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Community, Tribes and Modernity
WINTER SCHOOL
ON
Community, Tribes and Modernity
A most frequently used concept in the human
sciences such as anthropology, sociology, political science
and history is the concept of a community. In recent times
the idea of a community has also acquired a great deal of
importance in philosophical debates. It is inevitable that
the variety of uses of this idea in diverse academic disciplines
will influence each other- in many cases in a tacit or subterranean
fashion. Apart from the more or less technical use of the
concept of a community in these various disciplines, it has
also entered into common everyday vocabulary in phrases such
as ‘the international community’, ‘the business
community’, ‘the student community’ etc.
Since very far reaching arguments in these disciplines centre
round the idea of a community and that of its supposed opposite,
the individual, it is of the utmost importance that we have
before us as clear a map of this concept as possible for clarity
of debate.
Another related idea is that of a tribe. Although this idea
has a fairly well demarcated use in the discipline of anthropology,
its use, like that of the concept of a community, has acquired
a very significantly variegated proportion in contemporary
intellectual parlance. Occasionally the employment of this
concept in the practical political domain can be quite bewildering.
The two concepts of a tribe and a community together play
a pervasive role particularly in our political debates within
the framework of a democratic structure. There is also a tacit
assumption that the two are most intimately connected. And
yet there is very little analytic debate about either or about
their inter-relationship.
In the context of the very wide use of the idea of a community
and that of a tribe, the following aspects of modernity need
to be seriously re-examined:
I. Liberalism and its focus on the individual.
II. Universal acceptability of certain values.
III. Context-independence of reasonability and truth.
IV. Moral responsibility of institutions and individuals
for past actions of which they were not part. (Such responsibility
as ground for “affirmative action”.)
V. The gulf between the so called global community and the
geographically delimited tribal community.
The proposed winter school will be devoted
(in the form of lectures, seminars, presentations by participants)
to issues to the three areas mentioned above. It is clear
that problems that will come up for consideration will relate
to fields such as culture, religion, identity, corporations,
globalisation and preservation of different ways of being
human. Eminent scholars in the fields of politics, anthropology,
sociology, philosophy and literature will be invited to give
lectures, hold seminars and interact informally with the participants.
The participants will be required to make presentations and
take active part in all the discussions.
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