CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY Ashish Rajadhyaksha©版權所有 Context for establishing CSCS At present, India is perhaps going through its most uncertain and critical time since Independence. The Nehruvian ideology of socio-economic development has been in serious crisis for some time now, adversely affecting the institutions that were sustained by that ideology. Several institutions of higher education have been disabled by concrete problems such as lack of funding, although this is not the sole explanation for the crisis that they face today.  Social science research - with the exception of history and, until recently, economics - has clearly stagnated in recent years. It is ironic that the paradigm of research that dominated the social sciences in India - Indian political economy is a case in point - finds itself in disarray just when its analytical skills are most urgently required, the nation-state which endorsed it being increasingly under siege. Of the other social sciences, sociology or social anthropology, which flourished under the 'social change' paradigm, has been dormant since the 1970s. Political science/political theory too does not, as a discipline, seem to be able to respond adequately to the pressing political questions of our times.  To the extent that political economy and sociology did generate some work, it was under the programme of modernity, the value of which did not get thematized as part of its theory-building exercise. Therefore, when the political and social programmes of modernity themselves came into question, these disciplines have tended to disintegrate. Political economy has no theoretical resources to generate models with which to reconceptualise the relationship between the State and the Market, nor to understand the restructuration of 'ownership' and 'property' that globalized capital is bringing about. Sociology, to take another example, has found it difficult to theorize the new relationships between culture and politics (the reshaping of ethnicity, gender and caste within 'modern' institutions). The urgent issues of sovereignty, state and ethnicity have not been rigorously investigated by political theory. The humanities disciplines, which have not received even the kind of official support that the social sciences have enjoyed, are also in disarray. Philosophy, for example, has been unable to develop a tradition of its own. English studies, which enjoys a rare prestige, showed, for a time at least, some vitality, but largely as a site for innovative work which has called into question the identity of the discipline itself.  In this context, the case of history has been instructive. Since its trajectory as a discipline was bound up with the Independence movement, it has not had to face the problem of impetus. Precisely because it is a site of contesting interpretations, the critical issues that have precipitated a crisis in the discipline keep it alive. The interventions of the Subaltern Studies group, for example, have forced the discipline to re-examine itself critically, and have also opened a new area in which a variety of political initiatives both within India and outside have contributed to the enlivening of the discipline (eg. feminist studies, or those emphasising local and regional issues in India). The crisis, in short, has been productively internalised by the discipline. The lesson to be drawn from this experience, it would seem, is that the formulation of research problems, and the theoretical idioms providing the heuristics for empirical research can generate debates and insights only when they draw from, interact with, and reflect the specific cultural and historical experience and political aspirations they set out to theorize or investigate.  Objectives It is at this conjuncture that some of us have felt the need to institutionally consolidate the promising and innovative lines of theoretical work in culture and politics to which the existing institutions have been either inhospitable or, given the resource crunch, unable to respond. The funding crisis apart, we feel that there is a deeper reason for the stagnation of research in the social sciences and the humanities. Our diagnosis is that social science research in India never sought theoretical autonomy, all too often adopting research agendas, problematics and methodologies defined elsewhere. The crisis of our times obviously runs deep. What is required today is an attempt to conceptualize in new ways the objects of our research, and to create new structures of knowledge adequate to the complexity of the phenomena we are studying. We must also seek to formulate new institutional practices, in the areas of research, documentation, archival work and pedagogy. While on the one hand we will initiate dialogue with existing institutions, and contribute actively to the reconceptualization of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, on the other hand we will press for the reinterpretation of key nationalist-modernist figures and concepts. The rationale for a new research centre comes, indeed, from the need to address the task of elaborating a new research paradigm for studying culture, politics and society in our contemporary context. History of the Organisation In the mid-1990s, a group of scholars working in different research centres and universities in India decided to come together to set up an institution at Bangalore which would promote transdisciplinary research in the fields of the humanities and social sciences. Accordingly, on 23 December 1996, the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society was registered as a charitable trust at Bangalore. We were then in a position to seek projects in the name of the Centre. Over the next year, we continued our efforts in this direction and towards the end of 1997, we had assurance of a two-year grant from the Ford Foundation for the Media Project, which would constitute one of the core activities of the Centre.  