Someone asked for further elaboration--intention and meaning--on my
comments on my experiences in Kerala and asked if these comments were
based on privileged conversations.
First of all, all of those conversations took place publicly; I would
never share the private ones. Secondly, the point was to illustrate
that although innovating new conceptual categories and approaches--
that more clearly document aspects of the realities faced by the
oppressed-- utilizing "official" data and approaches is important
work (like what members of the Center for Popular Economics are
doing), we also need to develop grassroots-based categories,
approaches and data bases to counter the official ones.
For example, no statistics were gathered or kept on forms and
incidences of abuses of women associated with the dowry system or
other factors. No statistics were kept or gathered on distributions
of wealth and income or on comparative (post-loophole) tax rates; no
statistics were gathered or kept on uses, conditions and pay rates of
child labor; etc. What the "official" data gathers measure and
gather, and the analytical angles through which they measure, reflect
what the powers-that-be consider "worth" gathering; and that rarely
includes anything about the concrete realities, forms/levels of
oppression etc faced by the many--rather, that which is in the
service of the few in power.
Now to evolve data categories, methodologies and analytical
approaches that are truly useful for and concretely reflect the
realities of the oppressed many, those who lend their analytical
skills must be close to the people they purport to "study" and for
whom they purport to be "in service." Never mind for Kerala for a
moment, what a novel thought: that part of the curriculum for any
degree in America is a requirement that the student be required to
actually apply a given package of acquired skills and knowledge--with
accompanying thesis--to identify, analyze and work to solve a
concrete problem in some community. Perhaps medical students
analyzing and documeting epidemiological trends and being required to
work with those with no access to health care; perhaps engineering
students being required to actually build something that makes a
difference in someone's life; perhaps economics students being
required to evolve totally new and fresh analytical approaches and
categories not dealt with in the "official" data; etc.
Of course there is a problem. Just as there is no real surplus of
physicians (only a surplus of physicians who want to be a plastic
surgeon to the "stars"; there is certainly no surplus of physicians
on Indian Reserves or inner-city ghettos) so there is no surplus of
academics working in concrete ways and in conrete environments to
actually solve concrete problems faced by the oppressed many. How
many migrant field workers could actually read and understand what
has been written about them by the academics who "descend" from the
commanding heights to study them--to add knotches to their CVs? How
many women get anything tangible from the "gender studies"
specialists who "descend" upon them to "study" their realities?; How
many workers are actually aided in concrete struggles by the
academics who "descend" upon them to study "labor-force structures
and dynamics and markets"?
Of course to build political economy that really serves someone other
than academics racking up CV notches will require some serious
reorientation. "Infiltrating" and gaining "acceptance" from the
"right" schools, the "right" journals, the "right" authorities of the
"profession", the "right" conferences leads nowhere except to
rationalization and the illusion of doing something serious. It can
be useful in temporarily resolving some cognitive dissonance problems
and in terms of creating "market niches" that facilitate publications
and give the "mainstream" of "the profession" to show how truly
tolerant of diversity they really are, but in the end it leads
nowhere "progressive".
Jim Craven
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