of caste-Hindu language and structure. More importantly, by not taking into account the logic of Kodava discourse and its rich/complex engagement with the British/‘modern’, Srinivas inserted the language of inequality, a language that spoke to Hindu-India, pan-India as he called it, weaving, translating independent microcosms into a complex web of nationmaking. To see Kodava as already modern, more modern, skipping Sanskritization would mean to de-stabilize the logic of caste, a proposition that perhaps was undesirable. For Asad, ethnography is on shaky grounds precisely because it is meant to be for another audience, in a language usually inaccessible to the people it describes. Ethnography can stand tall only when it can be called into question by people who are its objects, speaking languages on shared grounds and translating themselves and also translating the researcher with the same flair. The process has only begun and I shall end this chapter with a personal anecdote

To Translation We All Belong 99 that to me has simultaneously been the best critique of Sanskritization and an endorsement of Kodava modern, that happens by translating the self and the other. I first presented part of this chapter in the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, an Institute M. N. Srinivas was instrumental in setting up. I had visited my father in Kodagu just the previous day of my presentation. As we were catching up on the village gossip, my father who is 82 and has spent his whole life in Kodagu, reminded me of the suicide of a Brahmin man (of Tulu origin) in our village, East Nemmale. I did remember. He added that his wife had recently re-married. I was surprised and said that it was really nice. My father continued: “ikkikkapattamaluu modern aayand-und” (these days, Brahmins are also getting to be modern)!!. That for me is village ethnography, translation and ideology of our day-to-day lives. Notes 1 Although not named as such, Comparative Literature, as a practice, is traced to the classical Greek and Latin knowledge practices that included learning of other languages and translations. In more recent times, the term and discourse around Comparative Literature is attributed to the series French anthologies used for the teaching of literature, published in 1816 and entitled Cours de littérature compare (Susan Bassnett, 1998: 12); then spread across Europe questioning the ‘narrowness’ of national literatures, made famous by Goethe’s articulations on weltliteratur. The first known course on Comparative Literature was taught in Cornell in 1871 and many chairs and departments of Comparative Literature emerged across Europe and North America during the late 19th century. 2 See Goethe, J. W. and Eckermann. 2009. “Conversations on World Literature.” In The Princeton Sourcebook of Comparative Literature, edited by David Damrosch et al. Princeton: Princeton UP, 17–25. 3 Jstor.org shows 1275 results for a search on “Sanskritization” and Google shows 99,600 results in 0.59 seconds! Accessed on 12 February 2020. 4 Jaffrelot (2000) points to how despite the force of Jyotirao Phule and Ambedkar (who was Srinivas’s contemporary whom Srinivas could not have missed, but did), despite them “avoiding the traps of Sanskritization by endowing the lower castes with an alternative value system”, despite Ambedkar having “identified the mechanisms of Sanskritization and understood their role in maintaining the lower castes in a subservient position” (pp. 759–760). 5 It is interesting that Shah refers to the politics of standardization of languages also as Sanskritization of languages implying that Sanskritization in effect was an attempt at standardizing the new nation in making. 6 In addition, a note from Simon Charsley talks about how this idea of Kshatriyaization “may have been reinforced by awareness that influential Coorgs wished to be regarded as Kshatriyas. It has frequently been noted that this has been a common route by which the politically and materially successful amongst those once outside the purview of varna have (attempted to) insert themselves into the scheme (p. 537). 7 One can never be a Brahmin even if we assume that people desire to be one. This has obvious parallels in the individual and institutional efforts of European White Christians claiming the indigenous in the Americas and Australia as inferior and attempting to ‘Christianize’ them, framing them within the framework of upward mobility, progress, moving up the ladder – all clearly integrationist but nevertheless maintaining the racist hierarchy, never able to break the race boundary no matter how both sides tried – in very similar ways that Srinivas understands caste and Sanskritization – after all these years there has been no caste that have equalled Brahmin, not to mention ‘becoming’ one.

100  Sowmya Dechamma C. C. 8 Not necessarily as an ‘after life’ as elucidated by Walter Benjamin. 1992. “The Task of the Translator.” In Walter Benjamin. Illuminations, edited by and Intro. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. London: HarperCollins. 9 As amply made clear by Clifford Geertz using the example of winking in his “Thick Description: Toward an interpretative Theory of Culture” (1973). 10 https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edward_E._Evans-Pritchard, accessed on 25 November 2019. 11 Srinivas’ translation of high-caste okka or low-caste okka (Srinivas 1952: 55 and 231) and madi/pole (Srinivas 1952: 109) on which theories of purity and pollution are built are good examples of both translation proper and ethnographical translation. 12 Like most indigenous communities in India who do not confirm to Hindu caste practices, and who are not Christian, Muslim or Buddhist (or do not belong to any organized religion), Kodavas are categorized as Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Karnataka.

References Asad, Talal. 1986. “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 141–164. Bassnett, Susan. 1993/1998. An Introduction to Comparative Literature. Oxford: Blackwell. Boldrini, Lucia. 2010. “Comparative Literature and Translation, Historical Breaks and Continuing Debates: Can the Past Teach Us Something About the Future?” Diacrítica. Dossier Literatura Comparada. 24(3): 181–199. Charsley, Simon. 1998. “Sanskritization: The Career of an Anthropological Theory.” Contributions to Indian Sociology. 32(2): 527–549. Clifford, James. 1983. “On Ethnographic Authority.” Representations. 2: 118–146. Clifford, James. 1986. “Introduction: Partial Truths.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by Clifford James. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1. Evans-Pritchard, Edward-Evan. 1962. Social Anthropology and Other Essays. New York: The Free Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, edited by Clifford Geertz. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, 3–32. Henry, H.H. Remak. 1961. “Comparative Literature, Its Definition and Function.” In Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective, edited by Newton P. Stallknecht and Frenz Horst. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1–57. Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2000. “Sanskritization vs. Ethnicization in India: Changing Identities and Caste Politics before Mandal.” Asian Survey. 40(5): 756–766. Kawade, Ankit. 2019. “The Impossibility of ‘Dalit Studies’.” Economic and Political Weekly. 54(46): 20–23. Kothari, Rita. 2013. “Cast(e) in a Caste-less Language: English as a Language of ‘Dalit’ Expression”. Economic and Political Weekly. 48(39). Kumar, Vivek. 2016. “How Egalitarian Is Indian Sociology?” Economic and Political Weekly. 51(25): 33–39. Littau, Karin. 2000. “Pandora’s Tongues.” Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction. 13(1): 21–35. Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press.

To Translation We All Belong 101 Oommen, T. K. 2008. “Disjunctions between Field, Method and Concept: An Appraisal of M.N. Srinivas.” Sociological Bulletin. 57(1): 60–81. Pandian, M. S. S. 2002. “One Step Outside Modernity: Caste, Identity Politics and Public Sphere.” Economic and Political Weekly. 37(18): 1735–1741. Pandian, M. S. S. 2008. “Writing Ordinary Lives.” Economic and Political Weekly. 43(38): 34–40. Parvathamma, C. 1978. Contributions to Indian Sociology. 12(1): 91–96. Poonacha, Veena. 2005. “Ethnography Frozen in Time.” Economic and Political Weekly. 40(21): 2160–2162. Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Shah, A. M. 2005. “Sanskritisation Revisited.” Sociological Bulletin. 54(2): 238–249. Shankar, S. 2012. Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation and the Vernacular. Berkeley and LA: California University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2003. Death of a Discipline. Calcutta: Seagull. Srinivas, M. N. 1952. Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India. London: Clarendon Press. Srinivas, M. N. 1956. “A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization.” Far Eastern Quarterly. 15 (4): 481–496.

7

Education as a Discipline in India Foundations and Histories Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain

Introduction The status of education as a body of knowledge has been contentious for quite some time. In particular, whether it is a specialised discipline with its distinct subject matter, epistemology, methodology, and knowledge community or whether it is a ‘derived’, ‘applied’ field of ‘practice’ that borrows and draws upon the theoretical approaches and methods of its foundational disciplines has been a topic of intense debate (Furlong, 2014; Lawn and Furlong, 2011). Its nature and constitution as a ‘soft’ discipline or its own ‘tribes’ and ‘territories’ have also been the subject of much debate (Becher and Trowler, 2000; Sarangapani, 2011). Sarangapani (2011) argues that as a discipline, the boundaries of education are fuzzy. Khan (2022) emphasises that its methodologies are ‘quasi-scientific’. Historical considerations have resulted in an unresolved conflict between the imagination of the discipline as theory building from praxis vis-à-vis its conceptualisation as a field of social inquiry. Yet another unanswered question is whether education is one among many disciplines of social science that can legitimately claim a place in the university alongside other more venerable disciplines. In English-speaking western nations, education as a discipline has been evaluated with reference to its dependence on the four fundamental disciplines namely, philosophy, psychology, history, and sociology. These foundational disciplines inform the subject matter and methodologies to understand the meaning, purpose, and phenomenon called education and its objects — the child, the learner, located in distinct institutional settings, cultures, and processes. In the introduction to this volume, two distinct dimensions of interdisciplinarity have been outlined. These are drawing upon various disciplines and fear that absence of being rooted in a core discipline signifies lack of necessary rigour. Both these dimensions are invariably present in the discussions about education. To understand the shaping of education as a discipline, it is important to recognise that it is simultaneously shaped at various levels and sites. These include policy spaces and discourses; shifting discourses and contestations about status, territories, and communities among various foundational disciplines in institutions of higher education/universities where education is imagined as a professional discipline with a focus on teacher education or as a liberal discipline; and schools DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-7

Education as a Discipline in India 103 as sites of practice and other sites where different actors attempt to influence discourses about and practices of schools. In this context, it is important to add five more dimensions to appreciate the complexities and challenges involved in making sense of and tracing the trajectories of education as a discipline. First, even though teacher education is the mainstay of education as a discipline, there are significant differences in the programmes, duration, qualifications of the candidates, and its implications for their recruitment as school teachers. This means that the discipline and its practitioners are being introduced, trained, and shaped in more ways than one and mapping the meaning of the discipline in its multiplicity poses enormous challenges (Menon and Mathew, 2016). Second, with “about 63 percent of the country’s children attending government schools” and “just 9 percent of teacher education institutes (being) public” (Gulati and Jain, 2022), the cracks induced by privatisation and public investment in the shaping of the discipline have become even more apparent. Third, historians of modernity and disciplines in India have noted that colonial imprints, metropolitan/English and provincial/vernacular fissures, as well as regional diversities and trajectories of the disciplines in India have remained largely unmapped (Aquil and Chatterjee, 2010; Kaviraj, 2010; Maitrayee, 2010). In this context, one needs to remain conscious of how certain discourses about education, curriculum, learning, learners, teaching, and teachers with global aspirations began at universities in metropolitan locations and in what ways their circulation and importance outside of these institutions and spaces was restricted. Fourth, there is a paucity of research on the growth and trajectory of education as a discipline in India. Fifth, the silences are often echoed in refresher course(s) and conference(s) pan-India, where faculty and researchers located in teacher education often lament the popular perception of colleagues from non-education disciplines. The arguments posed are drawn from a parochial and limited understanding of education whereby it is reduced to ‘training’. The education-walas are seen as mere nuts and bolts people. These method masters or pedagogues engage in training in terms of skill, transferability, mass production, involving daily labour, under the supervision of the theoretician, who occupies the high seat of knowledge production; and laying aims, purposes, and providing conceptual tools and theoretical foundations. With an awareness of the challenges imposed by this context, the present chapter is a modest attempt at tracing the historical trajectory of the discipline of education in India with a special focus on one of the foundations of education, namely psychology. We have devoted attention to psychology over philosophy, sociology, and history (the other three foundation disciplines) for three reasons. First, psychology has historically been given greater space in the discipline of education in India and as outlined in this chapter, this dominance is present across time and institutions. We have tried to draw attention to the limitation(s) of the dominant psychological perspective in education in India, particularly the why and how, drawing on both perspectives and methodology of other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology may enrich the discipline. Second, there has been a paucity of studies on psychology and education. In contrast, there have been some recent studies on sociology of education (Chanana, 2013; Chitnis, 2013; Madan and Pathak, 2020;

104  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain Nambissan and Rao, 2013) which trace its growth across institutions and increasing deployment of developments in social theory and methodology.1 Third, our attempt to map the emergence and shifts in the imagination, discourses, and practices of psychology as a foundation to understand how education, as a discipline, was being fashioned at various historical junctures in India and has required significant space to the extent that we had to remove sections focusing on other foundations. We have tried to map its contours, interactions with, and influence on global discourses. To this end, the chapter draws upon a variety of sources. These include various annual, quinquennial, commission, and committee report from the colonial and postcolonial periods in India. We examine a variety of syllabi and examination papers to trace and reconstruct the beginnings, continuities, and disjuncture at various points. Different concepts, readings, research foci, and trends are examined and compared across diverse periods and positioned in relation to global and local education discourses across several sites. This helps to examine and locate shifts, networks, and discourses while paying attention to contexts, time, and space. This chapter is organised into two sections. The first section gives a glimpse of the introduction of education as a discipline in colonial India with a focus on teacher training first and later its introduction in the universities. The second section focuses on the relationship and interaction between psychology, child development, and education. The third section concludes the chapter with insights gained from the discussion. A Historical Background of Education in India Like several other disciplines in India, the origins, history, and trajectory of education as a domain of knowledge is closely linked with colonial rule. Before we attempt a brief historical overview of the discipline, it is important to remember that the history of mass and universal schooling in the western world is about two centuries old. It is tied up with the emergence of both a modern and national system of education and the modern state and its imperatives to produce ‘citizens’ (Green, 2000). Thus, questions of appropriate knowledge – why and what should students learn as part of this transformation to become a national, efficient, and productive citizen; what should the site of learning be to deem the school as a public institution (even when established by private organisations); who should teach them – what qualifications and training this teacher should have; and what methods of teaching and assessments should be employed, came to be a part of the regimes of governance and regulation of the modern state apparatus. In the colonial context of India, these questions assumed a particular distinctness on three counts. First, the new system of education instituted in distinct phases was to simultaneously address colonial difference as well as a universal civilising imperative of moral upliftment and political transformation (Kumar, 2005; Tschurenev, 2019). Second, the introduction and institutionalisation of the new systems, modes, and technology of education involved continuities, appropriation, transformation, replacement, and disjuncture with the erstwhile system of education, with conceptions of teacher and teaching, expectations from school and education, as well as with pedagogic practices and examinations. And this educational borrowing,

Education as a Discipline in India 105 imposition, and putting into practice involved considerable ‘friction’ and negotiations ‘in a locally grown, socially embedded educational landscape’ (Tschurenev, 2019: 161–162). Third, several kinds of fractures such as the lower status of the school teacher vis-à-vis the educational bureaucracy and the university academic on account of their training and low salary, training in English, and vernacular as well as differential access and circulation of the metropolitan discourses of education in these institutions set in motion multiple ripples that continue to reverberate. ‘Improvement’ as the leitmotif of the raj in India guided early colonial attempts to change teaching in indigenous schools. The Governor of Bombay Presidency, Mountstuart Elphinstone in his 1823 minute recommended ‘a very concise treatise containing a few rules for the management of schools in a modern way’ (cited in Rao, 2020: 99). Initially a circle system was introduced where a “State pandit … attached to a circle of three or four village schools” attempted ‘improvement’ (Hunter, 1883: 37, 96). Drawing from the experience of England where ‘insufficient number of trained teachers and the imperfect method of teaching’ were found to be chief defects in the systematic efforts to improve education, the Wood’s Despatch of 1854 recommended normal and model schools to exemplify “the best methods for the organisation, discipline and instruction of elementary schools” (Wood, 1854: 28). The normal schools were introduced across various provinces since 1855. The course of studies at the training school “included reading, writing, and arithmetic … accounts and mensuration up to the full indigenous standard (and) elementary geography and history and the art of teaching” (Hunter, 1883: 96). Different provinces reported ‘theory/general principles and practices of teaching’ along with school management as courses taught in teacher training institutions in the 1890s (Legislative Council, 1896a, 1896b, 1896c). The percentage of trained school teachers in colonial India was low. That coupled with low educational qualifications and limited disciplinary training in school subjects limited their ability to influence the practice of education (Sarangapani et al., 2023).2 Such positioning created a perception that neither the training of teachers nor education as a discipline required intellectual and academic rigour and instead mechanical practice, focus on class and school management and moral ethos were preeminent. The discussion about normal schools in the Indian Education Commission report (Hunter, 1883) underscores the need to move beyond the binary of the success and failure of such an enterprise. It notes differences across provinces, complaints about village schools ‘rising above the traditional level of the wants of the classes for whom they were intended’, aversion among indigenous gurus to ‘leave their villages and come for three or six months, to the Normal school’, and the perception of the Normal schools as ‘both costly and ineffective’. In addition, the report pointed out that being ‘certified’ carried multiple meanings across different regions due to differences in the duration of training (Hunter, 1883: 96, 129–132). A deputy inspector of school in the course of his discourse to harp about an incompetent schoolmaster distinguished between the virtues and vices of the native personality, tradition, and religion. He listed patience and domesticity as qualities of the Hindu that could contribute to training him in the art of teaching. Ironically, these ‘virtues’ were also termed as ‘questionable’ and the deputy inspector continued to bemoan “an array of vices derived from nature, tradition, and

106  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain practice … caste … pantheism … and a want of moral fibre”. Besides the lack of “professional enthusiasm (and) paucity of his knowledge”, the native teacher had ‘defects’ of “want of power of extraction … concentration … illustration and an … aversion for the concrete” (Sharp 1904: 100). It was not only the employed teachers who were subject to this scrutiny. In other official assessments, various concerns regarding the ‘poor quality’ of candidates, recruiting village teachers from ‘amongst persons who possess and are likely to retain a sympathetic understanding of rural conditions’ and thereby be a ‘practical educationist’ who could ‘enliven the school’ were expressed (Hartog, 1929: 67–68, 74–75). Drawing from Bhattacharya (2017: 719), it can be argued that such attempts to reconfigure pedagogic practices and extend control over ‘the futures of communities’ made the figure of the school teacher a site of contestation between the coloniser and the colonised. As a result of the recommendations of the Calcutta Commission, education was officially recognised as a subject of study for the first time at Indian institutions in 1917. A further recommendation of the Calcutta Commission was that departments of education should work closely with those involved in practical fields, as well as with departments of educational psychology, philosophy, history, economics, and other relevant disciplines (Buch and Yadav, 1974: 1). Tracing the growth of education as a discipline, Buch and Yadav (1974: 2) tell us that the departments of education were established at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). In 1932, Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) was introduced as a degree programme in Andhra Pradesh and in 1936, Master of Education (M.Ed.) was started at Bombay University (Khan, 2022) and in 1943, at Allahabad. By 1951, 16 universities including Calcutta University were offering M.Ed. and this course required students to conduct some kind of research. Bombay University was the first institution to offer a Ph.D. in Education in 1941 and this number increased to 50 universities by 1972 (Buch and Yadav, 1974). A total of 342 Ph.D. degrees awarded in the discipline between 1941 and 1973 give an indication of the growth of the discipline. Buch and Yadav (1974: 6–8) report that the share of philosophy of education, history of education, sociology of education, and areas associated with the psychology of education was 23, 35, 19, and 122, respectively, whereas 35 Ph.D. degrees were awarded in the area of curriculum, methods, and textbooks. The department of psychology, sociology, history, and others had awarded 82, 14, 6, and 16 Ph.D. degrees on ‘educational problems’. The above discussion shows that issues of differentiated teacher training concerns about the qualification, training, relevance, and status of the school teacher and limited state investment, which continue to be referred to in contemporary education policy discourse have a colonial lineage. In the first half of the 20th century, education as a discipline entered the university space and like the English-speaking western world, its linkages with the foundational disciplines were emphasised in the recommendations of the various commissions. The next sections focus on these disciplines and their interrelationship with education to understand the nature of interdisciplinarity. In the Indian context, psychology came to dominate the study of education and through an analysis of the various courses of study across colonial and postcolonial

Education as a Discipline in India 107 contexts, we trace how certain discourses about the child, child study, learner, etc. took shape in the western context and travelled to India through the circulation of ideas, individuals, and institutions. Psychology, Child Development, and Education Instituting the Psychology of Education

This section examines the intersections, influences, and domination of psychology as a discipline within the settings and discipline of education in India. While such dominance has also been noted in the context of England from the 1920s to the 1950s (McCulloch, 2002: 106), a historical assessment of its content and shifts in India has only just begun to garner attention (Khan, 2022). In the Departments of Education in India, psychology and education overlap significantly. This is evident in an examination of the methods courses in education that drew largely upon theories of psychology and psychological research. Khan argues that when the departments of education were being set up or reorganised, they were competing with other well-established disciplines, and in this jostling, ‘the appeal of psychology’ together with ‘its quasi-scientific methodologies and theories of behaviorism and individual difference, seemed ideal for deriving its academic and research credentials’ (2022: 22). A general ‘principles of teaching’ course with some ‘inputs from psychology’ were seen in Teacher Education curricula as early as the late 1800s (Khan, 2022: 21). At the Normal School in Madras, later known as teacher’s college after 1886, a course on ‘Psychology in its relation to Education’ was introduced. The Poona Training College Code 1894 gives us a glimpse of the themes included in such a course. It included ‘training of senses and memory and the order in which the faculties of children are developed’ in second year’s course and in the third year’s course on ‘School Management’, ‘formation of habits and character and principles of moral discipline’ was taught (Legislative Council, 1896b: 4–5). The Calcutta University Commission 1917 recommended the incorporation of the psychology of learning into the training, following developments in the context of the West. In the teacher training programmes focused on secondary teachers and graduates in Travancore, educational psychology figured as part of the courses classified as ‘theory and practice of education’ (Jivanayakam, 1931: 66). A committee on training of primary teachers included ‘psychology and principles of education’ in the curriculum (More, 1938: 90). Recommendations to include basic familiarity with psychology was made in 1937 (Devi, quoted in Khan: 7). Khan argues that rather than drawing from a wider social science perspective, psychology in TE was positioned as a behavioural science in the first half of the 20th century. The main components included child study, behavioural learning theories, modification of behaviour, and measurement of mental capacities (Khan, 2022: 21). K. N. Brockway, Principal of St. Christopher’s Training College, Madras in the chapter on ‘Principles of Education’ (Macnee, 1931/1946) discussed measurement of innate ability, instincts and emotions,

108  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain play, imagination, observation, attention, imitation, memory, thinking, and growth of self and the school and society. Questions in the 1940 LT and BT examination papers for the ‘Principles of Education’ course at the University of Allahabad focused on the psychological principles/bearings involved in basic education, activity principle, language as a tool of thought for conceptual analysis and synthesis, questions regarding why studies are called disciplines and why they are being ignored, memory-drill and routine, behaviour patterns in early childhood, late childhood and adolescence, laws of learning, measurement of mental capacity, or the measurement of achievement in subjects of study (University of Allahabad, 1940). The Child Study Movement and Education

The emerging discipline of education in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) was premised on the predominant strand of child study. The history of the child study movement can be traced to old school ‘faculty psychology’. Locke in the 17th century and Rousseau in the 18th century had conceptualised that as children acquired and developed a capacity for reason and morality, the ‘faculties of their minds’ unfolded. Thus, proper child-rearing could lead to a developed individual. This faculty psychology3 insisted on Greek and Latin and other traditional subjects in the curriculum. However, Baker (1999) argues that for a larger part of the 19th century, schooling and teacher education was not informed by the developmentalist perspective. Children, development, and stages began to be listed as topics in the preservice teacher education curriculum from 1900 (ibid.). The emergence of the child study movement in the western world in the 19th century followed Humanism and Herbartianism. Developmental theories in evolutionary and scientific forms evolved at the same time in Continental Europe, the UK and the US. Two key movements in the 19th century, namely Herbartianism and its offshoot, child study, enabled developmentalism to gain a foothold in the US public school reform was based on these perspectives and began to include child-centred terminology and ideas in their pedagogical discourses. These ideas of child study, Herbartianism, and Montessori also reached India and were appropriated and reworked locally (Tschurenev, 2021). Two important events may be cited here. First, is the founding of Dakshinamurti Balmandir by Gijubhai Badheka in 1920. Influenced by Montessori’s ideas, Gijubhai’s child study and education were based on the ‘freedom to learn’, mindful organisation of the learning environment, and a constructivist or discoverybased model. With Tarabai Modak, Gijubhai brought out the Shikshan Patrika to popularise these ideas. Conferences were held in 1925 in Bhavnagar and 1928 in Ahmedabad to promote the new system of child education. Together, they founded the Indian Montessori Society. In a 1929 report of the society, they emphasised the necessity for skilled and trained teachers, materials, and the realities of bringing this method into rural areas. Tarabai founded Shishu Vihar, a Montessori-inspired school in Mumbai and Nutan Bal Shikshan Sangh was founded in 1938. A pioneering initiative in our history, Tarabai’s work included parent education. She aimed to educate parents on the science of preschool education. Dr. Montessori’s

Education as a Discipline in India 109 visits to India in 1939 and 1948 were significant events in Indian education with a far-reaching impact. She espoused a scientific approach to the child. When given opportunities to interact with children, she would not hold them, rather have the parents lay them on the floor and carefully observe their behaviour. “I will not talk about a method of educating children, but about something which has been revealed by children …” (Montessori, 2010).4 The child study movement influenced the growth of the psychology of education in India even during the colonial period. Following the child study movement, the focus on the measurement of attributes, abilities such as intelligence or difficulties acquired a prominent place (Menon and Mathew, 2016). To substantiate this argument, we present evidence from the trend of research, syllabi, and examinations in this field. As discussed earlier, the advent of modernity in India is enmeshed with the processes and power of colonialism. The very act of ‘making the learner’ may be characterised as an act of modernity in western contexts (Popkewitz, 1997) and the discourses of measurement and backwardness both introduced and acquired distinct meanings in the context of the discipline of education and teacher training in India. It is through the shifts in the system of ideas that unfolded through the course of the last century, that the child came to be seen as progressing through preordained stages of development, “psychological categories of the ‘self’ and rational measures of achievement”. In this section, we understand the fashioning of this modern child as the learner in India through the circulation of global discourses where the child understands him/herself as a rational, ‘problem-solving’ and ‘developing’ person (Popkewitz, 1997: 135). In colonial India, there were several efforts by the British to ‘civilise’ and educate the children of the colony that were located within the larger narrative of the colonised as savage and morally inferior. However, the British saw the child in the colony as an image of the Victorian child; pure, playful, and in need of discipline and regimentation (Nandy, 1987; Sen, 2005). The British policies and education were directed at reforming the savage and uncivilised child. Concomitantly, the colonised saw the child as valuable to the nationalist project and paid attention to the education of the children of the poor and lower castes (Nandy, 2011; Sen, 2005; Walsh, 2003). This idea of the colonial child as inferior and primitive, coupled with the Herbartian perspectives that the child is deficient, impacted educational aims, structures, and practices. This is evident in the categories in circulation such as the framing of the tribal and rural child as deficient, anxieties around delinquency, adolescence, backwardness, lack of achievement and motivation, etc. that repetitively figure in the research, syllabus, and examination questions. There are many kinds of anxieties evident in research; these are moral deficit, intellectual deficit, primitivism, and lack of parental (and social) control. These categories circulate to inform education policy and to ‘discipline’, parenting and teaching. There are many kinds of anxieties evident in research. The next sections discuss these multiple deficits and anxieties in school and in teacher education curriculum and research in the disciplines of education and the psychology of education.

110  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain Child, ‘Deficits’ and Anxieties Framing the Child through Categories of Deficit

The research studies focused on categories of deficit, including deprivation, delinquency, and neurosis, to name a few. The social anxiety evident in (repeated) research studies on delinquent, maladjusted, and ‘tribal’ adolescents can be understood concomitant to the rise of industrialisation and urbanisation in the postcolony. The anxiety around moral and intellectual deficits is produced through categories of ‘delinquency’, ‘at-risk’, ‘maladjustment’, ‘dropping out of school’, or not getting into ‘school’, ‘children on the street’, etc. The Buch survey reviewed 53 Ph.D. theses and seven projects from different Indian universities and was conducted in the period 1953–1972 (Buch and Yadav, 1974). Twenty-six out of these 53 studies relate to personality, 7 to problems of delinquency, 7 to adjustment problems, and the remaining to learning and motivation. Most studies focus on personality and facets of personality of adolescent delinquents or those with adjustment problems. A Ph.D. study conducted in 1964 examines the adjustment problems of adolescents and aims to lay out implications for mental hygiene and educational guidance. The groups studied are often high school students or children living in destitute homes, disadvantaged circumstances, or orphans. There are comparisons of ‘normal/non-deviant and deviant children’, ‘tribal and non-tribal children’, adolescent tribals, or denotified tribes. Tribal children are the focus of 17 studies in this period with themes such as the socialisation of aggression among tribal children.5 The 1980s witnessed a total of 400 research studies, 185 of which were carried out in the discipline of education, 179 in psychology, and 36 from various allied disciplines such as Physical Education, Home Science, etc. and were sponsored by the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) and the University Grants Commission (UGC). In the 1980s, about one-fourth of the studies (48 in education and 30 in psychology and allied areas) focused on achievement and achievement motivation. The most prevalent mode of research on achievement was comparative, with the objective of locating differences between various categories: (i) tribal and non-tribal (‘normal’) students, (ii) scheduled caste and scheduled tribe students, (iii) children from different social class locations, (iv) boys and girls, (v) early and late adolescents, (vi) over and underachieving students, and (vii) urban, rural, and tribal children. The B.Ed. syllabus followed till the 1990s at the University of Delhi included a unit on exceptional children; that is gifted, creative, slow learners, underachievers, socio-emotional deviates, socially disadvantaged, etc. The tools for identification of these children are part of a study done by the Department of Education (1985–1986, 1990–1991). Due to a change in the syllabus in the latter half of the 1990s, there is a shift in the vocabulary from ‘exceptional children’ to ‘groups needing special help’. Nonetheless, the categories of deficit of ‘socio-emotional deviates’, ‘underachievement’, ‘slow learners’, etc. persist Department of Education, 1999-2000. Syllabus Document, Bachelor’s of Education (B.Ed.). Delhi: Department of Education, University of Delhi. The curriculum for a two-year B.Ed. Programme at this department does not use categories such as gifted and deviant and instead emphasises on ‘diverse

Education as a Discipline in India 111 socio-cultural contexts’, ‘cross-cultural frames’, and ‘inclusive education’. The recent syllabus change attempts to capture ‘difference’ and position it as ‘equality-indifference’ as different groups need support for democratic education. The continuity of categories of able-normativeness for a long period at a preeminent department of education in the national capital of the country suggests several things. First, it is evidence of the deep roots and resilience of such a frame. Second, the use of such classifications in the research across various departments of education in the country points to a consensus about a shared vocabulary and perspectives. Third, such a frame performs functions of legitimisation of the deep discriminatory practices on and symbolic violence against ‘non-normative’, marginalised social backgrounds in the classrooms in a period when the education policy landscape (since the 1990s) emphasised on increasing access to school education. Fourth, it urges us to reflect on the role of psychology in educational settings, where the frame of individual difference becomes a simultaneous reference to and mask for social structural inequality. Adolescence as Social Anxiety

The second anxiety was moral and intellectual, located around the institution of family and the figure of the adolescent. The mental hygiene movement in Britain aiming to achieve ‘adjustment’ and mental health emphasised emotional growth as a crucial part of mind health, achievable through parental authority. The movement defined mental health as ‘mental adjustment’ and viewed history as the mind’s progressive evolution from ‘primitive’ to rational and ‘civilised’ (Toms, 2010). The mental hygiene movement in the US embodied and expanded science’s application to community life and necessitated intervention in social and developmental processes. The family was the focus of the mental hygienists. The hygienists upheld child-rearing, upbringing, and the education of the ‘educated classes’ and attempted the downward filtration to the working and lower classes. The mental hygiene paradigm began with the idea that the socialisation of children is the only route to a perfect society. The mental hygiene movement had a tremendous impact on India as is evident from the research undertaken between the 1950s and the early 1970s. These aimed to capture deficiencies in personality or frustration in adolescents. Research focused directly on the ‘adjustment’ of adolescents with a predominant trend to study urban adolescent boys. The delinquent behaviour of adolescent boys, their personality profile(s) particularly those who were institutionalised, was studied by seven researchers in the 1960s and continued to remain prevalent. These included comparisons between delinquent and ‘normal’/non-delinquents boys, delinquent boys with girls, tribals with ‘normal’ children, etc. Buch and Yadav (1974) report that in the period between 1953 and 1972, seven research dissertations focus directly on the ‘adjustment’ of adolescents with a predominant trend to study adolescent boys, mostly in the urban context. In the 1980s, more than 70 research studies focussed on adolescents or secondary school students, focusing on achievement (or lack thereof), (mal)adjustment, delinquency, frustration-intoleration, and educational backwardness. Emotionally disturbed, socially disadvantaged, morally developed and underdeveloped, scheduled caste adolescents,

112  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain deviant, and neuroticism are the key categories deployed in research. Out of these, nearly 60 (57) studies focus on adjustment and most of these are comparative. The curriculum on educational psychology includes a unit on ‘adolescence’, its characteristics, ‘problems, worries, anxieties and fears’(Department of Education, 1985–1986, 1990–1991). This category was subsumed under the wider aegis of ‘human development’ when the syllabus shifted in the latter half of 1990s. The child is construed as savage, a cause of social anxiety and in need of moral and intellectual amelioration. This can be understood in terms of G. Stanley Hall’s hypothesis that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Hall argues, “The child relives the history of the race in his acts, just as the scores of rudimentary organs in his body tell the story of its evolution from the lower forms of animal life” (1904: 443– 444), and therefore could be applied to understanding ‘feeling, will, and intellect’. This theory placed ‘the primitive’ with ‘the civilised’ on a hierarchical classification. This connection provided epistemological cues. As the child developed from immaturity to maturity, curriculum and pedagogy would be organised around the matching stage of human history. This was based on the premise that a child’s interest would be natural and instinctive for the corresponding historical periods and thus, knowledge must be organised around these analogous periods. This teaching model is the ‘culture-epochs’ theory (Hartman, 2008: 39). It is pertinent to note here that both curriculum and research operate as sites that discursively produce and construct the ‘problem population’. Power operates here not only in this marking but also in how the category of ‘adolescence’ as an imported category elides the continuity between adolescence and adulthood, especially in rural, non-urban India as pointed out by Saraswathi (1999). Yet, the prolific production of the category of adolescence may be a fit for certain social groups and not universal, particularly in the anglophone cities. The ad nauseam universal production of the category is attributed to biological and developmental changes. ‘At-riskness’ in adolescence is produced physiologically due to hormonal changes, elevated testosterone and its effects, changes in the brain, etc. These are psychologically believed to lead to reactive, risky behaviour, and increased impulsivity. Coupled with the cognitive characteristics of adolescent thinking, marked by egocentrism and personal fable, the period itself is marked by child study and psychology. It is evident that there appears to be a deep anxiety about ‘adolescents’ developing ‘adjustment problems’, ‘delinquency’, and consequent institutionalisation. It is easy to read and relate these anxieties about the young with reference to the production of an ideal citizen and a moral-political order in the postcolonial context. Still the fact that these apprehensions appear in curricula concerned with the preparation of teachers and in research in disciplines of education and psychology raises concerns about the intervals at which the two disciplines intersect to conduct surveillance over the young in institutional contexts. Deprivation

If the second set of deficits and anxiety coalesced around the adjustment of the adolescent and the failure of the family to achieve and contribute to ‘social control’ and

Education as a Discipline in India 113 ‘discipline’, ‘deprivation’ marked the absence of the family as an institution. The family is seen as the primary unit of socialisation and the fear emanating from the lack of a ‘normal’ family environment finds expression in research around deprivation. The family becomes the unit of governance, in order that children form and acquire moral values necessary for schooling. These anxieties coalesce around the figure of the adolescent, a key figure in courses on educational psychology and in research in the departments of education and psychology. In research around themes of deprivation and the family, the children who did not have ‘normal’ sanctuary in the family were seen at risk of being delinquent or intellectually unfit for school. In the 1980s, several studies on the theme of parental deprivation, and its impact on personality adjustment, variables, achievement motivation, and non/cognitive abilities were carried out. Few research studies focused on child-rearing practices and its impact on personality. We are citing the titles of a few Ph.D. studies from the past five decades to support our argument: Effect of socio-cultural deprivation on cognitive and non-cognitive attributes of tribal adolescents (1986); effect of parental deprivation on personality adjustment of denotified tribes (1976); a study of academic achievement, values, and adjustment of secondary school students in relation to the working status of mothers (2010); the role of family in the education of tribal students (2013); and mental health of children under institutional care: an empirical investigation (2017). A dominant theme in the 1980s was to investigate the influence of school and home environment on ‘scholastic achievement’. Eighteen studies examined how different socio-economic environments affect the child’s achievement, intelligence, and personality. The use, invocation and circulation of these categories in the discipline of education and teacher training in colonial and postcolonial India, on the one hand, can be understood with reference to the mental hygiene movement in the anglophone countries and their circulation in India and on the other to the homonymy among the colonisers and the Indian elite about the ‘backwardness’ of the Indian masses, the inequalities and dominance inherent in the Indian social order, and the social location and position of the researchers.6 The mental hygiene movement led to prolific testing or rather ‘scientific’ measurement of the mind in order to sift the shaft from the grain. The dull could be separated by their lack of capacity to adjust and ‘fit’ into society and therefore were in need of institutionalisation. Categories such as ‘primitive’, ‘madness’, and ‘lower classes’ were linked to childhood, each typified by the emotional, immediate, disorder, chaos, and immediacy of gratification. Predictably, intelligence and personality testing shaped this notion (Baker, 2017; Toms, 2013). Apparently, the lack of capacities of the ‘backward masses’, being unfit to care for, nurture, and educate children leads to later intellectual and moral deficits. These scientific claims, norms, and myths produced at the altar of mental hygiene were assumed to filter down to the family. Research Methods

Studies undertaken during the 1970s focused on the construction and standardisation of achievement tests, IQ tests, aptitude and attitude tests, and personality

114  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain inventories (NCERT, 1966, 1968). The adaptations of tests, tools, instruments, etc. continue till date. The popular instruments are Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices for personality, Children’s Apperception Test, Thematic Apperception Test, and Mosaic Test for examining behavioural patterns in mental disorders; Memletics Learning Styles Inventory (MLSI) and Multiple Intelligences Test (MIT) for intelligence and cognition. Both original and adapted versions were used, though the adapted versions were more popular. For instance, Binet Kamat Test, Vyaktitva Anusuchi, Personality Inventory, and Bhatia Battery of Performance Test were widely used. Tools prepared by Udai Pareek (role efficacy scale), Prayag Mehta, and Kuppuswamy (SES urban scale) were used in several research studies. A few examples of the range and kind of tools developed are mental health scale (neuroticism) for adults (teachers), psychological tests for differential diagnosis of mental disorders, culture fair emotional intelligence tools relevant for educative use, emotional intelligence, and Disability Attitude-Belief Behaviour Instrument. A few studies used questionnaires based on adapted versions of stories developed by Piaget. The propensity of methodology to draw on psycho-metrics, scientific testing, and developing ‘instruments’ can be traced back to key movements, viz. child study7 which emerged in the 19th century.8 The study of the child was to be based on ‘scientific’ methods. Tools and standardised tests that aimed to isolate the child’s attributes, attitudes, personality factors, etc. gained popularity. For instance, the IQ tests or the ‘g’ and ‘s’ factor tests ordained that the intelligence of a group of children could be plotted along a Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1995). These methods were subject to expansive critique. First, the most scathing critique was based on the isolation of subjective, ‘multifaceted set of human capacities’ as singular entities and their location within the individual. Gould (1981: 56) argues that we wish to characterise mentality to ‘make divisions and distinctions among people’ and make intelligence ‘an entity’. Through the seductions of science, this entity is located in the brain. It is through the fallacies of reification, ‘our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities’ and ‘ranking’, ‘the propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale’ as well as quantification that intelligence gets reduced to an objective number (ibid.). Second, child study’s insistence on excessive data and its distance from theory and science was critiqued by both John Dewey and William James. Dewey writes that child study, dons a mask of science and is essentially sentimentalism. It is isolated from science, “… those ignorant of or disregarding these larger sciences plunge directly into child-study and expect to get valuable results, the method is quackery …” (Dewey, 2008). The third critique came from child study’s link with curriculum. Hall had argued that the scientific study of the nature of a child’s life should inform the rational curriculum of schools (Hall, 1893). He enunciated a pedagogical system based on scientific principles, where children’s natural abilities and instincts could be deployed to decide the curriculum. Coming down heavily on these epistemological connections, Dewey argued that empirical evidence gathered through extensive child study does not translate into pedagogic action and teachers felt ‘fooled’ by ‘an

Education as a Discipline in India 115 indiscriminate worship act at the shrine of child study to a condemnation equally indiscriminate’ (ibid.: 209). Several interesting developments ensued. First, after being delivered a death blow by Dewey, child study was reinvigorated through the Kilpatrick project method in 1918 (Kliebard, 2004: 135).9 Second, despite this scathing critique of child study and Herbartianists, the allure of developmental notions of the child and human life endured. The psychological and physiological shifts in human life span were used to organise development from immaturity to maturity into stages of development. These four stages, kindergarten, transition, juvenile, and adolescence, were formalised by child study and Herbartian thinking. Teacher education curriculum in the US began to include topics such as ‘children’, ‘development’, and ‘stages of development’ for the first time around 1900 (Baker, 1998). Third, Piaget’s detailed observations of his own children and explorations of the nature of thought itself resuscitated child study and developmentalism through the course of the 20th century. His ideas of biological determinism were in tune with child study’s proponents. This form of child study drew upon observations of children in naturalistic settings, the clinical interview method developed by Piaget, and microexperiments with infants, children, and adolescents. Through a brilliant differentiation of the qualitative nature of thought in each stage of development, his theory was an edifice built on the foundation of developmentalism and child study. Child Study and Developmentalism

Postindependence, while psychometrics reigned in the field of psychology in education, different ideologies and methods of child study were being developed in India. These shifts occurred in several locations and some of these are discussed here. First, the setting up of the Department of Child Development at MS University of Baroda at Vadodara in 194910 was aimed primarily at gaining a ‘knowledge of children’ developing skills to ‘effectively guide children’, ‘organising learning environments’, etc. Menon and Matthew (2016) argue that the Faculty of Education and Psychology at Baroda operated on the “tacit assumption of an organic epistemic proximity between education and psychology underlying Teacher Education curricula” (154–155). Its ideology was reflected in the various lectures, seminars, and projects. Bloom, the father of educational objectives taxonomy presented a workshop on Educational Evaluation and Testing in 1957 that investigated microteaching and educational technology in the 1970s. The research in the Departments of Education and Psychology continue to closely work with the need assessment and implementation of state programmes. Second, the setting up of the child development department(s) in the Indian context in the 1970s. The Department of Child Development at SNDT, Mumbai was set up with a concerted focus on the study of lifespan development, family systems, and social policy; the Department of Child Development in 1970 at Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, with the vision of Dr. Anandalakshmy. Run from its location in a Home Science college, the curriculum focused on principles of development, methods of child study, development norms, etc.

116  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain The Department of Child Development at the University of Delhi made a small contribution to the change in thinking, curriculum and methods, research, and towards sensitive policy making. In the context of method, Anandalakshmy argues, “the introduction of the ‘ethnological method’ to the study of children was new, when we started it in the seventies. The qualitative methodology we have pursued systematically over the years is getting wider acceptance now” (Chaudhary, 2009: 154) These methods, repudiated the atomism, universality, and reductionism of the traditional scientific method, deployed mechanically to studying children. The development of children is, instead, complex and fascinating. The new department ‘looked for connectedness’ to build an integrated understanding of Indian families’ lives and to examine their own norms, assumptions, and beliefs. Working with the community was built into the practical work to build theory-praxis linkages and to test the theories. The research topics and study locations ‘reflected the full acceptance of diversity and plurality’. While research in the country continued to pose and operate in binaries, Anandalakshmy argues that this methodology, juxtaposed “Ability and disability, rural and urban people, boys and girls” not as oppositional, “but as parts of the same inclusive paradigm for the people sciences” [emphasis author’s] (Chaudhary, 2009: 152). She also argues that thinking in child study has been built on a critique of the regimented school system, “There is a curriculum, neatly typed on every table, daily time tables up on the wall, age-appropriate play materials, colourful furniture, the loud school bell, well-turned out and often welltrained teachers, and airy classrooms. The focus is on the setting. In the process of organising everything, the child is often neglected” (Anandalakshmy, n.d.). A few illustrative examples of community-based ‘in-situ’ research undertaken in this paradigm are cognitive competence in infancy (Anandalakshmy, 1982); perceived maternal disciplinary practices and their relation to the development of moral judgement (Saraswathi, 1978); psychological development and learning in young children in rural poverty and effects of interventions; and specific assessment of cognitive and motor development of infants, focusing on the environment variables of the study of home, school, urban residence, social class, and community. Third, the first systematic studies around child-rearing were conducted by anthropologists (Roland, 1989; Seymour, 1999): Carstairs’ (1958) research of caregiving and relationships in a Rajasthan town; Madan’s (1962) study of Pundit families in a village in Kashmir; Minturn and Hitchcock’s (1963) research with Rajputs of Khalapur focusing on studying the mother-child dyad, and the differences in child rearing practices among different communities. These initial studies led to a crucial borrowing from anthropology and the ethnographic method. Ethnographies of institutions, schools, colleges, and communities started appearing in Departments of Education. Fourth, the B.Ed. syllabus followed till the 1990s at the University of Delhi included a unit on learning – its domains, theories and aspects, and the impact of school and home factors on learning (Department of Education instead of Central Institute of Education, 1985–1986, 1990–1991). With the change in syllabus, the units included learning and its approaches (behaviouristic, cognitive, and humanistic) and theories of development – Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg (Department

Education as a Discipline in India 117 of Education instead of Central Institute of Education, 1999–2000). This shift was reflected in the question papers as well, where stage-theorists Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, and social learning theorist (Bandura) and socio-cultural theorist Vygotsky were included in the question paper (Department of Education, 2008.). Only one research in the period between the 1950s and the early 1970s mapped the child’s developmental stages. Two studies had a clear cognitive thrust on (i) the effect of cultural background and the learning process and (ii) reasoning and problem-solving. Three studies on language development of children and bilingualism were also undertaken in this period. Studies on cognition began to appear in research undertaken in both Departments of Education and Psychology in the 1980s. However, only a few of these studies focused on cognitive styles of ‘creative adolescents’ and ‘higher secondary students’, ‘tribal and non-tribal school pupils’, etc. Some illustrative examples of the studies before the 1990s are comparison of ‘high’ and ‘low’ creative adolescents, ‘normal’ and tribal children, investigating the relationship between cognitiveaffective development and scholastic achievement of tribal students, etc. The complex thinking abilities of school children were also studied, which are concept learning, problem-solving, memory and categorisation skills, internal representations in reasoning, labelling issues in conservation, etc. The cognitive domains were studied with reference to school children and disadvantaged children; often comparing schooled and unschooled children, socially deprived and non-deprived children, etc. Studies on language and moral development in children also began to be undertaken during this time period. Conclusion The ensuing discussion points to colonial lineages and continuities in the discipline of education. While in contemporary literature, curriculum, policy discourse, and research in education, the diversity, inclusion, equity, social justice, and democratic education abound, yet the long-standing debates on developmentalism and nebulous things such as personality attributes, scholastic ability, maladjustment, achievement motivation, etc. persist like a living fossil. These discursive constructs drawn from psychology characterise the ‘conservative’ and reproductive nature of education as a social force. The prevailing model of psychology, devoid of any social or cultural moorings and with its allure of scientism, that made the intangible mind and its workings seem tangible, definable, and measurable, appealed to education. Education leaned on psychology to claim legitimacy and the acceptable, professional status of a ‘discipline’. At the present juncture when the allure of producing ‘calculable worlds’ under the auspices of the new reigning discourses of new public management (NPM), randomised controlled trials (RCT), standards, and learning outcomes is reconfiguring education as a discipline, reminding ourselves about the historical intersections of psychology and education, we conclude by citing Baker (2002). “Nationwide institutions simply have not, will not, do not want to, or know how to give up the act of classifying, sorting, and hierarchizing human beings, reduced

118  Nidhi Gulati and Manish Jain in the end to ability levels or test scores. The theories of child development that undergird the postulation of abilities by age or stage remain wedded to the structures of schooling” (p. 696). As a country, we have been measuring, mapping, and understanding inequality and its dimensions. To continue to sort, classify, predict, and assume abilities of children based on those measures is not only unjust but also against the very premise of education itself. Psychology, with its paraphernalia of concepts and tools, has brought more harm to education instead of mitigating, overreaching, and undermining the very effects of the conditions that are ‘assumed’ to produce and reproduce these deficits. Notes 1 From the dominance of functionalism and modernisation paradigm in the 1960s and 1970s, there is increasing use of symbolic interactionism, structuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism in contemporary research in education though there is a marked absence of these theoretical insights in the psychology of education research at most institutions. We have not undertaken an examination of the intersections of philosophy and education and history and education here as we believe that this under addressed area in India with attention to historical shifts across institutions too requires a full chapter which we intend to undertake separately. 2 The Indian Education Commission noted that in departmental schools, 45.40% teachers were certified compared to 8.55% in aided schools and 18.39% teachers in total (Hunter 1883: 133–134). In 1940–1941, 40.63% teachers in primary and secondary schools were untrained (Central Advisory Board of India, 1944: 64). In 1940–1941, of the 640 teacher training institutions, 612 admitted class IV and middle classes passed students for training of teachers of primary and lower secondary classes for an elementary training of one or two years duration. In comparison, the trained graduate teachers who received one year training were associated with universities and were awarded a certificate of Bachelor of Teaching (B.T.) or Licentiate in Teaching (L.T.). But in certain cases on pursuing research, they received degrees of Bachelor in Education (B.Ed.) or Master’s in Education (M.Ed.) (ibid.: 59). 3 “Faculty psychology” is a historical psychology perspective that the mind has various faculties. This theory dates to ancient Greek philosophers but became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Reason, memory, imagination, and will are faculties considered separate but interdependent mental capacities. Thinkers influential to this movement were John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who viewed children’s minds as blank slates or noble savages. Education and experience will develop and unfold the mind’s faculties, they believed. 4 For a historical discussion about the influence of Montessori’s ideas on Tarabai Modak and Gijubhai Badheka, see ‘Indianisation’, ‘nationalisation’, and ‘ruralisation’ of the Montessori method at the time of India’s independence and later, see Tschurenev (2021). 5 We are using the category of ‘normal’ as used in the research studies and syllabi to draw attention to the discursive formation of the ‘normal’. The deployment and creation of this knowledge about the ‘normal’ and its associated binaries (such as the ‘backward child’) operate through the social and discursive operations of power. They abstract the individual child from the wider social and cultural contexts and structures of inequality and participate in their reproduction. Studies in new sociology of education and anthropology critiqued this obsession with the ‘normal’ individual child. 6 In the Indian context, the first documented research on ‘location of dull and educationally backward boys’ in schools to estimate their numbers reflects the beginnings of the ‘dullard’ and was undertaken in 1967 (Buch and Yadav, 1974).