Meanwhile, in 1997, even before the Centre acquired a physical existence, we undertook other assignments related to our research interests. In February 1997, in collaboration with the Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies, Hyderabad, we organized a two-day workshop on gender and media, the papers from which have been published as a special issue of the Journal of Arts and Ideas (Nos.32-33, April 1999). Later that year, in August 1997, a five-day workshop on Tamil cinema and politics was held in Madras. This workshop, which was organized in collaboration with the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, was preceded by several months of archival data collection and publication, in English translation, of select documents relating to Tamil cinema history. The Tamil cinema workshop served as a model for the one on Telugu cinema, politics and society that took place in August 1999 in Hyderabad (see report on Conferences/Workshops for details). We hope to conduct similar workshops on other Indian-language cinemas in the near future. The Centre began functioning in Bangalore from 1 February 1998. The three main components of the Media Project funded by the Ford Foundation, New Delhi (Gender, Media and Modernity: 1950-2000, The Media Archive, and Television and The National Culture) were set in motion. In the two years for which we had a grant, a substantial amount of work was done towards collecting data from various sources and undertaking a preliminary organization of the material. We established contacts with various institutions in India and abroad with the aim of furthering our research goals, as well as fulfilling our role in Bangalore as a forum for debate on issues of interest to academics in the humanities and social sciences as well as to the lay public. The Centre has attracted national and international attention as an innovative forum for research in cultural studies. We have a regular stream of visitors from all over India and abroad who come to use the library and to interact with Centre faculty. We have also had visiting faculty and graduate students who seek affiliation with us during the period of their research.  In August 1999, we were abruptly informed by the New Delhi office of the Ford Foundation that our grant period would not be extended beyond two years. No explanation was offered as to why the decision was taken. This was all the more surprising in view of the many compliments we had received from Ford Staff, and our belief that we had done good work on the projects funded by Ford. This was also a major setback for CSCS since it ran counter to numerous verbal assurances that we would receive support for at least five years, as has been the case with most other Ford Foundation grants in India. Much of the academic year 2000 was spent in retrieving our projects from this potentially disastrous situation. We have also had to drastically revaluate the original objectives of this project, since we now need to adapt our work in order to qualify for new funding support. Although many CSCS faculty have been successful in obtaining individual grants, the question of core support for the Centre's activities remains unresolved. After the CSCS Board of Trustees wrote a letter of appeal to the Permanent Representative of Ford in Delhi, a small infrastructural grant was made to CSCS, enabling us to survive for one more year as an institution. Organisational Structure A board of trustees oversees the functioning of the Centre. At present the board consists of four outside members, and three members of the faculty. We are fortunate to have as trustees four eminent public figures who have guided us in our efforts over the last three years: Mr. T.N. Satish Chandran, distinguished civil servant who has served as Governor of Goa and as Director of a premier social science institution, the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. Ms. Shashi Deshpande, well-known novelist. Prof. Susie Tharu, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, founder-member of Anveshi, and co-editor of the historic two-volume Women Writing in India; and Mr. S. Theodore Baskaran, distinguished member of the Indian Postal Service and well-known film scholar who currently heads the prestigious Roja Muthaiah Research Library, Chennai. At present the following faculty members are also on the board: Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Tejaswini Niranjana and Madhava Prasad. The board of trustees meets at least twice a year. Quarterly financial statements are sent to each trustee. At each meeting of the board, work reports of faculty members and details about other aspects of the Centre's functioning are presented and discussed. Activity reports are confirmed and financial statements are ratified. The Director, a post held in rotation by Senior Fellows, oversees the day-to-day functioning of the Centre with the help of faculty members constituted into an executive committee which takes all important decisions. We have an administrative officer, a librarian, a research assistant, an office assistant, a media archive in-charge and a varying number of data entry operators and computer technology consultants. A weekly staff meeting is held every Monday morning at which the progress and problems related to all these sections are discussed and action initiated. Both the executive committee and staff meetings are conducted in a democratic manner, and decisions are taken collectively after discussing all opinions. CSCS Projects/Research Areas In the light of the crisis of modernity and given our diagnosis of the stagnation in social science research, certain crucial areas suggest themselves. These are areas in which the scholars involved in setting up the Centre have already made significant contributions, as the attached Cvs will demonstrate. Although separable as individual project areas, they are all interrelated in forming a broad thrust area around what we might call the institutions and practices of modernity.  The Media Archive. Coordinator: Ashish Rajadhyaksha. Television and The National Culture. Coordinator: M. Madhava Prasad. Visual Culture. Coordinator: M. Madhava Prasad (in collaboration with the Social Science Research Council). Cinema in Andhra, 1921-1950: The Formation of a Public Sphere. Coordinator: S.V. Srinivas. Democracy and Spectatorship in India: Telugu Popular Cinema and Hong Kong Action Film. Researcher: S. V. Srinivas.  Gender, Media and Modernity, 1950-2000. Coordinator: Tejaswini Niranjana. Mobilizing "India": Gender and Ethnicity in the Subaltern Diaspora, a Comparative Study of Trinidad and South Africa. Researcher: Tejaswini Niranjana. Reconceptualizing the Human Sciences. Coordinator: Vivek Dhareshwar. Caste, Democracy and the Indian Intellectual Tradition. Coordinator: Vivek Dhareshwar. Conferences and Workshops 1. Workshop on Telugu Cinema: History, Culture, Theory, August 13-16, 1999 (Under a grant from the Ford Foundation, New Delhi) CSCS organized the workshop on Telugu Cinema: History, Culture, Theory in collaboration with Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies, Hyderabad. The workshop drew on two earlier initiatives. One, the workshop on 'Rethinking Media: Gender, Globalisation and Social Change' organized by CSCS and Anveshi in February 1997 in Hyderabad; and two, the workshop on 'Tamil Cinema: History, Culture, Theory' organized by Madras Institute of Development Studies at Chennai in August 1997.  The Telugu Cinema Workshop was the culmination of a research project which began in January 1999. Involving nine researchers (some of whom worked part time) and a coordinator based in Hyderabad, the research project aimed at generating material which would help students/researchers in their study of Indian cinema in general and Telugu cinema in particular. The project researchers worked for a period of six months in order to collect material on a range of topics related to cinema. Periodically CSCS fellows met the researchers to review the progress of the project.  2. The Human Sciences and the Asian Experience, February 18-20, 2000 (Under a grant from the Japan Foundation, New Delhi) The conference set out to explore the question of how the human sciences, products of western culture, have fared in Asia. The background assumption was that the human sciences, both in the west and in Asia, are in a state of stagnation and crisis. Therefore the question confronting the Asian intellectuals was: could it be that the stagnation and crisis of the disciplines can be overcome only if the non-western cultures begin the process of reconceptualizing the human sciences? The background paper raising this question was circulated among the potential participants. After a process of dialogue involving criticism, elaboration, and reformulation of the question, fourteen papers addressing this issue from very different perspectives and national traditions were selected.  The papers presented could be roughly divided into three types or groups: 1) the explicitly philosophical papers which addressed epistemological issues concerning the status of the humans sciences and examined the possibility, the necessity, as well as the difficulty of reconceptualizing the human sciences 2) papers which either actually attempted to provide an alternative way of doing social sciences or critically assessed the attempts at providing alternatives to the existing human sciences; 3) papers which looked at specific problems, for example, caste in India, modernization and nationalism in Japan, the politics of alternative sexualities in Taiwan, the postcolonial predicament in Taiwan.  