Towards a network of community knowledge activism (draft)
A workshop on community knowledge (C-K) practices is being planned in Kerala, with a view to forging a network of individuals and groups working in the areas connected to people's knowledge traditions.
This is meant for highlighting the cultural, ecological, spiritual, and health care significance of C-K traditions.
In India, people's knowledge traditions are being undermined either by those who promote science and technology advanced by the developed industrialised countries, or by those who reduce the source of every knowledge to the Vedic traditions. These two hegemonic cultural and knowledge streams have already established their institutional and ideological structures to marginalise and devalue people's own cultural and knowledge practices. They have been also functioning as instruments for social and economic suppression of productive social forces and working-class populations in every society.
The role that hegemonic knowledge structures play has not gained much attention from the side of wider social justice thinking. Hence, the theoretical and activist engagements with the knowledge-matter do require specific considerations in the processes of social wellbeing.
The sociocultural process that operates in relation to knowledge hierarchy, as imposed structures of supremacy and the critical engagements with them may be termed politics of knowledge.
In the Indian context of caste-based hierarchy, sociocultural discriminations have been very much mediated through knowledge monopolism.
Therefore, politics of knowledge, as a critical engagement with the monopolistic ideas of knowledge assumes greater importance in the process of social justice from the side of knowledge communities.
The proposed workshop on C-K wants to take up such knowledge-matters for the detailed analysis, and explorations of collaborative action programmes.
The networking of C-K activism would be on the basis of wider interest to relate knowledge-matter with social justice. Knowledge-rights, community-rights, cultural-rights are some of the wider concerns.
Never wants to form an organization other than networking for common concerns, from different perspectives.
The present-day world order has been very much defined by the conditions of knowledge being made as an instrument of exploitation and domination. The neoliberal globalized world order is regulated by the knowledge-economy or knowledge society. This is the socio-cultural condition in which knowledge-politics has become imperative, and so every welfare concern or social justice imagination needs to be analyzed from the framework of C-K freedom.
The network for C-K activism has to be conceived at different levels. The primary level network has to consist of those actual C-K practitioners and their associations from different fields as its major participants. This may not be possible immediately so long as the consciousness of knowledge politics gets a crucial status in society. Therefore, there may encounter many hindrances and confusion in the efforts to forge network activism relating to C-K practices.
A major difficulty would be connected to the identification of proper areas and practitioners of C-K practices. There may not be many forms that can strictly be termed C-K. Every C-K is likely to be existing against all odd conditions that pressurize to get modified itself by compromising its evolving standards and principles. Or its practitioners may be under the pressure to make adaptations for the requirements of changing rules and market forces that tend to eliminate it in the long run. Similarly, C-K communities may have lost their definitive nature.
The lack of definitive character of the C-K scenario might pose difficulty to the formation of a primary level network of C-K practitioners. Therefore, the kind of C-K activism that could be conceived or suggested now has to go with a limited purpose of generating a critical understanding of the supremacist knowledge regimes and thereupon the life world of C-K. Such a secondary level initiative must be taken up by all those consisting of its sympathizers and beneficiaries in the larger society.
Now the major problem remains ahead seems to be about the ways of identifying who are the sympathizers of C-K, where do we locate them, and how do we go about the networking process? There are already many organisations, which recognise the importance of C-K practices, and indulge in activities promoting products and livelihood means connected to it. They operate mainly as NGOs working with different areas of production and services that have a major thrust upon C-K heritage. But the question that remains unstated may be this: to what extent they do have a critical perspective to challenge the epistemological and ideological frameworks within which C-K practices have been kept at the lower edge? Their awareness of the hegemonic structures that subordinate their knowledge status as such is
often found suspicious.
Similarly, there are many sociopolitical and community associations that work for the welfare of C-K practitioners without holding any critical stance to challenge the epistemological frameworks advanced by the institutionalised sciences and other academic disciplines. However, it is absolutely unfair to say the scenario of critical thinking and engagements are totally absent or unavailable. Of course, it may be rare to see those who are having some exclusive focal perspectives and action programmes to engage critically with knowledge regimes of hierarchy. But there are many people and organisations to raise the issues of knowledge politics along their areas of focus and engagement other than C-K practices.
The above range of sympathisers seems to provide a better reason for seeking dialogical partners and network participants for knowledge activism, making the C-K matters the common cause for coming together while retaining one's own specific focus and area of interest.
Keeping this purpose in mind, an attempt is made here to figure out some issues and perspectives that come up on the way to taking forward community knowledge activism in the contemporary globalized world.
C-K activism has its specific reference to the promotional or advocacy measures for the cause of people's knowledge and cultural practices. However, it does not want to create any form of paternalistic missionary structure, instead of allowing the real actors to be participants and self-representatives. Keeping this in view, an initiative has already been taken to forge a network of persons and collectives working in different areas of C-K.
The conceived networking is meant for facilitating critical dialogues and engagements with the agencies that impose centralised knowledge structures and their market conditions. It has also been felt that ground level or internal situations are to get a primary consideration in the matters related to validity, credibility, authority, and justification of C-K, instead of getting forfeited to external pressures and motivations of any kind. This is to give stress on the radical nature of autonomy and diversity of C-K forms that are due to their collective and evolutionary history. These factors need much attention in the engagements with them, especially when promotional or advocacy measures and theoretical interpretations are undertaken at the level of secondary or middleman agency.