Education as a Discipline in India 119 7 Child study as a movement emerged as an offshoot of Herbartianism. The Herbartian emphasis on child growth and development and children’s interests blended with the child study movement. The key proponents of this movement in the context of the US were Hall, James, and Dewey. Under Hall’s leadership, child study drew upon diligent scientific data to offer valid solutions to pressing educational concerns. 8 Child study drew on Herbartianism. By the 1800s, Herbart separated philosophy from psychology. He argued that a child was not born with a will and that through pedagogy, a teacher could insert, develop, and shape a child’s will. He argued that “Pedagogics as a science is based on ethics and psychology. The former points out the goal of education; the latter the way, the means, and the obstacles (Herbart, 1901: 2). Pedagogy is a discipline that combines ethics and psychology. Second, psychology furnishes problems and systematics for pedagogy to respond to. According to Herbart, ethics provided the aims of education (i.e., morality), while psychology provided “the way, the means, and the obstacles” (Herbart, 1835/1904, p. 2). 9 The teacher training books, journals of education and questions papers in the teacher training programmes in India included sections and discussions on the ‘project method’. See, Doren, Alice B. Van (Ed.) (1930), Projects in Indian Education. Calcutta: Association Press (William H. Kilpatrick wrote the introduction of this book); Chapter 3 in Macnee (ed.) (1931). 10 The Secondary Training College, Baroda started in 1935 as a response to the need to address a paucity of Trained Teachers in secondary schools in the state. This became the Faculty of Education and Psychology in the year 1949 as a constituent of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda with two major departments of Education and Psychology. It sought to develop a research tradition in education alongside psychology for the first time in India.

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Indispensability of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Society On Philosophy and Science in Sociology Vivek Kumar

Introduction At the outset, I would like to underline the fact that the idea of this chapter has emerged out of a number of lectures delivered by me at various platforms of different academic institutions. Out of these platforms, the two most significant ones which gave proper shape to this chapter are the Master’s Course, ‘The Methodology of Social Sciences’ in the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU); and the second platform is the ‘Orientation Programs’ organized by the Human Resource Development Centre of JNU. This program is organized for social science and science teachers who have spent more than four years of teaching in colleges and universities. Master’s students and young teachers are often found to be perplexed about the origins of disciplines – science and social science. During my many lecture sessions on research methodology and theory of knowledge, I often noticed a striking confusion among Master’s students and young researchers while answering the question – ‘whether science came first or the social sciences?’ Most of them were found believing that the social sciences came first. And, even after informed discussions to correct this view, they were still found to be confused. Probing into this epistemological confusion of scholars prompts us to understand the exact relationship between philosophy, science, and the social sciences. Needless to state that such an inquiry also sheds light into the history of the origin and development of the sciences as well. Against this backdrop, the present chapter attempts to demonstrate that there is an intrinsic relationship between philosophy, science, and social science and therefore they influence each other as well. Second, there is logical sequence in which the development of knowledge about reality has taken place; that is, theology, metaphysics/philosophy, science, and social science. For instance, according to Giddens (1995: 138), “In Comte’s scheme of history, the theological stage of thought was relegated to a phase prior to the metaphysical-both, to be sure, becoming regarded as necessary stages in social evolution, but both becoming dissolved once for all when positivism triumphed”. Further, he also argued that one of Comte’s major works, “Course de philosophie positive … actually declared an end of philosophy as previously practiced: as an independent enterprise separable DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-8

124  Vivek Kumar from the achievements of science” (ibid: 139). This whole exercise will also go on to prove on its own that interdisciplinary approaches are sine qua non for explaining and understanding the reality, methodology, and theory in the social sciences in general and sociology in particular. The relevance of tracing the history of separation of science and social sciences and the introduction of interdisciplinary studies in recent decades will also help us understand how it is an inevitable step when considering social sciences and sociology as fields of research. Philosophy and Science: Understanding the Connections Bierstedt (1970) explains the exact relationship between philosophy and science and the impact of the physical sciences on the understanding of the natural and social world. Bierstedt (1970: 4) has argued that philosophy is the mother of all sciences and how gradually one by one each stream of science dissociated itself from the mother philosophy and became an independent discipline of natural science (Bierstedt 1970). In his own words: All the inquiries were once a part of philosophy, the great mother of the Sciences (mater Scientiarum), and philosophy embraced them all in an undifferentiated and amorphous fashion. One by one, however, with the growth of Western civilization, the various Sciences cut the apron strings, as it were, and began to pursue separate and independent courses. Astronomy and physics were among the first to break away, and were followed thereafter by chemistry, biology, and geology. In the nineteenth century, two new Sciences appeared: Psychology, or the science of human behavior; and sociology, or the science of human society. Thus, what had once been cosmology, a subdivision of philosophy, became astronomy; what had once been natural philosophy became the science of Physics; what had once been mental philosophy, or the philosophy of mind, became the science of psychology; and what had once been social philosophy, or the philosophy of history, became the science of sociology. To the ancient mother, philosophy, still belong several important kinds of inquiry – notably metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, and aesthetics – but the sciences themselves are no longer studied as a subdivision of philosophy. (Bierstedt 1970: 4) It is interesting to note that philosophy underwent a change in itself. This change was most perceptible from the 17th to the 18th centuries. Zeitlin argues that “… the eighteenth century thinkers had lost faith in the closed, self-sufficient, metaphysical systems of the preceding century; they had lost patience with a philosophy confined to definite immutable axioms and deductions from them … Philosophy was to become the activity by which the fundamental form of all natural and spiritual phenomena could be discovered. “Philosophy is no longer to be separated from science, history, jurisprudence, and politics … Philosophy was no longer a matter of abstract thinking; it acquired the practical function of criticizing existing institutions to show that they were unreasonable and unnatural” (Zeitlin 1987: 2). Such

Indispensability of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Society 125 was the change within the philosophy as a stream of knowledge. When we speak of interdisciplinarity, we often fear a jack-of-all-trades situation where our association with several disciplines may wrongly translate into abstract and vague conclusions. Perhaps it is here that we note that interdisciplinarity at its core has a deeper connection with science and philosophy. One that demands more than abstract thinking and happens to be scientific in nature. To understand the relationship between philosophy and sciences more clearly and effectively, it is imperative to define what we mean by science. According to Nett and Sjoberg (1968: 14), science “… embodies an approach to knowledge that is far more disciplined and calculated than ordinary inclinations of humans”. Hence, we can see that this definition has not taken into account the usual characteristics contained in the definition of science which may include experimentation, laboratory tests, or instrumentation and measurement scales. Having defined science it will also be worth mentioning how Nett and Sjoberg (1968) have demonstrated the history of the origin of science out of the confluence of abstract thought ‘of society’s intellectual or learned class’, for example, “The concept of zero and such logical systems as that of Aristotle” (ibid 15). And “more practical technological contributions of the artisans and merchants” (ibid). That is why Nett and Sjoberg (1968: 19–20) concluded that … the centuries did witness a considerable accumulation of both theory and practical knowledge within the context of preindustrial civilized societies. It was this knowledge that finally laid the basis for the scientific revolution which began to take shape in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Western Europe and culminated in what is termed the industrial revolution. The striking advances that led to the formation of modern science resulted from a merging of theory of abstract conceptualization (earlier the exclusive province of scholars), with more practical pursuits … of artisan and members of certain service groups. In this way, we can observe how abstract thought or philosophy has contributed in the origin of science. Now let us analyse the impact of the sciences on the social sciences. In this context, we can also observe that although philosophy is the mother of sciences, initially the practitioner saw little distinction between science and philosophy and, ‘they thought of them as allies in the search for secular truth’ (Wallerstein et al. 1996: 5). Perhaps concerning the introduction of interdisciplinarity, an attempt to blend disciplines from various sciences can help us understand how interdisciplinarity acts as an ally for practitioners of social sciences. However, according to Wallerstein et al., as experimental, empirical work ever more central to the vision of science, philosophy began to seem to natural scientists more and more a mere substitute for theology …. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the division of knowledge into two domains had lost the sense of their being “separate but equal” spheres and took on the flavor of a hierarchy, at least in the eyes of natural scientists. (ibid)

126  Vivek Kumar It is also important to understand the epistemic basis of biology, the other natural science, especially in the light of positivism. According to Fuller (2004: 46), “… the positivist call for unity failed to impress biology, the science whose practitioners most clearly realized that it was in need of unification …. The logical positivists declared biology a proto-science stilled mired in the metaphysical disputes between ‘mechanism’ and ‘vitalism’ which turned on whether life could be exhaustively explained by mechanical processes. Some positivists focused on the molecular basis of genes, held that biology would be eventually reducible to physics. Others, focused on the morphological structure of organisms, proposed that biology would itself become the science to which the science of the mind and society would be reduced”. Science and Social Sciences: The Interlinkages Conceptualizing the influences of sciences on social sciences warrants us to begin with defining social science. According to Wallerstein et al. (1996: 2), “Social science is an enterprise of the modern world … [it] attempts … to develop systematic, secular knowledge about reality that is somehow validated empirically. This took the name of scientia, which simply means knowledge” (1996: 2). One of the important relationships between the sciences and social science is that social sciences have adopted the natural science model, especially in the beginning, the Newtonian Physics model (Zeitlin 1987, Wallerstein et al. 1996, Morgan 1997). For instance, according to Morgan (1997: 7), “The studies of Isaac Newton, perhaps the most outstanding of the new physicists of the seventeenth century, had a slow effect upon the social thought”. Similarly, Wallerstein et al. (1996: 2) argues that, “The so-called classical view of science … was built on two premises. One was the Newtonian model, in which there exists a symmetry between past and future …. The second premise was Cartesian dualism, the assumption that there is a fundamental distinction between nature and humans, between matter and mind, between the physical and spiritual world”. However, Zeitlin (1987: 3) has revealed that “Unlike the seventeenth century thinkers, for whom explanation was a matter of strict, systematic deduction, the Philosophes constructed their ideal of explanation and understanding on the model of the contemporary natural sciences. They turned not to Descartes but primarily to Newton, whose method was not pure deduction but analysis. Newton was interested in “facts, in the data of experience; … his principles … rested to a significant degree on experience and observation- in short, on an empirical basis” (ibid: 3). Zeitlin has also further added that, “Newton’s research was based on the assumption of a universal order and law in the material world. Facts are not a chaotic, haphazard jumble of separate elements; quite to the contrary, they appear to fall into patterns and exhibit definite forms, regularities, and relationships”. In the same vein, he also emphasized that, “Order is immanent in the universe, Newton believed, and is discovered not by abstract principles but by observation and compilation of data” (ibid: 3). According to Morgan (1997: 7), “Newton’s concept of Universal force such as gravity and its effects upon holding large particles of nature in place was bound

Indispensability of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Society 127 even eventually to be reflected in how philosophers thought about society. Social philosophy had to find a few concepts that could be applied to society … Social philosophy began to think about the seemingly unchanging and therefore most predictable features of society. Whether called castes or estates, there were classes in all societies, and they worked roughly the same way in all of them. This large force or class began to have the same place in social philosophy as gravity held in Newtonian physics”. Science’s Influence on Sociology Understanding influences of science on sociology takes us to Morgan (1997: 7–8), who reviews that, “by the time of August Comte, the influence of Newtonian Physics social philosophy came to rest in Comte’s plea to use the means of science to study and understand society. He called for the opening of sociology as positive philosophy for social physics”. In the same vein, his prodigy Emile Durkheim was also right to use the model of sociology by drawing an analogy with other sciences at least when the science was in its developing stages (Benton 1977: 84). In the words of Durkheim (1966: 145): Sociology is, then, not an auxiliary of any other science; it is itself a distinct and autonomous science …. No doubt, when a science is in the process of being born, one is obliged, in order to construct it, to refer to the only models that exist, namely, the sciences already formed. These contain a treasure of experiences that it would be foolish to ignore. Hence, while giving characteristics of social facts as external to individuals, as exerting a coercive power over them, and as not spontaneously intelligible or transparent to the individual he relies on ‘common external’ characteristics; that is, an observation which is the basis for scientific knowledge. Interdisciplinarity in social sciences helps identify these ‘treasures of experiences that would be foolish to ignore’ in an intelligible manner without isolating commonalities between disciplines and perhaps, enhancing what becomes of them. However, Benton (1977) argues that on the one hand, Durkheim adopts the natural science model for establishing sociology as a science, and on the other hand, he also uses metaphysics for establishing sociology. According to Benton (1977: 85), for demonstration of supra individual social phenomena, Durkheim draws, “ … upon a general ‘principle’ of the effects of association or combination in nature. Just as the combination of chemical elements produces a new compound …. And just as chemical compounds may combine so as to form a living being …. So the combination of individuals forms a society. This is nothing but a philosophical notion”. Just to elaborate on the point of use of science in sociology according to Morgan (1997: 7–8), “European social philosophy, developed into sociology … Impressed with the success of Newtonian Physics, begin to look for a new factor of social life which would have the same effect of gravity”. In this context, Morgan argues that, Newtonian physics stressed gravity as a universal force. Sociology stressed

128  Vivek Kumar culture as its universal force. As gravity caused celestial bodies to behave in particular ways, the social philosophers taught that culture makes societies behave in particular ways. Epistemology of Social Science: Empiricism and Rationalism Epistemology of social sciences is another proof of how philosophy, science, and social science are intertwined with each other. In this regard, it will be worth mentioning here that the Newtonian Physics model found a supporter in John Lock (1632 to 1702) who advocated empiricism as epistemology (Zeitlin 1987: 5, Marshall 1998: 191, 373). Epistemology is the philosophical theory of knowledge, which asks questions about the nature and scope of human knowledge and what is the proper source or foundation of knowledge (Benton 1977: 19). Apart from Lock, Francis Bacon is another forerunner of empiricism who also emphasized the importance of experience in understanding social reality (Benton 1977: 22). In this context, we can also add that empiricism relies on sense perception as the proper source or foundation of knowledge. There are five senses – eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. By using these senses, we can have knowledge. However, as time passed, observation became the most acceptable source of knowledge. It is this source of knowledge on which the 17th-century scientist relied the most (Zeitlin 1987). Philosophy also became associated with 17th-century thought because of the intervention of another philosophical proposition which is ‘rationalism’. Rationalism emerged as the main portal to keep reception as a theory of knowledge (Benton 1977: 104). Descartes offers a unique philosophy of rationalism with the proposition, “I think and therefore I am” (Masih 1994: 2002). His proposition came to be known as Cartesian dualism which differentiates the physical and social world (Wallerstein et al. 1996: 2). Further, as the two specific sources of knowledge – empiricism and rationalism – came into existence, there emerged a controversy about which is the real source of knowledge (Kaufmann 1958: 10). However, it came to be recognized by the thinkers that neither empiricism nor rationalism alone can be the source of knowledge. It was Kant (1999: 92) with his philosophy, who argued that knowledge can be gained only by combining empiricism and rationalism together. In the words of Kant, “Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impression) the second is the power off of knowing an object through these representations. Through the first, the object is given to us, whereas through the second the object is thought in relation to that representation” (Kant 1999: 92). That is why Benton (1977: 101) has rightly concluded that “Kant’s main philosophical achievement can be understood as a reconciliation into a single theory of knowledge the elements of both rationalists and empiricist epistemologies”. John Locke, Francis Bacon, Auguste Comte, and others immensely contributed to the philosophical source of the empiricist or positivist approach in the social sciences in general and sociology in particular. Emile Durkheim adopted

Indispensability of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Society 129 this approach to develop the subject matter and methodology of social science which, for him, is sociology (Durkheim 1966, Benton 1977). However, another school of sociology which has been named humanism by Benton (1977: 101) was developed on the basis of the philosophical source of knowledge contributed by Descartes, Kant, and Wilhelm Dilthey (Weber 1947, Benton 1977). According to Benton (1977: 101), Dilthey helped social scientists to understand the internality of the individual as they belong to the same as fishing. How can one understand the internality of the individuals? It can be done by drawing an analogy with one’s internality to the outward expression of the internality of the other individual. However, to avoid psychologism in his explanation, Dilthey laid an added condition that one can understand the internality of the other individual only when the researcher belongs to the same culture and his path to the same history (ibid). On the philosophical basis of Descartes, Kant, and Dilthey, Max Weber developed his methodology of social sciences (Weber 1947: 1–29) as interpretative understanding of ‘Social Action’ which was further refined by Winch (1978: 111–20) with suitable correction to make sense of ‘Social Action’. Changing Nature of Science: From Newtonian Physics to Quantum Physics Science itself has not been the same after its emergence. Instead it has been changing its paradigm which historians and philosophers of science have been highlighting over the years (Kuhn 1970, Feyerabend 1988). By now, we are aware of the fact that the project of modernity or modernity was based on 17th century’s classical science (physics) or Newtonian Physics model which was deterministic in ethos. However, according to Hacking (1990), the most decisive conceptual event of 20th-century physics has been the discovery that world is not deterministic. Further, the past does not determine exactly what happens next. During the 19th century, it became possible that world might be regular and yet not subject to the laws of nature. It will be clear as to why such changes occurred if we understand what changes occurred in the 19th century in the physical science discipline. According to Blackburn: Quantum theory introduced by Max Planck in 1900 was the first serious scientific departure from Newtonian mechanics. It involved supposing that certain physical quantities can only assume discrete values. In the following two decades it was applied successfully to different physical problems by Einstein and Danish physicist Niels Bohr. It was superseded by quantum mechanics in the years following 1924 when … Louis de Broglie introduced the idea that a particle may also be regarded as a wave. The Schrodinger wave equation relates the energy of a system to a wave function …. The wave function expresses the lack of possibility of defining both position and momentum of a particle. (Blackburn 1994: 302)

130  Vivek Kumar In the same vein, Santos (1992: 22–23) argues: Einstein was responsible for the first rupture in the paradigm of modern science …. One of Einstein’s most profound insights was the relativity of simultaneity. Einstein distinguished between the simultaneity of events happening in the same place, and the simultaneity of distant events, particularly events separated by astronomical distances …. This theory has revolutionized our conceptions of time and space. Since there is no universal simultaneity, Newton’s absolute time and space do not exist …. If Einstein relativized the accuracy of Newton’s law in the field of astrophysics, quantum physics did the same in the field of microphysics. Heisenberg and Bohr demonstrated that it is not possible to observe or measure an object without interfering with it, without actually changing it in such a way that, after being measured, the object is no longer the same as it was before. Questioning the Objectivity and Thereby Legitimacy of Science The whole discipline of science and hence knowledge produced by science was itself questioned (Kuhn 1970, Feyeraband, 1988). Kuhn argued that there is lots subjectivity in the discipline of science especially when the paradigm of the practitioners is not able to answer their questions or when transitions between competing paradigms have to take place. Kuhn (1970: 150–151) highlighted the names of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Max Planck whose works had to wait long to get accepted by the scientific fraternity. For instance, Kuhn first quoted Darwin, “… But I look with confidence to the future – to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality” (Kuhn 1970: 151). In the same vein he also quoted Max Planck from his autobiography arguing that, “… a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and new generations grow up that is familiar with it” (ibid). That is why apart from telling us to re-read the history of science, Kuhn (1970: 1–9) concluded that, “These last paragraphs … perhaps … indicate that scientific progress is not quite what we had taken it to be …. We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer to the truth” (Kuhn 1970: 170). In the same vein, Feyerabend (1988: 3) also highlights the subjectivity involved in the discipline of science which further undermines its universal appeal: The history of science, after all, does not just consist of facts and conclusions drawn from facts. It also contains ideas, interpretations, mistakes, and so on. On closer analysis we even find that science knows no ‘bare facts’ at all but that the ‘facts’ that enter our knowledge are already viewed in a certain way and are, therefore, essentially ideational. This being the case, the history of science will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining as the

Indispensability of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Society 131 ideas it contains, and these ideas in turn will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes and entertaining as the minds of those who invented them. However, Feyerabend (1988: 3) provides a different view that, Scientific education … simplifies ‘science’ by simplifying its participants: first, a domain of research is defined. The domain is separated from the rest of history (physics, for example, is separated from metaphysics and from theology) and given a ‘logic’ of its own. A thorough training in such a ‘logic’ then conditions those working in this domain; it makes their action more uniform and it freezes large parts of the historical process as well. Stable ‘facts’ arise and persevere despite the vicissitudes of history. An essential part of training that makes such facts appear consists in the attempt to inhibit tuitions that might lead to a blurring of boundaries. A person’s religion, for example, or his metaphysics, or his sense of humor … must not have the slightest connection with his scientific activity. His imagination is restrained, and even his language seizes to be his own. This is again reflected in the nature of scientific ‘facts’ which are experienced as being independent of opinion, belief, and cultural background. Quantum Mechanics, De-legitimizing Science, and Postmodernism It has been argued by social scientists that the roots of postmodernism can be traced back to certain theories of the natural sciences such as the theory of relativity by Einstein and quantum physics by Max Planck. We have already discussed both the theories above. Further, Ladyman (2014: 118) explains that, “… there are some people who argue that scientific knowledge is relative, but that reality itself is socially constructed. So, for example, it is sometimes said that physicists literally construct electrons in their laboratories. As per this view, which is called social constructivism, an electron has the same ontological status as say a political party, or a nation state, in the sense that both only exist because people believe they exist”. In the same vein, Lyotard (1979) has discussed at length that postmodernism is not just a body of theory but a social condition as well. He has also emphasized that postmodernism came into existence in advanced capitalist societies in the 1960s. The main reason for its emergence is two ‘major myths’ or ‘meta-narratives’ that have legitimate scientific and social scientific activity for the past 200 years have been delegitimized or have lost their credibility. Quoting Lyotard, Marshall (1998: 512) narrates that, On the one hand ‘The Myth of Liberation’ has been rendered incredible by the complicity of all the senses in the great crimes of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust, the Soviet gulags, and the creation of Weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction. On the other, “The Myth of Truth” has been rendered incredible by the sceptical thoughts of historians and philosophers

132  Vivek Kumar of science … in other words, the disbelief of those who are supposed to know. The net result of such a generalized incredulity towards meta-narratives, according to Lyotard, is that the inhabitants of the advanced capitalist society now live in a world in which the following is the case: There are only ‘language games’; there are no economic constraints on cultural realms. Postmodernity, in whatever guise it appears, thus implies the disintegration of a modernist symbolic order. It denies the existence of all ‘universals’ … Postmodernism is therefore characterized by ‘a pluralisation of life-world’ (Fredric Jameson quoted in Marshall 1998: 512). Its most conspicuous features are, “… ‘variety, contingency, and ambivalence’, the ‘permanent and irreducible pluralism of cultures, communal traditions, ideologies, ‘forms of life’ or ‘language games’” (Bauman 1992, quoted in Marshall 1998: 512). Conclusion It is evident from the foregoing discussion that there is an intrinsic relationship between philosophy, science, and social science. Somehow, all of them are in search of reality but they differ in their epistemologies. It has also become clearer to us that philosophy is the mother of all sciences. Further, we have also seen how philosophy has undergone changes from being confined to definite immutable axioms and deductions from them to engage itself in the discovery of forms of natural and spiritual phenomena. Philosophy remained no longer a matter of abstract thinking; it acquired practical function of criticizing existing institutions (Zeitlin 1987: 2). Additionally, we have come to know how science was born with the confluence of philosophical and practical knowledge of the working class in the 14th and 15th centuries (Nett & Sjoberg 1968). It is in this context that the discussion makes it clear as to how in 17th century with the enlightenment the source of foundation of knowledge of the Philophes changed from faith and revelation to rationalism and experience (1). Rationalism and empiricism were further developed by Descartes and John Locke. Somewhere here the classical schools of the sciences got divided into two streams, namely the Newtonian Physics or mechanics model and Cartesian dualism model (Wallerstein et al. 1996). Out of these two models, social sciences well born as the project of modernity. As the sciences were producing exact results, the elites and the rulers of the society got the urgency and legitimacy to model knowledge of the society on the principles of the sciences (ibid). Hence social sciences in the beginning were modelled on the Newtonian Physics or the mechanics model (Wallerstein et al. 1996, Morgan 1997). Newton’s epistemology has been based on experience and observation. Further, he also based his research on the assumption of universal order and law. The principle of gravity effecting large particles to hold each other together was also part of his epistemology. All these aspects of Newtonian physics impacted the social sciences in a big way. The social scientists were so greatly influenced by physics that August Comte first used social physics as the name for sociology (Wallerstein et al. 1996). If Newton propounded that the natural world is governed by a law, the

Indispensability of Interdisciplinarity in Studying Society 133 social scientists also argued that the social world is also governed by laws (Zeitlin: 187). Remember ‘The Law of Three Stages’ given by August Comte. We can add how Karl Marx gave the law of development of society. In the same vein, the law of gravity was equated with social solidarity (1997). Here, it would be apt to mention that Durkheim (1966) had directed that when science is in the process of development, then it is prudent to imitate the method of established sciences and went on to imitate physics, chemistry, and biology for establishing sociology as a science. The nature of science itself underwent a temporal change. The change was especially visible in 1900 from Newtonian or classical mechanics to quantum mechanics (Blackburn 1994). Within this, Einstein’s contribution of relativism questioned Newtonian mechanics and thereby the linearity and certainty of motion. In Quantum mechanics, Planck, Heisenberg, Bohr, and Schrödinger all contributed to the understanding of inner aspects of matter beyond Dalton’s atomic theory. It also highlighted the relativity, uncertainty, probability, and constructivism, in scientific phenomena (Ladyman 2014, Joseph 2015). Along with quantum mechanics, Einstein’s relativism, practical-wave dualism the historian and philosopher of science delegitimized and rendered it incredible. Especially Lyotard (1979) highlighted how two meta-narratives of science – ‘The myth of Liberation’ and the ‘Myth of Truth’ – were rendered incredible by Thomas Kuhn (1970) and Feyerabend (1988). The development within and about science has given rise to new theoretical and philosophical debates in social sciences of capitalist societies which has been termed as postmodernism. Hence, the impact of postmodernism in social science can be observed through a plurality rather than universality of social reality. Instead of phenomena being certain and linear, they were uncertain and discrete. Last but not least, quantum mechanics established constructivism. In this way, quantum physics influenced the day-to-day understanding of social life. References Bauman, Zygmunt, 1992, Intimations of Postmodernity. Routledge, London. Benton, Ted, 1977, Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies. Routledge, London. Bierstedt, Robert, 1970, The Social Order. Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited, Bombay. Blackburn, Simon, 1994, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Durkheim, Emile, (1966), The Rules of Sociological Method (Translated by Sarah A. Solovay, John H. Muller and Edited by E. G. Caltin George). The Free Press, New York. Feyerabend, Paul, 1988, Against Method. Verso, London. Fuller, Steve, 2004, Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science. Columbia University Press, New York. Giddens, Anthony, 1995, Politics, Sociology, and Social Theory: Encounters With Classical and Contemporary Social Thought. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. Hacking, Ian, 1990, Taming of Chance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kant, Immanuel, 1999, The Critique of Pure Reason (Translated in English by Norman Kemp Smith). Khosla Publishing House, New Delhi.

134  Vivek Kumar Kaufmann, Felix, 1958, Methodology of Social Sciences. The Humanities Press, New York. Kuhn, Thomas, 1970, The Structure of Scientific Revolution. University of Chicago Press, London. Ladyman, James, 2014, Understanding Philosophy of Science. Routledge, New York. Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 1979, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester University Press, Minneapolis. Marshall, Gordon, 1998, Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Masih, Y., 1994, A Critical History of Western Philosophy. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, Delhi. Morgan, Gordon D., 1997, Toward an American Sociology: Questioning the European Construct. Praeger, London. Nett, Roger and Sjoberg, Gideon, 1968, A Methodology for Social Research. Harper and Row Publisher New York. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 1992, A Discourse on the Sciences. Review (Fernand Braudel Center), Winter, Vol. 15, No. 1, State University of New York, New York. Wallerstein, Immanuel (et al.), 1996, Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford University, Stanford, California. Weber, Max, 1947, The Theory of Social Sciences and Economic Organization (Translated by A.M. Henderson, Talcott Parsons). Oxford University Press, New York. Winch, Peter, 1978 (eight edition), The Idea of Social Sciences and Its Relation to Philosophy. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Zeitlin, Irving M., 1987, Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory. PrenticeHall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

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Border Crossings between the Legal and the Social On the Interface of Law, Sociology and Anthropology in India Manisha Sethi

The entanglement of the twin disciplines of anthropology and sociology with law has had a long career. Beginning with Marx and Weber, who were both trained as lawyers — indeed Weber’s first academic appointment was as professor of law – and Henry Maine and Lewis Morgan, also professional lawyers before being feted as founders of anthropology, both disciplines demonstrated a keen interest in law. The influence of sociology or anthropology on legal studies was conversely much less, until the rise of the ‘law and society’ movement in the 1960s. This chapter looks at the mutualities and hostilities that underlie this relationship and the field that has developed out of this cross-fertilization. It makes a case for interdisciplinarity and argues for the cessation of suspicion across disciplinary boundaries that can sometimes mar imaginative enquiries and critical scholarship. In the latter section of the chapter, we map the evolution of the sociology of law in India, paying special attention to how it is taught— in both sociology and law departments. My own position as a commentator on the practices of sociology is precarious, having never taught in a sociology department. But perhaps distance and the forced interdisciplinarity of the centres I have been at, have allowed for a clearer evaluation. The Legal and the Social Maine remains a foundational figure in sociology and anthropology. Even when the high tide of evolutionary theories ebbed, his jural model remained central to social anthropology, especially the structural functional theories. Indeed, Gluckman often argued that Maine’s Ancient Society should be the one book that anthropology aspirants should be familiar with. It pointed not just to Maine’s influence but to the key role that law played in early social theory.1 From its inception, sociology envisioned itself as dealing with legal ideas: Weber with his typology of legal thought is of course the archetype; for Durkheim too, legal rules, with their ‘negative, obligatory and prohibitive aspects’, appeared as paradigmatic examples of social facts, which were at the heart of his sociology. Slowly, however, the discipline pushed law into a corner satisfied with looking at it only as part of a wider sociology of professions, devoting attention to legal actors or institutions and their interactions within an organizational setting. Social theory DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-9

136  Manisha Sethi expelled law, as it were, both as a source of its abstractions as well as a subject about which theories about the social could be formulated. It was only in the 1960s, in the United States, with the birth of the law and society (or more broadly social sciences) movement that law was summoned back. But this is a tale that has often been reprised2 and I do not wish to reproduce it here except to add that this period witnessed a great deal of stimulating work with the appearance of new concepts such as legal culture and legal consciousness. It was in fact in anthropology more than sociology that studies in law had continued, examining in particular the disputing processes, institutions and practices which helped maintain social control among non-western, non-literate peoples. While it expanded the idea of law and legal processes beyond the fold of the state, the anthropological desire to retrieve ‘pristine traditional societies’ (the shadow of colonialism ever visible) – often tended to produce portraits of societies frozen in time, whereas even legal pluralism in its early phase invoked the picture of two parallel legal regimes – the traditional and the colonial, as though they existed in silos. Decolonization and the rise of post-colonialism complicated this picture, forcing legal anthropologists to acknowledge the influence of colonialism and the manner in which the law was implicated in it (as Martin Chanock famously noted, law was at the cutting edge of colonialism3). To bring in a more nuanced historical context, questions of power seeped into studies of disputing process, and as anthropology started to depart from its foundational concern with ‘other cultures’, the insights derived from ethnographic studies of law in small scale societies began to be applied to modern industrial societies. Legal pluralism, for example, a key concept developed by anthropologists to illustrate the co-workings of colonial and indigenous law in the colonies found its way from anthropology into the study of modern western industrial societies4 (which had hitherto been seen as societies in which one single body of law flowed from the state). This had the effect, above all to break down the borders between legal anthropology and legal sociology. Law and sociology/anthropology were pulled together in a variety of ways. Collaborations between lawyers and anthropologists were not unknown, and the most successful of these were between the law professor Karl Llewellyn and the anthropologist Adamson Hoebel (then only a novice), who together produced The Chayenne Way in 1941 – collecting stories from elderly Chayenne and shaping them into cases to investigate what they called the ‘law ways’ and ‘law stuff’ of the tribe. For many years, The Chayenne Way occupied a place only second to Malinowski’s Crime and Custom in the legal anthropology canon. June Starr, legal ethnographer extraordinaire, also took law courses and taught at a law college after a long stint as a teacher of anthropology. There were other ways in which anthropologists were implicated in the project of law. In the United States, anthropologists got embroiled in the Indian Claims Commission litigation starting in 1946, appearing for the tribes, offering evidence of Indian sovereignty over the land they occupied – while some appeared on behalf of the federal government to contest precisely those claims.5 In 1978, the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences founded a multidisciplinary working group comprising lawyers/jurists and anthropologists/sociologists

Border Crossings between the Legal and the Social 137 called the ‘Commission of Folk law and Legal pluralism’. The stated goal of the commission, in its own words, was both theoretical and practical: to contribute to the resolution of problems that arose from the interaction of folk law and state law, and to secure ‘the future of ethnic groups and social groups, governed by folk law in the modern world’.6 On the whole, the post-Cold War era saw a turn towards newer issues which had not engaged earlier generation of legal anthropologists: they became more directly involved with questions of justice through their work on indigenity, gender, violence and genocide, mass incarceration and even international criminal courts.7 This was also spurred on by the rise of Foucauldian studies of state and governmentality in the social sciences and critical legal studies in law. Where there was law (and law seemed to be everywhere in the modern world), there could be found legal sociologists and anthropologists. Insider/Outsider If sociology’s affair with law has been uneven, its interdisciplinary claims and overtures have very often been regarded with suspicion, if not outright hostility by those located within the disciplinary bounds of law. Laura Nader recalls the indignation of lawyers and jurists at interdisciplinary conferences in the 1960s, questioning her authority to speak about law when she had in fact not received any training as a lawyer.8 Only an ‘insider’ steeped in internal learnings of law could speak authoritatively about the subject. The external view was not only deemed alien but also an unsympathetic one, attempting to cast law in the mould of the social, thus stripping it of its distinctive understanding of legal processes and institutions.9 There is of course a parallel (there must be several, but this resonates most with me, having taught at the Centre for the Study of Comparative Religions) that a sociological perspective colonizes and reduces religion to something else (namely the social – whether as the collective in Durkheim’s writings, ideology in Marx’ and so on), leaving it eviscerated and much the poorer. (Only a practitioner – preferably from within the tradition – was truly capable of understanding the beliefs, motivations and values that a religious person held.) Empathy may be a valuable aspiration, but was well-nigh impossible for the outsider. Sociology’s intersection with a range of fields – law, religion, art, literature and even science – has always been accompanied with this tension that lies at the heart of the project of inter-disciplinarity. It is the patrolling of disciplinary boundaries, anxieties about invasive outsiders, fears that one’s own discourse and perspective could be pushed out by those produced in another disciplinary setting. This is all the more so in a discipline such as law which is not simply a field of academics but a practice – an institutional setting of central significance to the modern world. Indeed, many legal scholars unsympathetic to the conjunction of sociology and law argue that the primacy granted to the social by sociologists is entirely misplaced. By demarking the regulating norms, upholding the ‘ordered normality of society’ and correspondingly, confirming the ‘marginality of the excluded’ or the deviants, it is law, they argue that brings into being the social. Without law, society remains an absent, elusive concept, even an impossibility incapable of definition.10

138  Manisha Sethi Why should then a lawyer be interested in a sociological perspective? Why do litigants care about sociological theory? Could a sociology of legal behaviour have any relevance for the legal actors themselves? Ultimately, then, what can sociology bring to the table of law? Invoked constantly is the mantra that ‘sociologists must be on tap, and not on top’ – implying that law and legal scholarship could summon the services of sociology when needed (mainly to feed into policy, for example, by providing the judges with sociological data about a range of things: from crime to race and caste, education and so on) and banish it again when its limited uses had been exhausted. Indeed, the majority in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, which held racial segregation in the US schools to be unconstitutional, leaned heavily on social science research about the deleterious impact of racial inequality on education, thus setting a precedent for judicial reliance on sociological material. Closer home, in dismissing the challenge to the Government Order of 1950, which forbade the grant of reservations to those members of the Scheduled Castes who had converted to Christianity, the courts bemoaned the lack of an ‘authoritative and detailed study’ of Christian society which could establish that caste disabilities continued to attach to the converts even in their adopted religion. Thus, sociology could be a source of datum for courts and legal actors – but on law, and more specifically legal doctrine or legal ideas, they were seen as offering nothing at all, except perhaps a historical context within which certain legal ideas emerged. This has an interesting consequence though. When judges and lawyers look towards sociological or ethnographic material, they also willy-nilly admit concepts and theoretical frameworks produced in academia into the courtroom. For example, the dominant (and conservative) understanding of caste and tribe in Indian sociology or the anthropological understanding of religion as a ‘system of symbols’ produced legal common sense about these concepts which are key to public discourses today. Even as law is the major producer of meaning today, authorizing a certain worldview, legal ideas are not so divorced from social science academia, as one would be inclined to imagine. Cotterrell has noted that on the whole, sociologists themselves too thought of their own interests as lying outside the doctrinal – indeed, they were quick to condemn and dismiss the lawyer’s perspective as doctrinaire –and principally in the domain of the patterns of behaviour and organization of the legal actors and institutions. This resulted in mutual suspicion and a positivistic characterization of each other’s fields.11 But this begs the important question: How can we be non-reductionist, on both sides, and yet take seriously the entanglement of law and society? Perhaps sociologists should take more seriously the interpretive choices that lawyers and judges make, how they tread warily across the minefield of rules and regulations and how they debate and haggle over doctrine and the social processes that frame these interpretations and negotiations. Sociology’s implicit understanding of law as a field of social experience, its ability to systematize and to abstract while being grounded in the empirical are what congeal in a sociological perspective. Such a perspective is necessarily ‘transdisciplinary’,

Border Crossings between the Legal and the Social 139 according to Cotterrell (emphasis in original), and he urges lawyers and legal scholars to stop resisting or suspecting it of colonizing ambitions. Sociology and law ought not to be seen in competition with each other – one ready to supplant the other, instead a sociological perspective can be found anywhere – in any disciplinary location, not necessarily tied to the apron strings of sociology departments.12 The ‘law in context’ movement traversed beyond the traditional or orthodox exposition of legal rules and signalled the broadening of the study of law by locating legal phenomenon in their multiple contexts, drawing upon a range of source material, from a diversity of disciplines. Many fine examples of what we would consider to be sociological writings on law come from those located squarely in the disciplinary realms of law: Alan Norrie’s introduction to criminal law does not seek to explain the general principles of criminal law as other standard text books do – on the contrary, he subjects each of these principles to a penetrating social analysis. Crime, Reason and History is an erudite and irreverent guide to the tensions and contradictions that riddle criminal law, which he traces to the contending reform ideologies of 19th century England. In the late 1970s, when ICSSR commissioned specialists to chart out the terrain of the discipline as part of its bibliographic survey of sociology and social anthropology in India, it turned to the well-known legal scholar Upendra Baxi to survey the state of the sociology of law. (Professor Baxi was also the keynote speaker at the 46th All India Sociological Conference in 2021, which had as its thematic, Constitution, citizenship and minorities, again foregrounding how crucial law is to contemporary social and sociological questions.) If law is central to the way in which the social is constituted and if law itself cannot escape it’s embeddedness in the social field, then perhaps the best recourse would be to not quibble about disciplinary purity but to draw upon the methods and insights of both – and indeed to see both sociology and law as marked by a plurality of approaches, methodologies and theoretical frameworks. The most cutting edge work being produced in the area today disregards the inviolability of disciplinary boundaries without necessarily shying away from its own roots in a disciplinary location. To be interdisciplinary – or even transdisciplinary – is not to be ‘undisciplined’.13 Law and Society in Indian Universities The Law and Society movement in the United States thrived in the post-World War era, with its promise of new entitlements and rights, most specifically the New Deal. A concomitant proliferation – the heralding of the Republic and the Constitution, was seen in India too, but the connections in academia remained weak and scattered. Below, I undertake a rapid mapping of the ways in which law makes an appearance in sociology departments and the imprint of sociology in institutions of legal education. I will demonstrate that inter-disciplinarity in teaching on both ends remains feeble and derives from a positivistic understanding of law as well as the distinctive trajectory that post-colonial sociology took.

140  Manisha Sethi The ICSSR’s bibliographic surveys (1974,1985, 2000, 2009 and 2014) were meant to not only reflect the state of the various branches and specializations but in many ways to also define the areas which needed further research, thus giving an impetus to those areas (from Patel). The first two surveys (conducted by Veena Das and Upendra Baxi, respectively) perforce turned to material being produced outside sociology departments, ruing the lack of research in the area within the discipline. Writing in the 1960s, Das pointed out that the field was nascent and there was no common ground or any debate on these issues. Sociologists had not produced even a solitary study of the ‘corpus juris for any social group’ (cited in Baxi, p. 5), nor were disputing processes – a staple of legal anthropology in the West – of any central concern to Indian sociologists. Writing a decade later, Baxi begins by demonstrating the continued remarkable scantiness of ‘sociological research into legal processes and institutions’ and yet is able to produce a relatively voluminous report. It was published as a stand-alone text in 1985 with additional bibliography.14 Baxi’s resolution is to tease out socio-legal questions, themes and frameworks even on works which are not necessarily or directly produced under the signage of sociology of law – but which could nonetheless serve as starting points for a sociology/anthropology of law in India. He wishes to introduce these materials to legal scholars and to direct the sociologists’ attention to submerged socio-legal themes and to emphasize the necessity of engaging with law more frontally and in a more refined way. In that sense, Baxi’s survey is both a call for a greater and more intimate fellowship between academic lawyers and legal social scientists and the hope that it would spur the creation of taught courses such as Law and Society, Law and Social Change, Legal History and Legal System. The title of the book, ‘Towards a Sociology of Indian Law’, contained a provocation: it seems to be asking if Indian materials would produce a distinctive sociology of law, and what relationship it would bear to the field? But this is not the space to discuss that. The third survey in 2008 (the 2000 survey did not include a review of SoL) by J.S. Gandhi, however, self-consciously breaks from Das’ anthropological/ethnographic framework and Baxi’s ambitious eclecticism to focus only on formal legal institutions.15 This has the effect not only of resurrecting the older distinctions between anthropology and sociology but also of marking out state law as the only legitimate arena of the sociology of law. This reflected the scepticism many legal sociologists in the West too exhibited regarding the anthropological imperative to include within the ambit of law, norms and rules located outside the state.16 Gandhi’s logic was that a more tangible and narrow focus would allow the field to grow roots as well as enable comparative studies of the legal systems and cultures of India and the West. Gandhi, however, does not abandon Baxi’s call for including within the sociology of law the works of scholars located both in legal and in social science institutions. In Indra Deva’s edited volume produced under the auspices of Oxford in India Readings in Sociology and Social Anthropology17 – also reviewed at length by Gandhi –only about a fourth of the 21 contributions were by sociologists – the remaining were by practising lawyers or law professors. From the beginning, therefore, we have seen the blurring of disciplinary boundaries when it comes to the sociology of law, even in its early years.

Border Crossings between the Legal and the Social 141 Teaching Sociology of Law in Indian Universities Most university sociology departments will offer an elective in sociology of law, which are designed towards introducing students to the relationship between law and sociology, starting usually with sociological jurisprudence of the Harvard Law professor Pound; classical (Marx, Weber and Durkheim) and contemporary perspectives (Foucault and Bourdieu). There is nothing fundamentally wrong in the way curricula are designed, but the restriction of law into a single course doesn’t allow for a fuller discussion of a whole range of issues: rule of law, legal pluralism, criminal justice, critical race theory (or how in India, e.g., caste can be central to the criminal law enterprise), authoritarianism or even a fuller discussion on how the disciplinary debates may impinge on unravelling many of the public debates of contemporary times. India may be discussed as an illustration at best. How can preventive detention or terror laws be central to our understanding of the relationship between state and society, or law and authoritarianism, for example? Discussion on crime and punishment will invariably start with Durkheim and end with Foucault. Legal pluralism is reduced to debates over personal laws and that too mostly to Muslim personal laws. There is little link to other courses and concepts (be it citizenship, ethnicity, violence or state) in the law and society course, but that is also principally the limitation of how much one can teach in a single course. Law seems to have been absent from papers such as kinship despite the obvious connections and despite Maine’s foundational status. At the University of Bombay, for example, the paper on family, marriage and kinship has one entry on law in the form of debates on personal laws; law is occasionally and fleetingly discussed under political systems (law and social control) in papers in social anthropology/sociology, especially when discussing acephalous societies. Papers on the sociology of India – the staple of sociology departments across the country – even with a pronounced slant towards caste and village studies, have ordinarily spent little time on non-state legal systems, its paraphernalia, actors and practices and how they intersect, cohere or clash with state legal systems. It is not for a lack of materials – early anthropologists were cognizant of the relative influence of the two systems in the life of the village, though they took different views of it. For M. N. Srinivas (himself a trained lawyer in the tradition of the classical sociologists), the concept of dominant caste was tied ineluctably to the administration of justice. This local justice was not necessarily more just but operated in the same codes that the villagers and peasants understood – it was not the distant, awe-inspiring and therefore all the more alien justice of urban courts of law, according to him.18 Justice is not meted out on points of law but on considerations of the person and the circumstances that those persons find themselves in. Much as Srinivas lamented the sociologists’ blindness to the presence of law in ‘unofficial panchayats’ and their tendency to shy away from recognizing it as such (note Gandhi’s dismissal in his review), he did not develop these into a theory about law. This is in sharp contrast to Max Gluckman who also dealt at length with the ways in which traditional African chiefs’ courts brought ethical concerns into their judicial pronouncements, but gave us the (much contested) ideas of the ‘reasonable man’,

142  Manisha Sethi natural justice in Africa and above all, legal universalism. We do not therefore associate Srinivas with legal anthropology in the way that we (rightly) do Gluckman. Srinivas’ structural functionalism with its focus on structural unity (the phrase he uses is ‘well-defined structural entity’), however, fundamentally limits a processual view of law. Kathleen Gough’s attentiveness to conflicts and the instability of the coherent village is all the more richer for such an understanding.19 She seeks to explain the tensions that riddle a Tanjore village and its wider linkages with the world outside, evident in the enfeeblement of caste law and the mobilization of secular law to rebuff excommunication, by those transgressing the traditionally accepted and acceptable sexual boundaries. It is only through Baxi’s superimposition of a thematic on Gough’s work that we can see her writings on the village as concerned with law at all. In addition to these blind spots, which shrink our pedagogical vision, the vagaries of teaching a sociology of law were tied to the vicissitudes of the way in which sociology in India developed and the social came to be defined, especially the manner in which the particularities of the Indian social came to be conceptualized within a traditional civilizational/culturological perspective. Questions of power were largely expelled not only from the study of law in Srinivas but also generally in Indian sociology which was dominated by the functionalist model. There were other figures such as A. R. Desai and later, Dhanagare who insisted that sociology was social critique but it was Srinivas’ sociology which was institutionalized. Besides, Desai was not interested in theory building. What he did was to produce multiple volumes of extensive documentation of state repression against certain groups – the working class, the rural poor, Adivasis and Dalits – and demonstrate how this was carried out under the garb of welfarism.20 It laid bare the ideological and cultural functions performed by the Indian state and, in particular, the dominance and permeation of upper caste ideology in the legal system despite official avowals of secularization and equality. Though theoretically inchoate, Desai’s engagement with questions of power and dominant institutions could have powerfully challenged the easy alignment between state, law, social change and sociology’s own place vis-à-vis these.21 A remarkable parallel to Desai’s work is that of K. Balagopal, the mathematician turned civil liberties lawyer, whose reports from the field were regularly published in Economic and Political Weekly. Among others, his scathing critique of the Supreme Court’s understanding of terrorism and violence in upholding the constitutionality of TADA and POTA are deeply sociological.22 Yet, Balagopal does not make it to any teaching courses. Elite nationalist visions of state and society, and the territorializaton of these visions meant that Indian Sociology always had an uneasy, if not hostile relationship, with all those (groups, ideas and movements) who articulated difference within this territorialised nation-state. And since law and its mobilization was at the heart of the state’s dealings with them, sociology of law in India neglected, perhaps deliberately silenced these question. Up until recently, it preferred to comfort itself with studying the legal profession, the relationship between lawyers, clients and touts.23 So, while the entry of new groups and voices may have challenged the earlier dominant ways of doing sociology, the business of teaching sociology – especially

Border Crossings between the Legal and the Social 143 outside the rarefied preserves of JNU and D. School –has remained very much still yoked to the earlier model. One exception has been the institution of courses in gender/women studies, which have also been the most fecund sites for critically engaging with the questions of law and society inside the classrooms. But that could also partly be the result of the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender within policy and academic discourses. A University Grants Commission committee in the early 2000s in recognition of the direction of the social sciences towards inter-disciplinary orientation made wide ranging suggestions for overhauling the sociology curricula in colleges and universities. It recommended, among others, the inclusion of two courses at the undergraduate level: one titled, ‘Social Welfare and Social Legislation’ and another ‘Crime and Society’.24 A cursory look at the course outlines points to its imbrication in a social work perspective and more broadly flags the way in which Indian sociology has viewed itself as part of the national developmental state. It is not surprising, therefore, that questions of ‘disorganization’, which surface regularly in courses such as ‘social problems’, tend to dominate. Anthropology departments by comparison fare even poorly. Few offer courses in the anthropology of law or explicate the centrality of law to early anthropological theory. Perhaps because most departments veer heavily towards physical anthropology, social anthropology has been the preserve of sociologists and sociology departments with anthropology departments being dominated by physical anthropologists. Where law does appear centrally, it is in the courses and programme in forensics, which are taught in a non-reflexive and uncritical way, reproducing all dominant and statist definitions of crime and criminality – precisely what sociolegal studies endeavour to challenge.25 Only recently have law schools included sociology courses, making them mandatory for obtaining degrees. Even in law universities or faculties of law situated in larger multidisciplinary universities, where now increasingly, the teaching of sociology is mandated, the sociology of law remains neglected. At the more elite national law schools, one may find courses which draw on the themes and perspectives developed by the sociology and anthropology of law and state but otherwise in the more traditional law colleges and law departments in universities the field remains barren.26 The Faculty of Law at Delhi University surprisingly still does not include any social science papers – either as mandatory or electives.27 On the whole, social sciences have remained an addendum in legal education to be endured and passed. The courses on the whole remain unimaginative and unexciting and rarely move beyond what can be taught through BA level textbooks. While foundational courses are necessary, law students often wonder why they should be reading about Marx, Weber or Durkheim. For the last two years, I have been teaching sociology to law students at NALSAR University of Law and this has presented me with a novel situation. While the paper in Sociology of Law is very much rooted within the tradition of sociology, the students are not. Indeed, at the start of the course, they wonder why they should be learning about a subject which appears to them far removed from the world of professional law, which they

144  Manisha Sethi expect and aspire to enter. One of the tasks is, therefore, to make the course appear relevant to law students – not in terms of skills – but as providing a theoretical grounding and a lens through which they can challenge the received understanding of the law. My hope in that paper is to expand the statist, normative ideas about what constitutes law, allowing them to interrogate state law and excavate its skeins from power (whose law, to what ends), thus shifting the attention from studying doctrine to processes. Lastly, even when looking at state law, a grounding in the paper would takes us to multiple sites of the production of law and legal doctrine – away from constitutional and appellate courts to lower courts, the police station, the correctional centres, the prisons and even the streets. Today, socio-legal research seems to be flourishing in India: anthropologists, sociologists and lawyers have never been more interested in law as a social phenomenon – both in state and non-state settings – as they are now. As a lawyer friend joked recently, there are more ethnographers than lawyers to be found in Tis Hazari courts these days! The success and the heavy traffic at the LASSNET conferences year after year is testimony to the efflorescence of the field. The founding of law and governance centres at JNU and later at Ambedkar University also point to the institutionalization of interdisciplinary focus and framework. And yet, this richness is not necessarily reflected in our classrooms – either in sociology or law departments. The radical and critical edge of law and society has been blunted in teaching programmes. For Cotterrell, legal ideas must be viewed sociologically but our teaching practices largely seem to have abandoned precisely such a view. Notes 1 John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, ‘Reflections on the Anthropology of Law, Governance and Sovereignty’ in Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling: On the Governance of Law, Ed. Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Julia Eckert, Routledge, UK, 2009. 2 For a succinct account, see Susan Silbey, ‘Law and Society Movement’ in Legal Systems of the World: A Political, Social and Cultural Encyclopedia (ed. Herbert M. Kritzer), Vol. II: E.-L., Santa Barbara, California: ABC CLIO, pp. 860–863. 3 Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia, New York, Cambridge, 1985. 4 John M. Conley and William O’Barr, ‘Legal Anthropology comes Home: A Brief History of the Ethnographic Study of Law’, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 27 (41), 1993, pp. 41–64. 5 Bens, J, ‘Anthropology and the Law: Historicizing the Epistemological Divide’, International Journal of Law in Context, 12 (3), pp. 235–252, 2016. 6 “Note on the Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism”. People’s Law and State Law: The Bellagio Papers, edited by Antony Allott and Gordon R. Woodman, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011, pp. 355–356. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9783110866285.355. 7 See Sally Engle Merry’s Foreword to Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction by Mark Goodale, New York University Press, New York, 2017. 8 Laura Nader, The Life of Law: Anthropological Projects, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2002.

