Abstract

This article is an outcome of a self-reflexive engaged observation of my experience in teaching tribal studies. It delves into my personal journey with the question of epistemic privilege to unravel how experience becomes an embodiment of knowledge. The insights from this journey show knowledge is closely linked to an encounter with an interdependent and multidimensional world – ‘ontology of diversity’. ‘Ontology of diversity’ posits a layered world; dependent, lived, shared and dialogical. It suggests a Perspectival pedagogy for holistic and value-based teaching learning process.

Keyword: Perspectival Pedagogy, Epistemic Privilege, Tribal Studies, Experience, Knowledge, Self and Tribal Societies

Education and the teaching profession is what I was introduced to from the very early stage of my encounter with school education in my village, at a tribal village school. School and education to me is ‘a life-giving source’ and ‘school learning’ to me is an everyday ‘dal-chawal-roti’/‘bread and butter’. In between these counters, knowledge runs as a common theme. Knowledge is embodied in the very person that I present and represent in this social world, a world where ‘quest for knowledge/knowing’ stands out as fundamental. That we all seek knowledge about ourselves and about others in the social world in which we are situated is an existential fact (see also Sarukkai, 2012; Jayaram, 2017). In seeking knowledge and making meaning on a daily basis individuals, groups and societies live everyday lives.

The self, ‘I’ is located within a meaning-making system, has access to varied forms of knowledge – ‘apriori’, ‘aposteriori’, ‘lifeworld’ and the ‘experience’ (see Sarukkai, 2012) – ‘experience’ is the primary focus in this paper. The self/‘I’ is capable of reason and action – agency. The ‘I’ in this person is an epistemic location, has the ability to occupy a ‘point-of-view’, and ‘experience’ becomes both method and the empirical. Knowledge is embodied in the experience itself and the method to reach this empirical requires the self, ‘I’ – the ‘I’ as self-seeking truth as different from the colonial ‘I’^[1]. The experience in knowledge takes over ‘observation’ (positivism) as method and paves the path for ‘experience observation’ (post positivism) – how the ‘I’ observes ‘its experience?’. The process of the I/self-observing the experience can remotely be referred as ‘self-reflexive engaged observation’^[2]( see also Kenway and McLeod, 2004; bodhi, 2022; Tripura, 2023). Self-reflexive engaged observation could be defined in terms of the ‘choice’ available for the subject ‘to be’ or ‘not to be’ part of the experience – a situation of ‘lived experience’^[3] (see Guru and Sarukkai, 2012). In lived experience, the subject observes oneself and its lived reality, a process that cannot be separated from each other. To this end, I would like to believe that the person itself is an embodiment of knowledge and makes it possible for me to conceptualize and argue for an ‘epistemic privilege’ in the experiential knowledge, and if I can claim my ‘epistemic privilege’? (see Haraway, 1988; Smith, 1999) I will engage on this question based on my self-reflection of my experience in teaching a subject domain referred to as ‘tribal studies’.

My experience in teaching tribal studies comes within the context of the programme of the Centre for Social Justice and Governance, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai Campus. This location might raise several questions about my ‘positionality’ (see also Marguin, et al., 2021; bodhi, 2020) as a teacher as well as the subject of the study. Academically, a person trained in social work, I eventually matured through a doctoral degree in the school of social sciences with an interdisciplinary orientation (see also Sutar, 2023). The institutional location of my experience provides me the legitimacy of teaching tribal studies, although largely within the public policy vision – ‘antyodaya’ (ensuring the rise and empowerment of the last), ‘leave no one behind’ (UN Agenda for SDG 2030).

TISS stands out as one of the premier institutions of India, also in South Asia, that has worked for tribal communities within the public policy framework since 1936. The emerging specific themes from this journey of mine, namely social work, social sciences, experience, tribal identity, tribal village school etc. make my positionality look complex (if not confusing), but actually becomes the foundation that constructs a particular lens – a Perspectival plurality and diversity on which the social world can be perceived and comprehended (See also Go, 2021; Sarukkai, 2012; Guru and Sarukkai, 2012; Akhup, 2022).

Being aware of the risk of straight jacketing the social work discourse, I would like to put in perspective my teaching experience of tribal studies in the school of social work. In the first instance, social work can be approached both as a profession and discipline. The former one constitutes social work in terms of the practice that responds to social issues. It can be taken like any profession that addresses human and social issues such as health, education, livelihood etc. From its inception, social work professional orientation has focused on having a method, skills and values to respond to social issues and problems.