There was a general consensus about the need to reconceptualize the human sciences, and surprisingly, a considerable overlap of concerns also emerged during discussion. The crucial methodological and substantive questions were: Can one speak of Asian experience in the singular or should one really be talking about experiences in the plural? What does one make of Asianness? While the overlap of concerns, questions and even terms of discourses were noted, the differences in situation, trajectory and problems too were highlighted. While it is true that colonization has been an important historical experience for many Asian nations, how does one understand the Japanese situation, since Japan itself was a colonizer? Equally importantly, do we need to significantly transform the existing model of colonization provided by postcolonial theory in order to understand the complex condition of Taiwan and Korea? Does one include the middle-eastern tradition in our understanding of Asia? In what senses could one say that colonization has "made over" the people who were colonized? What role did social sciences play in the kind of knowledges produced in the colonial situation? What's the status of that "knowledge"? How does social science or orientalism in the colonial situation relate to social science in the west? Are they the same thing? What epistemological stance underlies both of them? If we reject that stance, what other conceptual and normative space is available for reconceptualizing the human sciences? These questions would not have emerged without this conference, which, as all the participants agreed, was unique in many ways. The event was brought to a fitting closure by the valedictory address of the distinguished political theorist Partha Chatterjee.  3. Forthcoming Workshop: Feminisms in Asia (Funded by the Japan Foundation, New Delhi) The Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, India, in collaboration with the Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi, India, proposes to hold a workshop on "Feminisms in Asia" in Bangalore, October 17-20, 2001. Background Note Today it would be indisputable that feminism has been one of the most significant social movements of the twentieth century. The impact of feminist initiatives has been as extensive as it is profound. In thinking about questions of everyday life and relationships; institutions such as education, the judiciary, the workplace; structures of power such as the state or the trans-national corporation; discourses like colonialism and nationalism; and the disciplines (history, economics, political science, literary studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and the biological sciences), feminists have produced remarkable new insights into the very fabric of our lives. Feminism has wrought irreversible transformations in our attempts to produce knowledge, in our modes of representation and our ways of looking.  In hindsight, it may not appear surprising that from about the mid-19th century on, in hundreds of locations across the world women began to organise for social and political change, around issues such as suffrage, education, or access to the public sphere. Women's magazines and newsletters were produced, and writing by women--essays, pamphlets, fiction, poetry and criticism in a myriad languages--became increasingly available. New modes of public protest came to be fashioned. Women's activism in diverse areas provided the ground for the analytical understanding of the situations we were struggling against. While there were very few societies where this was not happening, assertions such as "sisterhood is global", often made by western feminists in the 1970s or 80s, were not welcomed by feminists in other spaces. The universalising premise of such assertions, it was felt, served to obscure the serious differences in women's lives in different parts of the world, often--when one took into consideration issues of class, caste or race--within the same geo-political boundaries. What we propose as the underlying premise for our workshop is a radical departure from this idea.  Educational Initiatives Ph.D. in Cultural Studies Summer Programme in Cultural Studies Undergraduate Interventions The Science Initiative 1. Ph.D. in Cultural Studies (Commencing from July 2001) In 2001, CSCS introduced its Ph.D. programme in Cultural Studies. The Progamme is recognised by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Karnataka, where students are formally registered and from where they obtain the degree.  This is the first Ph.D. degree in India in the relatively recent field of Cultural Studies, which emerged as something of a response to crises in the humanities and social sciences. These crises have been reflected in the difficulties of bringing into teaching practice the kinds of cultural phenomena that are becoming increasingly relevant, for example, to definitions of politics, to people's everyday experience, and to issues of human rights. Relevant to these phenomena have been larger issues such as growing religious intolerance, the emergence of new modes of communication, or the rise of new social-political movements.  