Border Crossings between the Legal and the Social 145 9 David Nelken, ‘Blinding Insights? The Limits of a Reflexive Sociology of Law’, Journal of Law and Society, 25 (3), Sept. 1998, pp. 407–426. 10 Peter Fitzpatrick, ‘Being Social in Socio-legal Studies’, Journal of Law and Society, 22 (1), March 1995, p. 106, p. 109. 11 Roger Cotterrell, ‘Why must Legal Ideas be Interpreted Sociologically?’, Journal of Law and Society, 25 (2), June 1998, see especially p. 173. 12 Cotterrell, op.cit., p. 183. 13 Nelken, op. cit, p. 412. 14 Upendra Baxi, Towards a Sociology of Indian Law, Satvahan, New Delhi, 1986. 15 J. S. Gandhi, ‘Research in Sociology of Law’ in Yogesh Atal (ed.) Sociology and Social Anthropology in India (ICSSR Survey of Advances in Research), Pearson, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 558–598. 16 Brian Z. Tamanaha. 1993. ‘The Folly of the ‘Social Scientific’ Concept of Legal Pluralism’. Journal of Law and Society 20 (2): 192–217. 17 Indra Deva (ed.), Sociology of Law, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005. 18 M. N. Srinivas, ‘The Social System of a Mysore Village’, in Mckim Marriott (ed.) Village India: Studies in the Little Community, University of Chicago Press, Illinois, 1955, esp. p. 18. 19 E. Kathleen Gough, ‘The Social Structure of a Tanjore Village’, in Mckim Marriott (ed.) Village India: Studies in the Little Community, University of Chicago Press, Illinois, 1955, pp. 37–52. 20 A. R. Desai, (1986), Violation of Democratic Rights in India and (1990), Repression and Resistance in India, Bombay, Popular Prakashan. 21 See Sujata Patel, ‘The Nationalist-Indigenous and Colonial Modernity: An Assessment of Two Sociologists in India’. The Journal of Chinese Sociology 8, 2 (2021). https://doi. org/10.1186/s40711-020-00140-9. 22 K. Balagopal, 1994. ‘In Defence of India: Supreme Court and Terrorism.’ Economic and Political Weekly 29 (32): 2054–60. 23 Recent work in this area has begun to offer a powerful critique of statist visions of law, social order and the institutions and agencies of law and order. Nandini Sundar’s long standing engagement with Bastar has produced academic work, popular critiques and case law. See also Pratiksha Baxi’s review of how the more recent ethnographies of state law in India challenge the categories normalized under doctrinal law. ‘The Ethnographic Gaze on State Law in India’, in Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology, Edited by Marie-Claire Foblets, Mark Goodale, Maria Sapignoli, and Olaf Zenker, Oxford University Press, 2020. 24 UGC Model Curriculum, https://www.ugc.ac.in/oldpdf/modelcurriculum/socio.pdf. 25 Delhi University Anthropology Department offers an M.Sc. and a certificate course, while Lucknow University offers a self-financing post graduate programme in Forensics. The DU syllabus can be accessed here: http://du.ac.in/du/uploads/RevisedSyllabi1/ Annexure-13.%20M.Sc.%20Forensic%20Science.pdf and Lucknow syllabus here: https://udrc.lkouniv.ac.in/Content/DepartmentContent/SY_088970d7-3a17-4056-addd1fc78a9932f0_2.pdf. 26 To give only one example, but a fairly representative one: In Lucknow University, the Faculty of Law offers three papers in sociology: Sociology I (which designates law and society under sociology of professions thematic), Sociology II is a paper on Indian Society with a very conservative twist and the third paper is not sociology at all but social work. In effect, there is no sociology of law paper really (https://udrc.lkouniv. ac.in/Content/DepartmentContent/SY_702b594f-3a02-4da1-bf27-ab17f76800f7_30. pdf). 27 For full course list, see http://lawfaculty.du.ac.in/files/Subjects_and_Courses_of_ Study_for_LL.pdf.

10 Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work Neetha N.

Introduction Women’s work has always been an important area of social science research in India, especially after the landmark report on the Status of Women in India in 1975. Research in the late 1970s and 1980s was dominated by the definitional and methodological issues of measuring women’s work. The failure of macro data, which the 1975 report relied on to capture women’s employment became the subject of engagement. Since then, undercounting of women in economic activities, especially in agriculture and household industries was highlighted by many scholars. Field insights were used to critically look at existing data sources and campaigning for its revisions. Possibilities of alternative methodologies to study women’s contribution to economic production were an area that received much attention in this context. The Time Use Method (TUS) was suggested as an alternative, alongside an engagement with data collection agencies towards improving existing concepts and the conduct of ongoing field surveys. These studies were taken up largely within the methodological orientation of the discipline of economics following principles of sampling and using a predesigned questionnaire amenable to quantitative analysis. Apart from these scholarly interventions to count women workers, women’s employment dimensions and their segregations were also areas of interest. Research, especially by economists outlined labour market biases and inability of women to compete with men given their low educational background and asset ownership. On the other hand, there has been an interest among sociologists working on family studies in the unpacking of women’s housework, where middleclass women were the subject. Thus, for a long time, contemporary studies on women’s work were mostly within the disciplinary boundaries of economics or sociology, both preoccupied with their set priority areas of interest. This is not to completely write away the contributions of other scholars, especially anthropologists who have provided a nuanced account of women’s life in different contexts. With the emergence of women studies as a separate discipline though the scope of interdisciplinary research on women’s work was to expand, the orientation of the discipline towards cultural and literary studies limited this possibility. Globalisation brought forth multiple challenges in the study of the world of women’s work. These changes demand command over multiple-disciplinary DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-10

Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work 147 approaches and methods which is a challenge that women studies scholars specialising in women’s work are faced with at different levels. The paper traces these challenges and highlights the importance of triangulating research methods to studying women’s work in contemporary times. With the changes in the world of work since the mid-1980s and the emergence of a specialised stream of women studies, the disciplinary boundaries of researching on women’s work have been somewhat shaken with pluralist methodological approaches finding space. However, given the location of women studies within certain disciplinary frameworks, the use of interdisciplinary frameworks remained limited. The last section of the chapter, before the conclusion elucidates the author’s personal journey in the study of women’s work from the disciplinary location of economics; highlighting the contestations and negotiations that marked the research in an attempt to develop the required approach to study women’s labour and work. Research on Women’s Work in India – The Earlier Phase Women’s economic contribution was not a priority area of analysis or engagement till the 1970s. As noted earlier, it was only after the 1974 Committee Report on The Status of Women in India, that women’s economic participation became a subject of attention. Since the debate on women’s absence or exclusion from economic activity was set by analysing the Census data, an obvious outcome of the discussion was the critical examination of data sources, including the various concepts and definitions used. The question of invisibility of women’s work was one of the central concerns. Efforts to identify issues and accordingly revise concepts and definitions followed by the two macro data sources – the Census and the National Sample Survey (NSS), occupied an important part of research on women’s work. Labour statistics in general are all based on an international understanding of National Income whereby the economy and its resources and activities are framed into two broad categories – those that contribute to production and those outside. This distinction is central to the conduct of labour force surveys in India where the effort is to record only that which enters into the realm of production; which has seen some revisions over time. In censuses and NSS employment surveys the definition of work is largely framed to capture activities that produce income and thus many of the activities that women do are not accounted for fully or are overlooked completely (Krishnaraj, 1990). Analysis of the concepts used by the data sources led to an exposition of the limitations of the framework and its focus on materialand market-based production. Self-employed and unpaid helpers in family farms and enterprises, mostly being non-market-based forms of work, are difficult to enumerate and are not given much importance in such data. Women’s contribution in unpaid economic work, got international attention following Boserups analysis of women’s contribution to agriculture. This further helped in exposing the limitations of such data systems on women’s employment in the context of developing countries. Boserups analysis of the subsistence economy and the need to count the activities that women performed in subsistence production paved the way to a series of studies on women’s work and the undervaluing of such work that women

148  Neetha N. performed in India. The challenge was to capture the less marketed contribution of women to production which are not easily identifiable and thus mostly counted as part of women’s housework. The understanding of home-based wage work though was not so developed in the 1970s and the importance of capturing such work was also a subject of engagement. The focus of most studies undertaken during this period was on getting women’s productive work, which are unpaid and unrecognised, integrated into the data systems and analysis. The studies also highlighted the issues with male enumerators and information being collected from male heads of households, thus reflecting a male perspective. This, it was argued would lead to issues in the classification of domestic and productive work and also invisiblising women’s contribution to seasonal work, especially agriculture (Agarwal, 1985). The need, wherever possible, to hire female investigators who would be familiar with the dimensions of women’s work was also an important demand for addressing issues of undercounting (Jacob, 1982). The study by Devaki Jain and Malini Chand (1982) using time disposition modules to measure women’s work and their economic contribution in the two states of Rajasthan and West Bengal as a follow-up survey to the 32nd National Sample Survey Organisation survey needs to be noted. The study revealed the problems in the concepts that were followed by the NSSO that made secondary and subsidiary activities of women invisible and unaccounted. The revisions that were followed in the subsequent rounds led to a better measurement of women’s economic participation and the method was found to provide the required data for enumerating women’s work. To quote, ‘for getting a rule of thumb profile of activity patterns, in order to not only enumerate work but to quantify the type or pattern of employment or unemployment less rigorous time disposition modules could be adequate’ (Jain & Chand, 1982). However, those not in labour force continue to remain outside the subject of these surveys, except for some information made available for two categories of activities – only domestic work – (code 92) and those attending domestic duties and also engaged in gathering fuel or fodder for household consumption – (code 93) (Sen & Sen, 1985).1 The idea of a uniform and homogenous system of production which underlies the concepts used in the data systems continues to be a subject of engagement. Though the limitations of quantitative surveys to capture larger contextual dynamics were acknowledged the meanings of the statistical categories of ‘employed’ and ‘unemployed’ and the lives of poor women were not a subject of much engagement in this period. The story of the marginalisation of women due to economic development and their concentration in employment that is discriminatory and exploitative led to studies that looked at the conditions of women in different unorganised sectors during the 1980s (Banerjee, 1990). Studies on working conditions of women in different sectors captured women’s concentration in low paid jobs, long hours of work, sexual abuse of women, employer’s attitude and other demand side issues, and lack of legal protection. Segmentation and resultant segregation of workers were taken up by feminist economists leading to the questioning of existing economic

Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work 149 theories2 which had a narrow view of these dimensions (Kalpagam, 1986). Rural women and their marginalisation also led to studies that examined specificities of economic work and housework, difficulties in separating the two when economic work is not monetised and its impact on women’s overall status (Krishna Raj, 1983). The importance of looking at the social profiles of women workers in terms of their social group, age and number of children, extent of domestic work, etc. were sometimes highlighted in the understanding of women’s segregation. Alternative Methodologies and Approaches within Disciplinary Boundaries Engagement with data sources and its limitations also initiated discussions around developing alternative methodologies for data collection. The answer to the issues of undercounting women was found in the time use survey which records as to how people spend their time across various activities (Jain, 1996). Time use studies were thus a methodological innovation in the context of India, though they have been in use in other countries for measuring women’s contribution to house work. The focus of the first Indian time use surveys was economic activities, largely meant to arrive at better estimates of women workforce. Time use surveys were all framed in the methodological tradition of economics and social and cultural dimensions are not given its due in most surveys (Neetha, 2010). The disciplinary orientation and thus a methodological distinction that Indian surveys took are reflected in one of the reports of the sub-committees3of CSO, where the activity-classification of time use studies followed in developed countries have been marked as ‘sociological’. In all the attempts to measure and study women’s work through time use surveys, there was a clear separation of economic and non-economic activities. Though some studies brought out possibilities of overlaps, in the final analysis, such separations were marked with most activities regrouped into ‘employment’, and ‘household work’. While the possibilities of overlaps and continuities across the two broad spheres of women’s work were acknowledged in the context of rural women or home-based workers in urban areas, other spheres of economic engagements followed a dual path with clear separation often made between the world of work and the domestic sphere. This has sustained the duality in the study of women’s work whereby house work and care work were mostly formulated as separate analytical categories without much interconnection, though patriarchy may figure in the discussion on gendered division of work in the workplace. There were also few studies that explored the relationship between women’s work status and its impact on children and the family. The obsession with family studies in sociology where women’s work did figure was limiting, given its focus on the middle class. Sociological research highlighted the importance of cultural factors including conjugal family and kin ties requiring special analysis in the understanding of women’s work (Rao, 1990). The insularity that marked most research within family studies failed to capture the larger economic and social contexts within which these families and relationship were defined and redefined. Even though the economic changes that marked the 1980s impacted families in

150  Neetha N. multiple ways, the failure to incorporate these into the analysis of families resulted in the partial analysis of women’s role. There have been few attempts to define and analyse housework in its relationship to the larger productive economy using the socialist-feminist framework. The study by Krishna Raj and Patel (1982) analysing housework highlighted the material basis for women’s oppression as against the cultural argument. The deficiencies inherent in the use of the ‘unitary’ household model followed in economics as an analytical tool however, did not see much critical engagement, though inequality between members of the household was an underlying concern that got attention. Thus, to quote Rajadhyaksha and Smita (2004) ‘much of this research was done within the traditions of economics and sociology, and due to ideological constraints, subjects of these predominantly exploratory studies remained rural women involved in the non-formal employment sector’. Thus, disciplines seem to have segmented research on women’s work with clear dominations of disciplines in the study of different aspects of women’s work lives. Economists were mostly into the measurement of women’s work or their segmentation, largely preoccupied with the issue of invisibility of women in national statistics. Since making visible and measuring the economic contribution of women, unpacking of paid and unpaid economic contributions of women, and its linkages to economic development were central to these discourses, house work and its relation to women’s paid work remained outside such analysis. Though social restrictions and women’s role in reproductive labour in a patriarchal social structure was recognised at a social level, these issues remained passive in the analysis of women’s work participation or their segregations. Thus, the larger analysis remained economistic which while questioning a gender-neutral understanding of many labour market theories could not add much to the larger analysis. On the other hand, sociologists focused on family studies that too mostly of rural or middle-class women. Globalisation and Its Challenges: Informality, Multiplicity of Work, Social Migration, and Interconnected Workspaces The two key developments that have had much impact on the study of women’s work has been the high degree of informalisation and the employment of migrant workers that accompanied the globalisation process. Though informalisation and labour migration is a general feature for all workers, these developments are of particular importance for women (Banerjee, 1996). The invisibility issue that was largely in the context of women working as unpaid workers in agriculture or family businesses, became an issue of women wage workers as well (Banerjee, 1997). The expansion of home-based workers who are part of the subcontracted part of production both in export-oriented and domestic production, because of their intermittent and informalised relationship became a matter of concern. Apart from invisibility their integration into the discussion as self-employed workers, especially due to a lack of acknowledgement of such forms of work in data systems was a point of contest and debate. The underrepresentation and problems in defining the sector under the segment of self-employed demanded separate enquiries even in

Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work 151 so far as to capture the size of the sector including women’s share. The system of wage payment, mostly piece rate, and their vulnerabilities due to exclusion from all labour laws, as homes being workplaces are issues that demanded separate approaches and methodologies. Studies on specific sectors and locations using qualitative methodologies including case studies became central apart from engaging with macro data and its limitations. Multiplicity of work that many informal sector workers are used to on a daily basis is also an issue that does not get reflected in many disciplinary framings. Classification that is followed in macro statistics, be it NSS or Census, have clear criteria for measurement. Apart from issues with defining work, and its bias towards market-oriented work, all work that falls even within the market are also not captured. For example, any person who reports that she/he has not contributed to an economic activity for at least a month, is not accounted as a worker. This renders all those who have not been able to work for at least a month invisible as workers including their other employment details. Of these only those who have worked for the major part of the year are counted as principal or main workers and the rest are subsidiary workers. Because of women’s engagement in seasonal agriculture and also with inaccuracies in the reporting of women’s work, a large proportion. An important issue with statistics on subsidiary work is that it is available only for those who are not main workers and thus are engaged only in subsidiary employment. Many women, for that matter men too, do combine main work with other jobs on a regular or occasional basis, which does not figure in such databases. Further, the data on subsidiary work captures only one subsidiary work and ignores the rest of the subsidiary activities. Those who undertake multiple economic activities are the most vulnerable of all informal sector workers such as women workers and if the statistics are not able to capture the fuller details of their economic life, such data is bound to be of not much use. Survey schedules most often follow the above understanding and do not accommodate for multiple economic activities, as it is difficult for such information to be measured and put to data coding and entry. Scholars are thus bound to use a mixed method in such contexts, with a predesigned schedule capturing information that could help in making some comparative analysis with the macro data. The qualitative part of the questionnaire then captures the rest of the details that are required for a comprehensive picture, which is then also used to highlight limitations of the macro data. The division, of productive and non-productive work, that modern systems of national accounting has brought into practice has been challenged further for its inability to capture the fuller dimensions of women’s work with changes in the economy. The importance of looking at women’s work beyond the binary frames of production and outside production, through the lens of social reproduction also gained much acceptance. The increased evidence supporting the inevitability of an integrated analysis demanded skills in multiple methodologies and methods. Further the understanding of private homes separated from workplaces which is reflected in labour regulations was also a challenge. Home-based work and paid

152  Neetha N. domestic work are the two categories that have directly challenged the notion of home as a private space distinct from a workplace. How does one analyse homes as workplaces, especially when women are hired as wage workers? Can it be anlaysed just as any other workplace? On the one hand, social organisation of the family, its social and cultural specificities need to be brought in including those that govern division of work and responsibilities. On the other hand, family also needs to be framed as a site of labour relationships, which may not always be market based but may have characteristics of the market. Apart from market, labour relationship could also be located in other forms of extraction based on patriarchal or feudal relations. Distress-driven migration of women from rural to urban areas was also a feature of the globalisation period, especially since the late 1990s. Women’s labour migration has never been central to the discourse on economic development due to their underrepresentation in migration data. Approaches to migration in development discourses and theories have been largely preoccupied with the understanding of a transition from an agrarian to an industrial or even post-industrial economy. The broad understanding that governs this development paradigm is that of the migration process leading to some form of settlement at a particular destination (perhaps urban), usually accompanied by occupational/sectoral change, enhanced incomes and perhaps some degree of social mobility for the migrants. For this reason, the official migration data relates primarily to population movements, and not labour migration leading to difficulties and a degree of fuzziness in trying to distinguish the two. In actuality, the experience in India has been of a relatively slow rate of urbanisation, predominance of agriculture in total employment and the expansion of more circular forms of migration in, to, and around rural as well as urban areas (Mazumdar et al., 2013). Among other issues, one major disagreement over official migration estimates is largely on the inability to recognise short-term and circulatory migration. The underestimation of short-term and circulatory migration then leads to an underestimation of migration by the women and other marginalised segments of the population such as SC and ST. Apart from the issues of undercounting of non-permanent migration where women dominate, the mono-causal approach to migration that tends to make a rigid distinction between economic and social reasons for migration is an important issue for women’s migration. The respondents are required to give only one reason for migration and in the case of women invariably the reason for migration is identified with marriage. This has led to large-scale undercounting of women’s labour migration which makes existing macro data sources on migration not of much use for the study of female migration. Given the labour market segregations and concentrations that are evident from the employment data, women are mostly employed in few sectors and occupations which demand a separate enquiry into these sectors and forms of employment (Banerjee, 2018). Finally, studies have also noted circulation of family units or male-female pairs for wage labour in some industries/ activities that are virtually completely manned by migrants. For example, pairs (jodis) are recruited (by contractors) to work in the brick kilns or in the harvesting of sugarcane. These patterns suggest that the social or employment relations are

Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work 153 not always based on individual units of labour as assumed by existing approaches to the study of labour migration. Such forms of employment using migrant women that combine social relations for capitalist economic production has challenged the usefulness of disciplinary frameworks. In a globalising world, many changes in employment are connected to larger changes in the organisation of business relations or trade relations, where international relations also play a critical role. Thus, researching on work requires the researcher to locate the research in a broader political economy context. The larger economic context is important without which it is difficult to analyse existing employment practices and conditions of work. Researching on work was faced with these challenges, with global interconnections leading to multiple sites of production and flexible specialisations. It raised challenges to the understanding of economic and social relations only through the study of regional or local specificities including regulatory frameworks. These changes challenged the notion of social knowledge and identities framed within geographical or social boundaries and thus the primacy of local specificities in methodological processes. New methodological questions were poised on the possibilities of knowing interconnected social and economic outcomes which are beyond geographical or cultural boundaries. Though there are global parities in outcomes, the local contexts were found central in social experiences which then called for a larger integration of methodological practises and processes. Digital labour is one sector that immediately demanded such explorations. Women working in call centres or any IT company are integrated through networking technologies that defines outsourcing of work and global interconnections (Upadhya & Vasavi, 2006). Thus understanding of their work in such a system would definitely require a global approach. Local regulatory frameworks do affect technological conditions and labour relations; thus national contexts are also important. However, how global or national contexts play out in workplaces which are micro-representations of local social relations where multiple inequalities are operational is the important question. Studying or researching of these different levels requires different methodological approaches and skills, which can come only through interdisciplinary methods. Collection of data using multiple methods is only part of the problem of studying women’s work. The most challenging test is in terms of integrating these seemingly diverse sites and data collected through multiple methods of enquiry into a coherent whole (Upadhya, 2008). The Emergence of Women Studies and the Scope of Interdisciplinary Frameworks The initial proponents of women studies in India unlike in the West did not see women studies as a discipline but as a perspective that could be deployed keeping one’s disciplinary orientation. Thus, a feminist economist is one who uses women studies perspective to explore, understand, and analyse an economic issue. Research studies that were taken up in the initial years of women studies in India were all by scholars from various disciplines. Women studies centres that were

154  Neetha N. set up in the late 1980s under the UGC guidelines were not conceived as teaching or academic centres but as facilities for extension of services, even though some centres were also involved in research and interventions. It was only in the last about 15 years that women studies have gained a disciplinary existence with the teaching of women studies taken up in various universities. With women studies transitioning to the stature of a discipline, initially at the level of research degrees and later to post graduate teaching, offering a course on research methodology became pertinent. Research methodology being a compulsory course for research scholars as per UGC guidelines, various women studies centres have formulated syllabus for teaching the discipline. Most of these centres are not recognised as departments by the UGC and thus there are no assured grants. With uncertain funding, the centres are managed by limited faculty who are hired on short contracts. These departments are often headed by an adjunct permanent faculty who is from other departments of the university concerned and in most cases the faculty are drawn from linguistic departments, largely English. This did influence academic work in these centres and thus women studies research at large had a good segment of research work limited to textual analysis of literary writings. These centres attracted scholars mostly from linguistic backgrounds with limited students coming from other social sciences and almost none from economics. Given this background, the syllabus is heavily biased towards either literary and cultural studies or sociological frameworks and methods. Though, feminist methodology does not suggest any particular methodology or methods in research, there has been a turn to sociological and cultural studies approaches in women studies in India. Not only is there a preference for cultural or sociological approaches and methods, but also a complete disengagement with quantitative data in the teaching of women studies. Teaching of research methods in various centres is also dependent on the availability of faculty who can handle quantitative methods is often an issue. Thus, even when quantitative methods are part of the course outline, it is rarely taught. On the other hand, economics seems to be the only social science that have completely ignored feminist criticisms and remained closed to changing its frameworks and methodologies. Further, the general understanding that women studies is a soft subject has led to the neglect of the subject by students of economics – rarely does one find a student from economics background taking up courses in women studies centres. This has furthered the closure of an opportunity for possible methodological engagements between women studies and the discipline of economics. Further, given existing priorities and specificities in terms of research questions and methods within different disciplines, research themes and their analyses are often narrowly defined (Anandhi & Swaminathan, 2006). This lack of training on such methodologies coupled with the issue of orientation to economic questions are the reasons as to why many research scholars from these centers limit their research to topics that do not require analysis of quantitative data. Women’s work if it is taken up as a research theme is mostly from a sociological perspective which is based on field surveys with narrative case studies

Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work 155 being the research method. Rarely, such studies use a combination of frameworks and methods, though minimal macro data may be used sometimes to lay out the context. Thus, though interdisciplinarity underlines feminist methodology, research work in is found to largely remain within the bounds of cultural or sociological studies. This has resulted in a situation where critical research on women’s work is happening outside women studies centres often within a defined disciplinary framework. Practising Interdisciplinarity in Research on Women’s Work Given the diverse nature of workplaces, work relations, the complex and dynamic relationship between personal, social and economic contexts as outlined earlier, no single disciplinary framework or methodology can analyse many developments on women’s work. Studying feminisation of an export industry, which got much attention in the late 1990s with globalisation, for example, requires the researcher to track developments at various levels. The issue of feminisation was my first field research on women’s work and in the following section, my field learnings are summarised highlighting the limitations of my disciplinary framework, economics, in such a research. The Challenge of the Macro, Micro, Local, and the Individual

The study of Tiruppur knitwear industry and its feminisation was my first empirical research work. The boom in Tiruppur knitwear industry needs to be understood for analysing women’s work and conditions. The boom, a product of changes in international trade agreements is the larger context. But why Tiruppur, and no other hubs of export production also requires to be explored for understanding the full story. Apart from global interconnectedness, local conditions are also equally important, the only advantage being that one can identify, track, and analyse these changes much more easily (Upadhya, 2008). Local entrepreneurs and their specificities thus also need investigation.4 In addition to these broader details, industry-specific changes also have to be understood. Changes in production organisation and technology and its relation to the market are critical to analyse work processes, labour absorption, and conditions of work. The extensive use of subcontracting relations, linked to the uncertainty in export market if not brought into the discussion on women workers there is no meaning. Equally important is the technological shifts which have simplified work tasks and have facilitated divisions and specialisation of tasks. Labour and product contracting systems have defined work and labour relations leading to a large presence of migrant workers, which brings in complex dimensions related to rural migration. The above changes cannot fully explain the feminisation of the industry. Labour movement also needs to be understood. Trade unions and their strong presence in many factories which forced employers to honour annual wage increases have been a critical factor in employer’s decision to resort to large-scale job work and labour

156  Neetha N. contract system. Docility and life cycle-related turn over are attributes that defined women workers’ preference leading to feminisation. These varied dimensions and interlinkages were striking. Each of the above-outlined dimensions demanded different methodological perspectives and methods of data collection. The understanding that data could be easily collected from identified respondents and that it is the selection of sample which is the real challenge in any field survey, that one studied was found failing. The various categories of people (employers, trade union leaders, women workers, state officials, and other key informants) to be approached, how many from each of these categories, gaining access and the technique/tools of data collection all had to be handled during the course of the field work. As discussed earlier, the field study in Tiruppur was my first experience of collecting data on from women workers. The difficultly in locating workers and initiating required conversations were also a challenge. While physical access to workers was often easier, making workers interested in the study, getting their consent and time to share their work and struggles of life to an outsider was the issue. Thinking that it could be because of my inability to convince workers with my mix of Malayalam and Tamil, my search for Malayalee workers began. However, talking to them proved all the more difficult as they preferred not to talk to or reveal their identity and details to another unknown Malayalee. One had to then take the help of trade union activists to address the issue of gaining access to workers and to convince them about the importance of sharing information on their work life. The issue of confidentiality of such information was also an issue that needed reiteration given the precarious nature of employment. Workers feared retaliation from employers if they were found criticising the employers or supervisors. Even when such access was gained and the questions were not too personal, cooperation varied. Even when one was able to establish contacts with workers at a peripheral level, the idea that the data from a large number of women workers (300 women workers) could be collected using a predesigned questionnaire was challenged every now and then. Canvassing a predesigned schedule and how the sight of a paper keeps away workers from sharing the required information was also a learning. The often asked question as to how many more questions are left indicated their lack of interest in sharing their work details to anyone who cannot engage in a more personal conversation with them. Their cooperation was a sign of their obligation to the mediator who facilitated the process. However, there were few women workers, who did not bother much about our limited questions and went beyond what were put to them, bringing aspects of how women’s work is a complicated concept with its relation to economic and social attributes and the importance of understanding women beyond subjects of pure economic analysis. The link between economic outcomes and larger social structures became increasingly evident in many interactions and this opened up the need to capture detailed life narratives of women workers. Case study was thought as an option in this context and a small number of women were selected for a detailed qualitative study.

Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work 157 Multiplicity of Methodologies, Field Data Collection, and Analysis

Studying the process of feminisation in the context outlined earlier is beyond the scope of any one discipline and thus requires interdisciplinary orientations and many researchers are thus forced to adopt interdisciplinary frameworks. It is not only in the context of export production that such complexities exist, but are now part and parcel of all sectors, including agriculture though the specificities could differ. Recognising the limitation of disciplinary approaches and methods there has been a conscious effort to push the boundaries which did yield useful insights into the understanding of the process of feminisation in export-oriented industries. Through field work, which evolved over time, different sets of data were collected: (1) Secondary data available on garment exports, publications by mill owners association, pamphlets and notices of trade unions, state departments; (2) write ups based on conversations/interviews with employers, managers, supervisors, and other key people connected to production including labour recruiters, contractors, government officials, industry association leaders, and trade union leaders; (3) data collected from women workers based on a structured questionnaire; and (4) detailed case studies of select women workers; (5) newspaper clippings, pamphlets, posters, etc. The challenge does not end with collection of data. Pursuing multiple research methods will lead to generation of diverse types of data. Different methods of analysis and interpretive strategies are needed to handle these data sets. Analysis of different types of data cannot proceed independently, for they also need to be put together and interpreted simultaneously through a kind of ‘triangulation’ process. The mixing of methods did generate conflicting evidence which had to be tackled through an analysis of power relations, which could be social or economic. Learnings from Field Research

The need for a fluid approach to study women’s work was becoming more and more evident with further field-based work. In the study of any category of women’s work, there could be some larger patterns that emerge in terms of broad profiles of workers, their work place characteristics, and employment conditions. Each workers’ personal histories and lives and how these make of what we see of them remains the most interesting and most difficult part to capture, analyse, or theorise. The complex and layered stories of their life are impossible for any such study to capture through a research that is aimed at their being a woman worker. From the sharing of life histories of each worker, as a researcher one tries to capture or underline what can be generalised across workers linking it up to broader structural issues. The advantage in interacting with a large number of workers helps the researcher in drawing conclusions that are relevant for a group but may not reflect individual experiences or struggles. The other option is to do a few life histories of workers which help in describing and positioning an individual or few individuals in a larger social and economic context. The power of the detail is definitely what makes such studies meaningful.

158  Neetha N. However, the specificities of the few women that are studied limits insights into the lives of the larger group of women and their issues. To capture the larger context and its dynamics along with the specificity of the individual studied it is critical to follow a mixed approach. This was one methodology that I followed in many studies. A larger survey of a group of workers is carried out using a semi-structured questionnaire which then becomes the data on the basis of which larger issues of employment, working conditions and its relations to social and demographic profiles are studied and analysed. This approach demands resources as the sample size for is often large. Apart from broader workplace issues of pay and working conditions, the survey also captured the double burden of women and its impact on workplace relations if any, their daily negotiation and struggles like travel and housework. This approach demands resources as the sample size is often large. This is followed up by a detailed qualitative case study of select workers with whom detailed conversations both on the information already collected and other relevant dimensions, including their personal journey are made. These are different from embedded ethnographies in anthropological studies as interviews may not last for more than few hours or may be split over one to three days for short durations. In such short engagements, rapport building may not be sufficient to claim completeness, since the researcher or her/his team is an outsider in various ways. But even then this data is rich enough to help the researcher to analyse women’s work in its multiple dimensions and linkages. Conclusion Given the complexity of the world of work, with workspaces and work relations becoming diverse, disciplinary approaches and methods have limited scope in understanding work. This is especially so in the context of women’s work which is also closely linked to the social and cultural contexts which in itself are being redefined by larger economic changes. Women’s role in social reproduction and its interaction with economic structures are critical in the analysis of women’s work. The binary understanding that defines many disciplinary approaches to study on women’s work fail to bring out the interconnected nature of economic and other forms of work and its continuities. This demands for a more ‘interdisciplinary and ‘synthetic’ approach combining learnings, concepts, and methods from various disciplines. Interdisciplinary methodologies and tools have now become an accepted mode of research in the understanding of women’s labour and work, recognising the limitations of disciplinary frameworks. However, these developments are yet to find their space in women studies centres, which given their location, should be the space for such engagements. Notes 1 Though there has been pressure from feminist economist to include code 93 into the calculation of female workforce as such women are undertaking economically productive activities, there has been no acknowledgement of this in the official understanding (Mondal et al., 2018).

Interdisciplinary Concerns in Researching Women’s Work 159 2 Human capital theory, one of the main frameworks used to analyse labour market segmentation, attributes labour market segregation as an outcome of education, skill and productivity differences and thus women’s segregation into lower paid occupations is treated purely as an economic outcome. 3 https://mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/Sub-Committee_REPORT_ Final_4dec12.pdf 4 Local entrepreneurs are mostly ‘Gounders’, an intermediary caste group that occupies good economic and political power in the state. They are traditionally a farming community with huge land holdings and have played a key role in making Tiruppur, a knitwear export hub.

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11 Engaging with Interdisciplinarity through Disability Studies Shubhangi Vaidya

Introduction: Defining Interdisciplinarity The idea of interdisciplinarity has gained currency in recent years in the domains of teaching, research, policy and practice across the world. Chettiparamb (2007) traces its usage to the mid-1930s in the United Kingdom. The ‘Unity of Science’ movement in the United Kingdom in the 1930s and 40s campaigned for it and in the United States the student movements of the 1960s challenged disciplinary boundaries and called for an interdisciplinary understanding of social realities that were closer to practical life. The volume ‘Interdisciplinarity’ published by the OECD in 1972 called for a reorganization of academic and administrative structures along interdisciplinary lines; however, a decade and a half later, revisiting the concept, they found that not much momentum had been gained. However, it appears that within the North American university system, the idea of interdisciplinarity has taken roots (ibid). Chettiparamb points out that the major arguments for interdisciplinarity are based upon ‘normative’ or ‘transcendent’ viewpoints. The former argues that the gaps or lacunae within disciplines can be filled up by interdisciplinary work; the latter challenges the value of disciplinary thinking in today’s world and argues for ‘transdisciplinarity’ that would far surpass anything that disciplinary approaches might achieve (p. 13). At this juncture it would be useful to clarify what is understood by a ‘discipline’. According to Repko (ibid) disciplines are ‘scholarly communities that specify which phenomena to study, in order to advance certain central concepts and organizational theories, embrace certain methods of investigation, provide forums for sharing research and insights, and offer career paths for scholars’ (p. 4). It is their central role in determining careers that gives disciplines their power and autonomy and enables them to exert such control over the object of study and methods to be used; theories and concepts and epistemology. The term ‘interdisciplinary’ derives from ‘inter’ that is between, and ‘discipline’; in other words, an activity between or in the midst of two or more disciplines. The ‘inter’ in interdisciplinary is, according to Repko, a ‘contested space’ in which the complexity of the problem at hand shifts the focus from individual disciplines to the study of the problem itself; thus, ‘disciplines are not the focus of the interdisciplinarian’s attention; the focus is the problem or issue or intellectual question that each discipline is addressing’ DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-11

162  Shubhangi Vaidya (Repko, p. 7; author’s italics). Disciplinary insights illuminate various dimensions of the problem that can then be integrated or combined to provide a more holistic picture. The ultimate result of such an integration of multiple perspectives is certainly an advancement on the extant knowledge on the subject at hand, facilitating a deeper and more comprehensive approach. While several ‘generalist interdisciplinarians’ consider it a dialogue or interaction between two or more disciplines, ‘integrationist interdisciplinarians’ argue that ‘integration’ is at the core of interdisciplinarity and should be the ultimate goal (Repko, 2012). Integration involves the combination of theory, tools, techniques and approaches across disciplines to arrive at a unified way of addressing complex problems and issues which cannot be adequately captured within a single disciplinary framework. The complexity of the problems experienced in contemporary times, from climate change and pandemics to diversity, inclusion and human rights to issues of peace and conflict warrant a far more nuanced discussion and treatment and insights from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The issue of disability which shall be taken up for discussion in this chapter and specifically the category of autism, requires a shift in perspective from exclusively bio-medical framings and understandings which reduce the disabled ‘subject’ to a bundle of deficits and anomalies to be acted upon by ‘experts’. Interdisciplinary perspectives unfold the lived experiences and challenges of persons with disabilities by considering the constructed and culturally variable notions of the category, the systems and institutions which constrain and define their ‘personhood’ and the ways in which persons with disabilities negotiate with and challenge and contest these constraints. Disability Studies as an Interdisciplinary Area of Enquiry Addlakha (2013) observes that disability has been the subject of study and a major concern in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, social work and education resulting in the emergence of fields or subspecialities like rehabilitation science and special education. Health, illness and ageing, in particular have been important sites for the study of disability. From a sociological lens, certain classic sociological formulations on illness and disability are significant. Talcott Parsons’ (1951) analysis of the ‘sick role’ wherein the disabled persons by virtue of their illness/disability are temporarily out of the pale of normal social roles and activities and give themselves over to the medical professionals whose duty it is to alleviate their situation. Sociological theorizing on disability as social deviance and a stigmatised identity emerged in the seminal work of Erving Goffman (1963) and his contemporaries Fred Davies (1961) and Robert Scott (1969). Focusing on the interaction between the disabled and non-disabled Goffman (ibid) observed that a major aspect of the disability experience is the constant struggle against devaluation of one’s identity as a person who is not quite regarded as a legitimate member of human society on account

Engaging with Interdisciplinarity through Disability Studies 163 of the stigma of disability. The stigmatized individual may ‘pass’ as socially acceptable by employing strategies such as proving competence, using humour, disguising difference, etc., in other words, minimizing the social discreditation that stigma causes. If stigma cannot be successfully ‘managed’, then the individual is cast away to the margins of society and often internalizes the ‘spoiled’, stigmatized identity. Goffman’s symbolic-interactionist approach takes into account the shared meanings, beliefs and expectations that undergird social life and shape our understandings of what is normative and what is ‘deviant’. As the locus of disability is the individual’s body or mind, the onus of ‘passing’ or fitting into ‘normal’ society also falls upon the individual. In another formulation, Fred Davis (1961) studied the strategies adopted by physically disabled persons in their interactions with the non-disabled to ‘disavow’ their ‘deviant’ identity by gradually building bridges and reaching out to non-disabled people, sharing information about their lives and experiences and ‘normalizing’ themselves in their eyes. The attempt is to sensitize non-disabled persons to relate to the disabled persons as though he or she were non-disabled, a goal Davis presumed is desirable to most disabled persons. Both Goffman and Davis stressed the positive aspects of ‘normalization’ attempts of the disabled, to make their way and find their place in a society which devalues difference as deviance. Offering a more complex and nuanced understanding of stigma, Robert Scott (1969) analysed disability as a social role. His powerful work, The Making of Blind Men (1969) exposed how blind people are conditioned to become dependent and compliant because these are the attitudes expected of them by service professionals who hold the key to the powerful blind services system. Unlike Goffman and Davis, Scott (1969) also described several forms of resistance put up by blind people who rejected the subservient and docile role they were expected to perform. Inevitably though, these attempts result in the blind person alienating himself/herself from other people. Both medicine and traditional sociological perspectives were critiqued by disability studies scholars for pathologizing disability and viewing it as a ‘problem’ or ‘deviance’ that needs fixing or remediating. In the interdisciplinary field of disability studies, disability is seen in a comprehensive and holistic way not just as a medical or psychological ‘problem’, but a social and cultural construct and a political category. Disability studies as an ‘interdiscipline’; drawing insights from political science, sociology, anthropology, history and psychology has challenged and contested traditional ‘disciplinary’ boundaries that treat disability strictly as a bio-medical construct or problem in need of fixing, and opened it up to a more comprehensive holistic analysis that focuses upon the multiple oppressions and discriminations experienced by persons with disability in all areas of social life. The emergence of the ‘social model’ of disability developed in the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s by a group of social scientists, many of whom had disabilities, marked a major shift in the discourse on disability conceptualizing it as a social category and the product of disabling attitudes, barriers and environments (see Barnes and Mercer, 1996; Finkelstein, 1980; Oliver, 1990,1996)

164  Shubhangi Vaidya Understanding Disability: Medical and Social Models Defining disability is not easy. It is important to keep in mind the preferences of disabled people themselves, and to also be aware of the fact that ‘acceptable terminology’ changes over time, and from one culture to another. For instance, the term ‘handicapped’ that was earlier used to describe persons with disability is today considered a negative one. The term suggests the image of a person with ‘cap in hand’, begging for alms, and was rejected by disability rights activists themselves. Terms like ‘differently abled’ or ‘special’ are also used widely, but are also criticized by many activists because they do not capture the discriminations faced by persons with disabilities, and gloss over the experience of disability by using flowery language. In India, the Hindi term ‘apaahij’ is also not considered appropriate, and ‘viklaang’ was the term officially used. Recently, the term ‘divyang’ has made an appearance in the official discourse; and is considered by some disabled people as being rather patronizing. The bio-medical perspective on disability or the ‘medical model’ mentioned earlier, regards disability as a medical condition or problem to be set right and cured, whereas the social model regards disability as a social condition, produced by negative social attitudes, inaccessible physical and social environments and exclusion and rejection of persons with disability from the ‘normal’ activities and institutions of society. As per the medical model, disability is an abnormality or pathology residing in the affected individual. It places the responsibility or blame on the individual or the family (e.g. genetic defects, bad parenting or an individual’s ‘bad habits’ may be blamed for ‘causing’ the disability). Disabled individuals are ‘patients’ and are described clinically; for example, ‘the patient suffers from autism/cerebral palsy/Down’s syndrome’; they are expected to avail of medical therapies or treatments that will help to cure or fix their condition, or rehabilitation so that they can adjust to their condition. Medical professionals, psychologists, special educators and other ‘experts’ will carry out interventions/therapies and work on rather than with them, thereby creating a power relationship between the disabled individual and the medical profession (Goodley, 2011: 7). The ‘social model’, unlike the medical model, views disability as socially constructed; persons with disability are discriminated against by the so-called ‘normal’ society; denied access to education, employment, leisure and recreation, and thus forced to lead lives of isolation, dependence and rejection. The ‘solution’ or ‘cure’ is not medical or rehabilitation, but rather, social and political ‘inclusion’ and participation in the affairs of society; accessibility of places and services, and promoting a positive self-image and identity. The slogan ‘Nothing about us without us’ and the demand for rights of persons with disability emerged from this understanding (Goodley, 2011: 13). The growth of the Disability Rights Movement in the United Kingdom and United States which spread across the world, and the emergence of ‘Disability Studies’ as an academic field, were the outcome of this new way of thinking about disability. Disabled scholars from the fields of sociology, political science and other disciplines attempted to understand and

Engaging with Interdisciplinarity through Disability Studies  165 theorize about the disability experience, and disability studies emerged as an interdisciplinary research enquiry along the lines of women’s studies, race studies, queer studies, etc. In this context, two key terms – ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ – came to be used to distinguish between the medical and social dimensions. Impairment has been defined as ‘lacking all or part of a limb; having a defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body’. In contrast, the term disability, as per the social model outlined above, emphasizes how society denies a person with an impairment his or her human rights. ‘Disability is the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by contemporary social organisation, which takes little or no account of people who have impairments, and thus excludes them from the mainstream of social activities’ (Disabled Peoples’ International, 1982). The social model played an important role in paving the way for disability movements, empowering people to embrace their disability as an identity and making disability issues a significant political agenda in social policy. At the same time, it was critiqued for its disregard of the embodied nature of disability, the very real experiences of pain and debility that accompanied impairments and the exclusively ‘constructivist’ framing of disability that overlooked differences in embodiment and subjectivities. Feminist scholarship in particular has critiqued the social model on grounds of it sidelining the subjective, bodily experiences of disabled people particularly women, who grapple with the double burden and devaluation of their gender and disability. In the case of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, it is the very nature of their impairments that causes them to be stigmatized and denied their personhood, rather than just barriers in the environment, as the social model would put it. The experiences of persons with developmental disabilities, children with disabilities, care givers and families remained largely unvoiced within the discourse of the disability movement and disability studies. Indeed in certain western disability contexts, parents are seen less as allies and more as the representatives of the ‘other side’ – the very society that attempts to imprison persons with disability into relationships of subordination and dependence. Mehrotra (2013: 35) writes of disability as ‘the quintessential postmodern concept, because it is so complex, so variable, so contingent and so situated. It sits at the intersection of biology and society and of agency and structure’. Feminist disability studies and critical disability studies have complicated and enriched the domain by bringing in crucial intersections of gender and disability and critical social theory in foregrounding intersectionality beyond simplistic notions of identity. Mehrotra (ibid, 49) draws a comparison between disability studies to other sub-disciplines like women’s studies and Dalit studies that have ‘consistently challenged mainstream formulations of society and social processes’. She writes: ‘Critical disability studies also share the project of qualitative, participatory, reflexive and emancipatory knowledge production for bringing change in the everyday lives of PWDs through mitigating stigma and pro-disabled policy execution. Disability studies much like women’s studies have been construed as open and interdisciplinary’ (ibid, 49). It is against this backdrop that I situate my academic and activist engagements with Disability Studies.

