Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

224 COLLAGES OF BETTERMENTACADEMIC LIFEWORLDS, THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND DEEPDEMOCRACY IN THAILAND AND THE PHILIPPINESSharaad KuttanIntroductionThe following essay is an expression of a journey,which is why the personal figures as prominently as thepolitical. I begin with a personal narrative but end witha section entitled “Six points of comparison,” which isa modest attempt to summarize my tentative findings.I conclude with a brief call for institutional support forthe documentation of Asia’s intellectual heritage which,I believe, The Nippon Foundation through the APIFellowships Program is well placed to encourage.As a preface, let me note that the generosity of spiritembodied in the API fellowship was crucial as it gaveme the space to think through the assumptions I hadmade when I first conceptualized my research proposal.As the program is not primarily geared to the productionof outputs and “deliverables,” Fellows like me are ableto invest time and energy in ways not often available inour adult working lives. My years as a graduate student,activist and researcher, while enriching, have also inmany ways de-limited the ways in which I approachquestions of society, culture and social change. It is clearthat the question of institutional structures is of centralimportance for us who have come through the APIprocess since institutions and institutional processesthat promote knowledge production but simultaneouslyconstrain the ability, both on the level of individualsand groups, to think “freely” are problematic. Theacceptance of self- reflexive critique is an on-goingprocess and I look forward to an opportunity toexplore the connection between institutional structuresand processes on the one hand and “creativity” and“freedom” on the other.An institutional critique is, in fact, the very objectof inquiry identified in my proposal title. The way Istructured the terms of the proposal, typical of socialscience inquiry, was to work on the hypothesis thata connection exists between ideas (social sciences),institutions (academics/universities) and social processes(substantive democracy/public culture). This wasnothing short of ambitious and perhaps impracticableconsidering the timeframe for preparation that Iactually had. Truth be told, the unstated model lurkingin the back of my mind was that of a doctoral candidateembarking on fieldwork. However, without the rigorouspreparation to which such candidates in the socialsciences are subjected to, was this model viable? Thosefamiliar with academic practices will understand thatthe questions that a doctoral candidate takes to the fieldare wrought through a process of deep and systematicreading, coupled with a dialogical process initiated ina structured institutional setting, peopled by seniorfaculty and contemporaries. In some serious sense, Ifound myself parachuted into my field with a vague ideaof what I wanted to achieve, much like a journalist whois rushed to a conflict-ridden city he is familiar withperhaps only as a mark on a map. Was this fatal to myproject or was it in fact productive in bringing about adifferent form and methodology of inquiry?To interject: it must be said that I suffer from a formof denial, a suppression of frameworks of knowledgethat are not institutionally validated. I have gatheredin my short but moderately adventurous life a range ofexperiences and, dare I say, feelings about the world ingeneral and my society in particular that neverthelessinformed the line of inquiry that I proposed. That Ifelt compelled to inflect the style of my proposal in asocial scientific manner was both a product of habit,institutional anxiety (that is, a desire for affirmationfrom the institutions I was going to interact with) and,most importantly, a lack of an alternative vocabulary.When I embarked on this trip last year—a year of livingin intellectual discomfort, I must add—the vocabularythat I thought most important for my project was asocial scientific one, consisting of concepts, theories andparadigms underscored by a sociological imaginary. Thiswas the ideational stuff of my two university degrees,the second of which, a Masters, was from a departmentof sociology and anthropology. I had an unquestionedbelief in the need for conceptual clarity and theoreticalrigor, and an almost naïve faith in Reason in public life.I do not think that I am unique in this; I share a beliefwith many that human welfare—expressed throughnotions of peace, stability, wealth, equality, democracy,beauty and truth—can be gained or apprehendedthrough genuine and informed dialogue. My hand onmy heart, I am a child of the Enlightenment, and clingto its promises as a baby to its mother’s breast.Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows