The six preceding blog posts are my attempt to begin thinking through this challenge: of designing from scratch with no preconceived ideas about what we are doing a course that captures many of the issues that we are interested in as we reflect on contemporary South India.
Maybe a completely non-derivative way of doing this is impossible. But I am just trying to start as far away from where the course generally is at, in order to be able to approach it in a way that belongs here.
If you happen to read this posts and have suggestions, please do leave comments.
Showing posts with label third world politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label third world politics. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Teaching 'Third World Politics': Reflections 6
What would I teach? Let me back up and describe the issues I think it would be interesting and fun to explore at this point, sitting in South India. In no particular order.
To me, it is the debates surrounding particular choices that are interesting. But the teacher in me is conservative, wanting also to furnish information even as we teach students how to think about particular issues. As Professor Malapur would have put it, to come up with the right questions... because there are no answers.
So I want to design a course whose framework will set us all up to ask the right questions, and whose cases will give us a chance to debate the answers and the discourse itself.
What would I call such a course? "The Politics of Change"? "The Politics of Socio-Economic Change"?
I would lose the 'Third World,' 'Emerging Nations,' 'Development' tags for sure. 'Change' is more open-ended. And not necessarily linear.
And I think I would build the discussion in the course around what now seem to me to be false binaries, but that have been juxtaposed as critical binaries by different schools of thought:
- This year, we were struck by urban renewal/conservation issues. Particularly because we were visiting heritage sites that were once an integral part of planned urban centres.
- I think models of 'development' are interesting. What do people do towards developing specific areas? Whether it is a school or propagating a particular kind of farming. These lend themselves to larger questions about 'development' and about globalization both.
- Although we decided not to rehearse the nationalism course, I think identity politics is still interesting, particularly in its interface with a rapidly changing political economy.
- I think that nature and direction of change is always interesting to think about.
- I remain very concerned about governance issues.
- And of course, gender.
- How could we be in Chennai and not think of the role of technology, particularly ICT?
To me, it is the debates surrounding particular choices that are interesting. But the teacher in me is conservative, wanting also to furnish information even as we teach students how to think about particular issues. As Professor Malapur would have put it, to come up with the right questions... because there are no answers.
So I want to design a course whose framework will set us all up to ask the right questions, and whose cases will give us a chance to debate the answers and the discourse itself.
What would I call such a course? "The Politics of Change"? "The Politics of Socio-Economic Change"?
I would lose the 'Third World,' 'Emerging Nations,' 'Development' tags for sure. 'Change' is more open-ended. And not necessarily linear.
And I think I would build the discussion in the course around what now seem to me to be false binaries, but that have been juxtaposed as critical binaries by different schools of thought:
- Growth versus Equity
- Small versus Big
- Liberty versus Equality
- Market versus State, Civil Society versus State
- Global versus National versus Regional versus Local
- Indigenous versus Foreign
- Modern versus Traditional
and of course, - Third World versus Advanced Industrial,
to list just a few....
Teaching 'Third World Politics': Reflections 5
So what is this course about?
As it is usually taught in the US, it is about everything. A little bit about colonialism, a little bit about nationalism, a little bit about development, a little bit about gender and a little bit about international relations.
In India, we do not teach politics as if it is special in a developmental context but as students in Bombay University a couple of decades ago, we did study Development Administration. In fact, when I think about it, there was a large development component to my own BA degree: Macro-development Economics, a course on Appropriate Technologies which had some other name as well, Planning and Development Strategies, Development Administration. The Political Science classes were classic topics in political thought, international relations, taught more as humanities than as social science.
I think the problem I am having is not WHAT I would teach as much as what the rubric is that I would give it.
As it is usually taught in the US, it is about everything. A little bit about colonialism, a little bit about nationalism, a little bit about development, a little bit about gender and a little bit about international relations.
In India, we do not teach politics as if it is special in a developmental context but as students in Bombay University a couple of decades ago, we did study Development Administration. In fact, when I think about it, there was a large development component to my own BA degree: Macro-development Economics, a course on Appropriate Technologies which had some other name as well, Planning and Development Strategies, Development Administration. The Political Science classes were classic topics in political thought, international relations, taught more as humanities than as social science.
I think the problem I am having is not WHAT I would teach as much as what the rubric is that I would give it.
Teaching 'Third World Politics': Reflections 4
Courses in this area are usually some extension or variation of "Government and Politics of.." courses. By appending Third World, I think they aspire to capture something of the process of change. Once they do that, they cannot be just about politics.