166  Shubhangi Vaidya Engaging with Disability Studies: Autism and the Family in Urban India My engagement with disability studies emerged as an outcome of my doctoral research (Vaidya, 2016) later published as a monograph in 2016, which is a qualitative, ethnographic study of families of children with autism spectrum disorder, a developmental condition that profoundly impacts the social, communicative and imaginative capacities of the affected individual and may be accompanied by odd or challenging behaviour and sensory difficulties. Deploying reflexivity and a feminist understanding of the ‘personal’ as the ‘political’ I sought to draw upon my own situation as a parent and care-giver of a child with autism and study the way in which similarly situated families cope with their child’s disability and make sense of it. My engagement with autism began when my son was diagnosed with the condition in the year 2000 when he was three years old. Since then I have had the opportunity to meet persons with autism and their families from many parts of the country and the world and to be a part of the emerging discourse through my membership in a parent driven organization, advocacy and scholarship. My doctoral dissertation (Vaidya, 2008) attempted to show how families made sense of the child’s disability and mobilized personal, social and cultural resources to cope with their circumstances against the backdrop of the structural and interactional transformations in the urban space. By focusing on the realm of the ‘everyday’ I attempted to show how disability is experienced, negotiated and accommodated. The fieldwork strategy which relied upon unstructured narrative interviews and participant observation, elicited data on everyday routines pertaining to feeding, dressing, recreation, commuting, shopping, schooling, in other words, the activities and practices that form the bedrock of domestic life, in and through which families constructed the disability of the child and negotiated with it. Families built up and modified their routines around those of the disabled child and, over time, the special efforts and adjustments they made were ‘normalized’. My findings indicated that there is growing awareness and information about Western bio-medical conceptions of child development, ‘normalcy’ and of developmental delays. This growing awareness amongst young parents sits rather uneasily with more relaxed parenting styles of earlier generations, and ‘folk wisdom’ like boys being late talkers etc. This anxiety regarding ‘normal development’ appears to go hand in hand with the skewed, inegalitarian educational system, the competition for scarce resources like ‘good’ and ‘reputed’ schools, job prospects etc. and dwindling family support. Under these circumstances, the ‘mind-body’ dualism, characteristic of Western culture and the emphasis on intellectual capacities and capabilities as the markers of ‘normal’ personhood is gaining salience. In a culture where familism and respect for hierarchies has strong roots, the recent trends towards mobility coexist with the need for conformity. The ‘law-breaking’ or rule defying aspects of autism whose behavioural expressions confound and dismay the uninitiated make it a difficult condition to fathom and come to terms with (Shaked, 2005). How then do families make sense of their child’s disability? Through their narratives, certain

Engaging with Interdisciplinarity through Disability Studies 167 metaphors or images that represent their understandings of the disability emerged, including the conceptualization of autism as curse, as a product of ‘karma’, an enigma that is hard to explain, understand and predict, a state of permanent childhood and therefore also a sign of divinity. These metaphors clearly indicate the difficulties families face in dealing with the child’s symptoms and the manner in which cultural referents are drawn upon to ‘make sense’ of the disability and come to terms with it. Parents reported that they suspected that something was ‘wrong’ with their child when the social milestones and social reciprocity that are regarded culturally as the markers of competence appeared impaired, in other words, the child’s lack of social relatedness. The notion of the child’s autism as a breach, a rupture of order and regularity, came through sharply. The interface of the family with a medical system that views disability within a ‘disease-cure’ framework that has little meaning in the context of developmental disabilities like autism further frustrated them. A significant finding that emerged is that the onus for identifying the child’s problem rests squarely on the family. As a result, only those families that have the material and educational background to consult a variety of specialists and sometimes travel long distances, can hope to secure an appropriate diagnosis. Due to the middle- and upper middle-class profile of such families, the notion that autism is a Western disorder, the product of family fission and disengaged parenting, is further exacerbated. This has serious implications at the macro level, in terms of policy planning, welfare provisions, state sponsored intervention, etc. Moving on to the impact of the disorder on family relationships, it was observed that families find themselves isolated and pushed into a corner when confronted with a complex disability like autism. The child’s odd, sometimes disruptive behaviours make it socially awkward, embarrassing and difficult for contact to be sustained with kin and community. As has been mentioned earlier, care giving in the context of disability is a gendered phenomenon. The immense cultural weight given to the mother-child bond, the valourization of selfless ‘mother’s love’ and the expectations, internalized by mothers, that they must become ‘more than mothers’ came through sharply in their narratives. Fathers’ experiences reflected the expectations of masculinity and ‘responsibility’, the conflicts that sometimes arose between their bread-winning and nurturing roles. The impact of the child’s autism strengthened the marital bond through a common suffering and a shared concern for the best interests of the child in some cases, and led to complete divergence of goals and interests in others. The consistent pattern that emerged was that couples felt compelled to maintain intact the family unit for the sake of the child, even in the face of differences. The interactions between families and the wider community were frequently awkward and tense; while neighbours were, on the whole concerned but distant, strangers often reacted with curiosity, amusement or ridicule to odd behaviours exhibited by the child. While children with severe symptoms were regarded as deranged or mad, the mildly affected or high functioning ones managed to ‘pass’, usually with difficulty. A case study of ‘Action for Autism’, a Delhi-based parent directed Non-Governmental Organization was also undertaken. Its genesis from the efforts of a handful of motivated parents to a multi-pronged and dynamic organization at the

168  Shubhangi Vaidya vanguard of autism rehabilitation and disability activism illustrates how awareness, services and advocacy for intellectual and developmental disabilities has largely been driven by families across the world and in India as well. The core concern of the work was to examine how disability or difference impacted the contemporary urban family in terms of structure, function and agency, and how new forms of mobilization beyond the kinship circle assumed salience. The critical question to which every family seeks an answer: ‘what happens after us?’ underscores the urgency for the welfare state to intervene in ensuring human rights and entitlements to its most vulnerable citizens. This research drew me towards an eclectic range of sources from the domains of psychology, family studies, special education, cross cultural psychiatry, medical sociology and anthropology and women’s and gender studies apart from disability studies. Autism is a highly medicalized category which has been extensively researched by psychiatry and paediatrics, and the focus has largely been on therapy and treatment. My ‘discovery’ of disability studies led me towards considering both the complex and situated nature of the category as well as the lived experience of disablement and difference. As I write elsewhere: ‘Autism thus occupies a singular place on the continuum from the medical to the social model; it is held to be a biological disorder but manifests in social behaviour and normative social functioning; its nature can only be defined with reference to culture. It presents sociologists with a range of issues, human identity, difference, perception and subjectivity within a social and cultural context’ (Silverman, 2008) (Vaidya, 2017: 103). Intersections: Disability and Gender It was through my engagement with the lived reality of disability that a deeper engagement with caregiving and motherhood as a cultural and ideological construct emerged (Aneja and Vaidya, 2016). Apart from my findings on the experiences and narratives of mothers of children with autism, I also explored the connections between disability, sexuality and motherhood (Vaidya, 2015). The stigmatization of disabled women as either ‘asexual’ or ‘hypersexual’; their vulnerability to domestic and sexual abuse; their framing as needy dependents requiring constant care and therefore incapable of providing it; and their banishment from the domains of normative femininity and the prevalence of practices like sterilization of intellectually disabled women underscore the intersections between disability and gender across cultures. Despite the universal experiences of stigma and devaluation of personhood, cross-cultural and historical studies of disability are crucial in painting a nuanced picture rather than making sweeping generalizations based upon a discourse that has its origins in a specific, post War Western context. Mehrotra and Vaidya (2008) highlight precisely this issue in their chapter which reflects upon constructions of intellectual disability, personhood and masculinity in two locales – rural Haryana and urban Delhi. The feminization and infantilization of intellectual disability and the denial of age and gender appropriate roles to intellectually disabled men comes through sharply; at the same time, the salience of the category of

Engaging with Interdisciplinarity through Disability Studies 169 intellectual disability is greater in the urban context, where the ability to partake of formal education and prepare for white-collar jobs is more valued. Interestingly, the framing of a condition like autism as a ‘male’ disorder and the far smaller number of girls and women who receive a diagnosis, highlights how women often ‘mask’ their social anxiety or difficulties and often suffer greatly because of their strenuous attempts to live up to the gendered expectations of ‘normalcy’ and sociality. Delving into the lived experiences and narratives of women with autism can yield rich insights into the intersections of disability and gender. Bumiller (2008) writes that feminist disability scholarship raised new issues about identity formation and social exclusion, unsettling how feminists conceptualize gender, sexuality, reproduction, motherhood and caregiving. She underscores the fact that ‘autism is remarkable also for its significance to many issues at the core of women’s and gender studies, including gender identification, sexuality, motherhood, and the impact of new reproductive technologies’ (967). I raise the following questions in Vaidya (2019): ‘In the context of gender identity too, autism throws up interesting questions. How are gender roles “learnt” by persons whose disability/ difference affects social learning? …. Does autism complicate the process of “doing” gender? What can we learn about the constitution of gender identity through the lens of autism? And, from the perspective of experiential reality, how does being autistic and female translate on the ground, particularly in patriarchal sociocultural contexts?’ Intersections between different disability experiences, gender identities, and sexualities are fertile ground for further interdisciplinary research. Disability and Representation: Questions of Culture As a sociologist with an affinity to social anthropology, questions of culture have strongly informed my work in disability studies (see Vaidya, 2018a). The shifting, ever-changing dimensions of culture in a globalizing world, the reality of ‘multiculturalism’ and the post-modern turn which rejects the universal, totalising narratives of modernity have created spaces and places for difference and diversity in interesting ways. The emergence of ‘disability culture’ through formation of disability communities that come together to challenge exclusion and discrimination has both aesthetic and socio-political dimensions. Peters (2015) writes: ‘Notions of disability culture grounded in the personal and the aesthetic emphasise a way of living and positive identification with being disabled’. Solidarities based upon biological or genetic identities, as in the case of individuals with rare medical or genetic conditions have also emerged, and have been greatly facilitated by the expansion and growth of communication technologies and the internet. These ‘biosocialities’ pose an interesting challenge to the social model of disability as they foreground impairment and bodily difference as the basis for mobilization and advocacy of a specific disability group. ‘Autistic Neurodiversity’ is an example of such mobilizations, driven by autistics leveraging the internet to communicate and interact across temporal and spatial boundaries, unfettered by the compulsions of face to face interactions which many of them find difficult to initiate or sustain. Advocates of ‘neurodiversity’ hold that autism is not a ‘disorder’ in need of fixing,

170  Shubhangi Vaidya but an expression of neurological difference or diversity which must be valued and respected. While the concept of neurodiversity is gaining ground in India, more and more autistic ‘self-advocates’ are emerging and making their voices and choices heard and acknowledged. In my article on the representation of autism in India (Vaidya, 2020). I trace the multiple ways in which the condition has been framed, namely as ‘disorder’, ‘disability’ and ‘difference’. I explore bio-medical and psychiatric research and practice, activism and advocacy in civil society, and personal narratives and creative expressions like poetry and cinema and locate these within the global discourses on disability in general and autism in particular. Engaging with representations of disability in the creative arts is a productive lens with which to understand both the ubiquity and the ‘otherness’ of the category of disability. Popular culture is a rich repository for sociological analysis and authors like Patricia Uberoi (2006) have critically engaged with it in the context of family life and gendered relationships in contemporary India. In my exploration of disability and representation in popular Hindi cinema (Vaidya, 2018b) I attempt to unpack the themes in three popular ‘Bollywood’ films with disability as a central focus: Black (2005); ‘Taare Zameen Par’(2007 and ‘My Name is Khan’ (2010). The films mark a departure in the depiction of the disabled subject from earlier caricaturish attempts in popular cinema, and reflect changing understandings of the experience of disability. They also draw attention to lesser known disabilities like autism (My Name is Khan) and dyslexia (Taare Zameen Par) which have only recently gained salience in the Indian disability landscape. Read as ethnographic sources, these films document the changing trajectories of difference, personhood and neurodiversity in an increasingly plural world. Concluding Remarks Despite its ubiquity and inevitability in the human life course, disability is demonized and considered a ‘fate worse than death’. The existential frailty of the human body, the human need for care and our fundamental interdependence upon each other contest the notions of autonomy, independence and power. The complexity of the phenomenon of disability and the multiple subjectivities that it engenders, demands a nuanced approach that avoids essentialising and categorizing all disabled subjects under one conceptual umbrella. At the same time, the experience of stigmatization and marginalization is a universal one, and therefore disability finds place as one of the important axes of exclusion and discrimination. It therefore is a crucial area for social science research and theorizing. The ‘social model’ of disability reconfigured the category from a medical, individual one to a socio-political one, and paved the way for rights based approaches, inclusion and access. Feminist perspectives on lived experiences and embodiment complicated the category and introduced an intersectional lens. Disability studies as an interdisciplinary enquiry has been enriched by interventions across disciplinary locations – from the social sciences and humanities to public policy, law, arts and aesthetics. The need and relevance of disability studies has come into sharp focus in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interlinkages between the biological and the social, the

Engaging with Interdisciplinarity through Disability Studies 171 experience of segregation, isolation, contagion and stigma have brought home the everyday experiences of disability to the non-disabled world. The accommodations and flexibility in work and study that persons with disabilities had long appealed for, became realities in the ‘new normal’ with ‘work from home’ and online learning. The illusion of autonomy and independence, the fragility of support structures and the helplessness in the face of an unknown ‘enemy’ underscored the precarity of human existence. COVID-19 is more than a viral illness, it has upended our social, economic and cultural arrangements in profound ways and forced us to reflect upon their long-term viability and sustainability. It is not the virus that has disrupted ‘lives and livelihoods’ but rather an iniquitous, ableist social order. The fear of contagion unleashed by an unknown new pathogen and the staggering death toll across nations, ethnicities and races has forced us to confront our mortality as never before. The very systems and processes on which the contemporary world depend for its functioning, such as migration, travel, globalization – are found to be the carriers of the virus to every part of the world. The pandemic also provides us the opportunity to dismantle oppressive ideologies like ableism and remake a world order premised upon an ethics of care, respect for difference and fostering of diversity. Neurodiversity will play an important role in transforming these ideas into reality. References Addlakha, Renu (2013). ‘Introduction’ in Addlakha, Renu (Ed) Disability Studies in India: Global Discourses, Local Realities. New Delhi: Routledge: 1–31. Aneja, Anu and Vaidya, Shubhangi (2016). Embodying Motherhood: Perspectives from Contemporary India. Delhi: Sage-Yoda Press. Barnes, Colin and Mercer, Geoff (Eds) (1996). Exploring the Divide: Illness and Disability. Leeds: Disability Press. Bumiller, K. (2008). ‘Quirky citizens: Autism, gender and reimagining disability’ Signs 33(4): 967–991. Chettiparamb, Angelique (2007). Interdiscplinarity: A Literature Review. U.K: School of Humanities, University of Southampton. Davis, F. (1961). ‘Deviance disavowal: The management of strained interaction by the visibly Handicapped’ Social Problems 9: 120–132. DPI (1982) Proceedings of the First World Congress, Singapore: Disabled People’s International. Finkelstein, V. (1980). Attitudes and Disabled People: Issues for Discussion. New York: World Rehabilitation Fund. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall. Goodley, D. (2011). Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader. New Delhi: Sage. Mehrotra, Nilika (2013). Disability, Gender and State Policy: Exploring Margins. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. Mehrotra, N. and Vaidya, S. (2008). ‘Exploring constructs of intellectual disability and personhood in Haryana and Delhi’ Indian Journal of Gender Studies 15(3): 317–340. Oliver, M. (1990). The Politics of Disablement. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Oliver, M. (1996). Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

172  Shubhangi Vaidya Parsons, T. (1951) “The Social System”. Glencoe, Il. The Free Press. Peters, S. J.. “disability culture.” Encyclopedia Britannica, December 21, 2015. https://www. britannica.com/topic/disability-culture. Repko, Alan F. (2012). Interdisciplinary Research 2nd edition. New York: Sage Publications. Scott, R.A. (1969). The Making of Blind Men. New York: Russell Sage. Shaked, Michal (2005). ‘The social trajectory of illness: Autism in the ultraorthodox community in Israel’ Social Science & Medicine 61: 2190–2200. Silverman, C. (2008) ‘Fieldwork on another planet: Social science perspectives on the autism spectrum disorders’. BioSocieties, 3(3), 325–341. Uberoi, Patricia (2006). Freedom and Destiny: Gender, Family and Popular Culture in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Vaidya, Shubhangi (2008). ‘A Sociological Study of Families of Autistic Children in Delhi’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Vaidya, Shubhangi (2015). ‘Women with disabilities and reproductive rights: Deconstructing discourses’ Social Change 45(4). Vaidya, Shubhangi (2016). Autism and the Family in Urban India: Looking Back, Looking Forward. India: Springer. Vaidya, Shubhangi (2017). ‘The Right to Be Different: Autism and Advocacy in Urban India’ in Ghosh, Nandini (Ed) Interrogating Disability in India: Theory and Practice. India: Springer: 97–110. Vaidya, Shubhangi (2018a). ‘Disability Across Cultures’ in Ghai, Anita (Ed) Disability in South Asia. Delhi: Sage Publications: 245–261. Vaidya, Shubhangi (2018b). ‘The Other Within: The Construction of Disability in Popular Hindi Cinema’ in Paganopoulos, M. (Ed) In-between Fiction and Non-Fiction: Reflections on the Poetics of Ethnography in Literature and Film. London: Cambridge Scholar Publishing: 210–223. Vaidya, Shubhangi (2019). (Dis)’ability, Gender and Identity: Crossing Boundaries in Aneja, Anu (Ed) Women’s and Gender Studies in India: Crossings. New York: Routledge: 137–150. Vaidya, Shubhangi (2020). ‘Disorder, Disability, Difference: (Re)Presenting Autism in India’ in Mehrotra, Nilika (Ed) Disability Studies in India: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. India: Springer: 43–60.

12 Desires and Fears of Heterodoxies Notes on Disciplining Media Studies Vibodh Parthasarathi

This chapter is born out of a persisting unease, but also incessant hope, regarding the scope of media studies (MS) as a scientific endeavour in our academia. Although ‘the media’, in all its varied forms and sites, has been extremely topical and vibrant in our society, ironically, it is only over the last two decades that it has received systematic scholarly attention in India. This stems from the manner of construing MS, both formally and substantively, in Indian academia (see Das 2005; Das et al. 2005). The heart of this dual rendering, I suggest, has been a certain kind of methodological parochialism and an institutionalised hesitancy to engage with interdisciplinarity. The teaching of MS in India was saddled by an imagination of the media as an ‘instrument’ for nation-building and modernisation. A fair share of this is epitomised in various schools of development communication, be they framed in national or local/communitarian discourses (see Nair and White 1996). Subsequently, this imagination gave way to an equally myopic thrust on the media as a ‘resource’ to cater to the requirements of a growing economy. This resource-requirement thesis has recently been confronted with challenges regarding the misuse and abuse that is typical of other social resources. Shaped by these legacies, MS as a teaching enterprise has continued to grow within the furrows of a plethora of professional courses; these include journalism, advertising, public relations, media management, and the all-encompassing mass communication. Despite the vertical and horizontal expansion of such teaching programmes over the last two decades, their disciplinary orientation has remained as myopic, even exclusionary, as before. Consequently, questions and trends in research tend to carry the anxieties and expectations of MS as a professional endeavour. Within this growing body of scholarship, we palpably find degrees of hesitancy, or inability, to engage with interdisciplinarity. There are four reasons speaking directly to the motivations driving this chapter. Firstly, the unduly medium-centric approach and concerns of research in MS. This is widely evident in the carving out of particular sub-fields of inquiry – the oldest among these, television studies, or the recent excitement around sonic and internet studies. Secondly, the presentism reflected in research, or more specifically in the formulation of questions and themes worthy of examination. A major casualty of this, thirdly, has been the DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-12

174  Vibodh Parthasarathi absence of historicity in MS, let alone wide-ranging excavations into media history (see Parray and Saeed 2022). Leading to the fourth impediment to interdisciplinarity: the absence of a broader social theory within which concerns of media researchers can be located which is likeliest the key reason behind the laments about the inconclusiveness of scholarship on and about the media. In light of such formal and substantive preoccupations, the disciplining of MS as a coherent and systematic field of inquiry is necessary to overcome impediments scarring the trajectory of media education, and constraining it as a worthy social science enterprise before any worthwhile discussions on productive imagination of inter-disciplinarity in MS can emerge. Personal Journey At the end of 1980s, I first encountered the contours of the subject matter of MS in an innocuous course called ‘Communication Theory’ which was disappointingly, a marginal part of the overall practice-oriented Master’s in Mass Communication at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. This was the case with all ‘media’ courses then, and even now. What struck me was how it drew on an array of recognisable areas, ranging from political science and sociology to psychology and statistics. The only other non-practice course, equally marginal to the concerns of the Master’s program, was Film Theory but its verbose readings, grounded in a narrowly textual approach, did not speak to the history graduate in me. My fascination and curiosity in the first fragment remained and were nurtured by my own efforts and enthusiasm, together with tips from faculty in the university’s Sociology Department. Subsequently, I proceeded to pursue Master’s in Development Studies where I first came across the idea and practice of interdisciplinary scholarship. Much as my teachers’ CVs reflected a diverse set of disciplinary socialisations, so did their reading lists expose me to a palette of influences from across the social sciences. While my second master’s marked my initiation into policy studies, what had initially attracted me were the electives. Fortunately, it also initiated me into a more systematic body of scholarship on media/communication studies through a set of electives. The possible intersections, that would come to consume the best part of my preoccupations a decade later, between policy studies and MS were not palpable to me at the time. Not only were policy studies and MS, in themselves, unknown streams in Indian universities during the 1990s, it inclined me to explore opportunities in the professional world of development policy rather than becoming a part of formal academia. Two totally different happenstances provoked my interest in MS, and a belief in the possibility of such an endeavour in India. The first was a series of intensive and unusual conferences; the longest being six days, organised by Centre for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences, Pune and the Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia during the mid and late 1990s. I met media practitioners and scholars from different established disciplines – philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, history, sociology – whose interests converged, on aspects of mediacommunication-information. The desire and ability to raise questions on

Desires and Fears of Heterodoxies  175 apprehending ‘communication’ from different intellectual and methodological vantage points brought them together.1 The second happenstance was my curiosity to unearth the history of the early music recording business in India. My earlier training in history, interest in economics, and subsequent curiosity about ‘media studies’ was triggered by stumbling upon record covers, correspondence, bills, and other papers of my maternal grandfather who had written, composed, sung, and recorded children’s songs in Gujarati, along with his life as a school-teacher, during the 1940s. The songs I heard since childhood, now found a seamless convergence. Sharing my ‘research’ with scholars from established disciplines, something which grew and found wider purchase, albeit in bits and bursts, over the subsequent decade gave me the confidence that mine was a worthwhile effort. Looking back, these two happenstances were pointedly responsible not only for my return to academic scholarship but also in affirming the desirability of interdisciplinary endeavours therein. The establishment of a separate centre dedicated to MS, at the very alma mater where I had pursued mass communication, gave the opportunity to institutionalise and augment all my disparate experiences. The official incorporation of the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance (CCMG) as an interdisciplinary centre at Jamia Millia Islamia was music to my ears and a sign that MS from India had some sort of institutional mooring, if not recognition. The CCMG was the first teaching and research program in India solely dedicated to the ‘studies’ part of the media, i.e., one not embodying any aspect of media practice.2 Thus, providing the opportunity to harmonise the interests in different facets of the media of faculty with doctoral degrees from departments ranging from sociology and social work to political science and geography, and also providing a terrain to engage with graduates from other diverse backgrounds, including law, natural sciences, and business studies. The challenge was to leverage their capabilities in a manner that would benefit classroom discussions, in the process help overcome inhibitions of writing assignments, based on conducting interviews and reading documents, directed towards threshing out abstract ideas and creating operational briefs. All this entailed numerous fusions and transitions on the part of the students. If faculty were from different disciplinary quarters, then all the underlying efforts, transitions, and mergers could be most productively addressed. And if faculty from various universities practice and instil this, then such confluences become the ‘normal’ way of doing things in MS. All this then became the building blocks towards defining, inter alia, how IDS could render MS in early-21st-century India. Impediments to IDS Disciplinary Socialisation

Interdisciplinarity does not mean engaging with all disciplines all the time. Rather, it is foremost about being aware of the divisions involved in our own intellectual socialisation. These divisions have their own universal and peculiarly

176  Vibodh Parthasarathi Indian intellectual histories. Their emergence has been traced back to the organisation of academia during the latter half of the 20th century (see Wallerstein et al. 1997). But these divisions are also driven by our anxieties of being diverted, even polluted, by intellectual heterodoxies within established fields of the social sciences. We would do well to bear in mind that intellectual orthodoxies have been a distinctive feature of socialisation, both teaching and research, within all disciplines. We could see how this has rendered the relationship between MS and economics, and separately with law in India. In forging both these relationships, the zeal for particular disciplinary socialisation and anxieties of intellectual pollution appears as a primary impediment to IDS. In the institutional organisation of established disciplinary demarcations within the social sciences, economics aggressively rose to supremacy in the 20th century. With allocations of research grants, creations of centres of excellence, or employer demands, economics ruled the roost in Indian academia, perhaps more so than elsewhere. This is not to deny the importance of this discipline and its varied applications to understand and address aspects of allocating social resources or managing markets. Fortunately, the ‘almost arrogant visibility of the economic in the contemporary historical moment has led many critical scholars, especially in the humanities, to publish analyses and critiques of economic matters’ (Grossberg 2017: 356). This inspires viewing the economics of the media as too important a matter to be left to economists alone. Here however, media scholars ought to live up to two challenges. One is to recognise the plurality of approaches and emphases that has driven economics as a discipline, and not reduce it to certain dominant traditions. I can only speculate whether fears of intellectual heterodoxy have wider roots in a society or polity more generally orthodox or inimical to openness. The second is to recognise the need for engagements with the economics of the media being creatively polluted by a number of disciplines, ideally in concert. This is amply visible in recent debates on re-mooring the scope and concerns in media economics (especially, Fitzgerald and Winseck 2018). Something similar can be said about the engagement of MS with law in India. A fair share of legal research in India, despite the role of the various National Law Schools in augmenting this, has been conditioned under influences of new public management.3 This has ensured, for instance, questions of media policy get posed in legal studies within a particular theoretical and methodological framework. While scholars in political science, sociology, and history have done a lot to rescue the study of law from those trained (only) in it, equivalent efforts from MS have been wanting. The result has been the persistence of doctrinal approaches in the study and teaching of media law, and more widely in that of the relationship between media and law. The absence in India of something akin to the law and economics ‘movement’ in the United States has restricted approaches and conceptual frameworks adopted in critical legal studies, including the study of the media economy. This then also forces us to reflect on the project of interdisciplinarity in MS being hampered by a certain adherence, or submission, to disciplinary purity.

Desires and Fears of Heterodoxies 177 Fear of Heterodoxies

Impediments to interdisciplinarity equally rest in orthodoxies within a discipline itself, something less obvious. I find the necessary pre-requisite for an interdisciplinary sensibility, let alone engagement, is to fully recognise the diversity of approaches within any traditional discipline. For instance, the not-so-uncommon disdain for economics by many critical scholars in MS assumes that the former comprises entirely of neo-classical and/or Marxist traditions; this assumption marginalises the rich tradition of heterodox approaches within economics and economic sociology. This is particularly relevant to India where the study of media economics has been long ignored in the mainstream of both neo-classical and Marxist scholarship (see Parthasarathi et al. 2020). The same can be said for diversities marking a particular broad methodological position. A case in point is the many ‘schools’ of the political economy of communication, such as the Toronto School, Leicester School, or French School (see Mosco 1996; Murdock and Golding 1997). These have been a major influence in contributing to the plurality of approaches subsumed under the broad umbrella of the critical political economy of media, and consequently of media policy (see Hardy 2014). The lack of engagement with the plurality of intellectual traditions then becomes, for me, the site to ponder over wider intellectual myopia – one of whose (many) implications is an open and flexible engagement with the very idea of interdisciplinarity. For, we are closed to diverse traditions within our own ‘mother’ disciplines, for those who maintain such purity, it is difficult to garner the desire to be open to traditions and trajectories of producing knowledge outside it. Media Studies as a Field Traditional disciplines have expressed, not unexpectedly, a disdain for MS as a legitimate field of scholarly study. This is partly understandable given the professional and vocational roots of media education in India, within and outside the university system. Persisting in Indian academia, these roots have been augmented with the advent of private universities, characterised by the mushrooming of courses and diplomas in mass communication, journalism, media management, multimedia, etc. The notion that their syllabi lack conceptual and theoretical grounding, largely arise from a nebulous pedagogy and are bound by the singular aim of generating a workforce, only added to the distaste among established disciplines for anything to do with MS. What has been produced in the name of research, largely by practitioners involved in the teaching of such professional courses, has only reiterated the attitude of disciplinary puritans. Since the turn of the millennium, however, research in and about the media has been increasingly garnering an appeal among students, funders, publishers, trade bodies, and discerning citizens. The recognition of questions posed and literature produced in MS across the world has informed and influenced doctoral and other research projects across these established disciplines in universities in India, albeit

178  Vibodh Parthasarathi hitherto largely in sociology and to a limited extent in political science. While this has expanded the awareness, appeal, and legitimacy of MS, this does not mean such scholarship is grounded in interdisciplinarity; in fact, the tendency has largely been to discipline or domesticate the study of the media within existing compartments of these master disciplines. The balance of intellectual labour in media education has remained rooted in aspects of practice, its underlying operational techniques, and the adoption of technology. Resultantly, issues at the heart of the social sciences have remained marginal, or at best paid lip service to the syllabus/curriculum. Graduates from (the ‘better’) mass communication, film, and journalism programs in India are fluent in aspects of individual practice, some even capable of elegantly articulating what social scientists have said about media practice. Nevertheless, they are unable to systematically explore threats imparted by regulatory and industrial trends pertaining to the media, risks to media diversity, and mediatisation of politics. This scenario is particularly acute when film/journalism/communication programs are in institutions constituted as stand-alone entities. Reference here is not only to trade schools by media conglomerates and news organisations but also publicly funded training schools (such as FTII, SRFTI, and NID). Teaching and curriculum there are doubly ruptured from our lives and histories and besides being practice-oriented, they are also distanced from other sites of knowledge production and exchange. While media education programmes within composite universities are in a position to provide such knowledge and exchange, they invariably clash against the institutional organisation and divisions of modern academia. The Marginality of Media Studies The marginality of MS can be posited by weighing the importance accorded to its subject matter within and outside universities. The media has become an everywhere concern outside the university; its subject matter has come to dominate a large part of our individual lives, material milieu, and political struggles. Yet, MS is a nowhere field within the university, as its departments/courses hardly dominate any university campus. While many universities are known by their departments/ centres of say physics, history, or sociology, few are known by their scholarship in MS. Few people are hired by communication departments/schools compared to those in other disciplines and among these, fewer are engaged in communication studies, conveying the smallness or marginality of this academic endeavour. The conspicuousness of MS stems from the ascendency of its object of attention: the multiple communication revolutions unfolding before and around us over the last four decades, and their implications on social lives, political practices, and commercial choices. This ascendency of communication can be measured in terms of the hours we spend on being informed and entertained per day, the deepening legibility over our work and chores, the volume of money invested in communication infrastructures, and the breadth of administrative and legal attention of the state.

Desires and Fears of Heterodoxies 179 The rise of media education as a professionally oriented venture in India can clearly be traced to the expansion of the media business following the de-regulation in their production and trade during the 1990s. Within this broad site of higher education, the rise of MS as a critical social science occupation is largely in response to this ascendency of the media – in it providing not only the subject matter for research but also precipitating the anxieties motivating research. This appears to be similar to the manner in which heightening colonial extraction in the latter part of the 19th century offered both a materiality and subjectivity that catalysed the genesis of economic history as a field of inquiry in early modern India (see Patel 2020). There is a case to be made for the growth and trans-nationalisation of the media economy having fuelled and revitalised the field of MS in India. The incremental expansion of the media economy over the past three decades, notwithstanding the quality and apparent vitality of its growth, has offered tremendous professional opportunities attracting the attention of nearly two generations of students, educators, and planners. For the most, media/communication studies cannot be said to be an autonomous discipline, but a field to be studied from various social science perspectives. It is seen as an interdisciplinary social science endeavour with communication as the reference point (Singh 2010). Elsewhere it has enabled visualising the creation of, what James Carey called a ‘wedge discipline’ – a body of work that has sufficient weight and reach to clear a legitimate and central space for scholarship broadly, historical, critical, interpretive, and empirical in its scope (Carey 1997:3). In Indian academia, there has been a clear difference in training in the social sciences and public policy – be that between sociology and social policy or, albeit less so, between political science and public administration. In economics, we see this gap being bridged. This is less due to the innate potency of the discipline and more so due to its location in the hierarchy of knowledge that policy makers find useful. We easily find a distance between MS and media policy, for at least three reasons: media education was configured for professionals who were not burdened to bother about the circumstances that shape their immediate work and wider profession; the functionalist orientation of public policy in India cradling the genesis of research in media policy; and the refusal to frame media policy as part of wider economic policy (see Das and Parthasarathi 2011). This distance can, and ought to be, bridged if media policy is construed inherently as an interdisciplinary, if not multi-disciplinary endeavour (for instance, see Das et al. 2022). Media Studies as a Terrain of Interdisciplinary Studies The pleasures of interdisciplinary studies (IDS) in MS include connecting with wider arguments and sites of interdisciplinarity. The first is the wider project of ‘Internationalisation’ in MS itself. If we are serious about mobilising an ‘internationalisation’ project then it must go hand in hand with a critical interdisciplinarity project (Mansell 2007). The second is with feminist studies in communication and culture. It intersects with film and MS and connects with sociology, literature,

180  Vibodh Parthasarathi history, and with debates in Marxist, feminist psychology, feminist anthropology, and postmodern theory. The third is postcolonial studies, broadly described as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry committed to theorising the problematics of colonisation and decolonisation. As a field, it is positioned within the broader critical project of cultural studies that has had influence on communication scholarship (see Shome and Hegde 2002). Postcolonial studies are populated largely by scholars in literary studies, history, and anthropology. Despite its famed inter-disciplinarity, undergraduate and graduate curricula in MS are observed to engage with postcolonial perspectives in a cursory manner, if they are engaged with at all (Kumar and Parameswaran 2018: 355). Fourth is anthropology where there has been avid interest ever since the turn towards qualitative research on media reception/use/consumption. At one level, this sought to methodologically ‘correct’, or rebalance, quantitative traditions of social science dominating MS, as was also the case earlier in Britain (see Morley 2006). The extent to which the textual turn in ethnography, seeking to overcome the ideological burden of dealing with subjects in ‘other’ societies, has come to temper media anthropology on/about India is yet to fully pan out. Being the latest traditional discipline to have walked into MS on India, the bulk of scholarship has come from Euro-American scholars, reiterating the longstanding belief of this discipline entailing the study of ‘other’ societies. While this has produced some exciting interdisciplinary research on India, particularly on news (especially Ohm 2014; Udupa 2015), we hope with the wider anthropological turn in policy studies (for instance, Shore and Wright 2003) media policy would augment and expand such forays. The fifth is the emphasis on knowledge drawn from a diverse set of practices in science and technology studies, and digital humanities providing space for a new mode of questioning on and about the media. However, advocates of the latter in India have been hesitant in inferring, and rightly so, the ability of these different modes of questioning to coalesce as a new discipline or an interdisciplinary field itself (Sneha 2016: 56). The last such expectation, at least that shaped the contours of MS in India, was from cultural studies. Interdisciplinarity in the teaching of MS, as an intervention equally in media education and social sciences, has to be willed. This is on account of, on the one hand, a ‘structural institutional necessity’ (Gibson and McHoul 2001: 26) to legitimise a distinct space in media education against its larger/heavier professional endeavours, while on the other hand of the immensely centrifugal and cross-cutting nature of its subject matter. Rather than seeing it as an ‘interdisciplinary discipline’, as once proposed for cultural studies (Bennett 1998: 535), it is better conceived as a field of inquiry. Thus, an interdisciplinary thrust is what can discipline the teaching of MS given its longstanding perception as a field of professional and vocational education. Having consciously chosen to be formally trained in history, mass communication, development studies, and media policy makes me a sort of a jack of many trades; this has not provided me mastery over either but only engagements with

Desires and Fears of Heterodoxies 181 bits about each. The most important bit, however, has been recognising the orthodoxies and heterodoxies within each of these intellectual endeavours, the endogenously accepted boundaries of each, and possible sites of traction between them. In doing so, my pluralist intellectual socialisation has prevented any inhibition to reaching out to and appreciating a variety of scholarship, including that of not selfconsciously locating itself under the umbrella of media policy; in fact, this reaching out and engagement seem rather natural and possibly a reasonable way to proceed. In this chapter, I have offered some reflections and observations, sometimes tentatively and at other times apprehensively. These are directed at enhancing conversations between disciplines but equally at looking inwards into our own disciplinary moorings. This is where I recognise the impossibility of the interdisciplinarity project unless there are conversations between disciplines as they conventionally stand. Thinking ‘internally’ about a discipline and its accepted boundaries is a necessary step towards any imagination about the practice of interdisciplinarity. Conversations about and around interdisciplinarity are productively possible when we are fully informed about the particularities and peculiarities of our own (uni)disciplinary enterprises and engage in the difficult and uncomfortable task of recognising the boundaries of such particularities. One, recognising that a discipline is not ‘some homogeneous and seamless archive’, as Hall states (1990) – someone who was trained in literature but offered a chair in sociology, and influenced two generations of media scholars. Two, it is not about drawing on other or many disciplines but being fully aware of the legacies associated with that which is being drawn upon. And finally, in our times there is scarcely any discipline in the humanities and social sciences that has not had some engagement with either the instrumentality or materiality of the media. MS is getting continuously drawn to ‘the media’ as a technological object/category, and not as an institution embedded in other institutions and in webs of history shaping our lives and struggles. One consequence of medium-centredness is the divisions of course design and fields of inquiry in terms of film/cinema studies, book history, and recently sound/sonic studies. De-centring the media in MS is a necessary task but one insufficient if not unattainable without an interdisciplinary sensibility. The call for de-centring the media stems from the emphasis to view communication as integral to fundamental economic, political, social, and cultural processes in society (Mosco 1996: 71–72). A more specific rendition of de-centring involved focussing on ‘how people’s media-related activities today co-constitute everyday life’ (Tosoni and Ridell 2016: 1288). Be the broad or specific renditions of the task of de-centring the media, their methodological implications involve posing questions that are not hinged around the media or mediums of communication. In doing so, there would be a need to mobilise concepts prevalent and provided by a variety of social science disciplines. A look at individual ‘mother’ disciplines would show key departures from the canonical adherence within each, i.e., within economics, history, political science, and sociology, giving rise to invigorating debates about questions worthy of being posed and methods needing to be reconsidered. The way the presence of a canon provides an anchor to and shapes the boundary of a discipline, does doing away

182  Vibodh Parthasarathi with canons within a discipline then become the precondition for an interdisciplinary sensibility? IDS is not only about traversing the organisation of divisions among disciplines but about the kinds of hierarchy that are built into such an organisation and about relations of power among conventionally existing disciplines, within and outside academia. ‘Instead, it must be concerned with questions about power, its redistribution through time, and its different consequences for those who reside in specific places’ (Shome 2006: 2). What makes research on, say, media audiences from IIMs and IITs more appealing to policymakers than comparable research, say by a sociologist or political scientist, from universities? There has long existed an open discomfort in MS between those advocating for attention, if not primacy, to cultural and economic analysis. The genesis of this tension goes back to the divide in MS between adherents of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ approaches, i.e., those influenced by political economy and cultural studies, rooting for different objects of study, questions raised, and methodological paths. During the early decades of this tension, more widespread in the United States, social science-based approaches that take communications as their object were posited against humanities and text-based approach that focuses on culture (Kellner 1997). An abiding reason for this hostility on part of the ‘new’ was the reductionism and economism perceived in the ‘old’ approaches – or more precisely, the desire in dominant versions of political economy to stay away from engaging with media only as texts. But somewhere down the line, this necessary and ‘corrective’ intervention went overboard, so to say. This is not to deny the severe limitations of the media-centredness engrained in the often narrow and decontextualised textual pursuits characterising the ‘new’ approach, a tendency prominent in Indian scholarship way into the 2000s. Irrespective of explanations of this divide being rooted in the academic division of labour or ideological dispositions of their advocates, the end result was impairing inter and transdisciplinary sensibilities in MS. Recognising and accepting the varieties of traction possible between both broad approaches require a heterodox sensibility and methodological sophistication that may not come naturally to the committed practitioners of either ‘tradition’. My own work on the early music industry benefited from an early recognition of the methodological emphasis of both approaches offering complementary levels of analysis within the broad framework of political economy (see Parthasarathi 2005). Over the last pages, I have tried to reflect on the factors that have constrained an interdisciplinary sensibility in media studies in India. These constraints stem from a combination of the historical, organisational, and intellectual conditions that influenced and shaped teaching and research on media studies in our context. These institutional conditions are variedly recognised by scholars I have had the opportunity to engage with — be those I have read, reviewed, responded to, co-authored with, and shared conference-spaces with. It could well be argued these reflections suffer from a kind of methodological nationalism. The reference to ‘our’ society and ‘Indian’ academia may suggest the trends and travails in media studies are inert to global intellectual influences and institutional forces. Just as it is difficult to shake off disciplinary influences on media

Desires and Fears of Heterodoxies 183 studies, it is also difficult to talk about a field of intellectual inquiry only within the confines of a particular political geography. I do accept such a critique. But I also feel there could be something to say about trans-national influences and forces contributing to media studies in India being wary of pursuing heterodoxies. The ways this could mould the particular orientation of interdisciplinary media studies in India is worthy of another set of reflections. Notes 1 Nearly a decade later many of these conference papers, incrementally reworked in the interim by enthusiastic scholars, together with few other contributions, were published in a now landmark three-volume series, Communication Processes (Sage 2005, 2007, 2009). 2 A few years later, University of Hyderabad established a ‘media studies’ stream within its large and diverse communication school, a further reiteration of an idea long lying in the waiting rooms of Indian academia. 3 I thank Sudhir Krishnaswamy for this crisp insight during a seminar in January 2021.

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13 Media and Cultural Studies Text, Subject, and Perception Sujith Kumar Parayil

The methodological and conceptual questions related to media studies often revolve around what media studies are or what media studies do. This question primarily tries to problematise the critical epistemic terrains involved in media and cultural studies, such as ‘media as culture’, ‘media’ as industries’, ‘media as text’, and ‘media as technologies’. Indeed, these methodological and analytical insights invariably give accounts of the formation, mediation, and critical intricacies involved in the communication technologies and mediated experiences of the subject or user from the perspective of a threefold discursive site of media and its textuality. These sites are production, circulation, and consumption. In other words, these accounts contextualise aspects of institutionalised knowledge, ideological interconnectedness, and changes and continuities that occurred in society’s social and cultural life and how it foregrounded in the mediated experiences. Some of the problematic recurring in these analyses are; how technological media ‘disrupted the categories of distance, originality, citation, time and stable models of originality’ (Sundaram, 2013). In this context, the broader field of media studies is explained as ‘born in communication studies, media studies have addressed this problematic through internal debates on content, audiences, production, and the boundaries of what constitute the media’ (Ravi Sundaram). This assumption indicates the emergence of a generative and extended interdisciplinary field of media studies, unbound to a specific disciplinary boundary. This perspective also indicates a change that occurred not only in the earlier methodological and conceptual fields of communication and media studies but also in pinpointing various initiatives, which undergirds to design of a new area of interdisciplinary research on media and cultural studies. These concepts and critical frameworks involved in media and cultural studies encouraged communication technology researchers to revisit the idea of ‘technological determinism’ in favour of a view of technology as socially constructed. The noticeable changes in this endeavour are that even though this cultural-driven approach emphasises media institutions and power, the question was no longer what communication technologies or media do to people but how people appropriate, understand, make sense, and continuously reconstruct them. As the means for expression, interaction, cultural production, and cultural expressions and productions in themselves, media and DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-13

Media and Cultural Studies 187 communication technologies could be seen as both ‘cultural material and material culture’ (Boczkowski & Lievrouw, 2008, p. 955)—in which the socially enunciated and culturally manifested nature of technology—media—took priority. Ultimately, the move from technological determinism to social constructivism was a crucial development in communication and media research in the 1990s; by the 2000s, a vital form of social/cultural determinism had ‘become the dominant perspective in new media studies’ (Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2006, p. 4). Nevertheless, the contemporary digital and AI dynamics further widened the field of study, whereby the interactive and sensory kaleidoscope of the media and its allure of elements connected to the production of affective embodiment attained attention. It is yet another implication of the emergence of a processual media text and media subject in an interactive domain of technology and human. The significant aspect of this shift or turn in media and communication studies is that it relocates the user as a passive or active observing agent of the technological or cultural determinism but as a dynamic and interactive ‘being’ with a sense of cultural belongingness. However, the methodological and disciplinary boundaries of communication and media studies often limit the possibilities of exploring the mediated experiences of the media subject or understanding the experiences of the agency of the mediated subject. This methodological and conceptual inadequacy to understand the mediated experience has been foregrounded with two issues: the first one is related to the definition of media studies as technologies of communication or how we treat media text as part apart categories of either sociocultural determinism or technological determinism, which progressively denies distinct character of media text or the ontological enunciation of media, and then the corresponding knowledge field of media studies. Secondly, due to the attributed quasi-autonomous nature of media, it is always figured as an auxiliary discipline and often juxtaposed with either a prefix or a suffix to study media! (i.e., media and politics, media and economics, media and society), where the autonomy of the discipline and its knowledge domain is under stark question as it belongs to a blurred field of study. Interdisciplinary approaches in media and cultural studies, on the other hand, relocate and conceptualise the object of media studies across the discipline and make a claim that the text and textuality of media have their own specificities and signification in coding, decoding and sense invoking and therefore, acquired certain autonomy in the dissemination of knowledge and affect. In this background, this chapter attempts to understand media text and the subject, as an interdisciplinary object, within the media and cultural studies field. It will argue that interdisciplinary media studies are not something as a mere assemblage, a textual body without a soul. Instead, it will emphasise that the mediated experience of the text and agency of the subject have specific formation within the larger field of technological and cultural intermediation. Moving away from the conventional disciplinary boundaries of communication studies (where the emphasis is given to studying the technical, social, and institutional practices to understand how media communicate, circulate, and consume legible and intelligible knowledge and practices), this chapter explores the idea that the media are technologies of dissemination. They disseminate, emit or signify signs, sounds and

188  Sujith Kumar Parayil sights, and therefore senses and sensibilities. The mediated experiences have the power to create and construct knowledge and practices and invoke the imaginary ideals and social justice involved in a discursive domain, which is so specific to the media text and textuality. So, when it comes to an interactive encounter between the text and the media subject, the ubiquitous media text has continuously operated specific unique mechanisms to stimulate the perceptional universe of the media subject; the text activates the sensoriality of the subject or the person who encounter with the media text or technology. Here, the media subjectivity and media text need to be seen as an allegorical assemblage—a sensuous object—gridded with sensorial reminisces and reflectors of media, technology, and society. Media and its innumerable technological and cultural intermediations simultaneously trigger, evoke, and often activate the text’s embedded sensory dimensions and the sensual self of the subject. How do we understand the historical constitution of media subjectivity in the present era of ‘digital media turn’ or within the intermediary domain of Web 2.0 technologies in our everyday life? Primarily, this question leads us to understand the subjectivity in two somewhat overlapping epistemic structures of knowledge production; the social and technological formation of the subject. In this context, media subjectivity, like media text, makes its processual presence in the intermediary domains of social and technology. Media subjectivity or media subject here refers to an inside-out entity whose experiences and sensibilities are primarily shaped and continuously reshaped in an intermediary domain of media, cultural technologies, and power. The subject has emerged through the ‘conjunctural’ encounters impelled by the media and culture. The political economy of media, the global imagination, and the legitimised cultural practices and norms are also factors which drive the emergence of media subjects (Nguyet and Chua, 2005). In this situation, it is impossible to demarcate the emergence of the subject as a constitutive of only the social or only the technological experience. Instead, the subject is in flux, attuned to the temporal flows and circuits encompassed in their subjective experiences in a system mediation. In other words, the enunciation of media subjectivity by and through any form of media encounters or experiences constitutes the social and technological practices of the self. As one of the technological apparatus of culture, the media has the power to determine, alter, and modify this subjective consciousness. It often invents new signs, symbolic and gestural narrative forms to mediate this generative consciousness of the subject. Media here not just passively represent subjectivity but often actively invoke, invent, and disseminate experience and presence of the subject’s agency. Hence, subjectivity is not to be deduced as something static instead; it always attempts to communicate and signify multiple forms of experiences and negotiations through the act of sensorial mediations involved in both the analogue and digital media, such as the act of listing, hearing, seeing, tasting, and touching. Media subjectivity, therefore, is not only connected to the historically formed multifaceted narrative techniques of media to accurately represent the subjective perceptual experience of the character but is also intensively attached to the active, affective, and embodied sensory actions and reactions of the recipient— listening, viewing, reading, observing, or interactive subject—of the media text.

Media and Cultural Studies 189 Media Text: A Sensory Assemblage The primary task, then, is to understand what media text is or what ways media text constitutes its sensory transmission and dissemination techniques, whether it is connected to informative, interactive, or entertainment media. When McLuhan urges that the ‘medium is the message’ quite emphatically, he points out that senses are the media through which we make sense of the world or make our sense of belonging. A media text is always an assemblage of various sensorial elements unified and enhanced by multiple technologies and forms. However, a media text is not only undergirded with technologically determined forms and strategies but also converged and mediated with numerous other subtexts of reality and fantasy and often has the power to enact the sensory relation of the passive viewer or active observer. It has a cognitive element that triggers the human sensorium. Or, in other words, the textuality of media and inherent technological mediation has the power to alter ‘the posture and relations of our senses’ (McLuhan, 1962/2002, p. 55). Technological mediation refers here as ‘the extension of one or another of our senses by mechanical means’—‘can act as a sort of twist for the kaleidoscope of the entire sensorium’ (McLuhan, 1962/2002, p. 55). Media text and its involved rendering mechanisms are set to trigger the cognitive realm of the human while activating or reactivating various sensory relations. Media texts are active, as they are intended to engage people through their contents and produce meanings and reactions in the minds of the audience or user (Burton, 2017, p. 5). Once the text is in circulation, either the producer or the audience/user has any control, and the ‘text becomes an exciting place of engagement’ (Ibid). Media text here to be placed as a sense-mediating object, tool or site. An object which connects to the senses and, therefore, connects to the self with the world of reality and fantasy. Though the media text has a material existence, as Graheme Burton pointed out, it really ‘exists in an immaterial form, in the mind, and only when seen, read, or heard’ (Ibid). It activates both conscious and unconscious elements, as it acts as a stimulus to produce meaning. This media text enables us to think and engage with others through talk or dialogue. Through the media text, we make sense of the nonsense of the world—about us and others. It includes imagination and recognition of the self and others. Hence, the media text’s production, circulation, and consumption are embedded in the act of—cultural and political—mediation. Media text has the ability to activate the cultural and political agency of the ‘media subject’ as the media text itself became a reified product that emerged within a composite field, which is mediated by both technology and culture. So the conventional question of whether it is a social mediation of the technology or the technological mediation of society has no relevance here because, as mentioned earlier, the media text is a uniquely formed pastiche or assemblage of both. It has its own evolved mechanisms and strategies to generate content and meaning-making practices. Media is not culture, or culture is not media but a combination of both constituted by and through the interactions between forms of cultural and technological mediation tactics and tastes (Bowman, p. 4–28). As an intermediating entity, media text can be placed between the sense of being and becoming. An entity, object or site routinely creates interpretive ruptures,

190  Sujith Kumar Parayil engagements, and imaginations. In this background, one should suggest that the media text and the extended media studies fall not only in the domain of interdisciplinarity but also momentarily flashes into the field of ‘indiscipline’ (Mitchell, 1995). As a processual and an assemblage, media text needs to be studied within the field of indiscipline; it is an inside-out entity ensembled in technology and social relations. When it comes to the new media text, it has a processual contingency as it is being made or is open to be modified through continuous interactions between multiple authors (users) and the text. Here, the media text is a contested site for various negotiations and can transpose across to the media platforms for further reproduction, reinterpretation, and reappropriation for meaning-making sense and consumption. Indeed, in this new media or digital literacy context, the media text is a reified commodity or an object available for the consumer (viewer, spectator, observer) to reappropriate and alter and reactivate the senses. Media text is a digital artefact catered by multiple media genres to create an interactive platform for users. So the question is then, in turn, to ask what media do or how we use or interact with this medium, which is, nonetheless, an ontological tool of the human being to make sense of the world; indeed, it has the power to intensively affect us and activate our senses. The new scholarship in the field of affect and sensory studies points out that the various media genres and their forms of mediating mechanisms often create embodied reactions and, therefore, political, ethical, and moral concerns and reactions among its viewers or users through an encounter between media object/text and the media subject (user/viewer/observer). However, most of these studies also involve the media text and the subject in a conventional transition mode: an analysis of sender-receiver channels and representation. Something like affect and to be affected. These communication models and their analysis of discourses, forms, representations, and mediation treat media and culture as part apart categories but always draw an invisible partition between technology and culture. Thus, luring unending discussions and debates between technological and cultural determinisms and claiming a circular or supplemented mediation between medium and culture. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, prefixes such as media and culture, media and politics, and media and representation are necessitated, which, on the other hand, points out that the field of media studies is an interdisciplinary or intermediary field. In this broader conceptual field, the ‘media object’ floated like an empty signifier, without having an identity or autonomy, autonomy of media text, and the autonomy of media subject. In this context, one needs to conceptualise the intermediary field or space of media studies, whereby both the media text and media subject interact and shape the autonomy of the mediated experiences. Media Subject Primarily, the question of historical constitution of media subjectivity in the era of digital media turn, leads us to understand the subjectivity in two somewhat overlapping epistemic structures of knowledge production; the social and technological formation of the subject. In this context, media subjectivity, like media text, makes its processual presence in the intermediary domains of social and technological.

