On June 21-22, 2023, Ewha Womans University (the Graduate School of International Studies and Institute for International and Area Studies) co-hosted – together with the Association for Asian Studies – a symposium on Cultivating the Humanities and Social Sciences: Mainstreaming the Margins. More than 65 researchers from 6 countries (Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste) gathered to share experiences and ideas about bringing alternative and diverse perspectives into humanities and social science research.
The symposium cultivated such diversity by highlighting the research of scholars from the margins (e.g., former colonies, indigenous groups, women) and about the margins. For example, a researcher from Timor-Leste presented her research documenting the role of women in the resistance against occupation. A researcher from Nepal presented his findings about how ethnic minority groups preserve customary governance arrangements alongside formal state institutions. A researcher from India screened video testimonies of stateless people claiming their identities. And two researchers (one from Indonesia, and one from Thailand) uncovered the socio-cultural harms inflicted by economic growth-rationalized infrastructure development.
I was also inspired by the diversity of research methods – ranging from quantitative analysis of official statistics to intimate ethnographic studies and storytelling. One quantitative study of women’s role in family planning analyzed a range of published datasets to draw correlations between different aspects of women’s empowerment (economic, social) and family planning decisions. I was least familiar with and thus most intrigued by some of the creative qualitative methods employed by researchers. Two studies – one on the women’s resistance movement in Timor-Leste and another on stateless people in Assam (India) – recorded audio and audio-visual stories (even poetry) of research subjects. These very personal testimonies then serve as a form of data or “evidence” – thus challenging mainstream academic notions of objective research.
Another research initiative being undertaken in Cambodia – the Bophana Center’s audiovisual archive – was particularly striking because of the researchers’ commitment to inclusive documentation. This archive includes not only stories of those persecuted and harmed by the Khmer Rouge regime but also stories of Khmer Rouge collaborators and perpetrators. This seems to me a truly heroic archival effort. Heroic because they enable the forgotten to be recovered and remembered. Heroic because they enable the remembered to be forgotten by those who need to forget to survive (the act of archiving frees one to forget and leave the remembering to others). Heroic because they resist the positivist research impulse to “know.”
On the other hand, these researchers from the “margins” focus less on different “ways of knowing” and more on different “ways of remembering.”
My key takeaway from this symposium relates to this conception of research as objective and truth-seeking. Indeed, researchers often try to employ inclusive methods – different “ways of knowing” – in order to arrive at a more informed “knowing.” On the other hand, these researchers from the “margins” focus less on different “ways of knowing” and more on different “ways of remembering.” With this acknowledgment of subjectivity, giving voice to marginal “her-stories” and “their-stories” is not about replacing dominant “his-stories” in a positivist competition to establish “the truth,” but rather about keeping open the space for infinite memories and marginalities. I am grateful to leave this symposium thinking about how to incorporate the “remembering-as-research-method” in my own research, which after all is my own personal way of remembering and forgetting.
For more information about the researchers and research projects referenced in this post, please see:
Mainstreaming the Margins, EWHA WOMANS UNIVERSITY,Seoul, June 21-22, 2023 – Cultivating Humanities.
Ewha GSIS 