CULTURAL STUDIES AS LABOR OF NEGOTIATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION

摘要

This paper will focus on an applied research initiative1 1. Ratheesh Radhakrishnan's ‘The praxis of Cultural Studies in India - a Preliminary Report’ has informed me in this work. I have been helped by the structure Radhakrishnan has imparted-imputed to a field that resists definition. The other paper that has greatly informed my work is ‘The Desire for Cultural Studies’ by Tejaswini Niranjana, presented at the Conference on Cultural Studies and the Institutions, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, 2006 as also the CSCS Strategy Paper on HE, prepared by Tejaswini Niranjana and Mrinalini Sebastian, in 2006. I must thank my colleagues in the HE Cell - Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Mrinalini Sebastian, Ashwin Kumar A.P., Meera Moorkoth, Teena Antony, Elizabeth Thomas, Bitasta Das and Rekha Pappu. To Tejaswini Niranjana I owe something more than mere acknowledgement. View all notes we are currently engaged in, which brings together academics (both from conventional institutions - the university, the research centers and undergraduate colleges - and from ‘new and innovative institutional structures’) with policy-makers and grant-making organizations. The initiative has to do with the entire field of higher education (India having one of the biggest higher education systems in the world), but interestingly it was incubated by the Center for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS). The painstaking process of the gestation of collaborative interdisciplinary themes/fields of research/teaching and the labor of negotiation with policy-makers and grantees in the field of higher education by a Cultural Studies centre is thus the focus of this paper. Called the Higher Education Cell, an important aspect of the initiative's genealogy is that it is based on (a) a critique of the existing disciplines and an attention to the birthing of ‘new thematic/field specifics’ as also (b) a critique of the research undertaken in mainstream institutions and an attention to new research methodologies. The Higher Education Cell is at present focusing on four major functions through which it plans to engage with the higher education sector. These functions are (i) Incubation of Research Initiatives, (ii) Institutional Collaborations, (iii) Documentation and Archiving, and (iv) Grant Development. The research initiatives, which include Globalization and Higher Education, General Education in Comparative Perspective, Regional Language Resources, and Social Justice in Higher Education, have been conceived through collaborations with a range of higher education institutions. The wider context of the labor of negotiation is one where (1) new institutional structures are being experimented with, resulting in the emergence of ‘institutions with a difference’, (2) new interdisciplinary courseware or new themes/fields of research/teaching are being created (such as film-media studies, gender-sexuality-Dalit studies, migration studies, environment studies) and (3) new research and pedagogic methodologies are being given shape.View full textDownload full textKeywordscultural studies in education, interdisciplinary, labor of negotiation, post-colonial India, vocationalization/professionalization of educationRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.534582