Media and Cultural Studies 191 Media subjectivity here implies an inside-out entity belonging to the broader field of cultural technologies, in which it is impossible to delimit it either to the social or to the technological experience of the subject. In other words, the enunciation of media subjectivity by and through any form of media encounter or experience is constitutive of the social and technological practices of the self. The practices of the self, as Foucault observes, ‘are not nevertheless something that the subject invents by himself. They are patterns that he finds in his culture and which are proposed, suggested and imposed on him by his culture, his society and his social group’ (Foucault, 1987, p. 11). Media, as one of the technological apparatus of culture, has the power to determine, alter, and modify this subjective consciousness. As mentioned earlier, it often invents new signs, symbolic and gestural narrative forms to mediate this generative consciousness of the subject. Media here not just passively represents subjectivity but often actively invokes, invents, and disseminates experience and presence of the agency of the subject. Hence, subjectivity is not to be deduced as something static. Instead, it always attempts to communicate and signify multiple forms of experiences and negotiations through sensorial mediations involved in both the analogue and digital media, such as listening, hearing, seeing, tasting, and touching. The enunciation of subjectivity through media encounter is, in a way connected to the Foucauldian idea of the ‘technologies of the self’, which permits individuals to ‘affect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being, to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 18). Undoubtedly, one can argue that media represents or mediates subjectivity as the way in which cultural technologies envisage or constitute them.1 However, in the context of communicative modernity, and the related interactive digital media era, it is imperative to understand the sensorial affective dimensions of the media subjectivity and their perceptional enunciations instead of simply looking at representational elements of the subject. In this age of converging media and ‘convergence culture’ (Jenkins 2006, cited Bakardjieva & Georgia, 2012), the enunciations of the subject ‘are tightly intertwined with technologies of sign systems such as the mass communication media, the cultural industry, and the multi-sensory discourse they propagate’ (Bakardjieva & Georgia, 2012, p. 160). The Visual Subject In this context, this chapter attempts to analyse the formation of the visual subject in the domain of early modern Indian visuality (painting, photography, and cinema) and also to understand the conjectural rupture created in the sensorial perception of the subject by new media visuality. The first part of the chapter proposes that it is a secular visual narrative structure that predominantly idealises the visual perceptions of Indian modernity. However, the domain of new media visuality is a contested site where, on the one hand, it shows continuity or a superimposition of secular narrative structure, but on the other hand, there are daunting images of

192  Sujith Kumar Parayil victims, the act of violence and bare life that tries to disrupt this secular imaginary and attempts to cater to a new visual subjectivity. The former narrative structure and the resulting humanitarian perceptions emerge from a visual encounter. But the latter narrative structure depends not only on the images and its immediate affects but goes beyond the specific referent and tries to resurface with certain mythical morals, as against the ‘universal subjectivity’, through the violent and disruptive images. In both of these visual acts of social and political enunciation, the visual subject not only bears the ‘presence’ in the given space and time but also emphasises features of the ‘cultural agency’, whereby the act of seeing itself becomes the act of being in the world (Pinney, 2001). In conjunction with visual mediation, social sciences and humanities discussions on sensation and perception are highlighted with two major perspectives. The first gives an account that the visual media, including new and social media practices, are reproducing forms of historical, cultural and social sensibilities, and mentalities of the society. Hence there is continuity in sensorial perception (Paterson, 2009). While agreeing with these notions of reconfiguring social and cultural elements in visual media practices and their enduring forms, the second strand announces a radical shift in perception and sensation. This shift is mainly attributed to the ‘affective turn of visual media’ in terms of its forms, content, circulation, and redistribution, which provides new spectatorial perception and sensation that simultaneously have the power to generate new ethical and political questions, even for a non-contextual reader, viewer, or listener. As it provides a sense of (dis) embodied information, this affective intensity involved in visuality does not necessarily follow a strict historical continuity in its mediation of the senses. However, one of the common concerns for both these stands is how visuality shapes and reshapes the perception and sensation of the subject. Let us conceptualise a photograph as visual text to understand the interactive mediation it produces for the subjects to contour their mentality. Scholars across the discipline have conceptualised photography as a ‘text’ that produces and invokes multiple meanings akin to the written text. For Roland Barthes, it is medium coded and connoted with multiple semiotic layers whereby its signs enable to trigger both objective and emotional landscape of the viewers. Indeed, these signs commonly denote specific literal meanings to all; however, they can connote and invoke subjective experiences connected to people’s sentiments, nostalgia, pain, and suffering (Barthes, 1993). The text has a narrative content influenced by literature, art and aesthetics, manifested by the subject either inside or outside the frame (as a creator or a viewer). These multifaceted narrative contents of the photographic text are further elaborated by Susan Sontag (2001) while emphasising its historicity and power of concealment. She opined that the text has the power to invoke public opinion, influence memory, and desensitise viewers to the suffering of others. As a text, it can reveal and conceal truths, depending on the context and the intention of the photographer, as well as on the political and cultural subjectivity of the photographed subject and the viewer. Nevertheless, she unites with Barthes while reiterating the historicity of the photograph as it is an interpretation of the real, which recalls the Barthian

Media and Cultural Studies 193 phrase that it is textual evidence of history which shows that ‘things have been there’. At the same time, Andre Bazin (2004) indicates that the text preserves a temporal moment, its signification having an indexical relationship to the world. He points out that a photograph is a unique text that captures the essence of existence. However, the essence of existence or ontology of the photograph cannot be seen something as a photographic text capturing reality as it is, rather as Tagg (2009) profoundly shows that it is a ‘spatial text’ which is an outcome of various institutionalised knowledge, ideological bindings, and aesthetical practices, determined by the discursive domain. He advocates that since it is not a mere representation of reality, the photographic text requires an active interpretation to understand various intricacies related to the disciplinary or surveillance strategies determined by the discursive practices; the meaning of the visual text is conditioned by the discursive determinisms. This view of photography accelerates the point that, as a social text, it explicitly or implicitly reinforces the semiotics of distinct social hierarchies. According to Bourdieu (1990), photographic practices are imbued with power dynamics. As a result, it showcases canonised aesthetic and solemnised events of legitimised norms of hegemonic classes. In addition, the scholarly engagements with the photographic text reveal that the real effect of the photographic text is not only envisioned in the frames but also beyond the frames. As it is connected to the belief system, religion, ritual and idolatry practices (as an object veneration and religious devotion) of a cultural context, it always instigates an excess—‘figural excess’/‘materiality’—meaning to the viewer or the beholder (Pinney, 2004). It opens up embodied affects and intensive emotional actions and reactions among people or specific communities. It not only encompasses religious fervour, but the photographic text is also used to generate political and ethical consciousness, which have the radical potential to disrupt the dominant narrative and challenge power structures (Azoulay, 2012). So it does have an agency; as Edwards (2012) suggests, photographs are not passive objects but active agents that invoke and shape our sense and perception. These affective responses to images or texts—are deeply influenced by cultural norms, values, and ideologies. The text here is not a mere record of reality but rather part of culturally constructed representations, which indicates how individuals and communities perceive their world and history; the visual text envisages the idea of a sense of belonging in the world. The above conceptual rendering of the photographic text is an ample example of how a media text opens up myriad interpretations as it signifies many connoted meanings and indexical references; however, not confined to any specific disciplinary boundaries, rather the object of the study—the photography—invariably cutting across all disciplinary boundaries in the plethora of interpretations. The interdisciplinary object creates a status of indiscipline and offers further conceptual engagements and endeavours. In this background, the chapter further attempts to delineate the idea of the visual subject. In the era of photographic flow and communicative modernity, or global visual experience, the visual subject has been defined as ‘a person who is both the agent of sight—regardless of his or her biological abilities to see—and an object of certain

194  Sujith Kumar Parayil discourses of visuality’, whereby the ‘body stubbornly refused to be in more than one place at once, a networked visuality allowed us a measure of real-time global experience’ (Mirzoeff 2006, p. 22). The visual subject is not only subject to discursive domains but also subject to technologies and related experiences. In the context of the perceptional photographic image, the subject is located both inside and outside of the frame, whereby the former indicates the subject as an object of photographic act, and the latter indicates the subject as a viewer, observer, or an active interlocutor. The photographic visual subject is an ‘inside-out’ entity located in technologies, structures, and meaning-making practices. Alternatively, it is located in the dialectical process of ‘subjects making objects making subjects’ (Pinney, 2005, p. 269). This position of the subject is not necessarily reduced to the imperatives of technological determinism but that of a fleeting subject; it is concurrent with visual literacy imparted by various technological disjuncture and social mediations, such as the affective, sonic, and performative aspects. As photographs represent and evoke, the visual subjects are never passive; they think, they experience and are always active, even in the most dehumanising situations of colonial anthropometric photography or at the times of bare-body experiences (see Edwards, 2000/2015). The idea of media subjectivity or visual subjectivity cannot be restricted solely to media structure, forms, or various institutional apparatus connected to its production, dissemination, or consumption. Rather, subjectivity should be understood as the ‘space of the self’ both at ‘conscious and unconscious levels and the various factors contributing to the self’s constitution and agency within the world’; the forms of mediation—technological and social—are integral elements of such formation of the subjectivity (see Corner, 2011, p. 87). In other words, the subjectivities are constitutive of discursively defined and technologically enhanced entities. They emerge out of a composite site of various practices involved in media, society, and culture. John Corner elaborates on these points while stating: It has levels of agency that are formative of sociality, and it is formed by the social in ways that exceed the activities of the institutionalised media. Media processes bear upon the social in ways carried through into consequences for subjectivity. However, they also bear upon subjectivity directly in ways that have consequences for the social. Activities both at the social and the subjective level carry consequences for the operations of the media, even if, in many research accounts, the media are often seen to be ‘dominant’ in the relations that involve them, either in their terms or in terms of the elites whose power they are seen to reflect. (2011, p. 90) It is interesting to note that, like the way the ‘media text’ has been defined as ‘assemblage’, ‘pastiche’, or ‘allegorical’, media subjectivity reflects a compositeness of myriad forms and mentalities as well as social and cultural

Media and Cultural Studies 195 dispositions embedded in technology and culture. When forms of tenacity, authority, popular opinion, and a priori, as well as the aesthetic and presentable rationality of the media, enunciate the experience of the subject, this process is also being over-determined by the senses of cultural tastes, political self, and civic self of the mediated subject (Gaines, 2010, pp. 16–19: Corner, 2011, p. 87). This mutually inclusive and interactive relation between media and selfhood not only has both cognitive and affective implications in the formation of subjectivity but is also highlighted by an overtly media-dependent aspect of consciousness and action of the subject (see Corner, 2011). The manifestation of the subjective action and reaction articulation of affective intensities are shaped and reshaped in this intermediary site of media and selfhood. Hence, the site can be considered as a historical anteroom. However, several correlating factors are included in these two domains of media and selfhood, which simultaneously enhance the sense and perception of the subject. As mentioned earlier, popular politics, cultural tastes, ethical and political concerns, grounded aesthetics, fantasies, and dependent media ecology and symbolisms are some of the factors that mould the subject’s position in everyday culture. ‘The subjective is centrally implicated in any engagement with the production and circulation of knowledge and, perhaps even more obviously, with an exploration of pleasure. It is a site of imagination, desire, fear, and practical rationality’ (Ibid). What needs to be understood in this symbolic environment and its logic of interactivity is how it creates a sense of action, reaction, or sensorial perception in the subject: the enunciation of affective, ethical and political responsiveness of the subjectivity. Like the way the formation of subjectivity is in the process, and as it often tends to negotiate with various forms of existing knowledge, the position of the said subjectivity belongs to a cognate area between the local and the global. Local here refers to the ‘contexts’ in which the historically informed subject is located or the discursive contexts of the subject, which are also conditioned by the forms of institutional apparatus and cultural impulses and sentiments of the time. On the other hand, global refers to an imaginative and universal realm construed through the forms of mediated experience and technologies. The combination of the materiality of media and the mentality of culture constitutes the worldviews of the media subject. In a way, neither is fixed, and the identity of the subject is always transposed from one to another through appropriation, alteration and modification of knowledge and perception available in this symbolic environment. When it encounters forms of media as a dynamic entity, it always tends to show the potential to traverse from the local to the global and vice versa. The subject’s identity is not completely fixed by cultural essentialism or mediated experience—rather, it always transcends between culture and media. In this situation, to understand visual subjectivity, we need to study the nature of the affective intensities and the sensorial dimensions of the subject, enticed by and through the encounter intermediation between media and culture.

196  Sujith Kumar Parayil Note 1 Media representations of subjectivity are ‘subjective’ in the sense that they constitute instances of media attempting to represent experiences that are necessarily exclusive to the inner realms of a character (or person), and there are representational because they attempt to medially transform the complex interactions of subjective intentional states into intersubjectively comprehensible external forms of representation (Reinerth and Jan-Noel 2017, p. 3, original emphasis).

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Media and Cultural Studies 197 McLuhan, M. 1962/2002. The Gutenberg Galaxy, Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2006. Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and Abu Ghraib, Radical History Review, 95(Spring 2006):21–44. Paterson, Mark. 2009. “Seeing With the Hands, Touching With the Eyes” and “Feel the Presence”: the Technologies of Touch. In The Senses of Touch Haptics, Affects and Technologies, New York: Berg. Pinney, Christopher. 2001. Introduction: Public, Popular, and Other Cultures. In Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, edited by Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney. New Delhi: OUP. Pinney, Christopher. 2004. Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pinney, Christopher. 2005. Things Happen: Or, From Which Moment Does That Object Come? In Materiality, edited by Daniel Miller. London: Duke University Press. Reinerth, Maike Sarah and Jan-Noel Thon. 2017. Introduction: Subjectivity Across Media. In Subjectivity Across Media: Interdisciplinary and Transmedial Perspectives, London: Routledge. Sontag, Susan. 2002. On Photography: Reflections on Photography. London: Picador. Sundaram, Ravi. 2013. Introduction: The Horizon of Media Studies. In No Limits: Media Studies from India. Edited by Ravi Sundaram. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Tagg, John. 2009. The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. W.J.T Mitchell. 1995. interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture, Art Bulletin, Vol LXXVII, No.4 (December 1995): 541–544

14 ‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations The Needs, Perils and Limits of Border-Crossings Aparna Devare I belong to the discipline of International Relations. I say this with some forcefulness because I often get asked the question—‘how is your work related to International Relations?’, because seemingly what I do does not always ‘look’ like International Relations (henceforth IR). This chapter is an exploration into this question—it’s a lengthy justification of my claims of ‘doing IR’; in doing so I also interrogate ‘IR’, disciplinary boundaries and the university as a site of knowledge creation. In other words, the essay is a self-exploration on what it means to ‘belong’ to a discipline, to the world of academia and the limits of that belonging. When the editors asked me to contribute to a volume on inter-disciplinarity, for a moment I thought is that what I do? I don’t see myself as self-consciously inter-disciplinary. I always wanted to study IR from the time I was in high school which is what I did through my college years, eventually obtaining a PhD in IR. There were no digressions on this path—it was clear and unambiguous ever since I can remember. The interest in IR, both scholarly and lived was deep. IR was a lived experience for me since I was a child of an Indian diplomat and we moved from country to country, experiencing major global events such as the fall of the Berlin wall in Germany, the rise of democracy in Korea due to active student movements and so on. Our family discussions largely revolved around what was going on around us politically in the country we lived in and in the world. I would often hear anecdotes from my father about his diplomatic experiences, while my mother was always engaged in writing about other cultures and their ties to India. We were so immersed in the lived experience of IR that studying it seemed like a natural progression, although I did not necessarily plan to be an academic. And yet most of my writings do not seemingly ‘fit’ within IR. I wrote my doctoral thesis on three Indian figures from western (Marathi-speaking) India; Jyotiba Phule, M.G. Ranade and V.D. Savarkar and their ideas of history, religion and nation to craft their very divergent visions of a ‘modern’ ‘Hindu’ self/identity. I took history as an entry point to examine how thinking and writing historically was so crucial to the process of reorienting Hinduism, caste, society and the nation in the light of the colonial encounter. These were new modes of viewing and seeing society and they were powerful ones that were creating major conflicts in contemporary Indian society. I started thinking about the thesis some years after DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-14

‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations 199 the Babri masjid (mosque) was destroyed in the name of ‘history’ by Hindu right wing or Hindutva followers. Correcting historical ‘wrongs’ and rewriting history were at the center of the rise of Hindu nationalism. Savarkar’s vision was closely aligned with these new trends and he was in many ways the ‘founding father’ of these ideologies but the thesis was not confined to Hindu nationalism. There were other ways of being Hindu and there were also other ways in which the boundaries of Hinduism itself were fluid and challenged; these ideas were explored in the other two figures. The thesis was eventually published as a book entitled, ‘History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self’. In my IR department (which was at the American University, Washington DC) there was some degree of flexibility in the topics that we could choose because it was a very large department which housed many areas of specialization within it. The criteria for a PhD topic were that the research should relate to something global and not domestic (here domestic referred to the United States—those issues were covered by the political science, public policy departments). Any theme in any part of the world could be encompassed within the sub-discipline of area studies. Area studies gave considerable opportunities to pursue an inter-disciplinarybasis of research as long as it focused on a particular region. Thus, area studies brought together historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, political scientists, gender studies scholars, etc. in professional conferences and provided an opportunity for conversations across disciplines on regions such as mine, namely South Asia. It also brought together scholars studying different parts of South Asia, namely Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. enabling not only academic exchanges and discussions but friendships and close bonds—an option that was closed to us in our own parts of the world. If inter-disciplinary research is about ‘boundary-crossings’ then this was a transgression of a different kind but also equally meaningful. Ironi cally, this was perhaps an unintended consequence of the setting up of area studies within IR departments because the principal aim had been to create ‘experts’ and ‘specialists’ in regions across the world that would aid the US state in its imperialistic urges. Area studies originated in the United States in the post-WWII period when the United States emerged as a dominant power. Considerable resources were poured in by the US government to create these departments, which were usually housed in major universities (although institutions like the Ford Foundation also played a major role). Thus, knowledge and the quest for control often went together as was the case with the US government’s role in destabilizing regimes in South America and Africa that were unfavorable to US interests, particularly in the Cold War period. However, as David L. Szanton argues, while area studies may have its origins in Cold War concerns, it spawned many scholars that were very critical of US policies abroad and created a rich body of inter-disciplinary research on regions around the world.1 Thus, it did end up providing a space for scholars like me to work on our interest areas within the broad umbrella of ‘established’ disciplines such as IR which were far more rigid and conservative at the time. Since the publication of my book, I have written and published separate pieces on Savarkar and Hindu nationalism, Ranade and alternative visions of Hinduism via bhakti, Phule and history-writing, rationalism and narrative traditions, Jinnah

200  Aparna Devare and Muslim nationalism and Gandhi and Fanon on violence. I have also published a piece on Bal Gandharva, a theater icon in 19th-century western India exploring ideas of fluid gender boundaries. I am currently working on a piece on Ambedkar and Buddhism and his attempt to create a new basis of universalism as well as a piece on self/other relations in the Mahabharata. The most recent paper that I presented at the International Studies Association (ISA) conference (which is the main IR conference globally) in 2019 was on D.R. Nagaraj and his poetic interventions/ positionality as a Dalit in thinking about decolonizing knowledge. While I have engaged with some concepts that are dealt with by IR scholars such as nationalism, religion, violence, from a ‘dominant’ IR perspective, etc., I am not dealing with the ‘core’ concerns of the discipline. This was especially so as a PhD student in the 1990s, when IR dealt primarily with security, conflict, war, diplomacy, sovereignty and so on. On bringing my concerns about coloniality to the IR classroom, I was politely told by several professors that I should explore anthropology or development studies departments instead. When I attended the ISA conferences in the 1990s there were only a handful of people talking about coloniality and marginality. Scholars such as Naeem Inayatullah, David Blaney, Mustapha Pasha, Randolph Persaud, Arlene Tickner, Sankaran Krishna—were some of the few who were writing on these themes and they often talked about their own marginality, especially professionally since most IR departments in the United States did not consider their research areas to be ‘legitimate’ IR. Sankaran Krishna for instance, discusses his own experiences as a PhD student in IR when the field was very conservative. Even post-structural critiques which had emerged at the time and were challenging the IR ‘canon’ reflected as he says, an internal dialogue within the Western academy. Themes such as race and coloniality as he points out, even while they were constitutive of the discipline were completely silenced; there was an amnesia around these concerns.2 All of us who cared about these issues floated on the margins of these conferences and disciplines, unabashedly raising these concerns while being met with that familiar response (sometimes subtle and sometimes not) that perhaps we belonged to other disciplines that dealt more closely with ‘Third World’ issues. That is why at the time I felt comfortable attending area studies conferences like the South Asian or Asian studies conferences where the Third World mattered (not just as a space to be ‘developed’) and inter-disciplinarity was an inbuilt feature. A great deal has changed in the past two decades. There has been an ‘explosion’ of post-colonial voices even in conservative disciplines such as IR as reflected in the types of journals, publications, books and so on. The last time I physically attended the ISA a few years ago there were so many panels dealing with issues of race, colonialism, intersectionality of race/gender/class that it was difficult to keep track. It was a comforting feeling to know that there was a community of scholars who had similar research interests; there were too many people working on these themes to be on the ‘fringe’ anymore. In 2020, I was supposed to be on a panel about caste and IR but the conference was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. I mention this to point out that IR has come a long way in what gets discussed within its forums. IR scholars today no longer have to face the same kind of marginality in choosing their topics as there are many avenues for publishing, presenting and so

‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations 201 on. There are many journals that publish critical IR studies and major publishers are also open to varying themes. In India too, there is a growing interest in expanding what is understood as ‘IR’. Many PhD scholars are attracted to these approaches that are questioning the existing ‘canon’. For example, even if Kant is studied as a primary liberal IR figure he is no longer considered a ‘universal’ voice. The need for a multiplicity of perspectives even in the canon is now well established. There is a growing need and demand for voices that represent large and diverse populations around the world outside the Anglo-saxon one. There are an increasing number of scholars calling for a ‘global IR’ which moves away from a Eurocentric understanding of the discipline.3 However, as Yong-Soo Eun argues, an increase in plural perspectives in the discipline does not necessarily reflect real changes in practices. He says, when 23 American and European universities were surveyed, none drew on non-western scholarship to explain world politics to graduate students.4 There is always a danger that divergent voices can often get co-opted rather than becoming critical vectors of shifting the discipline itself and thereby enabling structural or material changes. As Steve Smith argues, IR remains America-centric: ‘I see International Relations as an American discipline that dominates by having the largest and best-funded academic community having dominant journals, and being able to ignore the work of scholars outside the United States’.5 It is much more difficult for scholars located outside North America and especially in the non-western world to participate in any conversation on IR globally and for their voices to be heard. Language, location, material aspects/resources, ‘training’ in the languages of the academy are all factors that contribute to these imbalances which have grown with neoliberalism. These imbalances are also playing out domestically in the global South between private and public universities with increased privatization of education. Thus, any ‘celebration’ of diverse voices breaking the ‘foundations’ of IR have to take these aspects including equity issues into account. Moreover, changes in the discipline are not necessarily reflected at the institutional level. Job opportunities in IR remain limited particularly in India which does not have too many IR departments and those that do would still prefer students adhering to ‘mainstream IR’. Core courses still teach the canon and students are expected to be well versed with mainstream approaches. Thus, the institutional structures do not necessarily reflect changes in the discipline forcing students to often make ‘pragmatic’ choices in what they study rather than following their passions and interests. Students often come to me wishing to study bilateral relations between India and other countries and security issues because they think those will have greater expediency in getting them jobs and I do not entirely fault them for that because many colleges and universities continue to define IR only in these terms. Moreover, jobs are often linked to state power in IR; hence a greater incentive to study security-related issues. Thus, students who work with ‘non-traditional’ understandings of IR are often ‘policed’ within institutions and in choosing career paths, thereby making these choices quite difficult for them. There is some degree of experimentation going on in India with centers and departments being set up that are not organized around any one of the mainstream disciplines but are theme and approach based such as gender studies, cultural

202  Aparna Devare studies, postcolonial studies, urban and development studies and so on which are inherently interdisciplinary. IR tends to be part of political science rather than a part of separate departments although this number has gradually risen in recent years. However, while a separate department allows for greater specialization in IR there are also advantages to IR being linked to political science since students are able to gain from both sets of practitioners and maintain a link between the domestic and international since they are taking courses that deal with both. An IR department will not deal with domestic politics and society since it is based on the separation of the two. Private universities are experimenting more with interdisciplinary departments in alignment with global trends. They tend to have greater autonomy in decision-making about what departments should be set up. However, these can only be accessed by a small fraction of the student population who are privileged. This could create a further binary between those who can opt for unconventional departments or specializations and pedagogy and those who remain in ‘traditional’ disciplines. Moreover, with greater privatization and neoliberal trends comes greater professionalization and specialization and the alignment with the global economy educationally. Universities are constantly being told that they need to globalize and meet global standards. Does this create a further disconnect between academics and the society they operate in, particularly in a Third World context? In India, universities and academic institutions were not always the primary centers or sites of learning unlike in the West. The long historical process of professionalization in the West led to academic and research institutions becoming the domains of ‘experts’ and the primary sites of learning. In India that was not the case. Society at large had many avenues and sites of learning, thinking, creativity and knowledge production that was not confined to the universities or academic institutions alone. Moreover, the notion that knowledge only rests with the experts and others are unable to theorize or reflect is highly problematic and one that gets perpetuated with greater professionalization. Thus, while on the one hand, it appears that we are moving toward greater ‘openness’ and ‘flexibility’ these are the challenges when this takes place within a neoliberal context. Interestingly, while IR has a strong conservative side and will continue to do so forcing many of us to lead these double lives for practical reasons (we will have to familiarize our students with mainstream IR theories especially in the global South or else they will be at a material disadvantage) it also lends itself well to boundary crossings. IR as a discipline has always suffered from a crisis of identity. In the 1960s Morton Kaplan wrote an article titled, ‘Is IR a discipline?’6 For several decades IR scholars debated this matter. There was great insecurity among scholars that IR did not have its own theories and methods and had to borrow from everyone else. Born as an offshoot of political science and law with a heavy reliance on history, IR scholars desperately sought legitimacy for IR as a ‘true discipline’ that could go it alone like all the others. However, in more recent years scholars view this heavy borrowing in a positive light and have sought to define IR as an inherently inter-disciplinary endeavor.7 Critical IR studies are inherently crossdisciplinary. These critical approaches include post-structuralism, post-colonialism and feminism among others. They challenge the very foundations of what constitutes

‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations 203 IR. There are two key foundational assumptions on which IR rests; first, the state as the primary unit of analysis in a world of ‘sovereign’ states and second, what Rob B.J. Walker calls the inside/outside binary.8 IR focuses on the ‘outside’ where as the ‘inside’ is the purview of political science since the latter looks at domestic politics and processes. Anything that is purely ‘domestic’ or ‘local’ is not considered the domain of IR. Both the state as a unit of analysis and the inside/outside binary presume that the state is a container and that what is outside can be clearly demarcated from the inside even analytically. The presumption is that the world out there has little to do with what happens internally within a society! Foreign policy studies work with this assumption since there is a clear demarcation made analytically between foreign and domestic policy/politics. Critical IR studies look at the inter-linkages, intersectionality, flows, historicity and relationality of ideas and processes and so on that rejects the state as a container like imagery of dominant IR. And in doing so unabashedly draws from history, literature, sociology, politics, anthropology and so on. In a path-breaking book published in 2004, International Relations and the Problem of Difference, Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney define IR primarily as cultural relations/encounters with difference.9 Rather than engaging with cultural differences as the possibility of dialogue and meaningful exchanges, the Eurocentric world envisaged difference as fearful, threatening and inferior. They used a spatial/temporal scale of development to subjugate difference. Hence, culturally diverse civilizations were colonized thereby disabling the possibility of genuine dialogue. The inside was seen as a stable space whereas the outside was seen as fearful and threatening which had to be controlled. This they argue marked the ‘naturalization of an active hostility towards diversity’.10 They characterize IR primarily as inter-cultural relations which encompass all aspects of human existence. Once IR is redefined in this manner primarily through the prism of culture it breaks down the artificially constructed barriers such as inside/outside in understanding the human condition. The above is just one notable example of how IR’s binaries/foundations are being transgressed. Several scholars in recent years have looked at the racial/colonial origins of IR as a discipline.11 IR was always closely linked to state power and especially with the hegemonic powers, first Britain and then the United States. Theories of realpolitik, in particular, went hand in hand with empire building and even liberal theories justified imperial interventions under the guise of civilizing/ educating and developing ‘natives’. However, if one digs deeper, the complicity between IR as a discipline and colonial expansions is hardly surprising. It is perhaps more obvious in the case of IR but all disciplines are an outcome of colonial forms of knowledge and emerged out of a European scientific world view. The rise of the ‘disciplines’ went hand in hand with the rise of a new scientific outlook toward knowledge. The rejection of theology in Europe as an overarching framework to view the world was gradually supplanted by a Cartesian one that cut up knowledge into discrete and separate parts rather than looking at the wholes and interconnections. Each part could be understood in its totality; hence the rise of specialists and ‘experts’ especially in the field of science. Knowledge increasingly belonged to the domain of professionalized specialists. This was seen as the most

204  Aparna Devare rational and scientific way to understand the world, with the observer standing outside what they observed in a detached and objective fashion. Reason had to be separated from emotion. It created new kinds of hierarchies while displacing older ones which were more rooted in theology. One such hierarchy related to women since they were seen as more emotional/less rational than men. While this process began in Europe from the 1600s onward, Wallerstein et al. point out, that it was only by the beginning of the 19th century that science came to be associated with natural science and was totally separated from philosophy.12 In Europe, the university became the primary site on which knowledges were produced based on the principle of reason; replacing theology even if there were some continuities. It is here that the disciplines emerged. As Wallerstein et al. point out, ‘The intellectual history of the 19th century is marked above all by this disciplinarization and professionalization of knowledge, that is to say, by the creation of permanent institutional structures designed both to produce new knowledge and to reproduce the producers of knowledge’.13 They go on to say, ‘The creation of multiple disciplines was premised on the belief that systematic research required skilled concentration on the multiple separate arenas of reality, which was partitioned rationally into distinct groups of knowledge. Such a rational division promised to be effective, that is, intellectually productive’.14 This was especially so for the social sciences since the natural sciences were not only reliant on the university but also received state support in other sites. It was only in the period of 1850–1914 that one sees according to Wallerstein et al., the disciplines diversify into present-day social sciences in the universities. They point to five primary locales—Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States where this took place. They argue that most 19th-century works used in the social sciences come from these five places. By the end of the world wars, it was sociology, economics and political science that really consolidated themselves as the core of social science. By 1945 they suggest that the disciplines known as social sciences were institutionalized in most major universities globally. The United States saw a huge leap of resources toward social sciences in academic institutions during this period post the Second World War. As mentioned earlier, development objectives and state expansion went hand in hand with research. Research was carried out with a missionary zeal; ‘Social scientists, no less than political or religious leaders, have missions; they seek the universal acceptance of certain practices in the belief that this will maximize the possibility of certain ends, such as knowing the truth’.15 This was also a gendered discourse since the social sciences were seen as ‘harder’ and more scientific disciplines than the humanities and literature (‘realm of emotion’). The positivist turn in the social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s made this even more poignant. What Wallerstein and other authors do not mention is the deep linkages between the rise of the disciplines and the colonial mastery over subject peoples. These new knowledges were about control and in search of new bases of domination, often rooted in scientific biological theories, eugenics and so on. Racism was given a scientific basis which was also deeply gendered. Several authors have written about the construction of scientific knowledge systems in Europe using the colonized subjects for experiments, testing and formulating their theories. It is no

‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations 205 exaggeration to say that the colonized subject was the site upon which the disciplines emerged. The rational self was being constructed in contradistinction with the irrational Other. This is a familiar argument within postcolonial studies and I won’t go further into it here. In India, the ‘disciplines’ were introduced by the British when they formed universities in the 1800s. It took some time before the ‘natives’ were ‘trained’ to think from within the disciplines. This process was accelerated after independence when more state funding was poured into higher education and the setting up of universities. While doing my doctoral research on 19th-century figures in western India (then Bombay Presidency), I noticed that many of them moved effortlessly between forms of knowledge such as law, religion and custom, economics, science and so on. One such example is that of D.D. Kosambi. Most well-known for his historical writings on ancient India from a Marxist-materialist perspective16 few people know that he actually taught and wrote papers on mathematics and statistics throughout his life (he also wrote on scientific topics such as genetics). Mathematics and statistics were his ‘livelihood’. He was also a linguist-fluent in many languages including French and German. He learnt Sanskrit and became an acclaimed Sanskrit scholar known for his textual criticisms of key Sanskrit texts and for translating important Sanskrit works including Bhasa’s play Aimarka. He also undertook archeological excavations in the Western Ghats and was a well-known Indologist. In addition to being a university professor he was also a peace activist advocating for solar energy as early as the 1950s and world peace; he was an active member of the World Peace Council.17 In the present-day context his contributions may seem ecletic but it was not unsual for iintellectuals in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s to have such varied interests. D.D. Kosambi was of course exceptionally brilliant in this regard. Intellectuals of that period that I researched worked with a very fluid notion of ‘religion’ talking about it primarily through the realms of law, custom, practices, beliefs and so on. ‘Religion’ I realized through my research was a deeply colonial category. Indians (and this applied to all religions) at the time did not work within an objectified understanding of religion although that was slowly changing through their gradual incorporation of an Orientalist approach. In the case of Hindus I do not mean to suggest here that all upper caste Hindus were not rigid in their views about lower castes or somehow more flexible and open. What I mean to say is that the debates between the more conservative and more open-minded Hindus operated within religion as more of a cultural and lived category, not separate from the social or political or primarily textual. Orientalism objectified religion (including prioritizing texts) making it a separate category so that it could increasingly align itself with more secular categories such as the nation and state. Hindutva for instance, is primarily a political identity and not necessarily a religious one, even if it draws from religion. Many upper caste adherents are not necessarily religious starting with its founder, Savarkar, a well-known atheist. Hinduism had to be reconstructed with certain colonial categories in order for it to transform into Hindutva which centered primarily around the nation and state; it demanded total loyalty to the nation-state and ironically even religion (with its messy and diverse practices)

206  Aparna Devare could not come in the way.18 And the nation-state form we know globally demands ethnic, racial and religious homogeneity/purity. ‘Religion’ as we know it in an academic sense did not exist; what existed were religious practices and beliefs that were social in nature and encompassed all aspects of life. These could not easily be separated from the social or political, so to talk about something separate as being the domain of the religious was not relevant. This was not dissimilar to Europe in the 1600s before a Cartesian consciousness dislodged a theological one. Most non-western cultures were similar to that of India’s including the Islamic world and there has been extensive writing on the lack of a separation of religion, politics and society in Islam. Hence, it is difficult to go back to ancient India and find a separate category of the political that is not linked to the religious or social although scholars often try to ‘find’ political treaties and thought in the ancient texts to respond to the criticism of the ‘lack’ of theory and the political in classical Indian traditions. The emergence of religion as a separate objectified category that is studied is also linked to the story of the disciplines in India since without that moment of disjuncture the latter cannot exist. In many ways, the story of political Hinduism (Hindutva), Islam, Christianity, Judaism (tied to the nation) etc. goes hand in hand with the emergence of the disciplines since both are predicated on this very scientism and separation. Academics working within the disciplines are thus, linked like conjoined twins with the projects they are so wary of including in the case of India-Hindutva; all are as Ashis Nandy argues, illegitimate offspring of colonial modernity.19 Given the complicity between the disciplines and colonial modernity how do we as academics living in the Third World or Global South (whatever term one prefers) negotiate our relationship to the disciplines? We are deeply embedded and trained in them and yet circulate in a culture where knowledge systems were not traditionally cut up into parts or the domain of ‘experts.’ Can we even genuinely talk about decolonization given our own locations in the academy? Walter Mignolo is skeptical of what intellectuals can achieve; he writes, ‘Like Derrida’s deconstruction, North Atlantic social sciences are reaching the limits of colonial difference, the space where alternatives to philosophy and the social sciences are necessary’.20 This applies to other geographic locales as well even if the differences between academic and non-academic life may not be as sharp; his point about academia/ disciplinary knowledges in general is relevant here—intellectual decolonization he says, cannot come from ‘existing philosophies and cultures of scholarship’.21 Can one separate the knowledge forms out of which the disciplines emerged or are the two inextricably linked? Pre-modern Indian knowledge forms did not separate observer from observed, mind from body and so on while rejecting the separation between theory and practice. Vivek Dhareshwar for instance, talks about the important of experience in Indian knowledge forms or what he calls ‘actiontheoretic’ concepts. He says experience and reflecting upon it was privileged over everything else whereas the discipline of philosophy has almost been inimical to it, separating experience and thinking/reflection.22 Similarly, the discipline of history has a completely different notion of temporality built into it from the Indian ones. Venkat Rao argues along similar lines calling Indian thought centered around

‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations 207 praxial thinking not dissimilar to the Greeks or other non-western cultures. Even if the Greeks introduced dialogue-based thought and theoria he argues, it was based on reflexive praxis like the Indian which looked at the practical usability of concepts. None of the concepts such as aatma, dharma or karma he argues, are based on a priori foundational categories or accounts to justify them exist. The grounding principle of reason he says, is absent. Life itself becomes a testing ground and basis of knowledge production. On the other hand he writes, ‘Our researches about livable learning and their performative modes of rendering take the forms of information-retrieval, historical-philological, comparative-theoretical accounts’.23 They become objects of representation. This is the predicament of postcolonial intellectuals as Dhareshwar suggests, because even as they claim to dismantle western knowledge forms, they continue to operate within the same discursive space.24 One such example of an individual that comes to mind who experimented with both western and Indian knowledge forms in institution building was Rabindranath Tagore. He created a university, or Visva-Bharati but wanted to make it creative and experiential unlike more western centered universities in India. One lesser-known aspect was that he was equally interested in the surrounding village economy and how to improve agricultural methods thereby improving the lives of farmers which he saw as an integral part of higher education. For him education could not be separated from values such as compassion, service and lived experience. He was drawing on to paraphrase Dhareshwar, an ‘experiential conception of truth’.25 Conclusion I would like to believe that I have come full circle. From the child who experienced the world in all its diversity it does not seem all that surprising to me that I can only theorize IR in an inter-disciplinary manner. I don’t know any other way. The need of the hour as academics is for greater self-reflection of our own positionality with respect to the disciplines. In other words, we need to turn the subaltern gaze on ourselves first before we turn it on others. The very languages we speak in (I don’t mean English vs. Indian languages here but that does add another layer of complexity and coloniality) are not always accessible to many around us. The increase in academic jargon and the purpose for which we write often for an academic audience does not make that easier. This is especially something to think about in a non-western context where knowledge creation has been far more diffuse/decentered although we know this is changing. The move toward greater use of narratives in academia and a greater acceptance of narrative and poetic traditions is a positive one although this tends to be more the case in the humanities than the social sciences. While we reflect upon the need to reach a non-academic audience we are also faced with increasing challenges in an age of social media where everyone claims to be an expert on everything and there is misinformation and falsehoods being propagated. That is posing new unforeseen challenges to academics especially in an increasingly authoritarian society. There is of course, no false dichotomy between universities and civil society; academics are after all products

208  Aparna Devare of a society as are the students we teach. We are not in that sense interacting only within the academic community. But as Mignolo suggests, we need to constantly engage in border-crossings 26 in our work, teaching and in linkages with those who might represent other critical sources and sites of knowledge creation—sometimes these may be unrecognizable to us. As Yong-Soo Eun points out, academics (he refers more specifically to IR professionals) need to engage more with nonprofessionals, public intellectuals and those who are often the object of study in order to ‘deterritorialize’ the disciplines.27 We need to collaborate and create linkages as listeners rather than ‘experts’ and ‘listen’ more specially to voices that draw on creative and reflective sources in society. I do not mean this as individuals but in an institutional sense. The institutions will also have to change and adapt accordingly although this does not seem to be happening at the moment. As Edward Said put it, ‘the intellectual should be an individual with a specific “public” role… committed to making connections across lines and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a speciality…despite the restrictions of a profession’.28 This is not easy to do and often comes with a professional cost not to mention personal risk in many non-western societies. Notes 1 Szanton, David, ed. The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines. Accessed on September 23, 2021. 2 Krishna, Sankaran in Robbie Shilliam, ed. Race and Racism in International Relations: Retrieving a Scholarly Inheritance. International Politics Reviews. vol. 8, pp. 152–195, 2020. Accessed on September 27, 2021. 3 Acharya, Amitav. Towards a Global International Relations? https://www.e-ir. info/2017/12/10/towards-a-global-international-relations/. Accessed on September 29, 2021. 4 Eun, Yong-Soo. “Calling for “IR” as Becoming-Rhizomatic”. Global Studies Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 2, June 2021. https://academic.oup.com/isagsq/article/1/2/ksab003/6244492. Accessed on October 20, 2021. 5 Smith, Steve. “Six Wishes for a More Relevant Discipline of IR” in Robert E. Goodin, ed., Oxford Handbook of Political Science, September 2013, p. 1. https://www. oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199604456.001.0001/oxfordhb9780199604456-e-037. Accessed on September 29, 2021. 6 Kaplan, Morton. Is International Relations a Discipline? The Journal of Politics. vol. 23, no. 3, 1961. 7 Pettman, Ralph. “Is there a Discipline of IR? A Heterodox Perspective. International Studies, March 1, 2010. 8 Walker, Rob B.J. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 9 Inayatullah, Naeem and David Blaney. International Relations and the Problem of Difference. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. 10 Inayatullah, Naeem and David Blaney. “Difference: Returning IR Theory to Heterology” in Aoileam Ni Mhurchu and Reiko Shindo, eds. Critical Imaginings in International Relations (Routledge, forthcoming), p. 4. 11 Vitalis, Robert. White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015; Vale, Peter and Vineet Thakur, “IR and the making of the white man’s world” in Arlene B. Tickner and Karen Smith, eds. International Relations from the Global South: Worlding Beyond the

‘Belonging’ to the Discipline of International Relations 209 West. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2020; Shilliam, Robbie. Decolonizing Politics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021. 12 Wallerstein, Immanuel et al., eds., Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. 13 Ibid., p. 7. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 53. 16 His book, An Introduction to the study of Indian History was considered a foundational text for Indian historians for decades and was widely read in colleges and universities as part of the history curriculum. 17 Details about D.D. Kosambi have been taken from his daughter’s essay on him; see Kosambi, Meera, “D.D. Kosambi: The Scholar and the Man,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 43, no. 30 (July 26–Aug 1), pp. 34–37, 39–42. 18 For a greater elaboration of this point about ‘religion as lived practice’ ‘coming in the way’ of nation-building see my two chapters on Savarkar in my book, History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self. New Delhi: Routledge, 2011. 19 Nandy, Ashis. “History’s Forgotten Doubles,” History and Theory, vol. 34, no. 2, issue 34 (May), 1995, pp. 44–66. 20 Mignolo, Walter. “The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference” in Mabel Morana, Enrique Dussel and Carlos A. Jauregui, eds., Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008, p. 241. 21 Ibid., p. 232. 22 Dhareshwar, Vivek. “Learning and Happiness: Sketches for an Alternative Theorization of Indian Sociality” in Vinay Lal, ed. India and Civilizational Futures: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics II. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 39. 23 Ibid., p. 151. 24 Dhareshwar, Vivek. “Toward a Narrative Epistemology of the Postcolonial Predicament.” https://culturalstudies.ucsc.edu/inscriptions/volume-5/vivek-dhareshwar/. Accessed on October 29, 2021. 25 Dhareshwar, “Learning and Happiness: Sketches for an Alternative Theorization of Indian Sociality” in Vinay Lal, ed. India and Civilizational Futures: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics II. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 41. 26 Mignolo, 2008. 27 Eun, 2021. 28 Said cited in Eun, 2021.

15 A New “Discipline” or a “Conversational Community” Reflections on Doing and Building Childhood Studies Anandini Dar Introduction In his seminal paper on theories and methods, Johan Galtung (1981) argues that “I have been struck by how little awareness the members of one intellectual community seem to have of the peculiarities of their community. They are often good at characterizing others, but not themselves” (pp. 817–818). In my reflections about my intellectual community, childhood studies, it is striking how common it is for scholars in this field to introspect its own peculiarities. Partly, the reason for this has been the very nascent, inter/multidisciplinary nature of the field. One finds its key international journals such as, Childhood, Children’s Geographies, Children & Society, rife with editorials and articles that reflect on the directions of the field, with debates and discussions around its epistemology and ontology, and the contesting claims about its nomenclature as a monodisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or multi-/transdisciplinary1 field. Very cognisant of its conventions, the global domain of childhood studies contends to establish itself as a discipline, and at the same time, critique its formation so as to avoid the trappings that traditional disciplines can bring to their shaping. While I discuss these debates within this new discipline in this chapter, I primarily focus on the ‘doing’ of childhood studies, as one of the least addressed aspects in the global discourses around interdisciplinary studies. Julie T. Klein (2005), prominent scholar of interdisciplinary studies, finds that much is deliberated on the meanings about interdisciplinarity in different fields with discussions around theory and methods, but little consideration is given to the actual work of “doing” and by extension the “building” of interdisciplinary fields and studies. Guided by this question of “How does one actually do interdisciplinary work?” (Klein, 2005, p. 7, emphasis author’s), I discuss how childhood studies has come to be, in a global context, through a review of literature and an auto-ethnography of my trajectory in this discipline and its shaping. What are its epistemological, ontological, and methodological framings? What are the contemporary debates about the inter-/multi-/crossdisciplinary nature of the field? These questions are both personally and professionally pertinent for me as I have been trained in the West in this new discipline, but now teach in India where I find the focus on this field, and on the study of children and childhood, largely absent in the institutional spaces of the academy. I reckon that childhood studies has been DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-15

A New “Discipline” or a “Conversational Community” 211 established as a degree granting area of study, with several programmes and departments in higher education in the Euro-Americas, but is yet an established discipline nor a fully developed “conversational community” in the context of India. This beckons an examination of what might an interdisciplinary childhood studies look like in India? Unlike the development of childhood studies in the global North, largely made visible by the “sociology of childhood” articulations in the 90s against development psychology approaches to “the child,” I discuss how “childhood” and “children’s lives” as an area of inquiry has not evoked the same kind of interest as caste, gender, or family in Sociology or Education Studies in India.2 Being a faculty of Sociology and Education in a social science university in India for the past seven years, with formal training in Australia and United States in eclectic disciplines – of sociology/anthropology, gender sexuality and diversity studies, and a doctorate in childhood studies – I reflect on the “doing of childhood studies” and the possibilities of building this field. As a founder-member and co-convener of the Critical Childhoods and Youth Studies Collective,3 which now has over 400 members working in/on themes of childhoods and youth in the global South, I have experienced first-hand the process of charting a space for a “conversational community”4 in this field. Reflecting on the historiography of disciplines of social sciences in India – primarily sociology and women’s studies – and the on-going work of children’s rights in India, I suggest that to do and build childhood studies in this regional context requires a decolonial and a critical frame of interdisciplinary analysis. Further, guided by debates on interdisciplinarity, led by Robert K. Merton (1976) & Mukherji (1986; 2000). I opine, to do childhood studies includes a form of “disciplinary eclecticism,” or by analogy, an “eclectic transdisciplinarity,” which cuts across institutions, social, and political contexts, and movements pertaining to young people. Doing Childhood Studies in the West: Battles around Its Mono-/Inter-/Multi-/Crossdisciplinary Terrains The year I was applying for admission to the then recently formed PhD granting programme in Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, United States, American gender studies scholar, Barrie Thorne (2007) published an editorial in the now canonical journal of the field, Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research, arguing that “the history of fields like women’s studies and racial–ethnic studies can provide useful guidance in the crafting of an inter-disciplinary field that seeks to bring yet another group – children – from the margins to the center of knowledge” (p. 147, emphasis added). In her efforts to help set up an interdisciplinary agenda for a department of childhood studies I had taken admission in, Thorne suggests that looking to women’s studies offers an understanding of how the central category of analysis for the discipline was “gender” and for childhood studies it must be that of “age.” Useful in providing an initial central tether to the discipline, the field witnesses a parallel development of subdisciplinary areas of inquiry on childhoods. For instance, historians and literature scholars are marked as distinct in their project of studying childhood. Subdiscipline of “history of childhood” or “children’s

212  Anandini Dar literature,” and others like the “sociology/anthropology/geography of childhood” proliferate in the western academy, as these inquiries are rendered distinct from the parent disciplines. A resistance to fully explore how childhood may re-transform the idiosyncrasies of their disciplines is limited. For instance, in the in the American Historical Review 2020, “historians of childhood”, have critically deliberated upon “age as a category of historical analysis”, arguing instead for a critical examination of “childhood as a [historical] category of analysis,” instead of the modern construct of chronological age (Pande, 2020). Hence, knowledge construction remains confined to disciplinary domains, challenging the need for an interdisciplinary childhood studies. These moves are indicative of disciplinary “turf wars,” which run parallel to moves for an agenda for interdisciplinary childhood studies in the West.5 Developments in various associations, such as a new subdiscipline of sociology of childhood under the International Sociological Association, or say, the emergence of the separate wing of the American Anthropological Association that was launched in 2008, by the name of the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group, demonstrate this well. Many of these corresponding moves have, however, been identified by some senior scholars of childhood studies, such as Jens Qvrotrup, as helping shape up a sense of a collective, primarily of an intellectual and academic community (Cook et al., 2018). At the same time, these developments of a separate discipline of childhood studies can be seen as drawing further boundaries of disciplinarianism, one that can lead to a somewhat sidelining of scholars of childhood and youth in these traditional fields to the margin. For instance, I recall conversing with peers from a department of anthropology, whom I met at a Graduate Student Conference on Childhood Studies I co-organised in 2010, complaining that in their home disciplines they are constantly being questioned about why their research focuses only on children and not all humans. They felt that we, at the department of childhood studies, were privileged to have a community of those who “get it” as to why young people need to be foregrounded in their examinations of state, society, and polity, for instance. These articulations suggest that academic homology, in this case, through new interdisciplinary programmes and conferences, foster a shared base from which new forms of knowledge may be understood and produced. Whereas, inquiries about childhoods within traditional disciplines remain trapped in the limits of, what the Indian sociologist Sujatha Patel (2006) argues, “heritage of epistemes” of monodisciplines, if prioritised at all. A case in point is the way in which the majority of the papers presented by the anthropology and sociology students at that conference largely only drew upon ethnography as a method of inquiry, rather than bringing together new interdisciplinary methodological insights available for a more fertile analysis of childhoods, children’s diversities, and experiences.6 Efforts to maintain boundaries, and “bold disciplinarism” (Aitken, 2010), tend to view disciplines as sacrosanct to notions of rigour and validity of studies, or I find, approach interdisciplinarity as some unifying and merging of disciplines, with limited understanding of scholarship on inter-/multi-/transdisciplinary studies. This rejection of centring the queries about childhood is also indicative of the apathy towards children, not witnessed when it comes to questions of caste, gender,

A New “Discipline” or a “Conversational Community” 213 class. Hence, an agenda for a distinct interdisciplinary programme beckons further deliberation. The debates in childhood studies about what it means to engage with inter-/ multi-/crossdisciplinarity have largely emerged from a space of institutionalisation within the Euro-American academy, that is, through the development of and teaching in new departments and programmes of childhood studies. Ruminations on the same have also appeared in editorials, opinion pieces in journals in this field. Rarely have, barring the reflections of Leena Alanen, scholars of childhood studies engaged with the rich scholarship now available on the epistemology, and history of interdisciplinary studies. Those writing about the claims against interdisciplinarity, and for multi-/crossdisciplinarity of childhood studies (Cook, 2010), or others who think that strong disciplinarity or a “normative turn” must be maintained (Aitken, 2010; Alanen, 2011), are themselves primarily trained in traditional disciplines, but are also interested in carving out a multi-/crossdisciplinary agenda for childhood studies. Hence, I ask, how does the training of new PhDs in a new discipline of childhood studies (with briefly varying nomenclature across contexts) serve to be distinct from doing doctoral work in monodisciplines of humanities and social sciences, with an emphasis on the young? What might we gain or lose from these traditional spaces of disciplines? What does “doing” interdisciplinary childhood studies training look like? A productive starting point to unpack what doing a PhD in this new discipline uncovers may be, as Qvortrup suggests, to offer a clarification of the distinction between “child,” “childhood,” and “children,” which according to him also “reveal differences between disciplines” (Cook et al., 2018). Drawing on William Corsaro, Qvortrup shares that “child” can be “about the individual child, childhood is a structural concept, while children represents a collectivity” (Corsaro, 2015, p. 41 cited in Cook et al., 2018). These distinctions in the core terminology of the subject are crucial, however, claiming, as Qvortrup does, that different disciplines unpack meanings about only one of these concepts and not the other, may not always hold true, particularly for an agenda for inter-/multidisciplinarity. For instance, anthropologists may work with “children” as a collective, but also make claims about the structural concepts of “childhood” that emerge from the everyday experiences of children in a given society (see for example classic work of Margaret Mead). At the same time, these distinctions in terminology may tell us something about the core ways in which traditional disciplines approach the subject of childhood and children. A psychologist is usually concerned with the “individual child” and not the construct of childhood (see Jean Piaget, Donald Winnicot). A geographer may approach issues around children’s mobility and ask about the everyday that informs us about a collective group of children (see Cindi Katz), and a sociologist may be more interested in asking the question “who” and “how is a child?” without necessarily seeking a definitive answer for the same. Doing interdisciplinary childhood studies means to learn about the differences across disciplines in their “approach” to children and childhoods. This is perhaps the early challenge that both teachers and graduate students face in being trained to “do” childhood studies in the programme where I received my doctorate.