'Third World' states were more or less the same as those states of Asia and Africa and on some issues, Latin America, that had once been colonized. Colonialism, by the definition of anti-colonial writers everywhere, was only partly about politics and administration. It was also ideological and cultural; and it had begun as economic exploitation. Therefore, studies of these places that were 'Third World' had to be also about other dimensions.
Especially, cultural. Since colonized peoples were somewhat backward and definitely traditional, the most useful variable to explain anything about them must be 'culture.' Not politics. Not economics. Nothing quite so rational and gentlemanly.
And then you look at the origins of the study of these states in American academia. It is rooted in 1950s anxieties about containing communism. What made states stable? What allowed democracies to develop? What would prevent revolutionary activity? These are the kinds of political questions that motivated that literature. It is a different matter that these questions inspired some really interesting empirical work and a useful vocabulary for describing politics. But Third World countries got frozen for a few decades in a certain taxonomy, defined not by them but for them.
The shift occurred when authoritarian governments started falling in Latin America and then in Eastern Europe. Democracy became a topic that could be associated with the 'Third World' suddenly, and there is still an industry of democratization experts, both academic and field, out there. Illustrated best by the Ukrainian expert sent by the National Democratic Institute in Washington DC to advise Sri Lankans on their election process. in 1980.
Then there was the course I taught in my last semester at graduate school: Emerging Nations. I taught it once as the politics of development and then chose to interpret it once narrowly and in keeping with my dissertation, as nationalism and decolonization and the politics of the same. Worked better as the last, but really, that was quite a departure from the intended purpose of the course. But from where were the 'Nations' emerging? Which 'Nations'? Were they also states? And into what were they emerging.
No idea at all.
'Third World' states were more or less the same as those states of Asia and Africa and on some issues, Latin America, that had once been colonized. Colonialism, by the definition of anti-colonial writers everywhere, was only partly about politics and administration. It was also ideological and cultural; and it had begun as economic exploitation. Therefore, studies of these places that were 'Third World' had to be also about other dimensions.
Especially, cultural. Since colonized peoples were somewhat backward and definitely traditional, the most useful variable to explain anything about them must be 'culture.' Not politics. Not economics. Nothing quite so rational and gentlemanly.
And then you look at the origins of the study of these states in American academia. It is rooted in 1950s anxieties about containing communism. What made states stable? What allowed democracies to develop? What would prevent revolutionary activity? These are the kinds of political questions that motivated that literature. It is a different matter that these questions inspired some really interesting empirical work and a useful vocabulary for describing politics. But Third World countries got frozen for a few decades in a certain taxonomy, defined not by them but for them.
The shift occurred when authoritarian governments started falling in Latin America and then in Eastern Europe. Democracy became a topic that could be associated with the 'Third World' suddenly, and there is still an industry of democratization experts, both academic and field, out there. Illustrated best by the Ukrainian expert sent by the National Democratic Institute in Washington DC to advise Sri Lankans on their election process. in 1980.
Then there was the course I taught in my last semester at graduate school: Emerging Nations. I taught it once as the politics of development and then chose to interpret it once narrowly and in keeping with my dissertation, as nationalism and decolonization and the politics of the same. Worked better as the last, but really, that was quite a departure from the intended purpose of the course. But from where were the 'Nations' emerging? Which 'Nations'? Were they also states? And into what were they emerging.
No idea at all.
Teaching 'Third World Politics': Reflections 3
A linear view of history and the human experience makes it possible to place communities along a continuum and label them 'backward' and 'advanced'. All of us do it in the judgments we pass on each other on a daily basis. However, as an intellectual construct, it is hard to accept and harder still to teach.
One could place colonial-nationalist-postcolonial on some sort of a timeline, but what did they mean for the more practical details of everyday life.
But that is not what traditional 'Third World Politics' do. The term 'Third World' ties us to development issues, and 'development' is imagined in linear terms. They posit a certain unidirectional journey, in which a large swathe of humanity is condemned to trail the front-runners, fighting neverending battles for unreachable goals. Rostow's four-stage model of growth is an example; as Busybee liked to joke in his Independence Day columns, India was perpetually stuck in the take-off stage.
One could place colonial-nationalist-postcolonial on some sort of a timeline, but what did they mean for the more practical details of everyday life.
- In the 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru called large multipurpose hydro-electrical projects the 'temples of modern India.' India did benefit from them. But over time, the problems with large projects have become evident as well, whether for their seismic effects as in Tehri or for the displacement of peoples as in Narmada. Are we now moving to the model the Cholas and their Sri Lankan counterparts used--large networks of smaller canals--for irrigation on the one hand and nuclear energy on the other? Is this forward, backwards or lateral movement?
- Allopathy is regarded as the modern system of medicine. So why are more and more people gravitating towards alternative systems that are older, such as ayurveda, yoga, yunani and siddha? Is this retrogressive motion?
- Thousands of young Indians work in high-paying but more or less dead-end jobs in the IT sector. Are they doing better or worse than the tradition artisan who earns less but at least has infinite scope for creativity?
- Or are this last question and others of this sort utterly inappropriate in that they romanticize the past at the expense of well-being today?
- What is today's well-being if it creates a less than liveable tomorrow?
But that is not what traditional 'Third World Politics' do. The term 'Third World' ties us to development issues, and 'development' is imagined in linear terms. They posit a certain unidirectional journey, in which a large swathe of humanity is condemned to trail the front-runners, fighting neverending battles for unreachable goals. Rostow's four-stage model of growth is an example; as Busybee liked to joke in his Independence Day columns, India was perpetually stuck in the take-off stage.
Teaching "Third World Politics":Reflections 2
Let's start with this 'Third World' tag.
Forget the political correctness stuff. Dress the term any way you like and you still have no way of understanding what it means.
Once you accepted that, what was your course about? Almost everything, every place and everybody.
What was the difference between teaching this course, teaching introductory political science or government and teaching American or Indian politics? Just a little value judgment, a little prejudice and a little historical accident.
Forget the political correctness stuff. Dress the term any way you like and you still have no way of understanding what it means.
- poverty
- inequality
- tradition
- old technology
- unresolved political issues
- 'backwardness'
Once you accepted that, what was your course about? Almost everything, every place and everybody.
What was the difference between teaching this course, teaching introductory political science or government and teaching American or Indian politics? Just a little value judgment, a little prejudice and a little historical accident.
Teaching 'Third World Politics': Reflections
One of the crosses one bears when one teaches politics in the West and is a lowly, non-Western person, is that one sometimes has to teach a course that is variously modeled as 'Politics of development,' 'Third World Politics' or in my alma mater, 'Emerging Nations.' I did not enjoy this course in any incarnation for the simple reason that it seemed to need to be about everything with only fourteen-sixteen weeks in hand, a student body with virtually no previous training in world history or geography and an underlying logic that across its incarnations, was rooted in a worldview to which it was hard to make reality conform.
My survival strategy while writing the syllabus was to include what was important to the department and what was important to me, overloading the course even further. My version of the course was an improbable combination of the way development economics was taught by our professors at Elphinstone College; my experience growing up in 1960s-70s India; the political development literature of the 1960s, and a grab-bag of emerging points of view from wherever I had wandered. If the original conception of the course covered, as I snidely put it, everyone but four white men, by the time I was done with it, it was un-teachable.
The worst classes I ever taught were in this course. And this, in spite of this being a subject of interest to me. (Maybe that is why?) Ten years after I was last forced to teach this couse, this summer as we planned a year ahead, I found myself saying very gingerly, perhaps we should offer THAT class. My colleague was shocked, having heard me complain bitterly on more than one occasion. A grab-bag of random reasons made me think this could be workable.
To this end, I am going to start a series of blog posts, where I think aloud and try to make something that I can live with.
My survival strategy while writing the syllabus was to include what was important to the department and what was important to me, overloading the course even further. My version of the course was an improbable combination of the way development economics was taught by our professors at Elphinstone College; my experience growing up in 1960s-70s India; the political development literature of the 1960s, and a grab-bag of emerging points of view from wherever I had wandered. If the original conception of the course covered, as I snidely put it, everyone but four white men, by the time I was done with it, it was un-teachable.
The worst classes I ever taught were in this course. And this, in spite of this being a subject of interest to me. (Maybe that is why?) Ten years after I was last forced to teach this couse, this summer as we planned a year ahead, I found myself saying very gingerly, perhaps we should offer THAT class. My colleague was shocked, having heard me complain bitterly on more than one occasion. A grab-bag of random reasons made me think this could be workable.
- The course is located in Chennai, India.
- We are constantly talking about change, about old and new, tradition and modernity.
- The interface between global and local, colonial and postcolonial are everywhere around us.
- So much of the politics we discuss is about social transformation.
- Governance challenges, heritage and identity come together in the places we visit.
To this end, I am going to start a series of blog posts, where I think aloud and try to make something that I can live with.
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