Such a field has come to be recognised today by the kinds of objects it analyses and the methods it employs. Today its key texts include seminal works of contemporary theory that have fundamentally transformed the very premises of teaching in the humanities. On the other hand, they also now include substantial resources of previously invisible writing and cultural production. These include autobiographies, oral testimonies, legal documentation, early efforts by political practitioners of various leanings to develop theoretical models, human rights documentation, the popular press, the cinema, and previously unexplored traditions of performance or visual expression, all of which would earlier have been either unteachable or seen as irrelevant to the concept of 'teaching culture', but which are now becoming an increasingly crucial resource for all cultural theory. Programme Modalities The registration is valid for a period of four years, of which the first year requires a compulsory residency in Bangalore. The courses are run on a semester system, with the division as follows: the first two semesters involve intensive reading/writing courses where students are required to interpret difficult texts, understand intellectual debates that have formed the horizon of interdisciplinary cultural studies, formulate and discuss ideas and questions and write research papers. Courses include collaborations with faculty from other institutions in Bangalore and elsewhere in India, and formal institutional collaborations on optional courses. At the beginning of the third semester, students put together a research proposal. They defend the proposal at the end of the fourth semester. In this period, students take on teaching and research assignments, either at CSCS or at collaborating institutions. Students commence their own research at the end of the fourth semester, and have four more semesters to complete their dissertations. Apart from English, dissertations in Kannada and Telugu are accepted. Eligible students should have a Master's Degree from any recognised university in India or abroad, with a mimimum 55% or its grade equivalent. There is a 5% relaxation for SC/ST candidates. CSCS envisages the following course-pattern for Ph.D. and Diploma Course students, and for students from other institutions who are take courses for credit at CSCS: One credit equals 20 hours of teaching; courses offered are either for 1 credit (20 hrs) or 2 credits (40 hrs) per semester. Courses worth approximately 6-8 credits are taught every semester. Total required credits for Ph.D. students, to be completed in two semesters: 8 [The Core Course, taught in two parts, is worth a total of 4 credits, each part being worth 2 credits-students can take this course only in sequence, i.e. the pre-requisite for Part II will be Part I, and this sequence is not reversed under any circumstances. For the remaining 4 credits, students can take a combination of courses of differing credit-value, whether at CSCS or at collaborating institutions.]  Diploma Course students are also allowed to take the Ph.D. Core Course, worth 4 credits, in the appropriate sequence. Total required credits for Diploma Course students, to be completed over a mutually determined time-frame: 6 Initiatives for Undergraduate Institutions CSCS, in collaboration with the Centre for Social Research, Christ College, Bangalore, conducts an annual short-term workshop in curricular transformation for college teachers beginning in 2001 and a Certificate Course in Cultural Analysis for undergraduate students enrolled in Bangalore colleges. The resource persons for the workshops as well as for the year-long course feature CSCS Ph.D. students, CSCS faculty, Christ College faculty, and invited speakers. The undergraduate course runs for 100 hours, over 30 sessions of between 3-4 hours, between August and January, annually. The Certificate is offered jointly by CSCS and Christ College, who also jointly host the courses. Most enrolled students are Arts students who have selected their subject combinations from Psychology, Economics, English, Sociology and Journalism. Initiative for Science Institutions CSCS offers an annual one-semester course, starting from January 2002, to post-graduate students of the science institutions in Bangalore. The course is hosted by the National Centre for the Biological Sciences. The rationale of the course is to offer stimulating discussions of contemporary social and political questions from cultural studies perspectives to a fairly homogenous audience with little training in thinking about such questions. Among the issues that feature in joint presentations by CSCS and NCBS faculty are: Visuality and Science, Questions of Ethics (following recent developments in biotechnology), and History of Science. The challenge here is to cut through the two-cultures divide and foreground the significance of thinking unconventionally about issues of culture in a science-dominated environment. The course carries one credit (20 hours). Workshops in Cultural Studies  CSCS organises training programmes at least once a year that are aimed at exposing research students and young faculty to the content and methodology of the new work done at the Centre. For this activity, in addition to our own faculty, CSCS enlists the help of experts in relevant areas. The Centre collaborates extensively with scholars and institutions who work in its areas of interest, and plans to recruit scholars and students from other Asian countries and from across the "South" for this programme. CSCS Lectures CSCS activities include organizing lectures to enable the fellows of the Centre and the general public to interact with scholars working in areas of interest to CSCS.  Media and Culture Series Focus on the City Series Reconceptualising the Human Sciences Visual Culture  History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Co-organized with National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore).  Through the Lens of Life Sciences Through the Lens of Life Sciences (Co-organised with the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore). Film Screenings 上一頁 下一頁