The latter defines social work as a discipline, having its own theoretical and methodological boundary. Social Work discipline today is recognized as an allied discipline of applied social sciences. It draws its theoretical base for understanding individuals, groups, communities and societies from sociology, psychology, anthropology etc. My experience with social work began with the former and eventually moved towards the latter. The latter trend is shaped by my experience at the Tata Institutes of Social Sciences (TISS) and the School of Social Work. The Institute today has about nineteen schools and five independent centers, and the School of Social Work has nine centers. These schools and centers represent the varied subject domains of TISS engagements cutting across themes such as social, political, health, human resource, management, policy, social work, economic etc. The experience in this context oriented me to move beyond simplistic and binary framing of science and social science. To my experience, Social Work actually provides me a lens of science that includes alternative sciences and epistemologies and allows me to move beyond a positivist’s conceptualization of science and social science. In a pluralistic approach to science (see Sarukkai, 2012), social sciences can hardly be restricted to a particular theory and method. This approach recognizes the contexts and paradigms that inform science. Science itself takes a ‘methodological plurality’ turn.

I encountered tribal studies from varied lenses over the last twenty years of my teaching. Initially, due to my personal connection with the anthropologists and sociologists working on tribal communities, I got introduced to the classical constructs of tribal studies from disciplines such as social anthropology and anthropology (see Roy Burman, 1994; Danda and Danda, 2010; Channa, 2020). The literature in this realm is extensive, but selectively, I would say that there have been visible trends, shifts and changes, and emergence of newer categories and themes over a period of time and place.  For example, I scanned through the emerging discourses on tribal studies across regions (see Leach, 1954; Barth, 1961; Beitelle, 1986; Pfeffer and Kumar, 2002; Xaxa, 2003; Oommen, 2007; Scott, 2011; Savyasaachi, 2012; Kannabiran, 2016; Banerjee, 2016; Padel, Dandekar and Unn, 2018) and  observed phenomenal theoretical shifts and changes: from ‘functional to structural’, ‘cultural element to cultural boundary’, and the emergence of the ‘political’ and ‘political economy’. These various lines of discourses within tribal studies produced newer categories (socio-political and historical in nature) such as ‘segmented societies’, ‘imagined communities’, ‘indigeneities’, ‘Scheduled Tribes’, ‘ethnicities’, ‘identities’, nationalities, non-state societies etc. used and applied in varied contexts, and thus allowing tribal studies to move beyond colonial constructs. These categories in tribal studies can broadly be grouped into themes around a) state/constitutional category that establishes the citizenship within the special arrangements – Schedule Tribe is a point in reference, b) ethnicity as cultural category that refers to the larger/generic group and/or confederacy within the state that aspires for special social protection, and b) ethnonationalism (subnational movements) that refers to tribal ethnic groups who claim their right of being a nation-state. These categories contributed to building different sub-strands of discourses within tribal studies, and allowed contextualization and historization, as eventually being done across geopolitical regions like Africa, Latin America, Australia, Middle East and Southeast Asia, and India in particular. With regard to Indian context, I observed three sub-strands in the post colonial period namely, a) ‘Tribal/indigenous’ that counters the evolutionary and tribe-caste continuum, b) ‘Subaltern’ and ‘political economy’ that argues for the voices of the tribal people as margins and peripheralized by neoliberal development projects c) ‘political and governance’ that argues for empowerment of tribal communities through recognition and establishment of local governance system in asymmetrical federal principle, and d) ‘tribal society, sustainability, livelihoods, and environment/biodiversity’ that argues for tribal philosophy, ethics and ‘way of life’ against the backdrop of both the neoliberal and global climate change discourses. The last sub-strand also deals with governance and jurisprudence, and resources, and contributes to deepening the meaning of equity and redistributive justice (see also Fraser, 1995; Foster, 1998; Kaswan, 2003; Xaxa, 2008; Nathan and Xaxa, 2012; Patel, 2016; Bhukya, 2017; Shekar, 2017; Bodhi and Jojo, 2019; Lele, 2020; Akhup and Tripura, 2022).