The conception of C-K signifies all those ideas and skills that are embedded in different modes of living and livelihood practices of the community of people in their natural and cultural territoriality. In contrast to the institutionalized formal knowledge systems, it embodies collective ownership that has been shared by generations of people through the process of adapting and modifying according to the requirements of life and its survival.
What is attempted here emerges from the long-term research and dissemination activities undertaken by me relating to the areas of traditional health care practices in Kerala, especially in areas such as Kalarividya, Marmavidya, and Siddhavaidya. It is out of some strong convictions I had from the above work in the limited field of traditional health care practices of Kerala that now I have ventured for networking of C-K activisms in general.
As it is found, the issues encountered in the health care C-K are equally relevant for all other C-K forms in India and outside. In other words, it is strongly felt that problems and solutions relating to health care may not be raised in an isolated manner. So it has become imperative for me to think about them in the wider context of C-K in general. It is strictly out of such a practical concern that I am interested to interact with others in my limited capacity.
Knowledge problems and perspectives that have been articulated here are those often being confronted during the work undertaken for the cause of C-K practices. They are rather presented as the structures of knowledge hierarchy that keep targeting to undermine the inherent potentials of C-K practices. And there are found different types of hegemonic structures of knowledge as affect the very survival and independent growth of people's own knowledge traditions and the concerned initiatives. Interestingly, most C-K perspectives may give an impression that they want to provide some accommodative spaces and justification grounds for C-K practices, in spite of their technological imperfections compared to modern scientific achievements. However, the friendly accommodative frameworks too can be found sustaining impediments detrimental to C-K in the long run.
Following may be some of the important perspectival issues that hinder C-K practices:
1) The supremacist approach that modern science advocates. That it is the most relevant and progressive knowledge applicable everywhere in the world. From this view, what continues to remain as C-K has rather been treated as a historical vestige. Hence it may have some curiosity values as a museum piece. Most of the heritage promotions based on the tourism industry seem to be operating as a corollary to this approach.
2) There is the foundationalist view that Vedic literature and traditions are the entire sources of every form of knowledge and belief practice in the Indian subcontinent. This homogenising approach has its intertwinement with the Casteist hierarchy.
3) There is one apparently pro-C-K perspective that springs from two different contexts. One tends to construe the C-K practices as nothing but nationalistic. They are seen as those regional adaptations and manifestations of essentially national. The national or patriotic science argument seems to view the C-K practices as embodying a pan-Indian science. Indeed it has a resistance angle against the Western colonialism of science that derogates C-K as unscientific and superstitious. The second pro-C-K view treats it as a folklorist and ethnic knowledge that are having great significance as complimentary arts.
4) There is one, which appears to be a libertarian perspective. Though this view tends to ascribe the status of alternate knowledge systems to C-K practices, the implied idea of the status of something else being core or mainstream still gets maintained here. Some alternativist claims are also being made for the mainstream status of C-K
5) The arguments for the self-validation of C-K based on religion, ethnicity, and nationalist specificity are very pervasive. But such self-justification arguments get compromised when negotiations with power structures and market forces become paramount. Even its sympathy for C-K does not go with an equal ground. Instead, the arguments for the autonomy of C-K and its life world of different C-K forms depend on its affiliation to particular religion, ethnicity, or nationality. That means a particular C-K form may be either promoted or
undermined only according to ethnic, religious, and nationalistic considerations.
6) Numerous scientific projects are emerging to cull out the scientific elements and insights inherent within C-K, and thus it goes with its pretentious claims of value addition.
The above approaches may not be considered exhaustive, and further, it is possible to figure out many more specific issues and perspectives in relation to every particular C-K practice respective to its socio-cultural and territorial context.
As getting revealed above, the wider scenario of knowledge debate seems to have been filled with contradictions. That is to say that the divisions and oppositions such as orthodoxy and heterodoxy, regressive and progressive, tradition and modern do not get maintained consistently, and so their differences have become redundant or superfluous. Similar is the situation that exists in the perceived opposition between C-K and S-K (systemic, scientific, university, or institutional knowledge).
The shift in approach can be as the apparent overture to C-K from the side of S-K. Such an opening up towards C-K cannot be construed as taking place in isolation to knowledge forms alone. It has also been entangled with different cultural aspects. Thus the process of the overture to C-K is very complex, and so it assumes different cultural manifestations. Its multiple aspects are found happening as another process of the return of something that has been taken to be passé in the evolutionary history of human civilization. It is not a negligible fact that there is a wide presence of all those cultures that are doomed to become extinct due to the onset of modern science. Of course, the significance of S-K needs to be understood by contextualizing it as being part of the return of what is perceived as dead or gone.
As enumerated above, there may be a wide-ranging interest with which C-K activism has been carried out. If such a common interest can be taken as a sign of anything, there is much scope for critical debate and collective engagement towards the cause of C-K. That may be a point for the initiative to facilitate a public/social debate on CK whereby to show how knowledge-matter should become the major parameter for social justice thinking and political engagement.
There are numerous streams of thinking and sociocultural engagement that have been drawn to the conceptualisation of knowledge as the crucial instrument of hegemony and oppression. Such engagements have a stated pathway to deviate from the glorified epistemological projects that tend to construe any intellectual exploration of knowledge or wisdom to be inherently liberating, either socially or spiritually. The process of facilitating a network for CK seems binding to figure out all those streams against hegemonic epistemological projects that have been undertaken or emerged from different perspectives and contexts of engagement.
P. K. Sasidharan
# 9447262817