214  Anandini Dar Daniel Thomas Cook, pioneer in American Childhood Studies, and graduate chair of the Department of Childhood Studies at the time, frustratingly expresses his challenges in a classroom of first semester doctoral students in the new PhD granting programme. He writes, “many took the question posed at the beginning of the term, ‘What is a child?’, as an invitation to search for some ‘real’, over-arching (or underlying) child common to our readings and investigations” (2010, pp. 221–222). For Cook, it is important not to arrive at some predetermined answers that an “interdisciplinary” approach may influence. Rather, being multi-/crossdisciplinary for him means posturing towards “the promise of a question the answer to which has not been determined in its asking” (p. 222). Those identifying with mono- (nonpositivist) disciplines may nonetheless argue that any scientific inquiry must not offer pre-determined answers. The students search for a “real over-arching child” in this case could also be located in a prior training in a disciplinary approach – of say, psychology – wherein, this meta question about “what is a child?” does not feature as a method to inquire about an already pre-determined individual child. Psychologists may not be concerned with such a framing of a question altogether. It is precisely to counter such kind of disciplinary boundedness expressed by the student and the teacher that Jill Korbin’s (2010) suggestion for a distinct programme in interdisciplinary training ought to be envisioned, wherein “additional training opportunities should be developed in at least one additional discipline and in how to transcend disciplinary boundaries” (p. 218). This would require specific interdisciplinary training programmes, as Korbin opines, and further, some core courses on interdisciplinarity, and the study of putative meanings of the related multi-/cross-/transdisciplinary studies. Such training has the potential to evade the trappings of “knowledge barriers that are constituted by the lack of familiarity that scientists often have with other disciplinary fields” (Alanen, 2012, p. 421). “Doing” childhood studies then means – acquiring what I contend, “transdisciplinary eclecticism” – learning about and acquiring various methodological and theoretical orientations for knowledge production. In other words, approaching a subject of inquiry not from a single disciplinary frame but familiarising ourselves with how to ask a question from a broad perspective, rejecting in many ways traditional disciplinary approaches. This is not to suggest that disciplinary knowledge production is less valuable, rather a thinking about how disciplines too can reorient their frames of knowing remains essential. Childhood studies hence provides a “meeting place of ideas” (Prout, 2005, p. 146) across diverse disciplinary frames, prioritising the “topic” or “problem” over the “discipline” (James, 2010, p. 216) yet, grounding the inquiry in rigorous theoretical and critical methodological approaches. In my own doctoral work, I adopted a multi-sited ethnography approach, buttressed with methods for research specifically for young people, to understand how culture, geography, and politics shape the lives of immigrant South Asian teenagers growing up in New York City in a post-9/11 context. In addition, while not a trained historian, I studied the archives documenting the lives of South Asian youth groups in America to contextualise how children have played a role in politics in distinct ways, locating the contemporary practices of young people as forms of “performative politics” (Dar, 2014, 2018). My theoretical engagements draw upon

A New “Discipline” or a “Conversational Community” 215 feminist theory and theories on place, space and transnationalism, and, in turn, also inform theory of politics from a childist perspective. This approach of privileging a problem – of understanding discrimination faced by racialised young people and their creative responses to it, in a local and transnational context – offers possibility for innovative theories for childhood studies and a re-thinking of politics from the frame of young people through an interdisciplinary approach. In other words, by drawing on theories from the disciplines of sociology, geography, cultural studies, race, ethnicity, postcolonial studies, and the limited cannon of childhood studies, I was able to, through my research, demonstrate what “doing childhood studies” resembles. Hence, a “transdisciplinary eclecticism” contributes to newer insights in knowledge production, more pertinent than battles, or “turf wars,” over disciplines, largely a realm of institutionalised framings and not essential to scientific epistemes. It is ironic that a field that parallelly also emerged from a reflection and critique of policies for children, such as that of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has made little inroads in the policies for children globally. Academics in the global north have instead valued “children’s voices” as a diktat for scholarship production in this field (Spyrou, 2016). An uncritical stance of prioritising the child as a “social actor” without considerations of intergenerationality (Abebe & Kjørholt, 2013; Alanen, 2014; Fengbo & Punch, 2014; Punch, 2020) or relationality (Rosen & Twamley, 2018) or inter-dependence (Cockburn, 1998), results in stunting the growth of a truly transdisciplinary field in terms of theoretical, methodological, and policy developments. While scholars have included children as participants, developed innovative methodology in conducting research with young people, there has been restraint in participating with children in activism, or reflectively engaging with decolonial perspectives of knowledge production. It is only more recently that CS scholars, globally, are questioning this inequity in knowledge production about children and childhood, “which acquires particular significance in light of ongoing and often exacerbating inequalities, exploitation and injustice that characterizes many children’s lives in the contemporary world” (Spyrou et al., 2018, p. 420). Key journals of childhood studies continue to act as gatekeepers – producing publications from scholars in global north working on global south children, but not the other way around. In fact, global “scholars of childhood are building their innovations on a limited set of canons” (Andal, 2021, p. 10), and publications that emerge from the South rarely circulate in Northern contexts, replicating the larger global inequities faced by global South countries under the garb of modernity, globalisation, and transnationalism. Some recent deliberations and “conversations”7 about these inequalities of knowledge production as a result of an unequal global world order, have helped critically reflect on the interdisciplinary debates and global future trajectories of this field (see for example Abebe et al., 2022; Kannan et al., 2022; Twum-Danso Imoh et al., 2022). However, key interdisciplinary journals in this field have made little inroads in supporting vernacular languages, or providing editorial support for scholars publishing from global South contexts, who receive no formal training in academic writing and publishing due to limited investments in research in social sciences and publishing.

216  Anandini Dar Institutional investment and financial support for the humanities and social sciences remain on a decline in global South countries, particularly in South Asia, complicating the terrain of knowledge production for a new international discipline (Chatterjee, 2002). Hence, doing childhood studies for me, is of course about gaining a transdisciplinary eclecticism, but at the same time, finding ways to craft the trajectory of this field in a way that does not reproduce larger global inequalities. Debates around interdisciplinarity in the West and those that will emerge as a result of a distinct context of South Asia are bound to differ. The socio-political contexts, particular relations between the state and development agendas, and other contextual problems affecting children and marginalised children in particular, ought to inform the growth and trajectory of this interdisciplinary field in the context of India – be it in the form of new departments and programs or even a conversational community. In the following, I briefly unpack the distinct terrain of India for childhood studies, arguing that this new discipline must be attuned to generating a truly decolonial and critical interdisciplinary study of childhood and youth, largely absent in childhood studies in the West. Contextualising Childhood Studies in India: Building the Interdisciplinary Field If the starting point for the development of departments of childhood studies in the West was to turn to the learnings from disciplines such as women’s studies and sociology in the United States and the United Kingdom, it may be worthwhile to deliberate on the differing historiography of these disciplines in context of post-colonial India to formulate a reflexive agenda for building this interdisciplinary field. The establishment of women’s studies programmes in India has been argued as emerging from a dialectic relation between social movements for women and feminist critiques of rigid disciplinary boundaries within the academy. Susie Tharu (1990) writes that the larger women’s movements across India “raided” the academy, first through programmes at research centres dedicated to the cause, in the early 1970s, and then later in higher educational institutions as well, wherein “Women’s Studies contributed to revival of the women’s movement in this country in the post-1977 period” (Mazumdar, 1990, p. 6; see also, Menon and Sen, 2020). Interdisciplinary programmes in the Indian context have informed the critical work on the ground (with students of women’s studies programmes joining such spaces), encouraged critical analytical research within NGOs, and resisted the co-opting of agendas by the government and donors (Pappu, 2002). Such has been the characterisation of the nature of interdisciplinarity, or what may be called “transdisciplinary eclecticism” of new fields of knowledge production within the Indian context. Other traditional fields of sociology, simultaneously also saw this interdisciplinary move of women’s studies as an opportunity to re-think, and reconstruct their own field by critiquing the epistemes of colonial modernity and methodological nationalism that Sujatha Patel (2006, 2020) traces as having shaped the discipline of sociology prior to 1960s. By questioning Euro-centric literature, sociologists today, Patel (2020) opines, are turning towards an interdisciplinary

A New “Discipline” or a “Conversational Community” 217 inquiry of the contemporary and have moved away from the traditional sociological perspective of participant observation and tradition-modern binary for study, all the while offering a critique of the colonial knowledge systems. This interdisciplinary turn has re-framed sociological practice and inquiry to be attuned to vectors of gender, caste, class, family, rural, and urban in the analysis of social problems in India, with new theories and critiques of power and inequalities. However, the figure of the child, and the sociology of childhood, have remained at the margins of inquiry in social sciences. In his essay on “How Egalitarian are the Social Sciences in India?” Gopal Guru (2002), renders open to critique the elitism and caste dominance of the inquiries made in social sciences, “despite its veneer of scientificity” (Varghese, 2011, p. 92). This understanding of exclusion may well be witnessed in the study of young people within traditional disciplines in India as well. For instance, while women’s studies explores the question of the girl child, the analytical category of childhood remains peripheral to the discipline. Located within programmes of sociology and education as a faculty in a social science university in India, I am compelled to ask: where and how has the child, childhood, and children been studied, and how do we make sense of the interdisciplinary inquiry of this subject in a post-colonial context?8 In these concluding reflections, I draw upon deliberations from a recent sociology conference on childhoods in India, and a reflection on my experiences of convening The Critical Childhoods and Youth Studies Collective, to suggest a need to engage with a decolonial frame of reference in “doing” and “building” a new interdisciplinary field of study on childhoods in India. For a decolonial frame, guided by transdisciplinary eclecticism, the examinations of childhoods, or children’s lives must require unpacking of equations of power and a re-thinking of the theories and methods employed in unpacking the interdisciplinary study of childhood.9 In 2019, I was invited to present my research at a two days national seminar on “Articulating Multiple Childhoods: Demystifying the Normative,” organised by the Department of Sociology, at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. My excitement to be part of some of the very nascent “conversational community” centring investigations on childhood studies in India, was soon transformed into a concern for the ways in which discourses in this discipline have been adopted into social movements for children. Presentations included academic papers and talks by those working on the ground with children in West Bengal. What became troubling was the way in which social workers regurgitated the western sociology of childhood literature that prioritises “children’s agency” in everyday lives, rather than bringing forth knowledges about childhoods and diverse children’s experiences who they work with on a daily basis, situated in a post-colonial and culturally distinct social context of family life and modern rights-based state of governance.10 The presentation also conjures the fact that it is the elision of a decolonial, southern or postcolonial approach to childhoods within Indian sociology that renders such articulations factual and produces disjunctures in the conceptualisation of an interdisciplinary childhood studies in India. Hence, borrowing from the history of women’s studies in India, it appears to me that a decolonial and eclectic transdisciplinary

218  Anandini Dar childhood studies must “raid” the social movements for children at this juncture, while also producing further scholarship from this frame.11 Similarly, in my terrain of now having taught in a school of education for seven years, I find that Indian educationists continue to rely on western development psychologists in their configurations of “understanding children and childhoods.” For instance, in a course with this aforementioned title, despite my insertions for a need for the history, sociology, and anthropology of childhood examinations as necessary for an interdisciplinary programme of understanding childhood, colleagues insist on focusing only on studies of western developmental psychology. Conceding that shifts within higher education institutions are deeply linked to national agendas and disciplinary idiosyncrasies (Chatterjee, 2002; Patel, 2006), I opine that it is perhaps in the interstices of institutional support, curriculum, collaborations, conferences, social movements, and student led interests that a decolonial and interdisciplinary childhood studies can be designed in context of India. It is with such a backdrop, albeit briefly explained, that I was keen on developing a critical group of scholars interested in the interdisciplinary study of children and childhood. Such a group of colleagues worked together within my previous institution to plan events with children’s book publishers, and even host a conference on the theme. This conference, hosted at Shiv Nadar University, ultimately led to the launch of the Critical Childhoods and Youth Studies Collective, in an online mode, with the support of my colleague and historian, Divya Kannan. With over two and a half years’ experience of running this collective I have realised that doing interdisciplinary childhood studies in the context of India ought to be very distinct from the interdisciplinary childhood studies in the West, and such a differentiation is necessary to ensure a decolonial agenda for childhood studies. It has been our very concerted effort to resist (though not entirely nor arbitrarily) the default turning towards the scholarship on childhoods in Euro-American contexts when we curated reading and syllabi lists we have shared on our website. Furthermore, solidarity with other non-western nations is reflected in the types of webinars and reading groups organised. We have also launched a new books and feature essays series that turns to post-colonial and global South research to ensure there is a space for and possibility to support and nurture southern perspectives on the interdisciplinary study of childhood Forging solidarities with networks on childhood studies in the Middle East, exploring scholarship from other post-colonies of Africa for presentations, and finding ways to integrate different disciplines of Dalit studies, partition studies, literature, and sociology in our feature essays series, has generated new forms of knowledge distinct from what gets formally taught in courses on childhoods in sociology, education, or psychology in India. As we chart this pathway, and engage in the shaping of this “conversational community,” the lack of an institutional framework has offered insights into the fertile freedoms it generates, where there is limited restriction on the types of eclectic transdisciplinary engagements and collaborations possible with scholars, social workers, and young people. Yet, at the same time, it highlights the constraints on our time, and members and student interns’ labour. Perhaps, what Galtung postulates remains central to the development of this new “discipline.” Much is still to be introspected

A New “Discipline” or a “Conversational Community” 219 for this community about its own peculiarities, trappings, and elisions, as student led interests, young people’s own movements, and scholarly interdisciplinary engagements find space; leading to the possibility of a future of a distinct discipline of childhood studies in India. Acknowledgements I thank Babu P. Remesh and Ratheesh Kumar, the editors, for inviting me to be a part of this volume. Feedback from the editors, an anonymous reviewer, and Hia Sen have helped improve this chapter. Notes 1 The concepts of disciplinarity, inter-multi- and trans-disciplinarity are situated in specific histories and contexts beyond the scope of discussion in this chapter. For a more in-depth engagement with each of these, see: Robert Post (2009) on disciplinarity; Julie Thompson Klien (1990) on interdisciplinarity; Basarab Nicolescu (2002) on transdisciplinarity. 2 A brief discussion on the idea of studying “childhood” in India has been taken up by Kumar (2016), and Nandy (1984), however, these works do not deliberate on the interdisciplinary inquiry necessary for the study of childhoods. 3 See more about the collective here: www.theccysc.com 4 Leena Alanen (2018) argues that the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies is not yet a discipline, rather a “conversational community.” 5 For an understanding of certain use of metaphors such as “turf wars” in contestations and debates around disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, see: Craig, 2008 cited in Alanen (2018). 6 The growth of an interdisciplinary childhood studies has led to several new methods for research with children and young people, which were otherwise restricted within disciplinary traditions of data collection. See for example: the use of “photo-elicitation” (Clark-Ibáñez, 2004, 2007), drawings (DiCarlo et al., 2000; Merriman & Guerin, 2006), among others. 7 See the series of “conversations” about the field of childhood studies by leading scholars in the area, published as part of the celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the international journal Childhood, by SAGE. In particular the piece by Hanson et al. (2018) attends to the local/ global dynamics of knowledge production about childhoods. 8 It is beyond the word limit and scope of this chapter to engage in a deeper review of literature from the related fields of Psychology, History, Elementary Education in India, which claim to study children and childhood, and their challenges of a limited interdisciplinary frame of analysis, mostly still emphasizing child development theories of the west. 9 I draw on the conceptualisations of Mignolo & Escobar (2010), Quijano (2010), Connell (2013), Guru (2002) and de Castro (2020) in my articulations of de-colonial knowledge production. Wherein, it is imperative to reflect on where the knowledge frames that we work with come from, and who is speaking for whom. 10 See for example the work of Balagopalan (2014), who unpacks the lives of street children in West Bengal through a social history of the everyday experiences, wherein the realities do not prioritise agency alone. 11 Unlike in women’s studies, wherein, women have been able to represent and voice questions for themselves, it is adults speaking/ working for or about children and their rights in the case of childhood studies.

220  Anandini Dar References Abebe, T., Dar, A. & Lyså, I.M. (2022). Southern theories and decolonial childhood studies. Childhood, 29(3), 255–275. Abebe, T. & Kjørholt, A.T. (2013). Children, Intergenerational Relationships and Local Knowledge in Ethiopia. In Abebe, T. and Kjørholt, A.T. (eds.) Childhood and Local Knowledge in Ethiopia: Livelihoods, Rights and Intergenerational Relationships. Norway: Akademika forlag. Aitken, S.C. (2010). Bold disciplinarianism, experimentation and failing spectacularly. Children’s Geographies, 8(2), 219–220. Alanen, L. (2011). Critical childhood studies? Childhood, 18(2), 147–150. Alanen, L. (2012). Disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and childhood studies. Childhood, 19(4), 419–422. Alanen, L. (2014) Childhood and Intergenerationality: Toward an Intergenerational Perspective on Child Well-Being. In Ben-Arieh A., Casas F., Frønes I., Korbin J. (eds.) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Dordrecht: Springer. Alanen, L. (2018). Childhood studies: Conversation(s) in a conversational community. Childhood, 25(2), 125–126. Andal, A.G. (2021). The state of journals on children and childhood studies: Insights and challenges from a citation analysis. Childhood, 28(3), 444–458. Balagopalan, S. (2014). Inhabiting ‘Childhood’: Children, Labour and Schooling in Postcolonial India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chatterjee, P. (2002). Institutional context of social science research in South Asia. Economic and Political Weekly, 37(35), 3604–3612. Clark-Ibáñez, M. (2004). Framing the social world with photo-elicitation interviews. American Behavior Scientists, 47(12), 1507–1527. Clark-Ibáñez, M. (2007). Inner-city Children in Sharper Focus: Sociology of Childhood and Photo Elicitation Interviews. In G. C. Stanczak (ed.), Visual Research Methods: Image, Society, and Representation. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Cockburn, T. (1998). Children and citizenship in Britain: A case for a socially interdependent model of citizenship. Childhood, 5(1), 99–117. Connell, R. (2013). Using southern theory: Decolonizing social thought in theory, research and application. Planning Theory, 13(2), 210–223. Cook, D.T. (2010). The promise of an unanswered question: Multi-/cross-disciplinary struggles. Children’s Geographies, 8(2), 221–222. Cook, D.T., Frønes, I., Rizzini, I., Qvortrup, J., Nieuwenhuys, O. & Morrow, V. (2018). Past, present and futures of Childhood studies: A conversation with former editors of Childhood. Childhood, 25(1), 6–18. Corsaro, W. (2015). The Sociology of Childhood, 4th ed. Los Angeles, CA; London: SAGE. de Castro, L. R. (2020). Why global? Children and childhood from a decolonial perspective. Childhood, 27(1), 48–62. Dar, A. (2014). “I Like Going Places:” The everyday and political geographies of South Asian immigrant youth in New York city. PhD Dissertation. Graduate School-Camden: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA. Dar, A. (2018). Performative politics: South Asian children’s identities and political agency. Childhood, 25(4), 473–487. DiCarlo, M.A., Gibbons, J.L., Kaminsky, D.C., Wright, J. & Stiles, D. (2000). Street children’s drawings: Windows into their life circumstances and aspirations. International Social Work, 43, 107–120.

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222  Anandini Dar Post, R. (2009). Debating disciplinarity. Critical Inquiry, 35(4), 749–770. Prout, A. (2005). The Future of Childhood: Toward an Interdisciplinary Study of Childhood. New York and London: RoutledgeFalmer. Punch, S. (2020). Why have generational orderings been marginalised in the social sciences including childhood studies? Children’s Geographies, 18(2), 128–140. Quijano, A. (2010). Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. In Mignolo, W. & Escobar, A. (2010). Globalization and the De-Colonial Option. London: Routledge. Rosen, R. & Twamley, K. (2018). Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes? Open access: UCL Press. Spyrou, S. (2016). Researching children’s silences: Exploring the fullness of voice in childhood research. Childhood, 23(1), 7–21. Spyrou, S., Arce, M., Eßer, C., Rosen, F. & Twum-Danso Imoh, R. (2018). Emerging scholars of Childhood Studies. Childhood, 25(4), 422–442. Tharu, S. (1990). Introducing Anveshi. Lokayan Bulletin, 8(3), 59–63. Thorne, B. (2007). Crafting the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies. Childhood, 14(2), 147–152. Twum-Danso Imoh, A., de Castro, L.R. & Naftali, O. (2022). Studies of childhoods in the Global South: Towards an epistemic turn in transnational childhood research? Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 7(1-3), 1–16. Varghese, G. (2011). Rethinking Social Sciences and Humanities in the Contemporary World. Economic & Political Weekly, vol xlvi no 31, p. 91–98.

16 Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist! Autobiographical Notes of a Researcher in Labour Studies Babu P. Remesh Can Economics Tell All about Labour? ‘How are you going to study labour without understanding caste, class and gender aspects? Will economics alone give you a holistic understanding of labour in a country like India?’ These questions from Navin Chandra, my senior colleague at the National Labour Institute (NLI) were the first few to provoke me to rethink the disciplinary approach engaged in my doctoral research. Being a new recruit to the Institute and amid my doctoral research journey, which essentially aimed at understanding the working conditions and labour relations of informal workers in small holding rubber plantations of Kerala, it was thrilling and comforting that my job was in sync with my research topic. In a friendly conversation, Navin Sir (as we called him) asked me to explain how I was proceeding with my doctoral work. I provided the simplest explanation that I will do a field survey of rubber tapping workers (tappers), collect their responses through pre-designed questionnaires (mostly eliciting quantifiable information, with a few qualitative details) and will proceed with the analyses using the then fashionable statistical package, SPSS. I made it a point to mention that I will also do some mathematical modelling as I kept in mind the modelling works done by Gaurav Datt, S.R. Osmani (Datt, 1996; Osmani, 1991) on wage determination and the works of Hayami and Otsuka, Eswaran and Kotwal on contractual arrangements (Eswaran and Kotwal, 1985; Hayami and Otsuka, 1993). After all, I have spent my initial two years of doctoral work deciphering these analytical frameworks deeply embedded in modelling involving hard-core mathematical economics and econometrics! While he was appreciative of my idea and told me about the analytical clarity in some of these works, he immediately returned to his initial questions and asked me whether I can do a convincing and comprehensive study of India’s or Kerala’s labour scenario, using a framework of neo-classical economics with supplementary tools from mathematical economics and statistics. ‘Where do you bring in aspects like caste, religion and ethnicity? Don’t you think these are not important in shaping labour market decisions and outcomes? Will the supply-demand and marginal productivity explanations of neoclassical economics explain the issues of women’s labour? Does Gender find any space in mainstream economics? How are you bringing in socio-political factors?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-16

224  Babu P. Remesh What about labour laws?’ he quizzed me as my confidence shook and I made it evident as I stammered and bluffed for the rest of the conversation. For days, Navin Sir’s question and this conversation haunted me! Had I been ignoring the limitations of my beloved discipline? For my Masters and MPhil, I did dissertations purely with the help of economic analysis and I was quite happy with what I understood and explained. Does it mean that what I understood was wrong or not completely right? Or does it mean that what I understood is only a partial meaning of real-world situations? These rippling questions, for the first time, left me with an air of uneasiness about the disciplinary approach I took for my doctoral work. Wallowing in this uneasiness, I began working with the team of faculty members at the NLI on its various mandated activities (i.e. mainly undertaking training and research in the area of labour and employment). Initiation into Interdisciplinary Practice Till the day I joined NLI in 1998, I had mostly worked with people from a pure economics background. Though the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, where I studied for my MPhil and PhD had some faculty members from other disciplines (e.g. demography, history and statistics), I realized my academic interactions were limited to the majoritarian group of economists. Unlike such cocooned situation of interacting only with persons of the same discipline at my alma mater, the new work life at NLI offered me a chance to work with faculty and experts from many other disciplines. At NLI, there were economists, historians, sociologists, statisticians, behavioural scientists, who were more than one of the above but we all shared one thing, our area of research or professional interest – i.e. labour and employment. The senior-most colleague, who asked me the disquieting questions was primarily trained as an engineer, who gradually got shifted to social activism/trade union activities and eventually ended up as a faculty member of the NLI! What helped my transformation subconsciously was surely working with experts from varied disciples and performing diverse tasks together to attain an interdisciplinary lens. During the initial stages, while presenting a new research project proposal or participating in discussions or preparing policy notes, I started realizing that others did not quite approach the topics under deliberation the way I did. Due to my prior disciplinary training, my interventions and vantage point to approach the themes of discussion were highly ‘economics oriented’. It becomes even more difficult to take forward arguments when one is constantly interrupted by fellow colleagues. When I explained the issue of wage formation from an economic point of view, based on the models developed by authors like Osmani, there were many questions from other experts who got their professional training in other core disciplines (e.g. sociology, history, law – to mention a few), which essentially shook the disciplinary base of my ongoing and future research in labour studies: How will you bring the sociological contents into your enquiry? How you can situate your problem in a historical setting? To what extent the labour law framework addresses the issue under consideration? These were

Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist!  225 some of the oft-repeated questions that I had to face in such a presentation. Interestingly, I did the same to my colleagues by asking them about productivity, efficiency as well as cost and benefits in each and every presentation that I attended. Needless to say that these interruptions and cross-questioning forced me to bring in newer dimensions for my own way of viewing labour issues. And, gradually, I could see myself approaching my research topics in a more comprehensive and mixed-disciplinary way, where I dared to borrow tools and techniques of other disciplines while retaining my basic loyalty to economics. A similar transformation was visible in other colleagues also. Essentially, the continued interactions of a set of experts from varied disciplines resulted in a group of researchers/practitioners with blurred disciplinary boundaries, where the members are ready to cross the boundaries of their discipline if the need arises. The disciplinary transformation experienced here was somewhat like what M.N. Srinivas views as the institutional way of becoming interdisciplinary, which involves ‘several specialists all of whom are engaged in tackling a single problem and are continually engaged in a creative dialogue’ (Srinivas, 2011). In a nutshell, the net outcome of my little more than one decade of engagement at NLI was me becoming more and more open to perspectives from other disciplines too while working in the specific area of labour studies. Getting Grounded in Labour History ‘I do not like History. I am an Economist!’ This was my first response when I was asked to be the founding coordinator of a flagship research programme namely the Integrated Labour History Research Programme (ILHRP) at the NLI way back in 1998. I could not imagine myself in the shoes of a history researcher. The arrogant, aloof economist in me, who specialized in econometrics and mathematical economics, considered history as ‘undignified’! I was a ‘Labour Economist’, I’d say to myself. ‘An economist studying labour’, yes! By then, I had started participating in the events of professional associations such as the Indian Society of Labour Economics (in which I, later on, became a life member). Given this backdrop, I feared that working in a labour history programme will affect my future academic progress. Now, after a quarter of a century, I realize that my views during those days were based on a gross misunderstanding of disciplinary possibilities for researching labour. Despite my resistance, the institutional coercion forced me to take up the responsibility of coordinating ILHRP which was a collaborative initiative of NLI and the Association of Indian Labour Historians (AILH), a professional body of labour historians led by well-known historian, Prof. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya. Prabhu Mohapatra, the Secretary of the AILH (and a well-established young labour historian by then) worked with me at ILHRP as a full-time consultant for many years. Working along with established labour historians was a great opportunity to visualize labour from a transformed perspective. Especially, the constant companionship and mentoring received from Prabhu totally redefined my degree of disciplinary loyalty towards economics. I started opening up new disciplinary windows – initially that

226  Babu P. Remesh of labour history, eventually extending to other allied disciplines such as sociology, political science, anthropology, gender studies and so on. Practising Labour History The labour history programme at NLI was a unique initiative and probably, the first of its sort in India. The overall aim being the initiation, integration and revival of historical research on labour in India, ILHRP had three distinctive components namely: (a) setting up of a digital archive on Indian labour; (b) writing labour history of India, and (c) Interdisciplinary research. The digital archive aimed to provide a digital repository of material and documents on Indian labour, by building up and preserving digital collections of documents and material concerning the working class. The second component aimed to promote substantive research and writing (along with documentation and digital preservation of gathered documents/ information) in the largely neglected field of ‘labour history’. The third component essentially aimed at organizing discussions, seminars, film screenings and colloquia around the broader theme of labour studies. All these components were visualized as mutually reinforcing, with a great degree of synergy and complementarity. The institutionalization of this research programme meant a lot of activities, which provided ample opportunities to interact and collaborate with several stakeholders including trade unionists, academicians (mostly historians), archivists, technical experts, NGOs, governmental departments and business houses. While working with trade unionists, socio-political activists and grass root level organizers, I got many insightful meanings for labour and work. Almost all the central trade unions in the country, as well as many state and regional level organizations, were contacted, as part of this task – as detailed collections on the trade union movement and labour mobilization in the country were an essential pre-requisite for the Archives of Indian Labour (as we named the archive). The immediate, tangible outcome of the project was the setting up of the digital archive, which was the first as well as largest of its sort in India, at that time. Within the first four years, a considerable amount of material related to Indian Labour was stored in digital form and we have provided the best possible user interface facility, with a dedicated website supported by an effective search engine. The archive was made available to all users free of cost and the software used for developing the same was mostly with open-source codes. The design and development period of these digital archives were filled with fun and rich interactions with some IT experts with a keen interest in social issues and social scientists with considerable interest and expertise in IT. Knowing the works of eminent labour researchers such as Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Prabhu Mohapatra and Jan Breman more closely was one of the major dividends from ILHRP. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s specific contributions to the study of informal workers and the labouring poor were mind-altering. The first working paper of our research programme titled ‘Labouring Poor and their Notion of Poverty’ by him (Bhattacharya, 1999) was an eye-opener. I had to rethink my own methodological approach towards labour studies. In this work, he explained

Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist! 227 how the working poor view their state of deprivation. How he used unconventional data sources like the songs sung by women agricultural labourers (over and above the most accepted national data sets like Census and NSSO) was incredibly insightful. When I came to know about the narratives of indentured labour in the Caribbean by Prabhu, using non-conventional sources (e.g. letters written by workers; feelings of longing and belonging expressed by workers; data on indentured labourer’s migration from records of docks and ports) I was gradually getting oriented towards the subaltern ways of looking at history. Down the lane, I read and understood the Subaltern Studies series edited by Ranajit Guha and others (Guha et al., 1982–1999). Among the experts working on labour history, perhaps Prof. Jan Breman was the most important personality who actually provided a considerable degree of clarity about interdisciplinary methods of understanding labour. I am not sure, whether Jan Breman uses the term ‘interdisciplinary’ as an adjective for his own works. But, knowing his works explain what it means. Though I had read his discerning works like Patronage and Exploitation (1974) and Wage Hunters and Gatherers (1994), I did not have any chance of understanding his ways of doing research, till I joined NLI. In fact, the labour history programme gave me many occasions to know him more closely. Being a well-wisher and a patron figure of the AILH, he used to regularly visit NLI, deliver talks and participate in the seminars organized by our programme. In our biennial international conferences on labour history attended by globally renowned labour historians, he was one of the regular presence. From his works, presentations and discussions I understood how a researcher can go beyond a specific disciplinary territory to have a holistic understanding of one’s own research matter. Though Breman is a sociologist by basic training, he is widely considered a social anthropologist and political-economy expert, working on Indian labour (especially on labour in Southern Gujarat). To the Association of Labour Historians, he is a valuable labour historian. And, for the Indian Society of Labour Economics (which is largely a professional body of labour economists) he is a well-established labour economist! It was heartening to know that one can be a researcher on labour and wear many caps simultaneously – of historian, sociologist, economist, political scientist and social anthropologist if the person captures a holistic picture of labouring situations. Alternate Ways of Knowing Labour The works of Jan Breman also gave me insights into how effectively one can collaborate with experts in other fields. His twin volumes on the closure of mills in Ahmedabad were real eye-openers to me! (Breman, 2004; Breman and Sha, 2004) One of these twin books was a photo book done together with eminent photographer Parthiv Sha (Breman and Sha, 2004). Later on, Breman donated this entire physical collection of original photographs to the Archives of Indian Labour. The next work of Breman which amazed me was a photo book along with Arvind Narayan Das and Ravi Agarwal (Das, Breman and Agarwal, 2000) titled, ‘Down and Out: Labouring under Global Capitalism’. Though using photographs as an

228  Babu P. Remesh effective methodology for understanding the subject was a common practice used by many historians (especially while comparing the past and the present), it is only after familiarizing myself with Breman’s photo books that I understood the efficacy of images in telling stories of labour. In one of the international conferences of ILHRP another labour historian, Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay, surprised me through his meticulous use of literary works in Hindi literature (e.g. the stories of Premchand) to explain the plight of Dalit labour in Northern India. From that day onwards, I have a (still unaccomplished) dream of doing a similar work focusing on agricultural labour in Kerala, based on literary works of legends like Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai. Like photos and fiction, many other sources other than formally organized official, authentic data (such as Census and NSSO) gradually started attracting my attention. Understanding the possibility of films and documentaries is worth mentioning. As the labour history programme organized several film and documentary screenings on themes related to labour, each of the post-screening discussions provided me with newer meanings for labour. Later on, I used films in an effective and engaging way in my classes on labour and development studies at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), where the screening of Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica and Modern Times (1936) by Charles Chaplin became a regular feature of my courses on work organization, industrialization, urban poverty and labour. Oral History Experiments and Archiving Data at Source Knowing more about the method of oral history documentation was a bonus that I got from the labour history programme. Admittedly, I was totally ignorant about this method of historiography till then. As one of the mandated activities of our programme was to promote oral history documentation (by documenting the oral testimonies of various stakeholders of labour – known and less known – to retrieve the irretrievable sources of information, before they are lost), we have been actively working on oral history documentation projects. I reckon the special talks and discussions we organized on the possibilities and peculiarities of the same. The discussions on analysing the silence of the respondents and on the effective and ethical use of recording devices were all new learnings for me, as I was totally unfamiliar with the nuances of this unique method of data gathering, till that time. A major project in the oral history stream was documenting the memories of trade unionists, in which an audio recording of memoirs of 300 trade union leaders (national, state, local and grass root level) was planned. This project was materialized through the active participation of most of the central trade unions in India. In its first phase, the project aimed to record the memories of those who were above 80 years, viewing the possibility of irretrievably losing their memories in the event of their possibly imminent demise. The ideas such as ‘transforming oral testimonies to written histories’ and ‘preserving memories for posterity’ were totally new to me and I was eagerly learning these novel notions of understanding the social world.

Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist! 229 We also commissioned two other minor projects that had considerable elements of oral history documentation, by involving young students from Ramjas College of Delhi University. The first one was on the history of railways and the labour involved in setting up railway networks. The other was on the informal sector workers who got displaced by the implementation of the Supreme Court’s order regarding the relocation of non-confirming industries, as per the Master Plan of Delhi. As the second project was on an ongoing incident which surfaced considerable unrest among labouring poor in the capital city, at ILHRP as per the advice of our collaborating labour historians we also initiated an instant parallel and supplementary activity of gathering all the newspaper clippings and photographs on this incident, which will add as a supplementary resource-base for the oral history documentation project on the same topic. This activity of ‘tapping data and history at source’ provided a new and thrilling insight for me, as I never imagined this possibility of data collection for social research. Interactive Learnings and Disciplinary Churning As part of establishing ILHRP and exploring collaborations for it, Prabhu Mohapatra and I had to have an initial round of visits to various parts of India. Often the purpose of the visit was to identify donors (of documents) and potential collaborators (academicians, trade unionists, representatives of business houses and so on). These visits and discussions with resource persons provided new insights in terms of approaching and analysing labour issues in a more holistic way. I vividly recollect a discussion we had with a Senior Management Consultant of the Indian Telephone Industry (ITI), Bangalore, a very well-known public sector which provided employment to thousands of workers in its golden periods. When we visited ITI in 1999 or 2000, I was very keen to know about the management strategies which he had been employing at the time to ensure labour welfare. To our surprise, while explaining his achievements this person happily highlighted his success in terms of ‘downsizing’ the workforce in his organization. From this incident, I understood how differently, the managerial experts are viewing employment and labour welfare, especially in a neoliberal period, in which efficiency enhancement and austerity measures became the most desired objective functions of the firm. Archiving the material of central trade unions in India was a major activity of our project. This was materialized through continuous discussions with almost all the major central trade unions. In the first few years since the commencement of the programme, we could build up a resourceful collection on trade unions, which included valuable material on both national and regional level organizations. Our visit to Roja Muthiah Research Library (RMRL) in Chennai was special in terms of understanding the collection and archiving of non-conventional documents. This was a library which curated one of the world’s finest private collections of Tamil books, accumulated by Roja Muthiah, on a wide range of subjects including literature, humanities, medicine and other sciences. By then, RMRL’s invaluable collection had started attracting attention from international academic institutions and the library had ongoing collaborative projects with institutions like

230  Babu P. Remesh the University of Chicago, aimed at preserving and learning from local publications on indigenous wisdom and knowledge. In Delhi and Ahmedabad, we had discussions with experts to gather possible documents on the mills, which were prominent in these localities. Our unsuccessful efforts to gather a collection on the Textile Labour Association (founded by Mahatma Gandhi) was a useful experience to meet some of the social activists in Ahmedabad. We visited the SEWA Bank of Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and got a first-hand orientation about the micro-credit and finance scheme run by informal workers. In Delhi too, we had the fortune to learn from visits to trade union offices affiliated with textile mill workers! Needless to tell, my disciplinary base got enriched by multiple interactions with unions, activists and social partners. As a beginner in the field of labour history, I learned the possibilities of viewing labour through a different lens of history; understanding the unique ways engaged by historians in gathering information and building up historical accounts. I became oriented about the methods engaged in archival research and about the varieties of materials that are archived in multiple repositories for facilitating research for posterity. I realized that there are subtle but crucial differences between the citation and referencing styles of economists and historians. I could also sense the tensions between economists and historians, as they have been continuously engaged in an endless debate apropos their hierarchical positioning within the social sciences. I guess, this disciplinary unrest between these two academic tribes continues even now and will be there forever! Most of the labour historians who I came to know through this programme believed that historians engage in more robust and solid ways of referencing and citation, as compared to economists, who often limit the in-text referencing up to the level of author and year (without mentioning page number and other precise details). Similarly, at times, during lighter academic conversations some of them were deriding the economist’s way of understanding migration through ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors! Though these comments and judgements made me uneasy to some extent, it gave me some secret joy when I noticed that at least some of them view economics as a difficult subject to comprehend, as it engages more quantitative analysis! Notwithstanding all these, it was quite convincing for me that historians and economists have so much to exchange and learn from each other. Some of the labour historians were keen to learn more about certain techniques and data sources, which are more frequently used by economists. These were indications of the possibilities and necessities of bridging and connecting disciplines. During those days, I used to would fancy that somebody should bring out a book which essentially entails a methodological dialogue between historians and economists, in the line of the volume brought by Bardhan (1990) with the title, ‘Conversations between Economists and Anthropologists’. As I gradually got my name affixed to the history research programme on labour, after a few years, I got an invitation from the Editor of Labour File, a well-known labour journal to contribute a regular column on labour history. Undoubtedly, I happily accepted this offer, as by that time my aversion towards history was replaced by adoration! In the next few years, I regularly contributed to this column

Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist! 231 touching upon many important topics including ‘Marx and Capital’; ‘Champaran Satyagraha of Gandhi’; ‘Labour Unrest in TISCO’; ‘History of Labour Day Celebrations’; ‘Thebaga Movement’; ‘Uprising of Plantation Labour in Leonora’; ‘Strikes of Mill Workers and Railway Workers’, ‘Massacre of Dalit Labour in Kilvenmani’ and so on. The long and short of the story is that my continuous interaction with the faculty colleagues from other disciplines at NLI and the closer and frequent interactions with labour historians and others as part of setting up ILHRP cumulatively resulted in a situation where my disciplinary approaches towards researching labour have got considerably altered temporally. Obviously, these changes had their imprints and implications on my research works and professional progression, in the subsequent years. Where Is Economics in Your Thesis? A visible change that has occurred due to my romancing with labour history was the changed track of enquiry that I followed while continuing with and completing my PhD thesis. I gradually lost my interest in pure economic analysis of labour relations in small holdings of rubber in the context of Kerala. I yearned to bring more and more qualitative analysis to my work. At one of the international conferences on labour history, I attempted a research paper which focused on the labour history of Kerala, based on some of the unexplored documents that we had gathered for our digital archives. In that paper titled, ‘Changing Consciousness and Image of Kerala Labour in the 20th Century’, I used lots of narratives and historical material to understand the temporal changes in the labour scenario of Kerala during a long period of time (Remesh, 2003). I was eager to bring more case studies, quotes and other qualitative material into the dissertation. During the fieldwork, I collected some non-conventional data for analysing wage rates in the small holding plantations. For instance, in the absence of official data on wages received by the small holding tappers, I started using the records maintained by institutions such as churches, trusts and temple committees – regarding their day-to-day expenses. Obviously, such records had some relevant information on the wages paid to the workers on their land. While gathering such information from Parish priests and so on, I used to especially think about the efforts of some of the demographers known to me who used parish data to study demographical changes in a select locality. I tried to get the details from the Tatchu book (literally meant ‘job/work book’), an informal book maintained jointly by workers and employers, which contained the details of work carried out by the workers, which can be eventually used for calculating their admissible total wages at the time of completion of a season, or during a festival period – to settle the payments. For some of the workers, these Tatchu books were not actually books in the true sense. Instead of paper and books, some of them maintained the records on the walls of warehouses and pumps – houses on the land where they were working. And towards the end of every season, they collated employment details from these walls to calculate the payments due to them.

232  Babu P. Remesh Needless to state that all these efforts brought in, cumulatively, lots of changes to my way of visualizing and doing my study. Though I do not fully utilize these experimentations for my PhD work, I used some of these new ways of doing minimally in my dissertation. Often, I used them for writing a paper for publication and for providing an illustrative example in a training session that I held at the NLI. Due to the new insights learned from my NLI episode, my data collection techniques also underwent total changes. Instead of visiting a respondent and noting down their responses verbatim or within the strict limits of a structured and predesigned questionnaire (this was my way for my MA- and MPhil-related field works), now I gave more attention to knowing the field, rapport building, following ethical guidelines (such as informed consent, beneficence and so on). I derived a special pleasure while using pseudo names for the respondents (and writing that I am doing this to ensure the welfare of my respondents). This kind of approach was not there in my earlier phases of research. So, the changed circumstances and largescale induction into qualitative field works gave me lots of thrill and enthusiasm to take forward my PhD studies through a different route. But, there were disciplinary tensions waiting for me while following this interdisciplinary path. ‘Where is economics in your study? After all, you are submitting this for a Ph D in Economics from JNU. And, do you think that there is sufficient economics in it, to justify this?’ These were the initial remarks of my PhD supervisor, when he went through the first draft of my PhD thesis. But, he was quick to come back to my vantage point and console me. His practical suggestion was to mellow down the interdisciplinary touch by increasing more and more economics contents in my work. On his advice, I added more portions in my thesis, on contractual choice, coping up mechanisms and economics of smallholding rubber plantations and added a detailed chapter on secondary analysis based on NSSO data – to save my PhD from the criticism of not having economics in it. I still remember that my Supervisor also could sense my uneasiness about the pure disciplinary approach as he himself was going through a journey of interdisciplinary exploration, during that time – through his active collaborations with Geographers from Zurich University. Gaining a Gender Lens for Labour with a Personal Touch! During my phase of disciplinary churning at NLI, I had a fellow traveller on the interdisciplinary path who shared many similarities and common features vis-à-vis my experience. Neetha, my life partner (who also was my classmate in MPhil and PhD peer student at CDS) was among the new recruits who joined NLI in 1998. She also has been going through similar academic anxieties and churning during her first few years of NLI life. There was only one major difference, I was trying to grasp labour history while she was trying to gain a gendered understanding of the labour scenario of India, as part of her official task of setting up a new centre on gender and labour at the institute (which she also accomplished in another few years’ time). As we both had similar situations of ‘disciplinary unrest’ during the same period, the discourses on limitations and possibilities of interdisciplinarity got extended to our home also. And, often, it helped us to bring in lenses of economics,

Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist! 233 history and women’s studies together while viewing the issues concerning work and labour. Gradually, this influence of a gendered perspective was reflected in my future research too. In one of my then ongoing research studies on workers in BPO and call centre workers, I started probing gender issues and this interested culminated in collaborative writing projects between me and Neetha, in the following years, on gender dimensions of BPO labour (Remesh and Neetha, 2004, 2008). We also tried to link the activities of our respective research centres/programmes by bringing a gender dimension to our archiving activities at ILHRP. An important activity that we could complete at the archive before she left NLI in 2006 was preparing a digital collection on Women’s Labour in India. This collection included all the important national-level documents published on Women and Women’s Labour till then, including Towards Equality Report, 1974–75; Shramshakti Report, 1988; and the reports/documents of National Commissions on Labour, concerning women and women labour. Interdisciplinarity through Field Studies and Action Research Working at NLI for little more than a decade gave me many other opportunities to conduct various research projects on various dimensions of labour. Given my previous training and inclination towards conducting field studies, most of my NLI projects were also field-based. These include studies on call centre and IT workers; weavers; agricultural labour; labour in disinvested public sector undertakings and so on to cite a few (see Remesh, 2008 – for details). Each of these field-based studies provided me with new visions for understanding workers in their specific contexts that are defined and shaped by unique sets of cultural, geographical and socio-political and economic factors. I also got a chance to undertake a major action research project on organizing agricultural labour in the Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu engaging the muchcelebrated Rural Labour Camp strategy of NLI – which was a unique method based on conflict resolution and conscience creation strategies suggested by Paulo Friere. In this case, too, I had to do this project due to ‘institutional pressure’. As in the case of ILHRP, I resisted doing it initially (as I did not like ‘Action Research’!). Though I continued to entertain (and even now have) some apprehensions regarding the efficacy of the Rural Labour Camp strategy, I found it extremely helpful for me to gain new insights on understanding labour issues from the worker’s own perspective and from their natural settings, especially since there were opportunities to stay with workers for a few days and discuss their problems, to arrive at solutions that can be realized by the participants themselves. It also prompted me to rethink accepted research methodologies and write critical papers on them (Remesh, 1999). During these years, I also understood the desirability of linking and bridging theoretical learning and field-based understanding. Often, there are gaps between the two. We may have people with only theoretical understanding or who are wellversed in desk research. And, on the other extreme, we may have people with considerable field experience. But, both these extreme cases are devoid of the benefit of blending theory and practice and thus it is ideal to have a blending of both ways.

