Dates: Weds, July 24 Mon, July 29, 2002. Weds and Mon are check-in and check-out dates. Thurs, Fri, Sat, and Sun are full-day meeting days.
Each person has 30 minutes to present and lead a discussion. Roundtable style each participant gets to hear each other.
NOTE: All section divisions and topics below are preliminary, suggestive, and subject to change. Participants should not feel constrained by any particular theme or category but should rather know that they are encouraged to contribute in whatever way they feel they can best address the overall spirit of the colloquium.
Here we will explore the dissimilarities or discontinuities, seeking to highlight possible contributions that Indic theories might make to the global discourse, implicitly (or explicitly) challenging the chauvinistic and modernistic notions that contemporary Western critical social sciences necessarily produce superior analyses of and models for contemporary society.
Here we focus on challenging the pervasive stereotype of Indic social unconsciousness with concrete examples and critical analysis. We collect critiques of the commonly held view that critical, structural analysis of society is a uniquely Western invention, discover to what extent indigenous Indian social thinkers have been engaged in this type of analysis, and present Indic social scientific theories which suggest similarities or continuities with contemporary types of critical approach.
Ryuichi Abe Indic Contributions to East Asia.[Gary Tubb (Prof. Tubb can not attend) Indic influence on European linguistics, literature, culture.]
Engage the West through: comparative analyses, historical influence flows, and future cross-fertilization possibilities. Not to present an “expose” of the Indic theory in isolation by itself.
[Deep N. Pandey ABSTRACT and PAPER (posted here for peer-review; Dr. Pandey can not attend): "Indigenous Sustainability Science."
Ethics, epistemology, psychology and mind science, spirituality, meditation, yoga, and other models for and techniques of personal transformation.
This concluding discussion session (about an hour), lead by Rajiv Malhotra and Bob Thurman, deals in a broad summary way with the central concern of the Colloquium: To pinpoint misperceptions of the Indic in Society Today, especially as perpetuated through discourse and structures within the Academy, and to suggest ways to redress these distortions as well as to present potentially positive but overlooked Indic contributions. This includes both presenting empirical data that refute the current misperceptions, as well as theoretical analysis of such meta-level issues as the current structure of the Academy (its disciplinary and departmental divisions, curricula, and so forth), suggestions for its restructuring, and strategies for overcoming the structural, procedural, or attitudinal obstacles to better incorporation of non-Western and traditionally time-tested arts and sciences. It will also raise pedagogical and methodological issues regarding emic and etic approaches to Indic studies, the (re)integration of Hindu and Buddhist histories, and so forth. We hope to discuss the types of paradigm shifts that might be necessary across a wide variety of fields, and the types of ideal agenda for systematic investigation, publication, and dialogue over the coming decade, in order to involve mainstream academia in the process of completing, rather than resisting, the coming global renaissance.