Along this, I eventually stumbled upon a new strand of thought (see also Akhup, 2015; Bodhi and Bipin, 2019; Bodhi, 2020) that provided me ‘a perspective’ to teaching tribal studies. It is mildly referred to as an ‘alter-native centres’ (see bodhi and Jojo, 2019). This strand of thought is anchored by the forum called Tribal Intellectual Collective India (refer to http://www.ticijournals.org/ accessed on 25.01.2024). To this end, ‘decolonial-historical’ (see Bodhi, 2020; Tripura, 2023) is a new methodological entry, the one which emphasizes on ‘methodologies of the peripheralized’^[4], a framework that creates possibilities for the emergence of alternative epistemologies. This entry suggests a ‘decolonial turn’ that eventually gave primacy to the historical, geopolitical, context, autoethnographic, stories, narrative, ethnomethodology, experiences etc. This trend is influenced by the emergence of tribal and/or organic academicians and made a fundamental theoretical ‘turning point’ from ‘object to subject’ in the domain of tribal studies. Although susceptible to ‘theory of ghettoization’ – ‘inward looking syndrome’, the emergence of organic tribal academic intellectuals actually give rise to a condition for a recognition of epistemologies of the peripheralized and paves the path towards a process of epistemological decolonization and epistemological justice. Here, the tribal as subject matter of study frees itself from being trapped in the state framework of ‘isolation-integration-assimilation’ (Verrier-Nehru- Ghurye) and emerges as a society/culturo-political entity which has a capacity/agency to occupy points-of-view, and the ability to adapt and negotiate with the changing context as matter of ‘being and becoming’. The question of ‘being and becoming’ defines the politics of tribes, often defined as survival politics. Survival politics is value based, and it is defined by the principles of mutual coexistence, adaptation and negotiations (see also Barth, 1961; Leach, 1954; Bodhi and Bipin, 2019; Akhup and Tripura, 2022).

As my understanding and reading evolved over a period with direct engagement in teaching of two courses – “Tribes, State and Governance”, and “Tribes and Social Research” my perspective eventually got strengthened. I began to find more meaning in what I was teaching, connecting it well with the students, their expectations and positionalities. Slowly and gradually, I began to realize that I was merging into the subject matter of the study. I am myself the embodiment of the subject of study, and at the same time, tribal studies provided me a framework to see and analyze this social work with meaning and purpose. This was further strengthened by my engagement with my doctoral engagement, research projects and publications. I realized that I was talking to myself and finding meaning in relation to others – the students. I could connect with students at different levels. For example, in the master level teaching “Tribes, State and Governance” I was able to engage with students on larger questions of state, society, governance, tribe, caste with a different ‘points-of-view’. The level of the pedagogical connection with Master’s, M.Phil and PhD depended on the location of every student. ‘Positionality’ emerged as a major category for building knowledge, and personal learning. As I enhanced the intensity of the pedagogy through affective and reflective engagement, I realized that learning and meaning making depended on the social location/experience of the students. But in general, tribal studies provided a common foundation for understanding Indian social reality. This engagement got deeper when I was able to locate tribal studies in relation to the larger caste based Indian society. The learning that came after I was able to see a connection between caste reality and tribal reality made my engagement more meaningful, and I could situate teacher student relationship and learning process within the principles of social justice enshrined in the Constitution of India.

In the attempt to better the teaching process – increase meaningful connection with students, I realized that I had to provide a foundation for a deeper learning, and there, I directly encountered with a category called ‘ontology’ – ‘being and becoming’; the question of ‘what is?^[5] The question of ‘being and becoming’ in tribal studies led me to relate myself with the social world of diversity, in other word ‘ontology of diversity’ (see Cupchik, 2001; De Gialdino, 2009). This level of engagement at the ontology of diversity paved a way for a deeper engagement into the natural social reality itself with all its complexity and dynamicity and allowed me to be located within a perspective. The ‘ontological diversity’ itself now began to make sense to me at the practical level, and provided categories that allowed me to ask deeper questions of life in the context of tribal studies. What is the meaning system that defines my learning process? Who am I? What is tribal social reality? This realm of engagement revealed the need to identify categories, concepts and reorganize to be able to construct a reality both at the ontological and axiological level (what is? and what should it be? – the normative and ideological base). It entailed situating and unframing the ‘received theories’ – ‘theories as given’, to make meaningful learning across students who come from varied social backgrounds.