234  Babu P. Remesh Similarly, for a labour researcher, it became increasingly evident to me that it is important to have a blending of both theoretical/desk-based research and empirical, field-based experiences. Blending Research and Teaching in Labour and Development The initial impetus of interdisciplinarity that I gained from NLI and ILHRP got further strengthened when I joined Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in 2009 in its newly established School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies (SOITS). This selection was my first formal recognition or professional reward for consistently working on labour, in an interdisciplinary way. At SOITS my primary task was to design and implement a Master’s Programme. Accordingly, I designed and coordinated an MA programme in labour studies. Leveraging on my past experience, the design of this programme was done availing advice and assistance from experts in various disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. And, I tried to best utilize and learn from the competence of my fellow colleagues to strengthen this programme. New colleagues with different disciplinary competencies and with aptitude in different sets of tools and methods brought added vibrancy to our Masters in Labour and Development. For instance, one of my colleagues, who was a specialist in sociology but had a keen interest in disability studies (Shubhangi Vaidya, one of the contributors to this book) prompted me to bring disabilityrelated aspects into labour studies. Another colleague, Sadananda Sahoo’s keen interest in pursuing diaspora studies helped our programme to expand the scope of coverage of our courses by including international labour migration and diasporarelated matters. Yet another colleague, Ratheesh Kumar’s (who is co-editor of this book) involvement as a teacher had helped to provide more in-depth orientation towards engaging some of the qualitative methodologies (e.g. ethnography). Some of the preparatory discussions of our programmes in the school were quite useful for gaining clarity apropos taking forward labour studies in the interdisciplinary path by adequately blending research and teaching. During my teaching of four batches of MA Labour and Development, it was also clear to me that having teachers from different disciplinary orientations working on an identified theme is only one of the two major requisites. Another facilitating factor is having students from different disciplinary orientations. It is fascinating to see teachers and students from numerous disciplines working together continuously and eventually attaining more or less similar insights and perspectives to work on their common area of research and studies, i.e. labour and development. Dilemmas of Interdisciplinary Traveller Though understanding labour in an interdisciplinary way was intellectually challenging and rewarding, it is quite wrong, if we assume that the ‘converted disciplinarians’ are not faced with any practical challenges. At universities, young researchers are not allowed to deviate considerably from their disciplines, as their degree awarded, promotion assured and publication prospects are all highly linked

Once Upon a Time, I Was an Economist!  235 to their progress in an identified discipline. I remember vividly that in some of the interview boards, in which I participated in to obtain a career progression, it was made crystal clear to me that ‘We are not interested in your labour and interdisciplinary works. Let us come to pure economics, as this interview is for a Professor’s position in Economics’. Similarly, during the initial years of my academic career, I found that most of the funding agencies, fellowship providers and journals concerning labour research were blatantly favouring a disciplinary approach. When around a decade back, I had submitted a proposal for a labour study for a post-doctoral fellowship, I was informed that there was no interview board available for interdisciplinary studies. Given this situation, the person who contacted me wanted to include my proposal in the panel of economics, as I originally belong to that area. But, as I did not want my labour research to be routed through the economics way, I suggested they keep it in the panel of management studies (as the problem under study was also linked to managing labour!). There is no need for finishing this story. My situation was akin to a mouse facing a group of cats and trying to convince them the former’s part of the story! Notwithstanding the above rigidities, at the level of evaluation and supervisory advice, many universities are now showing a greater degree of interdisciplinarity. For instance, a PhD done on the theme of labour in a sociology department can be sent to an evaluator whose discipline is history or economics, provided the expert is a specialist in labour studies. Similarly, in research advisory groups of doctoral students, more attention is given to the thematic expertise of the advisors than their disciplinary positioning. Such signs of flexibility are indeed promising for those who experiment with innovative methods and disciplinary experimentations. By Way of Conclusion: Labour Is Not Any Other Commodity! After many years of continuous turning and churning in my disciplinary approach to the field of labour studies, I realize that I am not an economist anymore, though I love economics as my first discipline of specialization. Knowing labour in its totality warrants a differential approach which goes much beyond the conventional contours of the discipline of economics, as labour has many more dimensions other than supply-demand interactions and marginal productivity analysis. This understanding of the uniqueness of labour is truly echoed in the Philadelphia Declaration of ILO, 1944 which proclaims that ‘Labour is not any other Commodity’ (Remesh, 2010). Now, is it important to not confuse labour as an inanimate resource or factor of production? Should we visualize labour in a holistic way? Should we mix and blend disciplinary approaches for understanding its multiple dimensions? Perhaps, think beyond the boxes of our disciplines? These are questions I shall leave with you! References Bardhan, Pranab (Ed.) (1990): Conversations Between Economists and Anthropologists: Methodological Issues in Measuring Economic Change in Rural India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

236  Babu P. Remesh Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi (1999): The Labouring Poor and their Notion of Poverty: Late 19th Century and Early 20th Century Bengal, Working Paper No.1, Integrated Labour History Research Programme, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA. Breman, Jan (1974): Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India, UC Press, California. Breman, Jan (1994): Wage Hunters and Gatherers: Search for Work in the Urban and Rural Economy of Southern Gujarat, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1994. Breman, Jan; Das, Arvind Narayan and Agarwal, Ravi (2000): Down and Out: Labouring under Global Capitalism ; Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2000 Breman, Jan (2004): The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class: Sliding Down the Labour Hierarchy in Ahmedabad, India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Breman, Jan and Sha, Parthiv (2004): Working in the Mill No More, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Datt, Gaurav (1996): Bargaining Power, Wages and Employment: An Analysis of Agricultural Labour Markets in India, Sage Publishers, New Delhi. Eswaran, M. and Kotwal, A. (1985): A Theory of Contractual Structure in Agriculture, American Economic Review, Vol. 75, No. 3. Guha, Ranajit et al. (1982–1999): Subaltern Studies, Vols. I to X, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Hayami, Y. and Otsuka, K. (1993): The Economics of Contract Choice, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Osmani, S.R. (1991): Wage Determination in Rural Labour Markets: The Theory of Implicit Cooperation, Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 34. Remesh, Babu P. (1999): `Conflict Resolution and Worker Conscientisation: Rethinking the Rural Labour Camp Strategy’, Labour and Development, Vol.5, No.1 Remesh, Babu P. (2003): Changing Consciousness and Image of Kerala Labour in the 20th Century, Labour and Development, Vol. 9, No. 1. Remesh, Babu P. (2008): Shifting Trajectories: Work Organisation, Labour Relations and Mobilisation in Contemporary India, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, Noida. Remesh, Babu P. (2010): ILO: Nine Decades of Labour for Labour, Labour File, Vol. 8, No. 1–3. Remesh, Babu P. and Neetha, N. (2004): Women Workers in the New Economy: Call Centre Work in NOIDA, Labour and Development, Special Issue on Globalisation and Women’s Work, Vol. 10, No. 2. Remesh, Babu P. and Neetha, N. (2008): Gender Implications of Outsourced Work in the New Economy: A Case Study of Domestic Call Centres, The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Vol. 51, No. 4. Srinivas, M.N. (2011): Author Preface to 1966 Edition, `Social Change in Modern India, Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad. Upadhyay, Shashi Bhushan (2022): Representing the Underdogs: Dalits in the Literature of Prem Chand, Studies in History, Vol. 18, No. 1.

17 Positioning Emotions in an Interdisciplinary Perspective Nita Mathur

Interdisciplinarity provides an intellectual space and an incentive to juxtapose and align variegated and even competing perspectives, insights, methodologies and theories to produce knowledge which is more astute and holistic than what mere disciplines could generate. In such a situation, there is room for a constellation of alternative analyses to emerge to enable a holistic understanding of social reality. The heuristic potential of interdisciplinarity was emphasized by Von Bertanlanffy (1968) way back in the 1930s. In operational terms, he suggested an integration of theories across disciplinary boundaries, and the presentation of research findings in a formal theoretical language that would facilitate their communication across disciplinary boundaries (see Faber and Scheper 1997). Born out of a certain disaffection with academic disciplines, it still remains slippery and ambiguous in practice. It remains fraught with the tussle between the practice of organizing knowledge into different disciplines while also carving out a niche, i.e., independent of disciplines. Interestingly, it is precisely this flexibility and indeterminacy which accords it the sophistication it merits. Two key questions that surface at this stage are whether and in what way does interdisciplinarity benefit the person on the street? Moreover, can interdisciplinarity free itself from the shackles of academic discourse to address the concerns of laypersons? It is given that ‘knowledge’ and its interpretation are the best possible means available to deal with problems both at the micro or individual level and at the macro or societal level. Expectedly then, ever bulging data sets and information portfolios lend themselves to deliberations, discussions, and debates in different disciplines. It is also given that internal specialization marks disciplines and specialized sections mark specializations. The drive towards specialization at different levels is powered by, as Weingart (2010) suggests, external motivations and opportunities, changes in contexts of application, economic developments calling for focused expertise as from competition between disciplines. Ironically, however, the travails of people do not seem to ease despite insights from astute disciplinary specializations. This paradox raises concerns regarding the nature, scope, and utility of what we refer to as ‘knowledge’. The fundamental issue which foregrounds this paradox is that of intellectual synergy informing expertise.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-17

238  Nita Mathur The call for a restructuring of the Social Sciences presented in the 1996 Report of the ‘Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences’ was a landmark manifestation of a break from territoriality of disciplines with European universalism and positivism in favour of ‘integration of knowledge produced by different disciplines on a particular subject’ (cf. Değirmenci 2017: 46).Tracing the trajectory of social science as a form of knowledge and its differentiation into disciplines between the late eighteenth century and 1945, the Report brings to the fore the challenges posed by world developments since 1945 up until this intellectual division. This prepared the ground for a discussion on restructuring the social sciences, which may be treated as a forerunner of an overall consensus on integrated research programmes cutting across traditional lines. While decrying the existing disciplinary structures, the Report notes the rise of competing structures. Wallerstein et al. (1996: 98) sum it as, ‘There are emerging, to be sure, particular groupings of social scientists (and indeed non-social scientists) around specified interests or thematic areas, from population to health to language, and so forth. There are also groupings emerging around the level of analysis (concentration on individual social action; on large-scale, long-term social processes, etc). Whether or not the thematic distinctions or the “micro/macro” distinctions are ideal ways to organize the division of labor in social science knowledge today, they may at least be considered as plausible to distinguish between the economic and the political, for example’. While there is widespread agreement that complex problems that confront people/humankind at large ranging from climate change at the global level down to unemployment at the individual level require an inclusive approach, obtained from an integration of understanding obtained from diverse disciplines (Frodeman and Mitcham 2007; Klein 2008, 2010; McLeish and Strang 2014), interdisciplinarity remains obscure in terms of methodology and theoretical framework(s).This chapter examines crossovers and interfaces among disciplines as providing a ground for the development of new methodologies and fresh perspectives. More specifically, it re-visits and re-engages with some pertinent ideas and methodological concerns that have marked the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. Gaining a better understanding of how emotions inform and are informed by culture requires a new conceptual and methodological framework which sidesteps the scope of specific disciplines. This is exemplified with reference to my study of emotions and culture of Tamil Brahmin migrants in Delhi. The interdisciplinary framework that develops from the interjections and intersections of disciplines shapes this ethnography and opens up the possibilities of newer ways of conducting, interpreting, and presenting research. Mainstreaming Emotions Research on emotions has a vast and chequered presence in many social science disciplines though chiefly, but not limited to, that of psychology. In fact, Cacioppo and Gardner in review of studies on emotions in the discipline of psychology back in 1999 mention that PsychInfo yielded 5,064 and Medline 3,542 citations of the

Positioning Emotions in an Interdisciplinary Perspective 239 term emotion. The number of studies has increased manifold since then even as books and journals dedicated to studies on emotions occupy a large portion of academic space in the discipline. Studies on emotions in the discipline of psychology largely developed on the base/substratum provided by philosophers, historians, and literary writers dating back to the Ancient Greeks (Arnold 1960; Hansell 1989; Lazarus 1993; Gergen 1995; Nussbaum 2001; Strongman 2003). Some of the earlier studies on emotions were scientific in nature in the sense of identifying certain ‘basic’ or ‘universal’ emotions largely inspired by Darwin’s ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’ (1872) which treated emotions as stereotypical bodily expressions. The question was whether and to what extent the social effects of emotions are biologically determined. As van Kleef and Côté (2022) note, basic behavioural responses to emotional expressions shown by human beings also occur in non-human primates suggesting a firm biological basis for such responses. However, rare studies involving cross-cultural comparisons indicate that more situationspecific responses to emotional expressions are modulated by the cultural context. Emotions lie at the core of some of the most profound discipline-based studies. An academic understanding of emotions has undergone many twists and turns even as a consensus on concepts, theories, and methodologies remains awaited. This is expected, as disciplines shape the way we acquire, process, and dispense with knowledge. As Beattie et al. (2019) mention, the level of analysis depends on the agenda that guides different disciplines, notably psychology (that accounts for an individual perspective), neuroscience (with a focus on cognition and other processes such as mirror neurons), social psychology (with an emphasis on inter-group relations); sociology (with a focus on social movements), international relations (with a thrust on groups, communities and the State), feminism (with an emphasis on power and reflexivity), and geography (with an interest in space and place). Studies on emotions prior to the beginning of the twenty-first century were foregrounded in an intrapersonal perspective which prioritized a neural basis and cognitive, experiential, expressive, and behavioural manifestations within individuals (Ekman 1993; LeDoux 1995). The following period witnessed scholarly acceptance of the idea that emotions are social in that they arise, are experienced and expressed in social situations and regulated in light of social norms and goals. Despite the fact that an overwhelming number of research studies have documented the role of culture in emotion perception, how culture influences the social effects of emotions still cries out for attention. Subsequent debates and discussions shifted the focus to behaviourism (James 1948, Cannon 1927) and then to an appraisal approach which salvaged emotions from an environment–behaviour pairing, thus accounting for a differentiation of emotions and meaningful interpretation based on an appraisal of stimulus by an individual (Arnold 1960, Ellsworth 2013; Frijda 1986; Ortony et al. 1988; Lazarus 1991; Scherer 2009; Roseman 2013; Moors 2017). Reference to culture in the context of emotions forecloses the credibility of the idea of basic emotions (Ekman 1992). This marks a major shift in the understanding of emotions from one which presupposes structural and temporal irreducibility (i.e., certain emotions are recognized by everyone everywhere) to one which privileges relativism and interpretivism instead. The switch from cross-cultural

240  Nita Mathur regularities to cultural knowledge and social/cultural construction of emotions has entailed a new emphasis not only on a negotiation of emotions among the people being studied but also between researcher and informants, thus placing constructionism before universalism and commonsense naturalism (see Lutz and White 1986). Redemption of emotions from the confines of the biological was inevitably accompanied by the incorporation of the social/cultural as a legitimate context for academic enquiry. An acknowledgement of the role of emotions in personal and social life was born out of an interest in ‘a number of factors, including dissatisfaction with the dominant cognitive view of humans as mechanical “information processors”, a renewed concern with understanding socio-cultural experience from the perspective of the persons who live it, and the rise of interpretive approaches to social science that are more apt to examine what has previously been considered an inchoate phenomenon’ (Lutz and White 1986:405). Evidently, far from remaining the preserve of one discipline or a select few disciplines, emotions have found a place in diverse disciplines, which also makes for a variegated understanding of them in academic circles. The spectrum ranges from neuro-scientific studies to literary and cultural studies that mark two turns: the first is from nature to culture; the second is from the individual and personalized to the collective and shared. The central preoccupation is with the question of how emotions operate in specific situations and how they resonate in overall, larger, broadbased, and collectivist forum. A perspective on emotions can be productive when the relational aspect of emotions is highlighted and the gap between the individual and collective is bridged; thus enabling a seamless shift from one level to another at the level of both theory and practice. What is of consequence, as Beattie et al. (2019) note is the role emotions play in developing intersubjective relationships and also how people reinforce or circumscribe particular emotional scripts and knowledge in everyday life. Potential of Reflexivity in Interdisciplinary Studies Reflexivity, subjectivity, and ethnopsychology have finally gained a firm footing in an otherwise generally positivist and idiosyncratic framework for an understanding of emotions. The emphasis on a context-specific understanding is premised on the idea that emotions are experienced and expressed through an engagement with socially and culturally construed activity and are not context-free or solely individual-centric. In contrast with a large part of social science scholarship, research on emotions warrants a personal and engaging presence of the researcher in the research process itself. The connect between the personal and cultural collective enables the practice of interdisciplinarity in its truest form as the researcher finds space to present disciplinary influences on her own scholarship even before presenting how and in what way different disciplines have contributed to the object of study. In the words of Wallerstein et al. (1996: 91–92), ‘We agree that all scholars are rooted in a specific social setting, and therefore, inevitably utilize presuppositions and prejudices that interfere with their perceptions and interpretations of social reality. In this sense, there can be no “neutral scholar”. If perfectly uninvolved

Positioning Emotions in an Interdisciplinary Perspective 241 scholars reproducing a social world outside themselves is what we mean by objectivity, then we do not think such a phenomenon exists’. It is appropriate to account for the disciplinary influences and emotions of the researcher in the course of data collection, interpretation, and presentation. It is expected that this would deepen knowledge and accrue theoretical and methodological advantage in the long-run. I begin with a confession with respect to my choice of discipline. I grew up with the bias that the natural and physical sciences held the key/solution to the ills in society which, for me, placed them a few notches higher than all other disciplines including the social sciences. Having graduated in the discipline of botany and with a dream to pursue higher studies, I was compelled, for certain reasons, to digress from the discipline of my choice to that of anthropology. For me, at that time the switch from botany to anthropology seemed like the most severe punishment of my life, but only till such time as I immersed myself in the new discipline. As the months rolled by, I studied both physical anthropology (akin to the biological sciences) and social anthropology (akin to sociology and other social sciences) with equal zeal and realized the banality of my bias. This renewed realization pushed me to opt for social anthropology (surprisingly not physical anthropology) and continue with it with much interest and passion. My own challenge to the academic status quo and the ardour to experiment with interdisciplinarity came with the realization that the process of knowledge production itself was amenable to innovation and that creativity lay in making it more inclusive of the returns from different disciplines. One of the most persistent concerns was that of objectivity. The question of objectivity has remained central to a large volume of discussions and debates in the social sciences. The disquiet in me was with the methodological reconciliation of my commitment to objectivity, by virtue of my prior training in botany, with subjectivity which seemed to be well-accepted in the social sciences. Stepping out of naïve arguments of the objectivity-subjectivity debate and seeking to superimpose objectivity of the kind which models the social sciences on the sciences turned out to be futile, for as Wallerstein et al. (1996: 90) put it, ‘One kind of question that has been posed is “whose objectivity?” Posing the question in this way implies scepticism, even total doubt, about the possibility of achieving objective knowledge. Some have suggested that what is said to be objective knowledge is merely the knowledge of those who are socially and politically stronger’. Against this backdrop, the questions that surface are: whether objectivity is a mirage in social science research? Is there a possibility of meaningfully reconciling objectivity with subjectivity? Can intersubjectivity hold the solution/key? After objectivity, my concern was with generalizations which in effect meant connecting the micro, i.e., community-based studies with the macro, i.e., larger phenomena, organizations and/or institutions. The goal was to be able to integrate the nomothetic case with idiographic description into a model which was amenable to critical thinking. Having been trained to understand a whole species, even family of plants from a single representative sample, it was baffling to draw generalizations from, for example, an ethnography. In my formative years in the discipline of anthropology, ethnography was, for me, no more than a fascinating description of a

242  Nita Mathur culture and way of life of a particular people for its own sake. In fact, I found myself questioning the relevance and significance of ethnographies beyond description and record. The buzzing question was whether, how and in what way could ethnography contribute in ameliorating the lot of people? A similar question might be raised on certain specific issues such as social action, rituals, beliefs, customary laws, and so on. The seeming paradox arises, as I understood in sometime, as a result of remaining too focused on the micro or cultural specifics underlying the epistemological or methodological intersections with other disciplines. Calhoun and Rhoten (2010: 116) identify three basic patterns in interdisciplinary social science: ‘the pursuit of a comprehensive view of social life that requires different perspectives, the pursuit of innovation based on learning skills or acquiring tools from other disciplines, and the pursuit of a better understanding of a social problem, public concern, or object of professional practice’. Understandably, these patterns are subject to multiple combinations in different projects of knowledge production and assimilation. Implementing Interdisciplinarity Consider my reflexive position in the study of emotions and culture of Tamil Brahmin migrants in Delhi. By way of introducing the community it is imperative to mention that, following the 2011 census, the size of the Brahmin population in Tamil Nadu was 1.78 million of which 1.40 million were Tamil Brahmins. It is estimated that a quarter of all Tamil Brahmins, i.e., about 1.85 are settled outside of Tamil Nadu (Fuller and Narasimhan 2014). A fairly large number of them are settled in Delhi, mainly in the areas of Janakpuri, Karol Bagh, Munirka, and Ramakrishna Puram. They are broadly divided into two groups: the Vaishnavite, who treat Vishnu as the presiding deity and are distinguished by marks of ash in the shape of the alphabets V or Y (referred to as namam) on the forehead; and the Shaivite who treat Shiva as the presiding deity, and are distinguished by three parallel and horizontal stripes of sandalwood paste (referred to as vibhutipattai) on their forehead. Interestingly, Tamil Brahmins manifest a queer blend of tradition and modernity. To give an example, a young man dressed in a formal three-piece suit could very well be seen with anamam or vibhutipattai, whereas a young girl dressed in traditional attire might be seen rattling off ideas about science in impeccable English. What is important to note at this juncture is the underlying culture and cognition which brings them together as a community. A single question: who is a Tamil Brahmin or what goes into the making of a Tamil Brahmin? What constitutes the core identity of Tamil Brahmins sparks a long standing and common discourse which is shared by a majority of them. The discourse largely centres on issues of purity, way of life, certain myths, and aesthetics, primarily the dance of Bharatanatyam and music. An analysis of this discourse and its elements suggests that the core is constituted of emotions that play out in multifarious ways and in many combinations. The fact that emotions have been investigated across a wide range of, seemingly diverse, disciplines ranging from biology and neuroscience to philosophy,

Positioning Emotions in an Interdisciplinary Perspective 243 psychology, humanities, and the social sciences, emerged as an insurmountable challenge before me. By and large, three dimensions of emotions seem prominent in academic writings: physiological changes that accompany emotions, affect or feelings experienced by a person, and expression which influences behaviour and communicates affect to others. Drifting between a purely objective and dispassionate approach which characterizes biology and neuroscience and a subjective and more engaging approach which characterizes the humanities and social sciences, I was in search of an integrative and multifaceted one. Debates and discussions surrounding the universality of emotions informed chiefly by the disciplines of psychology and anthropology (see Ekman 1977; Plutchik 1980; Schieffelin 1983; Lutz 1988) provided the entry point to me. While recognizing the inefficacy of the idea of emotions as trans-cultural and at the same time rooting them solely in culture, I chose to integrate knowledge from varied disciplines to develop an approach which would balance the two poles. I conjoined everyday life and living with beliefs, values, myths, art, and aesthetics. The purpose was to analyse emotions through the prism of the ‘everyday’ using accounts of the ordinary to explore the various ways in which emotions are experienced and used. I sought to interrogate the multifarious deployment of emotions in the everydayness of life. Drawing from the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and sociology, I embedded an individual-centric approach within the social and cultural context which made for a cogent and inclusive understanding. The first stage comprised of sifting out multiple emotions mainly out of their everyday narratives, myths, and lyrics to which they performed the Bharatanatyam dance. Of the palette of emotions, a cross-section of Tamil Brahmins identified eight determining emotions: love (anbu), laughter (chereppu), courage (veeram, thunnevu), fear (bhayyam), sorrow (kavalam), anger (kobam), disgust (veruppu), and jealousy (poramai). My next endeavour was to develop a methodology for an exhaustive study of the experience and expression of emotions within the community. The second stage comprised of developing an understanding of the cultural theory of emotions. This accounted for the context within which emotions acquire salience in the culture. I began with intensive fieldwork during the course of which I learnt Tamil language, and Bharatanatyam dance and also participated in the daily life of the people. I spent between six to seven hours every day (for about eight months) with them participating in whatever they did in the course of the day, ranging from teaching the children, stitching buttons on clothes, watching television, and a range of such activities. On many occasions, I participated in their major rituals and functions. Virtuosity in participant observation obtained from my training in the discipline of anthropology enabled me to acquire a close understanding of why they did what they did and of their overall cognition. In a practical sense, the beginnings of accessing a cultural theory of emotions was made using the psychological approach of forming clusters of words associated with each emotion. Words in each of the eight clusters were analysed within the framework of the culture and social relationships. Practically, this called for a series of in-depth interviews surrounding each emotion. Further, the experience of emotions was gauged from people’s own accounts and their response to an array of statements drawn from one

244  Nita Mathur of the most promising works on emotion in the discipline of psychology (that of Ekman 1977; Plutchik 1980; Schieffelin 1983; Lutz 1988). It was found that while the set of eight constituted the core of emotions in the culture, intensity was the major variable that called for close attention. Tamil Brahmins classify intensity of emotions into three categories: high (suggested by the prefix mikka or romba to a word for the particular emotion), low (suggested by the prefix kunjam to a word for the particular emotion), and medium (suggested by the word for the particular emotion bereft of a prefix). The prefixes mikka and kunjam are employed as independent words as well to denote ‘much’ and ‘little’, respectively. In the third stage, I constructed a psychological test based on pictures of Bharatanatyam dancers depicting each emotion in multiple intensities. A fairly large number of psychological tests have been developed to estimate an emotion in research and clinical practice (see Spielberger and Reheiser 2009). Often the goal is to assess an emotion at the moment when the test is administered. The administration of a test is accompanied with a set of instructions on how the emotion is to be reported. The main pitfall which I could foresee is that the results seem valid at the moment of administration and reporting of the test. However, to establish that a particular emotion is a constituent of a person’s personality based on a psychological test, to me, seems a little far-fetched. This is not to deny the credibility of psychological testing or the roots of the discipline of psychology but only to make the point that the validity of psychological testing could be enhanced by incorporating cultural and social factors into analysis. An anthropological approach, on the other hand, seeks to assess emotions within the cultural context through an analysis of narratives, beliefs, values, and practices of culture. While the former approach suffers from excessive regimentation, the latter succumbs to an excessive emphasis on culturalism, both preventing a clear and meaningful comprehension of emotions. While the notion of psychological testing seemed appropriate as it could provide an appropriate framework for understanding emotions, it was imperative to incorporate culture ingeniously. The challenge was to combine the acumen of both disciplines in a way such that the limitations posed by the excessive rigidity of psychology and the excessive fluidity of anthropology could be obviated. The option which lay before me was to develop a psychological test which would be based on an understanding of emotions in Tamil Brahmin culture obtained through in-depth and prolonged fieldwork. Based on this understanding, the objective of the test was to assess the intensity with which each emotion was experienced and expressed in everyday life. It was distinguished from other psychological tests in that it was constructed from cues picked up from the cultural milieu itself, which was expected to raise the reliability of the results. It was revealed that with a few exceptions, most of the time people tended to overestimate and display certain emotions in high intensity, others in low intensity, and the remaining in medium intensity. It can be argued that intensity of emotions is dependent on the situation. Notwithstanding such an assertion, it was concluded that the intensity of an emotion was not solely dependent on the situation; rather, its arousal was greatly influenced by cultural values and ethos. Consider the emotion of anger for example. In most

Positioning Emotions in an Interdisciplinary Perspective 245 situations, anger is elicited in low intensity, for it is considered as an emotion of demons, and one which impairs ‘right thought’, ‘right action’, and ‘right judgement’. Further, the practice of pouring water on the head every day, chanting the glories of god and other such endeavours are believed to keep anger in check. Withdrawal is regarded as the best method of controlling anger. While some sailed they introspect and reflect on the issue solitude, others said that they went about their daily chores quietly. The test brought out the polarity between some pairs of emotions, for example love-disgust, laughter-sorrow, courage-fear; and the linearity between anger and jealousy. Such interconnections, as Izard (1977) explains are not to be understood as rigid and inflexible. Apparent opposition does not always denote an ‘either-or-relationship’ while similarity or apparent association does not always denote an ‘and-relationship’. Quintessentially, the apperception of emotions among Tamil Brahmins within an interdisciplinary frame of reference was an arena of scholarship which brought together multiple disciplines imperceptibly but those of anthropology, psychology, and sociology discernibly. The motivations underlying its origins were explicit. Given the pervasiveness of emotions in all walks of life, knowledge was needed from multiple disciplines to develop discursive and unfragmented insights that would cut across disciplinary cleavages. The face-to-face encounter of different disciplines within a single frame added intellectual value and simultaneously developed several premises and justifications for collaborative studies. Perspectives and Open Questions While interdisciplinarity has remained a buzzword in academic discourse for a long time now, it is not free of competing impulses. As Moran (2007: 15) puts it, ‘On the one hand, it forms part of this traditional search for a wide-ranging, total knowledge; on the other, it represents a more radical questioning of the nature of knowledge and our attempts to organize and communicate it’. In this sense, interdisciplinarity questions some of the major concerns that confront epistemology as such, and endeavours to ‘discipline’ knowledge and address problems and issues that necessitate inclusivity and a unified form of knowledge. Interdisciplinary collaboration that invites scholars from different disciplines to negotiate concepts, methodologies, and theories seeking to circumscribe the composite nature of emotions acquires a particular salience for the reason that they not only shape the social life of disciplines but also the social life of the people on the streets. Overthrowing the shroud of disciplines, research on emotions is bound to widen its scope in order to accord centre space to everyday negotiation and the politics of emotions as well as to the reproduction of the hegemonic structures of their expression and consumption. Studies on emotions in everyday life call for a more radical questioning of the nature of knowledge itself and of the endeavours to organize and communicate it. Two threads run through the interrogation of emotions in everyday life: first, making sense of the connect (or disconnect) between emotions at the individual and collective levels; and second, the operational dynamics between emotions and the structures of power.

246  Nita Mathur Of central concern to the everyday politics of emotions are four questions: Whose emotions aggregate attention? Which emotions or emotion sets are perceived as worthwhile? What is the scope of emotions? In other words, what can/ cannot emotions make happen? And how do emotions circulate in social groups? Evidently, emotions are integral constituents of commonsense as well as enablers of resistance to hegemonic power. Given the fact that emotions are ‘neither purely internal to an individual nor divorced from a background and social context’ (Fierke 2014: 563), it would be rather naïve to confine them to individual experience, somatic or bodily reaction, or inter-group relations. Meaningful understanding of emotions can be arrived at/obtained from a consolidated perspective combining all of these and by superseding disciplinary limitations. What is required is greater methodological diversification and interdisciplinary collaboration. van Kleef and Côté (2022) affirm that deeper insights can be gained through interdisciplinary collaboration as could happen when psychology and biology come together. Joint efforts could discern the biological bases underlying the social effects of emotions. Similarly, new competencies could develop during the course of collaborative studies in the areas of political science and communication studies conjoined with big data gathered from social media platforms. Two outcomes could be expected. First, a renewed understanding of how the emotional expressions of politicians, opinion makers, or influencers shape the attitudes and behaviours of followers. Second, discovering new frontiers in understanding the social effects of emotions. Additionally, this idea could be extrapolated to ongoing research in artificial intelligence and robotics. We could look forward to the development of a new generation of interfaces that might fundamentally change how humans interact with machines. The interface of humans with machines carries wide ranging implications for new forms of being and sociality. It is time to speculate, reflect, and introspect on the possibilities of stretching epistemologies. The rigour of sharing concepts, methods, and theories across disciplinary divides could well be used to ensure a space for critical commentary in academics and influence policies driven towards enhancing the quality of life of people at the grass-roots. There is an impending need to engage with technical systems including artificial intelligence with a resolve to provide deliverance from social and structural inequalities. The situatedness of emotions in this new black box of algorithms is a pertinent domain of enquiry. References Arnold, M. B. 1960. Emotion and Personality: Psychological Aspects vols. 1 and 2. New York: Columbia University Press. Beattie, A. R., N. Head and C Eroukmanhoff. 2019. ‘Introduction: Interrogating the ‘everyday’ politics of emotions in international relations’. Journal of International Political Theory, 15(2), 136–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219830428 Cacioppo, John T. and Wendi L. Gardner. 1999. Emotion. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 191–214 Calhoun, Craig and Diana Rhoten. 2010. Integrating the social sciences: Theoretical knowledge, methodological tools, and practical applications. In R. Frodeman, J. Thompson

Positioning Emotions in an Interdisciplinary Perspective 247 Klein & C. Mitcham (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Cannon, W. B. 1927. ‘The James-Lange theory of emotions: A critical examination and an alternative theory’. The American Journal of Psychology, 39, 106–124. https://doi. org/10.2307/1415404 Darwin, Charles. 1872. The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. John Murray. https://doi.org/10.1037/10001-000 Davitz, J. R. 1969. The Language of Emotion. New York: Academic Press. Değirmenci, Koray. 2017. ‘Revisiting the insane of interdisciplinary and disciplinary distinction in social sciences’. European Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Slides, 2(6), 45–50. Ekman, P. 1977. Biological and cultural contribution to body and facial Movement. In J. Blacking (Ed.), The Anthropology of the Body. London: Academic Press. Ekman, P. 1992. ‘An argument for basic emotions’. Cognition and Emotions, 6(3–4), 169–200. Ekman, P. 1993. ‘Facial expression and emotion’. American Psychologist 48(4), 384–392. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.48.4.384 Ellsworth, P. C. 2013. ‘Appraisal theory: Old and new questions’. Emotion Review, 5, 125–131. Faber, Jara and Willem S. Scheper. 1997. ‘Interdisciplinary social science: A methodological analysis’. Quality and Quantity, 31, 37–86. Fierke, K. M. 2014. ‘Emotions and intentionality’. International Theory 6, 3: 563–567. https://doi.org/10.1017/S175297191400027X Frijda, Nico H. 1986. The Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frodeman, R. and C. Mitcham. 2007. ‘New directions in interdisciplinarity: Broad, deep, and critical’. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 27(6), 506–514. Fuller, C. J. and Haripriya Narasimhan. 2014. Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle Class Caste. London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Gergen, K. J. 1995. ‘Metaphor and monophony in the 20th-century psychology of emotions’. History of the Human Sciences, 8, 1–23. Hansell, J. H. 1989. ‘Theories of emotion and motivation: A historical and conceptual Review’. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 115, 429–448. Izard, C. E. 1977. Human Emotions. New York, London: Plenum Press. James, W. 1948. What is emotion? 1884. In W. Dennis (Ed.), Readings in the History of Psychology (pp. 290–303). Appleton-Century-Crofts. https://doi. org/10.1037/11304-033 Klein, J. T. 2008. Education. In G. Hirsch Hadorn (Ed).Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research. Springer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Klein, J. T. 2010. Creating Interdisciplinary Campus Cultures. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Lazarus, R. S. 1991. Emotion and Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press. Lazarus, R. S. 1993. ‘From psychological stress to the emotions: A history of changing outlooks’. Annual Review of Psychology, 44, 1–21. LeDoux, J. E. 1995. ‘Emotion: Clues from the brain’. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 209.35. Lutz, C. 1988. Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lutz, C. and G. M. White. 1986. ‘The anthropology of emotions’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15, 405–436.

248  Nita Mathur McLeish, T. and V. Strang. 2014. Leading interdisciplinary research: Transforming the academic landscape. Stimulus Paper. Durham: The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. Moors, A. 2017. ‘The Integrated Theory of Emotional Behavior follows a radically Goal Directed Approach’. Psychological. Inquiry, 28(1), 68–75. Moran, Joe. 2007. Interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Nussbaum, M. C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ortony, A, G. L. Clore and A. Collins. 1988. The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pedersen, Dawird Budtz, 2016. Integrating Social Sciences and Humanities in Interdisciplinary Research, Palgrave Communications, https://www.nature.com/articles/ palcomms201636 Plutchik, R. 1980. Emotion. A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis. New York: Harper & Row. Roseman, Ira J. 2013. ‘Appraisal in the emotion system: Coherence in strategies for Coping’. Emotion Review, 5(2), 141–149. Scherer, K. R. 2009. Affective science. In D. Sander & K. R. Scherer (Eds.), Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schieffelin, E. L. 1983. ‘Anger and shame in the tropical forest: On affect as a cultural system in Papua, New Guinea’. Ethos, 11(3), 181–191. Spielberger, C.D. and E.C. Reheiser. 2009. Assessment of Emotions: Anxiety, Anger, Depression, and Curiosity. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 1, 271–302. Strongman, K. T. 2003. The Psychology of Emotion: From Everyday Life to Theory (5th ed.). New York: Wiley. van Kleef, G. A. and S. Côté. 2022. ‘The social effects of emotions’. Annual Review of Psychology, 73, 629–658, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020821-010855. Von Bertanlanffy, L. 1968. General System Theory: Foundation, Development, Applications. New York: George Braziller. Wallerstein, I., et al. 1996. Open The Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. Weingart, P. 2010. A short history of knowledge formation. In J. Thompson Klein & C. Mitcham (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

18 Researching the ‘Urban Turn’ Interdisciplinary Methods to Study Cities and Regions Rohit Negi, Rachna Mehra, and Pritpal Randhawa

Urban studies is a growing interdisciplinary field of scholarship that values innovative, collaborative, and heterodox methodologies. The field draws from urbanfocused work in established disciplines such as sociology, economics, geography, political science, anthropology, history, psychology, and law. In addition, literature, arts, design, science, and technology studies have also come to creatively inform urban studies more recently. While each discipline employs distinctive epistemologies to explore and theorize cities and regions, the larger issues they address are typically of interest across domains. Over time, certain approaches and methods have become integral to urban studies research, including spatial analysis, political economy, political ecology, and institutional approaches. After outlining a broad overview of the state of urban studies, particularly from the Indian vantage point, this chapter specifically focuses on three methodologies of vital importance to the field contemporarily: first, understanding the urban process via built environments and assembled infrastructures; second, policy process as a method to read the shifting world of urban policy making; and third, oral history methods that link the past with the present and ideas of the future. The chapter describes the challenges and opportunities in evolving well-defined interdisciplinary methodologies to research a range of urban issues. Introduction Aspects of the urban have been the object of inquiry across disciplines, in India and beyond, since at least the 1930s. Sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, historians, and economists, among others, have researched how cities grow, function, shape social and environmental change and play an important part in the forging of new identities and collectives. The sub-disciplines of urban sociology and urban geography are by now well established within their respective disciplines (Patel 2018). Additionally, scholars with more humanities-oriented interests have created their own intellectual space alongside the otherwise professional fields of urban planning and urban design. An important moment in this story was Gyan Prakash’s (2002) observation that while the urban had been the site of enquiry, though patchy, for a long time, there had been a discernible ‘urban turn’ with regard to concerns arising out of city life in India. Since then, scholars have started to DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-18

250  Rohit Negi, Rachna Mehra, and Pritpal Randhawa converse ever more substantively beyond academic silos. Journals such as Urban Studies, EPW’s Review of Urban Affairs, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Cities have promoted these conversations by publishing interdisciplinary urban research. Conferences such as those organized by the Research Committee 21 of the International Sociological Association—held in Delhi in 2019—and, more recently, Urban ARC, regularly bring together scholars from different disciplines with a shared interest in the urban. Over time, these discussions have cohered in intellectual inquiry that promotes theoretical debates via commonly recognized vocabulary, methodological experimentation, and a broadly critical perspective on urban processes. This increased interest is strongly connected to advocacy, activism, and practice. SARAI in Delhi and the Mumbai Studies Group (founded in 2000) have been important for a discussion of cutting across domains. Collectives such as PUKAR, Hyderabad Urban Lab, and CRIT-Mumbai combine intellectual work with situated practice. Scholars organized under the ‘PEAK Urban’ collective argue for an interdisciplinary inquiry into urban futures that subject the sciences of prediction and projection to cultural, institutional, and ethnographic analysis (Keith et al. 2020). The currently dominant technocratic paradigm of ‘smart cities’ has been extensively studied via historical and critical frames that parse out its multiple forms, absences, and injustices (Chakrabarty 2019, Datta 2019). Similarly, the Sajha Manch campaign in the early 2000 and Main Bhi Dilli campaign (launched in 2018) have undertaken massive exercises aimed to push the process of master planning, long considered an exclusive domain of disciplinary experts, in participatory directions. Relatedly, since the late 1970s, urbanization has come to represent a worldwide process (planetary) that has shaped larger political, economic, and socio-environmental relations (Brenner and Schmid 2015). Increasingly, the widely held rural/urban dichotomies or teleological ideas in prevalent social science thought have been critiqued and arguments made towards thinking of the urban as a continuum and process. Urban studies has also been influenced by broader questions around epistemic location, positionality, and the historicizing of universalist claims of northern theory. Scholars have argued that urban realities in the global south should not be read as exceptions to the template received from the north. Rather, conceptual work to theorize observed processes in more autonomous but relational frameworks must be done to think through southern urban pasts, present, and futures (Baviskar 2003, Chatterjee 2004, Benjamin 2008, Schindler 2017, Bhide and Burte 2018, Bhan 2019). This call has significant methodological implications. These include an openness to heterodox and pluralist methods of research, the recognition of the different scales at which research may be productively situated, attention to the ‘ordinary’ work of power, and a deeper engagement with lived experiences of not only people’s inhabiting of cities but also of their governance. Against this backdrop, this chapter will describe in greater detail three methodological approaches that have been found productive by urban studies scholars beyond their disciplinary origins. The first approach proposes to read the city through its materiality or the built environments and materials that move through while transforming the urban and in turn being transformed by the urban process. The second is

Researching the ‘Urban Turn’ 251 the ‘policy process’ as a method to unpack the politics of knowledge and power embedded in urban policy. Finally, the chapter discusses the oral history method, which is especially productive in understanding the lived experiences of the city, especially from the margins. Researching the Urban through Its Materiality Alongside the initial sociological inquiries into the nature of the urban, questions related to the spatiality of change have been important to the field of urban studies in the last four or so decades. The contribution of critical geography to this effort has been important with scholars aiming to understand the myriad ways in which society and space are entangled and co-produce each other (Soja 1980, Massey 1984). In particular, the role of capitalism in structuring social and spatial processes has been of interest (Harvey 1985). Space, especially qua property in capitalism, is about exchange values, purchase, and sale and its social relations as a commodity. It is this logic that, as things stand, tends to dominate policy and practice, particularly in urban areas undergoing rapid economic transformations. Property values and rents apply pressure on individuals and collectives to keep up or face the threat of displacement, producing spaces that are constantly in flux and lives that are vulnerable to disruption. Place, on the other hand, is imbibed by memories, habits, and attachments, aspects that resist quantification but are valuable from a human perspective. Many urban contestations around us are expressions of this underlying tension between space and place; collectives struggling to continue their livelihoods while facing so many uncertainties. How do conscientious scholars comprehend and engage with these tensions of urban life? One of the learnings from the past decades of thinking with this question is that considering larger forces and their specific manifestations on the one hand and deploying grounded methods to appreciate local knowledges on the other must go together (Tsing 2011). To this end, focusing on materiality and its several dimensions is a productive methodological and conceptual means. Apart from other things, tracing the matter—such as steel, energy, and food—that builds and sustains the urban takes us to places far beyond the city’s borders from where these things are brought in as they fuel urban metabolic processes (Gandy 2004). Tracing these chains through origin to use and to waste leads us to the realization that struggles around environmental resources in places like Jharkhand or Uttarakhand are very deeply tied to the workings of cities like Delhi. At the scale of everyday life, materials are bound up in relationalities that are social, and therefore, also economic and political. Class, as per Marxist understandings, is primarily about one’s relation with the mode of production, but it is also simultaneously a spatial and sociological phenomenon. For instance, spatial segregation that leads to some residents living in a stigmatized part of the city forecloses opportunities and reproduces inequality. Similarly, being an elite resident is related to particular ways of dwelling and consumption. Class, in other words, is lived and performed and we live and perform in space. Cities are divided along lines of class and caste with radically dissimilar built environments, physical, and

252  Rohit Negi, Rachna Mehra, and Pritpal Randhawa social infrastructures. Focusing therefore on the materiality of everyday lives tells us something important about what it means to inhabit a deeply unequal world. This is broadly the assumption behind the ongoing work of one of us in small towns of Banjar (Kullu district) and Bharmour (Chamba district) in Himachal Pradesh (Negi et al. 2017, Negi 2023). These settlements may or may not be administratively defined as urban but look and behave like it in terms of increasing population, circulation of capital, the scale of construction, and the newly realized need for collective infrastructures such as sewerage and public spaces. Even when they are reclassified to urban (mostly through notification of a Nagar Panchayat), this process takes place well after these changes are set in motion. This means that planning follows the materialization of a town rather than substantively shaping it in any meaningful way. The aim of this work is then to document the largely selfdriven process of urbanization through the stories of old and new residents, the political economic forces within which the urban is set, and especially through the biographies of built environments that emerge through these interactions. With this background, let us consider housing in these small towns. One can either rent, own, or squat as a way of accessing housing. Housing thus is a relation with other people, with the state (through property ownership or rental contracts), and with the market, which mediates access. Housing is also a physical artefact. Given that reinforced concrete construction is now ubiquitous across the region, cement, steel, tiles, electricals, woods, fixtures, and furniture are the constituent elements of the contemporary home. Each of these is sourced from some place with specific ecological linkages: gravel/bajri via blasting of hills, sand from the depleting riverbeds, cement from factories elsewhere, and timber through legal or illegal felling of forests. The move towards this typology of construction is then tied to a bundle of environmental changes and the governance of nature. In Himachal, tough regulations related to the felling of trees have meant that the historical practice of wood and stone construction (locally known as ‘kathkuni’) is no longer possible with timber being extremely expensive and tough to source for the public (Raghuvanshy 2021). Initiatives to build with locally available materials such as mud, clay, and bamboo are gaining ground (Tenzing 2021), but these practices remain exclusive and isolated. It should be remembered that different aspects of construction work are linked to specific bundle of skills and thus to the individuals who practice them. Transitioning to concrete in these contexts leads to uniformity, modularity, and passing of knowledge from the local mistri (mason) with expertise in kathkuni to contractors and masons skilled in concrete-based construction from places far and beyond. The former must seek other means of livelihood even as their situated knowledges are increasingly rendered obsolete. In turn, these changes create a market in construction materials that those with the requisite capital look to profit from. During the research, we spoke with a local cement wholesaler in Banjar whose turnover from the small town and its rural hinterland was such that the cement company had flown him to places like Thailand and Dubai, forging global memories out of a local construction boom. These individuals come to form the local capitalist class, an elite which then builds and translates its prosperity on to the landscape through

Researching the ‘Urban Turn’ 253 their own construction of massive houses, shopping centres, or hotels, speculative investments that bet on the continued growth of the regional economy. Writing about Dar es Salaam, Claire Mercer (2014) shows how houses of different typologies with varied architectural styles and aesthetic elements stand for far more than their functional aspects. Building, in other words, “is a complicated process requiring careful orchestration of resources, labour, money and material over long time frames. Houses thus [illuminate] the precarious nature of claims to middle classness” (p. 244). The size of homes, their structural integrity, and assembled aesthetic elements are variegated and produce a heterogeneous urbanscape. Aspiration is one aspect here; bare life is another. People build with concrete to ‘future proof’ their family’s lives. But across the Himalaya disasters like earthquakes, landslides, and flash floods loom and they reveal the fundamental inequities latent in different construction practices. When we asked a local contractor in Banjar what might happen to the town if an earthquake like the one in Nepal in 2015 were to strike, he told us that 30% of the town would collapse. One can predict by tracing the geography of heterogeneous construction practices, which the 30% is likely to be. Finally, housing is also about futurity, aspirations, and emotional bonds, aspects critical to how we make place and meaning in the world. Methodologically, mapping the layout of neighbourhoods with residents, the built environment, and infrastructures becomes a means to understand emergent and risky lives. Writing the biographies of buildings as connected to those who construct and inhabit them shows the way class and caste manifest in material terms. Mapping the chains of materials and their links with skills and labour are generative pathways to locate the movement of knowledge and exploitative practices through which towns get built. Thinking with matter, in sum, allows the researcher to remain embedded even as the world around us changes at a breathtaking pace and is therefore productive tool to ground concepts critical to urban studies. Alongside the top-down process of policy formulation, the material processes and transformations on the ground as discussed earlier also have an influence on how urban policies are shaped and carried out. The next section attempts to understand the intricate process of policy making and related contestations. Understanding Urban Policies through the ‘Policy Process’ Method Policy is generally understood through a highly technical and narrowly conceived perspective. This approach is about what is viable and unfeasible in a policy and aims to suggest how it might be improved. Technical policy analysis, however, has limited utility for social scientists as it overlooks the social, political, economic, and environmental dynamics that lead to policy change. In order to understand the complex factors involved in the process of policy formulation, there is a need to alter the focus of research from policy analysis to policy process analysis (Keeley and Scoones 2003). Rooted in science and technology studies (STS), the policy process approach is being widely used to unpack the politics of policy formulation rather than fixate on a particular policy alone. More recently, it has also been

254  Rohit Negi, Rachna Mehra, and Pritpal Randhawa used in understanding and examining urban policies (Davoudi 2006, Randhawa and Marshall 2014). The policy process approach brings a novel lens to critically examine the relationship between knowledge, power, and policy. Keeley and Scoones (2003) argue that knowledge does not get established in policy as part of a simple linear process where problems are identified and solutions are operationalized. There are constant contestations about knowledge which run throughout the policy process from macro- to micro-scales. Placing the bureaucracies and formal systems of decision-making in their context enables us to understand the variability of possible knowledge-policy interactions in the policy process (ibid). As far as power is concerned, it is embedded in the production of knowledge itself. It is used to contest, negotiate, legitimize, and marginalize throughout the policy process. Powerful interests exert influence by keeping certain issues off the agenda. Crucial to the policy process framework is the recognition that what different groups or actors believe about a question reflects their own stakes. The influence of different interest groups is likely to play a role at each stage of the policy process, from agenda setting to implementation. Policy making is thus a ‘negotiative’ exercise between different groups. It is important to give attention to the ways in which decisions or specific policy outcomes are mediated by power, and how power shapes relationships between actors participating in the policy process (ibid). Discourse is an important medium through which certain kinds of knowledge and perspectives may gain dominance in policy. Through discursive processes, certain claims or justifications can appear more legitimate while others can be sidelined or excluded (Long 1992). As Michel Foucault (1991) suggested, discourses are the sum of numerous practices through which power is exercised. These practices together form a discourse that is powerful in the sense of framing how people act in and think about the world. Discourses are not controlled in their entirety by individual actors and exist largely independently of the will of individual groups and actors but some do hold an edge over others (ibid). The literature on policy process also deals with the category of expert knowledge and local knowledge. Expert (scientific/codified) knowledge plays an important role in formulating discourses. These knowledges are acquired through professional education and earning disciplinary licensing. Potential ‘knowers’ are sectoral experts: the city planner trained in urban planning; the specialist who knows everything about the geology and underground piping system; etc. (Pfeffer 2018). Most policy making is based on such knowledge and but is being critiqued by many as it only presents one reality, while multiple, often competing, realities (in the form of local/community knowledge) co-exist in society (Davoudi 2006). Local knowledges are often excluded from the policy process resulting in poor or inappropriate policy decisions. The option then is to dislodge the dominant position of certain networks through the deployment of counter-narratives and a process of strategizing and taking advantage of policy spaces to build alternative actornetworks. In other words, where scientific institutions fail to address the concerns of citizens, lay people may develop their own forms of knowing and push these through the policy arena (Corburn 2003).

