Discussant’s comment II
For and against an ‘Indian’ Sociology: A response to Marilyn Strathern’s ‘What’s in an argument?’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11618107 |
|---|---|
| Authors | D Banerjee (0000-0001-9786-796X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 35-44 |
| Publication date | 2021-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contributions to Indian Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0069-9659 • E-ISSN: 0069-9667 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00699667211000901 |
| OpenAlex | W3134757850 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Argument: Reflections on Knowledge Exchanges' It is a pleasure to respond to Prof. Strathern's observations on the limits and possibilities knowledge-exchange.Her instructive lecture reminds us of two questions that are staked in any meaningful analysis of knowledge flows.The first: what counts as 'knowledge' and what are the processes through which we come to an agreement on its forms and practices?The second: on what terms can knowledge be exchanged (what kind of gift is it), and what relationships(between giver and recipient) does it presume and shape?The materials with which she answers these questions are taken from ethnographies of Melanesia and from debates within US academia.In my response here, I am curious about her questions play out when we take up another context of knowledge-exchange I am more familiar with: South Asian sociology and anthropology.More specifically, I take this journal's own history as a starting point in thinking about the politics and processes of knowledge-exchange.I do this because I find that one of Strathern's insights (the generativity of academic debate as a model for knowledge-exchange) dramatized in an early moment in the history of Contributions to Indian Sociology in a way that both complicates and furthers Strathern's argument.To elaborate, Strathern describes how 'knowledge-transfers' have become ubiquitous in policy discussions, driven by misguided calls to transact a one-way exchange from those who have expertise to those who need it.Against such a seamless and smooth imagination of its movement, Strathern praises habits of knowledge production that encourage disagreements, divergence and controversy.For instances of such habits, Strathern looks to two places: Melanesian anthropology and disciplinary anthropology.The first set of examples show how for certain communities, knowledge is understood not as transferable expertise, but as a set of social relations, as expressions of kinship, as determined by the relational positions of giver and recipient.What is transacted here is not the content of knowledge, but a set of social obligations and positions.Its aim is not to fill 'lacks' and 'gaps', but to open the social world for contestation and criticism.In looking in this way to Melanesian anthropology, Strathern continues a disciplinary tradition to take ethnographies conducted outside the metropole to trouble metropolitan assumptions: here Melanesian practices undercut Euro-American institutional
Argument (complex analysis · Biology · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Realism in Sociology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |