A Network of Researchers

One of the objectives of Indian Slate as a platform for learning and teaching is to form a network of researchers.

The purpose is to bring together young researchers – graduate students, young faculty, or those doing research outside the educational institutions – in a forum which seeks to provide a milieu and the intellectual resources for formulating new research questions and pursuing them creatively and cooperatively. The need for such a network has become all the more urgent as the crisis in the higher educational institutions has coincided with the near stagnant condition of the social sciences and the humanities. The condition is not, of course, specific to India, but it has gone largely unacknowledged in both the US and Europe. There seems little awareness of it in the US, which has exercised the most baleful influence on the course of research in the last three or four decades, mainly because the universities are insulated from the social fabric, the academic debates remaining just “academic.” In Europe the alarming decline of philosophical and social scientific thinking is evident in the desperate attempt to embrace Americanism not only in its academic structures but also in content. And because the metropolitan intelligentsia in India is now integrated into the circuits of American academia, far from recognizing the stagnation of research, it is even deluding itself in thinking of this as a dynamic period of intellectual production, regurgitating politically correct and woke stance on caste, class, gender and such stuff! This is not to blame the big bad wolf but to simply acknowledge the enormously powerful presence of the US on academics in India and Europe. While it is regrettable that the stagnation in the human sciences has gone unrecognized in the US and Europe, there is a sense in which the refusal to acknowledge the stagnation may have something to do with the fact there are no cultural resources for rethinking and renewing the enterprise of social understanding. Such a refusal or unwillingness could spell disastrous in India since it not only has the resources for a genuine recreation of the human sciences it requires such a recreation for its own survival as a culture. The stakes, therefore, are indeed very high. However, our own objective in constituting a network of scholars at this stage can only be modest one of laying the ground-work for rethinking the human sciences even as we remain aware of the stakes and nurture the vision of a revitalized human sciences.

What can the network accomplish? It is impossible to do research in isolation: the need to constantly reformulate questions and hypotheses, exploring different routes to answer a question, submitting the initial theorization to criticism, strengthening the hunches into strong arguments, integrating results from different domains, all these require cooperative and collaborative structures. Here are some ideas for what such a network can undertake in the future.

Summer / Winter Schools

The network proposes a summer school (May/Jun) and a winter school (December/January), each lasting 8-10 days. We do not naturally expect every member or even the majority of the members to attend every session. The idea is to bring together each time those who have done research with those who are keen to undertake research. There will be master-classes on themes selected for the meet; apart from these master-classes, there will be sessions for discussing research done and sessions specifically for formulating research questions.

Local Offshoots

The network will also encourage members from a particular city or region to take the initiative to organize smaller workshops or lectures for undergraduates and support such initiatives by providing personnel, curriculum, and research material. Once the network is in place, an online forum for active discussion will be set up.

Developing an e-Journal

Eventually, the network will also conceptualize an e-journal for the Human Sciences. Research in human sciences in India suffers from the absence of a forum where new ideas and approaches are debated. In fact, EPW is still the only journal for critical intellectual discussions. Given its framework and mandate, there is only so much EPW can do. There is clearly a need for a different kind of forum for publishing serious, rigorous and yet accessible research. Since a printed journal is not viable or needed, all we need is a network of scholars who would be willing to sustain such a journal in the long term.

If you're interested to be a part of the Indian Slate network and engage in the above activities, write to Vivek at contact@indianslate.in