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Educational Action Research
Connecting Research and Practice for Professionals and Communities
Volume 27, 2019 - Issue 1: Knowledge Democracy
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Articles

Research as knowledge democratization, mobilization and social action: pushing back on casteism in contexts of caste humiliation and social reproduction in schools in India

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Pages 57-74 | Received 25 Jun 2018, Accepted 12 Oct 2018, Published online: 29 Oct 2018
 

ABSTRACT

Dalit (the ‘downtrodden’) students continue to experience caste-based discrimination, humiliation and dehumanization; illegal practices that are being reproduced in the school system in the state of Odisha, India. Based on a research study organized by the Center for Research and Development Solidarity, an adivasi (original dweller/Scheduled Tribe)-dalit (Scheduled Caste) research organization and 401 dalit students in grades 6–10 attending 16 government schools in a 25-village zone, this paper elaborates on this research initiative. It demonstrates how knowledge democratization, both, as research undertaken with and for dalit students as producers of (caste-resistance) knowledge and as knowledge sharing as mobilization, can simultaneously mobilize wider circles of organized collective action with parents, Village Education Committees (VECs) and local dalit NGOs and movements to address casteism and untouchability in state schools. The paper concludes with some brief insights pertaining to academic and funded research as knowledge democracy and mobilization for social action that are emergent from this caste research and related research and social action addressing land-forest-labour assertions in South Odisha.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The author acknowledges the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Insight Grant program for facilitating this research partnership and project on ‘Untouchability, Casteism and Schooling in Rural India: Exploring Local Response & Resistance’, with the Center for Research and Development Solidarity (CRDS), a dalit-adivasi (Scheduled Caste & Tribes) popular research organization in Gopalpur, Odisha, India.

2. An initial list was prepared from the literature reviewed by the PI and CRDS experience with these issues through their own work, their personal experiences as dalits who had been through the state school system and based on their experiences when working for other NGOs in the area addressing caste issues. A ‘survey approach’, understood as a ‘non-scientific’ process of popular public education and sociopolitical mobilization, was endorsed after some discussion based on its potential for social action/mobilization work (given the numbers and prospects for social engagement) and for data gathering and academic research purposes generating knowledge about caste/untouchability in schools. The term ‘survey’ was selected to satisfy institutional and academic demands for recognizable methods but was largely understood by the team and participants as a chance to chat and share experiences with a large number of participants on their own terms, while recognizing a mobilization approach to ‘surveying’ (non-scientific or what Paik Citation2014, 333 refers to as so-called ‘trivial sources’) as being socio-culturally and politically productive.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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