My experience shows that teaching is closely linked to lived reality – the foundation of Perspectival pedagogy. In Perspectival pedagogy, experience emerges as the most important source of knowledge, and method of teaching. In experience lies knowledge, and through experience teaching becomes meaningful. Experience makes pedagogy located and situated and recognizes the learner and subject of the study as constitutive of value and ethics; knowledge founded on human values. Knowledge from tribal studies has to be an ethical project – about empowerment of the people in a social justice framework. Teaching tribal studies to me is not about anthropology or sociology. It is a process of embedding value – care, equality, equity, co-existence, and solidarity in education.

The aspect of value (the principle that guides the process of becoming) in teaching tribal studies connects me to the ground reality – a reality diverse and dynamic (ontological diversity). This reality when viewed should be understood as dynamic and complex but should operate on the principle of ‘diversity-coexistence’ (see also Akhup, 2015; bodhi, 2022). Reality is diverse, pluriverse and the normative aspect in the teaching lies in being close to ‘diversity-coexistence’. A construct of reality on the principle of ‘diversity-coexistence’ allows me to enter into the space of dialogical social relations. It entails a social world of interdependency – a foundation of ethics of care and social justice.

Tribal studies recognize the dignity of individuals and cultural groups and indicates a dialogical social realm and meaning making process. The challenge therefore is to de-frame the foundationalist, elementalist and exclusivist construct of reality, and create space for ‘diversity-coexistence’ ‘without inequality’. Social reality viewed from tribal reality is necessarily ‘diversity-coexistence’. Anything that goes against this natural phenomenon is likely to be gripped by violence. The dismantling of ‘diversity-coexistence’ is closely linked to what we could term it as colonialism. Colonialism is a power process that dismantles ‘diversity-coexistence’ (see bodhi, 2022). This also suggests that teaching tribal studies should move towards the contextualization and epistemological decolonization process. The process allows the recognition of the histories of the particulars, in time and place, spatio-temporal, where culture is embedded, and epistemology is located.

I realized, in this teaching journey, tribal studies have become a ‘point-of-view’, an epistemological standpoint from where I could engage with the larger issues that confront the present society. I would like to believe that tribal studies is a perspective. It gives me a way of seeing and understanding. It gives me a framework to interpret and find answers to the issues that confront me at a micro level, and also issues at the macro level. For example, I would like to believe that tribal studies give me a deeper insight into pressing issues such as climate change and ‘Anthropocene’ (see also Moore, 2015; Singh, 2018) – an age defined by the centrality of man and its activities infringing on the ecology and environment.

The tribal/Indigenous studies in varied contexts of Indigenous and tribal societies (see also Quijano, 2000; Surrallés and Hierro, 2005; Descola, 2005; Smith, 2009; Hart, 2002; Ardill, 2013) particularly by scholars belonging to the tribal/Indigenous peoples themselves, indicate as well as affirm the framework, concepts and process involved in the meaning-making of a daily lived experience at their own specific location and context. This framework is unique as it is anchored by the Indigenous worldview – a worldview constructed by a reality of an intricate and/or dialogical relationship between different aspects namely, a) physical world, b) the spiritual world, and c) human world. In this relational world, land occupies a central contextual category of territory, history, livelihood, identity and spirituality. In fact, land is often referred to as the mother – the origin and source of life. Land becomes their standpoint or the frame of reference. ‘Land’ anchors their cosmology and worldview, shapes the meaning of their lived experiences and the way how they construct knowledge out of the sense that they draw from a relationship with themselves and others in the world around. Viewed from this kind of a worldview, there are two important aspects that constitute the Adivasi or the Indigenous standpoint: that pedagogy is informed by Indigenous theoretical standpoint where this world is constituted by social reality. The foundational aspect of social reality is described by two concepts namely, a) ‘universality of subjectivism’ – meaning a shared human and social foundation, and b) ‘objectification of the particularity’ – meaning lived experiences and boundaries of differences. This is often referred to as the foundation on which ‘sociality’ is conceptualized in the Indigenous social world.

Although this view might sound idealistic, the perspective actually reveals an alternative social world (deep ontology) – dependent origination, interdependent world (see also Devall, et., al. 1985; Descola, 2005; Archuleta, 2006; Knudsen, 2023). This world is defined by ‘universality of spirits’ – ‘a condition that defines animism’ (spiritual foundation), and human-earth connectedness – ‘a condition that defines totemism’ ‘objectification of the particular’ (ontological diversity) [^6]. Animism and totemism constitute the axiological – the value base. This foundation constructs a particular ethics – ‘ethics of connection with ‘jal-jangal-jameen’. The ‘ethics of connections to the land’ can provide deeper meaning to ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ – ‘one world, one family, one future’ with equity and social justice that can resist neoliberal disembodiment of the experience.