Researching the ‘Urban Turn’ 255 Several studies have used the ‘policy process’ or related frameworks (such as ‘pathways approach’) in understanding sector-specific urban policies (Davoudi 2006, Randhawa and Marshall 2014, Randhawa et al. 2020). One of these illustrates that urban waste management policies in India are an outcome of a complex interplay of knowledge and power at different governance scales. There are multiple actors who play an important role in the production and diffusion of knowledge pertaining to urban waste management in India. While the dominant narrative (fed by the expert knowledge) is set by powerful international institutions and organizations and key ministries of the Government of India, the counter-narrative (local knowledge) is put forth by action research environmental organizations and informal waste pickers associations. No doubt, greater power lies within the dominant narrative, but there have been relentless contestations and negotiations between the actors advocating the dominant and counter-narratives in the process of formulating and implementing waste management policies (Randhawa et al. 2020). As a result of this continuous contestation, there has been recognition of the role of informal waste pickers in the waste management regulations. Recognition is not just limited to the regulations but to the mechanisms of their implementation—there are cities such as Pune and Bengaluru where the urban local bodies (ULBs) now involve informal waste pickers in the management of municipal waste (Chikarmane 2012, Chandran 2021). The discussion above suggests that tracking and zooming in to the policy process provides important insights to unpack the relationships between knowledge, power, and urban policies. Discourse is the crucial medium in defining the trajectory of any policy. Policy making is a continuous process of contestation between actors with differing claims and access to power. Though expert knowledge plays a significant role in shaping the agenda of policy making, local knowledge and networks constantly challenge experts and the dominant discourses. While policy making entails recognizing, sometimes privileging or excluding and at other times resolving various conflict of interests, the main issues in urban research have emerged as a result of ‘a collective project’ produced through shared ‘action, negotiation, imagination, experimentation, and struggle’ (Brenner and Schmid 2015). The next section will look at how discourses of the past have shaped the cities of the present. It will give a brief overview of the organization of documents in archives and the use of oral history methods in understanding the linkages between past and the contemporary cities. Use of Archival Documentation and Oral History Methods to Understand a Built Landscape Urbanization in India is an uneven process and its modern form can be traced to the colonial period (Patel 2009). But, modernity did not bring about standardization in urban form, culture, and practice. This is evident from the presence and continuation of traditional vernacular styles and structures along with the modern built form in the post-colonial period. The differences were further deepened with the introduction of capitalism under the imperial regime which spatially structured the

256  Rohit Negi, Rachna Mehra, and Pritpal Randhawa rural and urban landscapes in addition to regulating the economy and polity of the region. The East India Company and later the British Crown introduced the Permanent Settlement Regulations (1793), Tenancy Legislation (1885), and land reforms including Land Acquisition Act (1894) which have had a far-reaching impact on property rights and spatial changes in the region. There is a rich repository of archival sources such as land revenue records, surveys, census, gazettes, gazetteers, and reports produced by enquiry commissions which give in-depth information on the policies formulated under the imperial regime. But the researcher has to be circumspect in terms of the data generation techniques and knowledge production methods pertaining to the colonial period. Sophisticated cartographic practices were used to map the landscape to understand the topography of the region and to build public infrastructure such as roads and railways to facilitate the smooth movement of raw materials and finished goods in different parts of the country. From the late nineteenth century, the government raised money for administering towns through the systematic collection of municipal taxes whose records and audits were carefully maintained (Gupta 1981, Legg 2007). Improvement Trusts were also created in various settlements to purportedly improve the sanitary and living conditions (Kidambi 2007, Dutta 2012). The historical legacies of urban planning and changes made in laws to accommodate specific arrangements of governance under colonial rule continue even today (Nair 2013). Haynes and Rao (2013) suggest that while colonialism was an ‘organizing principle’ in studies on cities during the nineteenth century, its relevance as the ‘central narrative principle’ of urban history is replaced by a distinct Indian form of urbanism and urban politics that emerged from the 1920s to 1970s. This discourse can be traced by looking at various documents found in the archives. While it is not possible to locate different kinds of records in one place, many documents have found their way to the state, regional, or National Archives of India (NAI). The Imperial Records Department (IRD) was set up in Kolkata in 1891 but after the transfer of the colonial capital from Kolkata, the archive was shifted to Delhi in 1911 and following independence, it was rechristened as the NAI. It houses the largest repository of historical documents and is an institution fulfilling the needs of research scholars. As a critical academic while using land revenue or any other document in the archive, one must ask why and how it was organized. The documents present in the archive, whether in the colonial or in the postindependence period, mostly represent colonial governmentalities and therefore may not represent the viewpoint of marginalized communities or subaltern groups, working classes, women, children, or differently abled groups. Moreover, there is a conceptual silence and sequential gaps if one looks at the documentation of records (Aziz 2017). Hence, the onus lies on the user of the archive as to what they select and how they analyse or interpret the material according to their disciplinary training. Sometimes researchers need to read ‘against the grain’; that is, trace the non-linear relationship between ideas embedded in policies and their ramifications. They need to pay as much attention to the silences as they do to the written word. Since the archives may be silent on many issues, alternate archives in the form of private and family collections as well as oral interview documentation have

Researching the ‘Urban Turn’ 257 become important to supplement written documents and bring a different perspective to the table. Contemporary history of a region may be recorded through interviews across different age/gender/caste/class groups whose ideas of belonging to a place may question the established norms and plans which do not represent such voices. Hence, oral history has become an important method to document and preserve the past as well as a tool to empower communities who can share their version of history (Perks and Thompson 1997). It offers an alternative to official narrative and triangulation of data through this method enables writing a nuanced history of a place. In the Indian context, oral history has also become highly relevant to study the events surrounding the partition of the subcontinent (1947) and its far-reaching consequences across regions. The futile political negotiations between the colonial officials and national leaders resulted in the most unfortunate event in the history of the two nations which proved detrimental for people, land, and resources. It continues to remain a bone of contention between India and Pakistan to this day but there are ongoing public projects (independent of government initiatives) to collect oral interviews and create digital archives recording memories of dislocation, rehabilitation, and meanings associated with belonging to a place before and after resettlement. Scholars like Ravinder Kaur (2007), Vazira Zamindar (2010), Uditi Sen (2019), Pallavi Chakravarty (2022), Rotem Geva (2022), and many others have combined the use of archival material along with oral history interviews to document the experiences of the migrants. Moreover, if one includes the rich body of literature produced in different languages (Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and English) based on the experience of pre- and post-partition period, it has the potential of turning into a remarkable interdisciplinary work. Most scholars working on partition history now combine archival data with literature and oral history interviews to understand how spaces have changed, evacuee property exchanged hands, and inequalities were reproduced through allotment of land to specific communities belonging to lower castes. However, care should be taken to understand what meaning is conveyed or constituted through selection and representation of facts since a mere gleaning of data from archives or collecting oral interviews will not be sufficient in understanding the urban processes. A nuanced approach must be adopted to read the contemporary city as a text in itself. This is possible as the city also serves as an archive or a repository of different experiences layered by sociopolitical interventions reflecting the flux of continuity and change (Rao 2009). Finally, the researchers who observe the city as a text will narrate its tale in their unique way (possibly with bias and supposition) since any story comes to life only through the words of its narrator. Hence, one has to be attentive to contemporary frames of reference which may be used to understand and represent the past. Nonetheless, archival and oral history methods can be judiciously employed to write histories of cities, regions, and human settlements as observed in space and time to understand the linkages between past, present, and future urbanism.

258  Rohit Negi, Rachna Mehra, and Pritpal Randhawa Conclusion The discursive field of urban development and by extension scholarship was initially hegemonized by categories of global, world class, and ‘developmentalist’ approaches (Robinson 2002, Shaktin 2007). Subsequently, alternative imaginations of the city challenged the hierarchies produced by the prevalent theoretical frameworks wherein poor countries were seen as ‘non-cities’ or ‘lacking in city-ness’ requiring external intervention. In a recent review of the state of urban studies in India, Coelho and Sood (2021) suggest that though it ‘evolved as a statist field’ largely concerned with state policies, analyses, and actions, the ‘millennial turn’ sparked off ‘transdisciplinary conversations’ across India. The three approaches as mentioned in the chapter while emerging from specific disciplines, open possibilities for an interdisciplinary dialogue as materiality interacts with political economy and geography, policy processes are rooted in social studies of science and technology, and oral history has benefited from sociological and anthropological research methods and interviewing techniques. Hence, an interdisciplinary dialogue on evolving a methodology pertaining to urban studies requires experimentation. While modest steps in this direction are being taken, there is a long way to go before a well-defined set of methods are arrived at that can assimilate or be applied across a range of important issues in urban settings. As scholars and faculty teaching in an interdisciplinary urban studies programme, our thoughts resonate with Paddison’s (2001) idea that the field is really an ‘eclectic project’ which weaves a complex story that sometimes cuts across and on other occasions remains constrained by the disciplinary divide. Hence, what’s needed is to encourage heterodox and experimental approaches, which are open to different methodological interventions rather than a strict guarding of any particular discipline by adding the prefix urban to it or limiting ourselves to being an urban sociologist/geographer/historian, etc. While we (the authors) acknowledge and appreciate the disciplinary rigour and training in research methods which helped us specialize in our respective fields of planning and geography, science policy, and history, we are even more grateful that critical thinking in social sciences has propelled us to explore the possibilities of imaginatively applying those methods to an interdisciplinary program. Our goal is to see students, trained through interdisciplinary and innovative coursework, become the flag bearers of a new kind of urban studies that is fundamentally critical, open minded, and connected to practice. References Aziz, S. (2017). National Archives of India: The colonization of knowledge and politics of preservation. Economic and Political Weekly, 52(50), 33–39. Baviskar, A. (2003). Between violence and desire: Space, power, and identity in the making of metropolitan Delhi. International Social Science Journal, 55(175), 89–98. https://doi. org/10.1111/1468-2451.5501009 Benjamin, S. (2008). Occupancy urbanism: Radicalizing politics and economy beyond policy and programs. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(3), 719–729.

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19 Multiple Personas of Social Scientists in Public Health Challenges in Interdisciplinarity N. Nakkeeran

Introduction Interdisciplinarity may be understood as disciplines converging together, not merely to address an interdisciplinary challenge but to interact and communicate with each other to share principles and theories of knowledge, models, and approaches of understandings, and to develop links between those disciplines to create an interconnected, coherent spaces of academic inquiry. Earlier literature has extensively elaborated on interrelated concepts such as disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, cross disciplinary and transdisciplinary and how these concepts differ and overlap (Gibbons et al, 1994; Klein, 1996; Besselaar and Heimeriks, 2001). Hence, there is no need to revisit these discussions in this current essay. Instead, this essay aims to build over some points that stem from these discussions. Besselaar and Heimeriks in their paper (2001) point out that within interdisciplinary fields, the intensity of communication and discussion within a disciplinary network is less while external communication is expected to be more extensive as these fields draw intensively from various other specialities. They also add that these communications are expected to be “bi-directional and symmetrical” (p. 8). This essay aims to take off from this point of this ideal expectation of bidirectional and symmetrical communication and the relationship between a set of interdisciplinary fields foregrounding the context of public health. Public health is a space of convergence of a number of academic disciplines. Whether this convergence is for temporary problem solving (and hence remains multi-disciplinary) or coalesces into a trance/interdisciplinary space or field of knowledge depends purely on a number of practical aspects around how academic culture fostered by these disciplines in specific empirical contexts has evolved. An important underlying determinant of this degree and quality of convergence is the differential respect, legitimacy and power enjoyed by the individual disciplines that attempt to converge. In other words, the actual communications and discussions between converging disciplines are often necessarily bi-directional and symmetrical but skewed towards one or more of the disciplines and in a manner that is to the disadvantage of another set of disciplines. This essay builds on this assumption. It starts with the following two objectives: One, to capture an author’s academic life as an interdisciplinary journey and DOI: 10.4324/9781003329428-19

Multiple Personas of Social Scientists in Public Health 263 hence to delineate what interdisciplinarity means to the author personally. Two, to bring out challenges a social scientist faces in charting out her/his space within public health, in navigating through collaborative exercises of teaching, curriculum designing, research and publishing with other disciplines and in overcoming differences stemming not only from epistemological perspectives and methodological approaches but also from differential locations across power hierarchies. Interdisciplinarity as a Personal Journey Given the multiple possibilities of social science’s location within public health understanding, practising interdisciplinarity becomes a personal journey for a social science professional within a public health ecosystem. With a graduation in physics, a post-graduation in social anthropology, doctoral work involving ethnographic study of a village, and subsequent teaching and research experience in public health schools followed by a shift to a social science university, my academic and professional journey included sharp turns and ruptures. Epistemologically, while physics expected analytical insights for problem solving with a sense of certainty, anthropology and ethnography on the other hand opened me to strive to describe and understand complex, open and dynamically shifting cultures with a fair degree of scepticism. From deducing irrefutable mathematical equations, the journey took a paradigm shift towards ethnography and qualitative research. While in the public health schools, I was someone trying to be a social scientist among public health experts. On moving to the social science university, I had to try being a public health expert among social scientists. Most often it felt like trying to swim in two streams simultaneously, which was no doubt harrowing at times. I should add that public health schools were far more accommodative. They acknowledge the role of a social scientist (of a kind) in comparison to a social science university granting similar space for a public health specialist. The latter certainly is far more esoteric and territorial, which perhaps is a topic for another day. The challenges a reflective social scientist faces while being among public health experts particularly from the medical background are fourfold. Firstly, it is at the level of content. The scope and content of social sciences that are considered relevant to public health are very narrow, restricted to behavioural or behaviour changes aspects; original social science concepts are rarely deployed instead there is a greater dependence on second or third level derivatives of such concepts, usually bereft of their original generality or nuances. Secondly, in terms of values associated with teaching-learning experience, social science is usually cognizant of the relationship between power and production of knowledge and reflexively questions the hegemony enjoyed by disciplinary fields in knowledge production over the lay person. However, when working within a public health school with a medical slant, social science has to work with values that celebrate a belief in certainty of knowledge and knowledge as apolitical and ahistorical. As a result, the teaching-learning environment is often relatively taut and unidirectional, one in which critical social science cannot thrive. Thirdly, most often such public health

264  N. Nakkeeran experts do not recognize the possibility of epistemologies and ontologies different from what the scientific method is based on. As a result, a social scientist has to constantly haggle and negotiate to establish the uniqueness of social sciences in terms of its methodology and theoretical perspectives. As a natural corollary to this point, a social scientist has to constantly fight to make a space for social science research methods and to establish the potential role its unique strengths in qualitative research methodology can play in public health. An interesting pre-occupation for a social scientist in such an environment is the need to frequently reiterate that social science teaching and research is not about picking up some concepts and skills but rather is about aligning its teaching/practice with epistemologies it subscribes to; further, social science teaching/practice without an understanding of its theoretical and philosophical foundations would amount to a work that is not much different from that of a charlatan. Fourthly, all these problems also get reflected in the space a social scientist is able to wrest in designing academic programmes or proposals for funded research. Likewise, as a public health person within a social science university too one faces challenges but of different kind. The gulf between the kind of social science generally deployed within public health and that is in circulation in various disciplinary schools within a social science university results in the latter not even acknowledging public health as an interdisciplinary field that includes social science content. In the eyes of such social scientists, public health is almost synonymous to ‘medical’ and should not be given a place in academic spaces. One gets a feeling that you are constantly being told ‘you don’t belong here’. The flip side to the disjunction described in the preceding two paragraphs is that as a social scientist in a public health school and as a public health expert in a social science university, one gains from two diverse academic settings in multiple ways. Among other public health experts, a social scientist picks up the knowledge of public health field in which social science understandings can be applied. One also gains skills that enhance rigour in certain kinds of research methodologies such as a survey method and quantitative analysis which are otherwise not necessarily picked up by all social scientists. Research ethics is one more field in which public health field has a potential to influence the social science research constructively. Similarly, within a social science university, a public health scholar has enormous potential to reflect and engage. For instance, in public health and in a few social science disciplines, ‘research methods’ take the form of empirical research often directly involving human subjects. ‘Research methods’ in these fields are self-evident areas of learning. On the other hand, there are many social science and humanities disciplines in which ‘research methods’ do not assume the same form and same degree of space and importance. Their meaning, nature, and even relevance get problematized and understood differently across academic fields. This is an eye-opener and sharply influences one’s imaginations of research and the meanings of a large number of research concepts that are otherwise considered to have a priori meanings. This radically alters the way one understands the meaning of knowledge, reality, research, etc. and how these understandings are put to use (Nakkeeran, 2016). A reflexive social

Multiple Personas of Social Scientists in Public Health 265 scientist questions the taken for granted dichotomies of scientific knowledge and the common sense, scholar and the lay, object and subject (or idea and object), and objectivity and subjectivity. These reflections help to infuse a sense of criticality into public health as well. Public Health as an Interdisciplinary Field Public health is an interdisciplinary space. The scope, contours as well as the theories, approaches and methods of public health are shaped by fields such as medicine, social sciences, management, technology, public policy and law. Fundamentally, the field holds that public health problems and solutions can stem from any level and from any dimension. Flowing from this, the field has developed educational and research architecture, (universities, institutions and schools) academic programmes (degree programs and individual courses), research fields, grants and research teams that promote and aspire to be interdisciplinary. It has developed approaches, explanatory models and theories that draw from a range of disciplines. It concedes the limitations of explanatory models that do not acknowledge the role of perspectives drawn from one or more core disciplines that constitute the field of public health. The field also often permits graduate students from any academic discipline to get trained as a public health expert. In other words, the entire ecosystem of public health is fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature. One can say that this interdisciplinarity of the field of public health is often, almost inescapable. Having said that, as much as disciplines collaborate and converge to constitute this field of public health, they also compete with one another for space and for a say in how key elements of the field get defined. Though medicine’s monopoly within public health has always been challenged, it continues to enjoy a decisive dominance, thanks to its social and institutional legitimacy and to the extent of professionalization it has achieved. As a result, there is an enormous influence of medicine as a ‘science’ understood in a conventional sense with all its peculiar characteristics of being objective, distant (impersonal), perceiving the field of enquiry as a disaggregated or disembodied collection of factors, devoid of values—apolitical and ahistorical; with an understanding that science as the only mode of understanding and representing reality, looking for neat and clean stories that are easily presentable in numbers, linear processes, twodimensional diagrams or two by two tables. Even among different social sciences, a discipline such as economics enjoys significant influence with its focus on financing aspects of health, when compared with other social science disciplines. In other words, we are dealing with a sort of interdisciplinarity that involves a hierarchy of competing disciplines. Social science disciplines such as sociology and anthropology have the capacity to critically engage with key public health concerns as well as with medical and economic reductionism or with the dominance of technocratic or managerial solutions. However, in practice, these disciplines have to fight hard to retain their space and importance within public health.

266  N. Nakkeeran Three Personas of Public Health-Social Scientists The UN Commission on Social Determinants of Health had observed that “the devastating health inequities we see globally are manmade. The causes are social – so must be the solutions” (Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2007, p. 3). One may conceptualize the role of social sciences within the interdisciplinary space of public health in three contrasting ways. The first is where social science is seen as an auxiliary discipline or an accompaniment to or in service of medicineeconomic-technology dominated public health. The second arrangement is the one in which social science is seen as a legitimate constituent element of public health as an equal partner with other disciplines including medicine. The third possibility is that of social science, as a reflexive discipline (Lambert and Mckevitt, 2002) playing a critical role in challenging the taken for granted notions within public health and attempting to reorient the latter. In other words, there can be three kinds of social scientists in the field of public health. A social-scientist who is deployed by a public health expert, a social scientist who is a public health expert and a social scientist who engages with public health experts in an attempt to re-orient public health. The three personas present totally different positions for a social scientist vis-à-vis public health. In reality, however, these positions may be dynamically shifting or a social scientist may negotiate a position somewhere between these three positions or as a dynamic admixture of these three positions. In parallel, the curriculum content and teaching of social science within public health can also vary along this continuum. On the one end is sort of social science which focuses on human behaviour as a disembodied, disaggregated and an individual level phenomenon with the aim of promoting, shaping, correcting or rectifying through education or incentivising. Accordingly, social science content too gets articulated within sub-disciplines such as medical anthropology, medical sociology, health psychology, health economics, etc. and the focus remains largely on concepts that dwell on the individual level. While these approaches are certainly useful in understanding and explaining illness or health behaviour, their scope to transcend individualized or individual level explanations to ill-health is limited. In such manifestations, social science disciplines are rendered ahistorical, apolitical and asocial, largely residing within concepts such as sick role, health behaviour, compliance, risk behaviour, behaviour change, health promotion and the like. Such accommodation of social science does not attempt to fully utilize the depth and rigour of social science theory and conceptual understandings. On the other end of the spectrum, if social determinants and social determination of health have to be taken seriously, one has to relate ill-health and more importantly, inequity in health, well-being and social suffering with structural determinants, and unequal or even exploitative social and institutional arrangements. To comprehend and take cognizance of these aspects, we need a social science perspective that critically engages with social, economic and political processes and institutions beyond the realm of health. This variant of social science has to engage with and deploy concepts that are drawn directly from parent social science

Multiple Personas of Social Scientists in Public Health 267 disciplines, such as power, rights, equity, inclusion, nation-state, citizens, knowledge, ideology discourse, and their nuances. It has to bring out maldistribution and misrecognition (Fraser, 1996, 2008) that happen along the lines of class, caste, gender, race, sexual orientation and region. In the same stroke, social sciences also subjects ‘medicine’ and ‘public health’ to critical enquiry as a field of knowledge and the manner in which these fields have gathered legitimacy and power through history. In other words, such a version of social science questions and problematizes ‘received knowledge’ and taken-for-granted assumptions; lays emphasis on ‘social’ and ‘collective’ rather than keeping the unit of analysis as the individual; and gives importance to history and to interaction among groups involving vested interests or vulnerabilities. Social science disciplines have increasingly become reflexive and critical of their own western origins, its claim to legitimacy of representation, its methodology and hence certainty of knowledge. Such reflexive explorations have laid the ground for engaging with ‘science’ and ‘scientific method’ as a historically produced human artefact, a product of specific socio-temporal contexts and as a yet another form of knowledge among many other competing candidates. In other words, social science tries to question the very foundation on which medical and public health knowledge is built and hence their methodological and explanatory domination. While this is contestable, what is being attempted here is to emphasize the diverse materializations of social sciences and their respective potential to engage with the field of public health. The nature of interdisciplinarity that gets forged may also depend on the academic and professional culture prevailing in a region. That is to say, the social and political patronage enjoyed by a specific discipline may vary vastly across regions, which will have an influence on the interdisciplinarity that emerges. For instance, based on personal experience and observation, the author is of the opinion that the status of social science education vis-à-vis medical or other professional education is awfully poor in India, particularly in South India compared to Delhi or some other cities in the northern part of India. This comparison may also be extended to that between India and most western countries. Therefore, location of social sciences within public health and the space it enjoys can significantly vary across these regions. Conclusion The nature of interdisciplinarity depends on the nature and relative power and influence enjoyed by the disciplines that confluence. In that sense, interdisciplinarity is not an apolitical process or a static state. Individual disciplines that converge may differentially benefit as well as get stymied across different aspects. Interdisciplinarity not only shapes specific academic and professional fields or the individual disciplines that converge but also shapes an individual scholar’s professional or academic trajectory.

268  N. Nakkeeran Social science as one of the set of disciplines that coalesce to form public health, can potentially assume multiple personas, each of them reflecting the differential status enjoyed by the social sciences vis-à-vis other disciplines constituting public health. Similarly, interdisciplinarity can be differentially cast depending on regionspecific academic and professional cultures. References Besselaar, P.V.D., and Heimeriks, G., Disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary – concepts and indicators, ISSI-2001, 705–16, 2001. Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), Achieving Health Equity: From Root Causes to Fair Outcomes: Interim Statement, CSDH, World Health Organization, Geneva, 2007. Fraser, N., Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, and participation. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values Delivered at Stanford University, 1996 (April 30–May 2) California, 1996. Retrieved from Fraser98.pdf (utah.edu) (See also Social justice in the age of identity politics, Critical Quest, 2008). Gibbons, M., et al., The New Production of Knowledge, Sage, 1994. Klein, JT., Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1996. Lambert, H., and Mckevitt, C., Anthropology in health research: From qualitative methods to multidisciplinarity, BMJ Clinical Research, 325(7357):210–3, 2002. https://doi. org/10.1136/bmj.325.7357.210 Nakkeeran, N., Centre for research methods – concept note, Unpublished, Ambedkar University Delhi, 2016. Razzaq, J., Townsend, T., and Pisapia, J., Towards an understanding of interdisciplinarity: The case of a British University, Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies, (31):149–73, 2013.

Index

Note: Page references with “n” endnotes. academic disciplines 1; see also disciplines Academic Tribes and Territories (Becher) 15 ‘Action for Autism’ 167 actor-network theory 25 administrative university 49–53 adolescence 108, 109; ‘at-risk-ness’ in 112; as imported category 112; as social anxiety 111–113 agonistic-antagonistic mode 25 Aimarka (Bhasa) 205 Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) 106 alternative methodologies/approaches within disciplinary boundaries 149–150 Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) 144, 228 analogues: and interdisciplinary approaches 11–12; and multidisciplinary approaches 11–12 Ancient Society (Maine) 18, 135 anthropology 5–7, 17, 19, 61, 64, 90, 94, 95, 103, 117, 180; feminist 180; medical 71; physical 143, 241; social 95, 135, 139, 141, 143, 169, 241 Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group 212 anxiety 111–113 Articulating Multiple Childhoods: Demystifying the Normative 217 The Art of Philosophy (Sloterdijk) 79 Asad, Talal 17, 90, 95, 98 Association of Indian Labour Historians (AILH) 225, 227 āstika 81 Atmatattvaviveka (Udayana) 85n46 ‘Ausbildung’ (vocational training) 50 autism 166–170

Bacon, Francis 128 Baker, B. 108, 118 Balagopal, K. 142 Bal Gandharva 200 Bammer, G. 64 Banaras Hindu University (BHU) 106 Bangladesh 7–8 Bardhan, Pranab 230 Barry, Andrew 25 Barthes, Roland 192–193 Baxi, Upendra 139, 140 Bazin, Andre 193 Beattie, A. R. 239–240 Beck, Ulrich 51 Benton, Ted 127–129 Béteille, Andre 50 Bharatanatyam dance 243 Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi 106, 225–226 Bicycle Thieves (De Sica) 228 Bierstedt, Robert 124 Bildung 50–52 Blackburn, Simon 129 Blaney, David 200, 203 Bohr, Niels 129–130, 133 bold disciplinarism 212 Boldrini, Lucia 88, 96 Bombay University 106 border crossings 18 Born, Georgia 25 Bourdieu, Pierre 141, 193 ‘Brahminization’ 92 Breman, Jan 226, 227, 228 Brewer, Garry D. 10 Brockway, K. N. 107 Brown vs. Board of Education 138 Buch, M. B. 106, 111 Bumiller, K. 169 Burton, Graheme 189

270 Index Cacioppo, John T. 238 Calcutta Commission 106 Calcutta University 106 Calcutta University Commission 1917 107 Calhoun, Craig 242 Capella, Martianus 27 Carey, James 179 Carnegie Foundation 29 Cartesian dualism 126, 128 castes 96; Brahminical 96; lower 91, 93, 96, 99n4, 109, 205, 257; Scheduled Castes 138; upper 92–93 Centre for Development Studies (CDS) 224 Changing Consciousness and Image of Kerala Labour in the 20th Century (Remesh) 231 Chanock, Martin 136 chaos theory 44 Chaplin, Charles 228 Charsley, Simon 91, 92, 99n6 Chatterjee, Partha 7, 8 The Chayenne Way (Llewellyn and Hoebel) 136 child development: and education 107–117; and psychology 107–117 childhood: historians of 212; history of 211; scholarship on 218; sociology/ anthropology/geography of 211–212; sociology conference in India 217 Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research 210, 211 childhood studies (CS) 20, 210–219; in India 216–219; interdisciplinary 211–219, 219n6; multi-/ crossdisciplinarity of 213; overview 210–211; in West 211–216 children: anxieties 110–114; ‘deficits’ 110–114; deprivation 112–113; framing through categories of deficit 110–111; rights in India 211 Children’s Apperception Test 114 Children’s Geographies 210 Children & Society 210 child study: and developmentalism 115–117; movement 108–110 Christianity 138, 206 Cities 250 city: borders 251; forecloses opportunities 251; life in India 249; planner 254 classification 1–3 Clayton, John 83 Clifford, James 94

Coelho, K. 258 cognitive justice 46, 52, 55, 56n9 Cold War 46, 53, 199 colonial period 109, 255–256 ‘Commission of Folk law and Legal pluralism’ 137 communication 27, 62, 175, 178–179; bi-directional 262; disciplinary boundaries 237; feminist studies in 179; models 190; political economy of 177; scholarship 180; of scientist to people 32; self-referential 77; studies 174, 178–179, 186–187; symmetrical 262; technologies 169, 186–187 Communication Processes 183n1 communicative modernity 191, 194 Comparative Literature 87–89, 99n1 complexity studies 6 Comte, Auguste 123, 127, 128, 132–133 convergence culture 191 converging media 191 conversational community 210–219; see also childhood studies Conversations between Economists and Anthropologists (Bardhan) 230 Cook, Daniel Thomas 214 Copernicus 130 Corner, John 194 Corsaro, William 213 Côté, S. 239, 246 Cotterrell, Roger 138–139, 144 Cours de littérature compare 99n1 COVID-19 pandemic 49, 170–171 Crime, Reason and History 139 Crime and Custom (Malinowski) 136 Critical Childhoods and Youth Studies Collective 211 critical psychology 71 cultural studies 6, 19, 186–196; see also media studies culture: and disability 169–170; of knowledge 41 Dakshinamurti Balmandir 108 Dalit 142, 165, 200; labour in Northern India 228; narratives 90; narratives into English 90 dance 242–244 darśanas 81–82 Darwin, Charles 3, 130, 239 Das, Arvind Narayan 227 Das, Veena 140 Datt, Gaurav 223

Index  271 Davies, Fred 162, 163 Death of a Discipline (Spivak) 97 Deb, K. 65 deficit, framing child through categories of 110–111 definition-based approach 19 de-legitimizing science 131–132 Deleuze, Gilles 37 democratisation of knowledge 50 deprivation 112–113 Desai, A. R. 142 Descartes, Rene 126, 128, 129, 132 De Septem Disciplinis (Capella) 27 De Sica, Vittorio 228 desires and fears of heterodoxies 173–183 developmentalism 115–117 Dewey, John 45, 114–115, 118n6 Dhareshwar, Vivek 206, 207 dialogic rationality 81–84 differentiation 17, 28, 38, 42–43, 47, 77, 115, 218, 238–239 digitalisation of knowledge 47–49 digital labour 153 digital repositories 42, 48 Dilthey, Wilhelm 129 disability: and gender 168–169; medical and social models 164–165; questions of culture 169–170; and representation 169–170; understanding 164–165 Disability Attitude-Belief Behaviour Instrument 114 Disability Rights Movement 164 disability studies: autism and family in urban India 166–168; engaging with 166–168; interdisciplinarity and 161–171; as interdisciplinary area of enquiry 162–163 disciplinarity 9–11, 26–30 disciplinary: constraints 10; eclecticism 211; socialisation 175–176 disciplines 2–4, 10; autonomy 27; and certification 27; legitimacy 27; ontogeny of 2 The Division of Labour in Society (Durkheim) 3 Down and Out: Labouring under Global Capitalism (Das, Breman and Agarwal) 227 Durkheim, Emile 3, 43, 127, 128, 133, 135, 137, 141, 143 East India Company 256 eclectic transdisciplinarity 211

Economic and Political Weekly 142 economics 223–224, 231–232 education: and child development 107–117; and child study movement 108– 109; as discipline in India 102–118; historical background, in India 104–107; instituting the psychology of 107–108; and psychology 107–117 Edwards, Elizabeth 193 effective ignorance 34 Einstein, Albert 45 Eliot, T.S. 14 Elphinstone, Mountstuart 105 Emergency Society for German Science 29 emotions 17, 238–240, 242–246; and interdisciplinarity 20–21 empiricism 128–129 engaging with disability studies 166–168 Enlightenment 80–81 epistemological dimension, and ID 44 epistemology 43, 56n6; empiricism and rationalism 128–129; of social science 128–129 Erikson, Erik 116–117 Eswaran, M. 223 ethnographic knowledge 17 ethnography 98–99, 241–242, 263; autoethnography 210; language and 94–97; multi-sited 214 Euro-American academy 213 European Enlightenment 50 experimental psychology 29 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Darwin) 239 family: and autism 166–168; in urban India 166–168 fear of heterodoxies 177 Feyerabend, Paul K. 130–131, 133 Feynman, Richard 36 field research 157–158 foreign policy studies 203 Foucault, Michel 2, 22, 141, 191, 254 France 204 French Revolution 4 Frickel, Scott 25 Fuller, Steve 126 Funtowicz, Silvio O. 30, 33, 34 Galison, Peter 45 Galtung, Johan 210 Gardner, Wendi L. 238 gender, and disability 168–169

272 Index General Education in a Free Society 45 geology 28, 124, 254 German literary culture 88 Germany 28–29, 49, 88, 198, 204 Geva, Rotem 257 Gibbons, Michael 30, 31, 33 Giddens, Anthony 123 Gijubhai Badheka 108, 118n3 global IR 201 globalisation 146–147; challenges of 150–153 Gluckman, Max 135, 141–142 Goethe 88, 99n1 Goffman, Erving 162–163 Goldberg, D. 62 Gough, Kathleen 142 Government Order of 1950 138 Guattari, Felix 37 Guha, Ranajit 227 Gulbenkian Commission 5 Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences 238 Guru, Gopal 217 Hacking, Ian 26, 129 Hall, G. 112, 114, 119n6, 181 Hayami, Y. 223 Haynes, C. 72 Haynes, D. 256 Heimeriks, G. 262 Heisenberg, Werner 130, 133 Helmholtz, Hermann 29 Herbart, J. F. 119n7 Herbartianism 108, 119n6, 119n7 heterodoxies: desires and fears of 173–183; fear of 177 higher education 20; ecosystem 50; India 7, 62, 65, 69; LA-based curriculum 63 Hindu: beliefs 82; caste practices 100n12; caste system 96; nationalism 199; philosophy 81; self/identity 198 Hinduism 92, 95, 198–199, 205–206 History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self (Devare) 199 Hoebel, Adamson 136 Human capital theory 159n2 humanism 108 humanities 3–4, 6–8, 15–17 humanities and social sciences (HSS): administration 69–70; departments in science and technological institutions 64; in India 61–62; teaching programs in 67–68

Humboldtian model 49–53 hybridization, and ID 29 IITs: administration 69–70; HSS departments in 64–65; research in 68–69; student supervision 69; teaching in 67–68 Imperial Records Department (IRD) 256 Improvement Trusts 256 Inayatullah, Naeem 200, 203 India 201; alternative methodologies/ approaches 149–150; bilateral relations 201; central trade unions in 228, 239; childhood studies in 216–219; children’s rights in 211; Dalit labour in 228; in disciplines 205; education as discipline in 102–118; globalisation and challenges 150–153; higher education 7; historical background of education in 104–107; Indian Constitution 7; informality 150–153; interconnected workspaces 150–153; interdisciplinarity in research on women’s work 155–158; interdisciplinary frameworks, scope of 153–155; liberal arts spaces in 16–17, 61–73; multiplicity of work 150–153; post-colonial 216; research on women’s work in 147–149; social migration 150–153; social sciences in 6–9, 267; transdisciplinary conversations 258; urbanization in 255–257; urban waste management policies in 255; women’s labour in 233; women’s movements 216; women studies 153–155 Indian academy 200, 201, 212, 213, 216 Indian Claims Commission 136 Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) 63, 110, 139, 140 Indian Education Commission 105, 118n2 Indian modernity 192 Indian Montessori Society 108 Indian philosophy 75–84; contextual challenge of interdisciplinarity 76–78; samvāda 80–84; telos of interdisciplinarity 76, 78–79 Indian Society of Labour Economics 225, 227 Indian Telephone Industry (ITI) 229 Indian universities: law and society in 139–140; teaching sociology of law in 141–144

Index  273 Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) 228, 234 indispensability of interdisciplinarity in studying society 123–133 Industrial Revolution 4 industrial society 53–55 informality 150–153 information processors 240 insider/outsider 137–139 institutional practice 107–108 Integrated Labour History Research Programme (ILHRP) 225, 226, 228, 229, 231, 233–234 integrative-synthesis mode 25 interconnected workspaces 150–153 interdisciplinarity (ID) 9–11, 26, 56n5, 211–216, 263–265; autism and family in urban India 166–168; challenges in 262–268; contextual challenge of 76–78; contextualizing 61–72; defined 24, 42–44; defining 161–162; disability and gender 168–169; disability and representation 169–170; and disability studies 161–171; disciplining 71–72; and emotions 20–21; institutional way 10; and liberal arts 63–64; medical and social models 164–165; as personal journey 263–265; personal way 10; philosophy of 35–37; politics of 41–55; practising 15–22, 67–70; questions of culture 169–170; in research on women’s work 155–158; and the State 37–39; in studying society 123–133; understanding disability 164–165 “Interdisciplinarity in Historical Perspective” (Ash) 28 Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities 56n8 interdisciplinary: agonistic-antagonistic mode 25; approaches through analogues 11–12; approaches through metaphors 11–12; being 75–84; implications of being 12–15; integrative-synthesis mode 25; organisation of knowledge 44–55; research 146, 165, 169; schools 13; subordination-service mode 25 interdisciplinary studies (IDS) 237–246; disciplinary socialisation 175–176; and emotions 238–240; fear

of heterodoxies 177; futures 182–183; impediments to 175–177; implementing 242–245; media studies as a terrain of 179–182; open questions 245–246; perspectives 245–246; reflexivity in 240–242 International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science 45 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 250 international relations (IR) 19–20, 198–208; global 201; job opportunities in 201 International Relations and the Problem of Difference (Inayatullah) 203 International Sociological Association 212, 250 International Studies Association (ISA) conference 200 International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences 136 Islam 206 Italy 204 Izard, C. E. 245 Jacobs, Jerry A. 25 Jadavpur University, Kolkata 217 Jaffrelot, Christophe 91, 99n4 Jain, Devaki 148 James, William 114, 119n6 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) 46–47, 123, 144 Johns Hopkins University 57n17 The Journey of the Magi (Eliot) 14 Kant, Immanuel 128, 129 Kaplan, Morton 202 karma 81 Kaur, Ravinder 65, 257 Keeley, J. 254 Khan, F. A. 102, 107 Klein, Julie T. 210 knowledge 2–4, 34; digitalisation 47–49; ethnographic 17; Mode 1 knowledge 31–32; Mode 2 knowledge 30–32; politics of 33–35; printing 47–49 Kodavas (Coorgs) 91–96 Kohlberg, Lawrence 116–117 Korbin, Jill 214 Kosambi, D.D. 205 Kothari, Rita 90 Kotwal, A. 223

274 Index Krishna, Sankaran 200 Krishna Raj, M. 150 Kshatriyaization 92, 99n6 Kuhn, Thomas 16, 33, 130, 133 Kumar, K. 219n2 labour: daily 103; and development 234; digital 153; statistics 147 Labour File 230 Labouring Poor and their Notion of Poverty (Bhattacharya) 226 labour studies 223–235; digital archive 226; dilemmas of interdisciplinary traveller 234–235; disciplinary churning 229–231; and economics 223–224, 231–232; and gender 232–233; grounded in labour history 225–226; history and data 228–229; interactive learnings 229–231; interdisciplinary practice 224–225, 227, 233–234; knowing labour 227–228; practising 226–227; research and teaching 234 Land Acquisition Act 256 language: of caste 97–99; and ethnography 94–97; of inequality 97–99; and problem of subjectivity 94–97; Sanskritization and concerns around 91–93 LA programs 65–66 Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial fund 29 Law and Society movement 139 law in Indian universities 139–140 legal and social 135–137 legitimacy of science 130–131 liberal arts: and interdisciplinarity 63–64; place in education 62–63; spaces in India 16–17, 61–73 Liebig, Wilhelm 28 Linnaeus, Carl 3 Littau, Karin 90, 93 Llewellyn, Karl 136 Locke, John 128, 132 Lyon, A. 62 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 131–133 Madan, A. 62 Main Bhi Dilli campaign 250 Maine, Henry 135 Mäki, Uskali 26, 30 The Making of Blind Men (Scott) 163

managerialism 4 marginality of media studies 178–179 Marshall, Gordon 131–132 Marx, Karl 43, 133, 137, 141, 143 Marxism 45 mathesis universalis 36 McLuhan, M. 189 Mead, G.H. 45 media economy 176, 179, 182 media studies 186–196; disciplining 173–183; as a field 177–178; marginality of 178–179; media subject 190–191; media text 189–190; overview 186–188; technological determinism 186–187; as terrain of interdisciplinary studies 179–182; visual subject 191–195 media subject 189, 190–191, 194 media text 189–190 medical anthropology 71, 266 medical models 164–165 medical sociology 168, 266 Memletics Learning Styles Inventory (MLSI) 114 Mercer, Claire 253 Merriam, Charles E. 45 Merton, Robert K. 53, 211 metaphors: and interdisciplinary approaches 11–12; and multidisciplinary approaches 11–12 methodological dimension, and ID 44 methodology 253; to appreciate local knowledges 251; approaches 250; experimentation 250; implications 250; policy process 253–255; productive 251; sociological and anthropological research 258 Mignolo, Walter 206 Miller, William B., Jr. 38 Mills, C. Wright 11 minority 96 Mode 1 knowledge 31–32 Mode 2 knowledge 30–32 modernity 103, 129, 132, 169, 194, 215–216, 242, 255; colonial 206, 216; communicative 191, 194; in India 109, 192 Modern Times (Chaplin) 228 Mohapatra, Prabhu 225– 227, 229 molecular biology 30 Moran, Joe 245 Morgan, Lewis 126, 127, 135 Mosaic Test 114

Index  275 Mukherji, Partha Nath 211 multidisciplinarity 9–11, 43, 44; approaches through analogues 11–12; approaches through metaphors 11–12 Multiple Intelligences Test (MIT) 114 multiplicity of work 150–153 ‘The myth of Liberation’ 133 ‘Myth of Truth’ 133 Nader, Laura 137 Nagaraj, D.R. 200 NALSAR University of Law 143 Nandy, Ashis 206, 219n2 nanoobjects 36–37 nanotechnology 36 nāstika 81 National Archives of India (NAI) 256 National Labour Institute (NLI) 223–225, 227, 231–234 natural history 2 natural philosophy 2 natural sciences 53 Nehruvian reforms 7 Nepal 7–8 Nett, Roger 125 new biology 37–39 A New Biology for the 21st Century 37–38 New Deal 139 New Education Policy (NEP) 63–64 The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (Gibbons) 31 New Public Management (NPM) 52 Newton, Isaac 2, 126, 130, 132 Newtonian Physics 129–130, 132 Niranjana, Tejaswini 90 nomad science 37 normal science 33 Norrie, Alan 139 Not for profit (Nussbaum) 62 Nussbaum, Martha 62–63 Nutan Bal Shikshan Sangh 108 objectivism 80 objectivity 130–131 “On Ethnographic Authority” (Clifford) 94 ontological dimension, and ID 44 Oommen, T. K. 91, 96 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 24, 46, 56n3, 161 orientalism objectified religion 205

Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Darwin) 3 Osborne, Thomas 26 Osmani, S.R. 223, 224 Otsuka, K. 223 Paddison, R. 258 Pandian, M. S. S. 89, 91 paradigm analysis 33 Parvathamma, C. 91 Pasha, Mustapha 200 Patel, Sujatha 212, 216 Patel, V. 150 Patronage and Exploitation (Breman) 227 Patton, Laurie 85n39 Paz, Octavio 89, 97 pedagogic unity 5 pedagogy 8, 16–18, 112, 119n7, 177 performance 224, 243, 251 performative politics 214 Permanent Settlement Regulations 256 Persaud, Randolph 200 personal history 174–175, 232–233, 263–265 Personality Inventory 114 Peters, Susan 169 philosophy: Indian 75–84; and science 124–126; and sciences 18; and social sciences 18 photograph 193–194 Phule, Jyotiba 198, 199 physical sciences 18 Piaget, Jean 29, 114–115, 116–117 Pillai, Thakazhi Sivasankara 228 Planck, Max 130, 131, 133 Plato 79 politics of interdisciplinarity 41–55 politics of knowledge 33–35 Poonacha, Veena 91, 96 Poona Training College Code 1894 107 Popper, Karl 13 positivism 123, 126, 238 postcolonial studies 180 post-industrial society 53–55 postmodernism 25, 118n1, 131–132, 133 postmodernity 132 post-normal science 16, 33–35 Prabhu, G. 62, 72 Prakash, Gyan 249 prativādin 82 pre-normal science 34 Primitive Culture (Tylor) 3 Principia Natura (Newton) 2 printing of knowledge 47–49

276 Index psychology: and child development 107–117; critical 71; and education 107–117; traditional 71 public health 21, 262–268; interdisciplinarity as personal journey 263–265; as interdisciplinary field 265; overview 262–263; personas of 266–267 pūrvapakṣin 81, 82 quantum mechanics 131–132 quantum physics 129–130 Qvrotrup, Jens 212, 213 racism 88, 204 Rajadhyaksha, U. 150 Ramjas College of Delhi University 229 Ranade, M.G. 198, 199 rationalism 128–129 Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices for personality 114 Ravetz, Jerome R. 30, 33, 34 real over-arching child 214 reflexive science 31–32 relativism 80 religion 28, 193, 198, 200, 205, 206 Remak, Henry 88 Repko, Alan F. 161 research: in IITs 68–69; methodology 9–15; programs in HSS 68–69; on women’s work in India 147–149 Rhoten, Diana 242 Roja Muthiah Research Library (RMRL), Chennai 229 The Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim) 3 Rushdie, Salman 92 Said, Edward 17, 90 Sajha Manch 250 sākṣin 82 samvāda 80–84 samvadaas 17 Sanskrit 205 “Sanskritisation Revisited” (Shah) 92 Sanskritization: and Brahminization 92; and concerns around language 91–93; and Kodavization 93 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 130 Sarangapani, P. 102 Saraswathi, T. S. 112 Sarukkai, Sundar 62–63, 65 Savarkar, V.D. 198–199, 205

Schmidt, Jan C. 36 Schmidt, Jon C. 44 School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies (SOITS) 234 Schrödinger, Erwin 133 science: changing nature of 129–130; delegitimizing 131–132; influence on sociology 127–128; legitimacy of 130–131; natural 53; Newtonian physics and quantum physics 129–130; nomad 37; normal 33; philosophy and 18, 124–126; physical 18; post-normal 16, 33–35; pre-normal 34; reflexive 31–32; and social sciences 126–127; vernacular 32 Science and Technology Studies (STS) 43, 46, 56n4, 253 scientific temper 7 Scoones, I. 254 Scott, Robert 162, 163 Secondary Training College, Baroda 119n9 Second World War 5, 30 Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) 230 Sen, Uditi 257 sensorial approach 188, 189, 191–192, 195 Shah, A. M. 92, 99n5 Shankar, S. 91 Shikshan Patrika 108 Shishu Vihar 108 Shiv Nadar University 218 siddhāntin 81 Siting Translation (Niranjana) 90 Sjoberg, Gideon 125 Smith, Adam 3 Smith, Steve 201 ‘Social Action’ 129 social anthropology 95, 135, 139, 141, 143, 169, 241, 263 social anxiety 111–113 social imagination 53–55 social migration 150–153 social models 164–165 social movements 44, 46, 51, 216–218 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) 45 social sciences: empiricism and rationalism 128–129; epistemology of 128–129; in India 6–9; and philosophy 18; science and 126–127; territories 4–6

Index  277 social scientist 54, 131–132, 163, 263; about media practice 178; at Chicago University 45; groupings of 238; interest and expertise in IT 226; kinds of 266; in public health 262–268 society: interdisciplinarity in studying 123–133 society in Indian universities 139–140 Sociological Imagination (Mills) 11 sociology: of childhood 211–212, 217; of health 265; science’s influence on 127–128 Sontag, Susan 192 South Asia 7 Spivak 97 Srinivas, M. N. 91, 92, 94, 141–142, 225 state sciences 37 statistics 25–26, 28 subjectivity 94–97 subordination-service mode 25 Sundar, Nandini 145n23 survival analysis 25–26 Systema Naturae (Linnaeus) 3 systematic training 69 Szanton, David L. 199 Tamil Brahmins 242–245 Tarabai Modak 108–109, 118n3 teacher education programme 102–103, 107–108 teaching: in IITs 67–68; programs in HSS 67–68 technoscience 54 telos of interdisciplinarity 76, 78–79 Textile Labour Association 230 Tharu, Susie 216 Thematic Apperception Test 114 theology 2 theory-action disjunction 79–81 Thorne, Barrie 211 Tickner, Arlene 200 Time Use Survey (TUS) 146 Tiruppur knitwear industry 155–156 Torday, John S. 38 traditional psychology 71 transdisciplinarity 44 transdisciplinary 44; conversations 258; eclecticism 214–217 translation 17; language and ethnography 94–97; language of caste 97–99; language of inequality 97–99; and problem of subjectivity 94–97;

Sanskritization and concerns around language 91–93 Tylor, E.B. 3 Uberoi, Patricia 170 UN Commission on Social Determinants of Health 266 United Kingdom (UK) 19, 63, 108, 204; interdisciplinarity in research proposals 63; sociology in 216; Unity of Science movement in 161; women’s studies 216 United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 50 United States 204; IR departments in 200; law and economics movement in 176; sociology in 216; women’s studies 216 ‘Unity of Science’ movement 161 universal subjectivity 192 University Grants Commission (UGC) 110, 143, 154 University of Allahabad 108 University of Bombay 141 University of Chicago 230 University of Delhi 110, 116 University of Gottingen 49 University of Hyderabad 52, 183n2 urban India, and autism 166–168 urbanization 21, 250, 252, 255 urban local bodies (ULBs) 255 urban policy-making 21 urban studies 249–258; archival documentation 255–257; oral history methods 255–257; overview 249–251; policy process method 253–255; researching through materiality 251–253 Urban Studies, EPW’s Review of Urban Affairs 250 usable knowledge 34 vāda 81 vāda tradition 76 van Kleef, G. A. 239, 246 Veblen, Thorstein 45 Vemula, Rohith C. 52, 58n26 vernacular science 32 visual subject 191–195 vita activa 80 vita contemplativa 80 Von Bertanlanffy, L. 237 von Humboldt, Wilhelm 49 Vyaktitva Anusuchi 114

278 Index Wage Hunters and Gatherers (Breman) 227 Walker, R.B.J. 203 Wallerstein, Immanuel 5–6, 125, 126, 204, 238, 240–241 The Wealth of Nations (Smith) 3 Weber, Max 43, 129, 135, 141, 143 Weingart, Peter 30, 76, 237 Williams, Raymond 42 women’s studies 18–19; emergence of 153–155; and scope of interdisciplinary frameworks 153–155 women’s work: analysis 157; challenge of macro/micro/local/individual 155–156; field data collection 157; field research 157–158; interdisciplinarity in research

on 155–158; interdisciplinary concerns in researching 146–158; multiplicity of methodologies 157 work/workspaces: academic 145n23; interconnected 150–153; multiplicity of 150–153 World Peace Council 205 Writing Cultures 94 Yadav, M. S. 106, 111 Yong-Soo Eun 201 Zamindar, Vazira 257 Zeitlin, Irving M. 124, 126 Ziman, John 54 Zurich University 232