In particular, it can be observed that the Indigenous scholars posit these categories as a methodological proposition against dualistic framing of the Western/European. They argue for a world of diversity and sociality or social interaction, where every entity has a point of view, and power and ability to act. Secondly, the Indigenous standpoint is informed by the studies conducted from the perspective of indigenous women’s experience. In this, Indigenous feminists (see also Smith, 1999; Alvares, 2003; Moreton-Robinson, 2014) describe how Indigenous women’s methodological standpoint is rooted in the philosophy of the Indigenous peoples’ philosophy from the indigenous contexts. They argue that relationality, a concept referring to human relatedness and sociality, is the centre of indigenous peoples’ philosophy. Therefore, Indigenous women’s standpoint is defined by ‘relationality’. Relationality becomes a point of departure as well as a frame of reference for Indigenous women’s standpoint against the feminist standpoint built on binary construct. Moreover, relationality as a frame of reference in tribal women’s research standpoint draws a distinction, a point of difference as well as suggests a point of view in relation to other feminist methodological categories such as positionality, intersectionality, epistemic violence, marginality etc. (see also Spivak, 1988; Haraway, 1988; Harding, 2004; Davis, 2012; Collins, 2019).

In conclusion, I would like to draw attention to the question that I posted at the outset – can I claim epistemic privilege? To me the answer is ‘yes’ to begin with, but it does not end there. As a tribal teacher myself, I would like to believe that my social location allows me to give better insight to tribal studies. But I cannot be dismissive of the interdependent world, and the intersubjectivities – the lived and shared knowledge, a necessary condition for dialogical epistemology (see also Akhup, 2015). I would like to believe that we can learn from Indigenous feminist perspectives. Some Indigenous feminist writers have been making major pathways to the conceptualization of ‘situated’ and ‘co-produced embedded’ knowledge (see also Smith, 1999; Moreton-Robinson, 2014). They show that an Indigenous feminist perspective moves beyond conventional feminist standpoints and constructs a reality that is dialogical, a knowledge that emphasizes ‘relatedness’ and ‘situatedness’. The dialogical knowledge to me is closely linked to a ‘Perspectival Pedagogy’ (see also Go, 2016). Perspectival pedagogy is founded on Perspectival realism (layered reality, interdependent ontology). Realism is not flat but deep, having many layers (see also Mir and Watson, 2001; Archuleta, 2006; Knudsen, 2023). There is no one way but many ways from which this reality can be understood – the lens matters. The Perspectival pedagogy recognizes the ‘being and becoming’ (possibilities) as closely linked to experiential and values – equity and social justice. It could be a framework for a holistic and value-based teaching learning process.

Acknowledgements:

I am very thankful to bodhi s.r. for always being a reflexive mirror to me in the teaching and learning process. I acknowledge Ruby Hembrom and Manish Meena for their insightful comments on the draft. Plus, I thank them for suggesting deeper questions, and also editing it. Please note that the Reference section is included with the intention of providing PhD scholars with a list of texts for their use on this perspective.

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End Notes

^[1]. Colonial ‘I’ from a decolonial sense works on the framework of universal-particular. It is located in colonial epistemology that objectifies and dismisses local and indigenous knowledge.

^[2]. Engaged observation is a suggested method that attempts to go beyond classical ‘participant observation’ of objectification of the subject and field. It involves merging with the field and subject and observing experience through the self.

^[3]. Shared experience when it takes into consideration the common in the experience of the subjectivities.

^[4]. The category ‘methodologies’ indicates ‘plurality of methods’ – a common theme running across the discourse on epistemology. But the concept peripheralized, used arbitrarily, not to claim victimhood, is considered as a process that suggests recognition of the ‘social’ epistemologies as well as a process called epistemological decolonization of tribal communities who had been objectified by waves of colonial epistemology. Epistemological decolonization should be read as a process driven by the decolonial framework rather than development theory of ‘centre-periphery’.

^[5]. Philosophical and methodological underpinnings of pedagogy.

^[6]. A layered world.

Dr.Alex Akhup is Professor at Centre for Social Justice and Governance and Action and Coordinator PhD Programmes, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

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