Project Deep Roots Explorations in Reflexive Anthropology
PROJECT PROPOSAL FOR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION (Cover Sheet)
Project Deep Roots Proposal Document
Semester II Project for the course: Research Methodologies
DOCUMENT METADATA Working Title: Project Deep Roots Working Subtitle: Explorations in Reflexive Anthropology Project Executives: MDes. (Batch of 2011) Last Author: Samuel Pushpak &Avik Ganguli Owner: MDes. (Batch of 2011) Date of Draft: 09/02/2012 Version: 1
Version History Index Date 0 05/02/2012
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Version: 1
09/02/2012
Author / Editor Samuel Pushpak, Avik Ganguli, Anindita Dutta, Manu Kamath & Mohit Goel Samuel Pushpak & Avik Ganguli
Last Editor: Samuel Pushpak & Avik Ganguli Date: 09/02/2012
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Project Deep Roots Proposal Document
Semester II Project for the course: Research Methodologies
Project Deep Roots Introduction The project hopes to explore new ways of class room teaching by designing a communication system that integrates emerging ethnographic methods with readily available information technologies. Inside the classroom, a variety of challenges are faced on a day-to-day basis by students and teachers alike. Often, as the teacher is trying to convey ideas and concepts which are alien to the class environment, where ideally the students would have needed to move to these contexts to engage, the teacher is forced to make do with charts and other static visual references. Our motivation is to bring these interactions to the classrooms themselves.
The Background The travel magazine Discover India declared Mawlynnong in Meghalaya as the cleanest village in Asia in 2003 and the cleanest village in India in 2005. But that is not it’s only claim to fame. Mawlynnong is also the site of the extraordinary Living Root Bridges. And lastly, but by no means the least, Meghalaya and especially the provinces of Mausinram and Cherrapunji are best known for being (perhaps) the wettest place on Earth. Incessant rainfall and turbulent river streams make it a difficult place to live indeed. And it is this violent and unforgiving face of Nature that the Living Root Bridges help to tame. These bridges are constructed out of the inter-tangling of roots from trees planted adjacently on opposite banks of a stream; taking several generations, sometimes up to 500 years to build. After consulting text books (mainly Geography and Environmental Science) we decided that this would be the perfect scenario to demonstrate this idea.
The Technology We will be working with such technological tools as the portable video projector, a laptop computer and a broadband internet connection; things which are fast becoming (or already are) properties found in all private schools and major public schools in our country today.
The Event Our project is sending a group of three elected members to Mawlynnong in Meghalaya, from where these members will be reporting via internet video chat to the school students. This is the central point of our project. Version: 1
Last Editor: Samuel Pushpak & Avik Ganguli Date: 09/02/2012
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Project Deep Roots Proposal Document
Semester II Project for the course: Research Methodologies
The rest of the team will remain here and assist the children frame their questions, and keep informing them on the latest developments outside the chat sessions. But these 1-2 hour live video sessions will give the children a chance to walk through the site and ‘see the place for themselves’.
The Process and Plan For purposes of structure and efficiency, we will start gathering questions and requests from the students from before the three member video crew leaves for Meghalaya. This will require anything between one to three days, depending on practicalities. We anticipate that a lot of the questions and doubts raised in the first round will be answerable sitting here in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Therefore, we will organize a presentation which will answer most if not all of those questions. By this we hope to create a ground level of understanding among the students about the conditions in Mawlynnong, Meghalaya; but also, at the same time, to ensure that they are framing questions that best exploit the possibilities offered by the project i.e. the live video conferencing. This exercise will be conducted over another one to three days. The other motivation behind this is encouraging the students themselves to act as ethnographers. And in some sense aren’t we all?
The Spirit of Ethnography (and the Rationale of this Project) The spirit of Ethnography is perhaps best captured in the word ‘Exploration’. And there was a time not too long ago, when the world was still being ‘discovered’. It was as if travel equals knowledge. Men like Columbus and Marco Polo were charting out voyages to unknown lands; ‘seeing’ things and reporting back stories of adventure. And it was this re-narrating the adventures; showing something through the recounting of one’s own experiences that exercised a certain sense of power. But the days of ‘discovery’ are gone. In the age of the Internet, few things (if not nothing) remain(s) undiscovered. Therefore, doing ethnography by seeing something and reporting on it is not so novel any more. What one is concerned with now is the ‘subjectivity’ of observation, the ‘subjectivity’ of representation and finally the ‘subjectivity’ of reception. That is why the subtitle of the project reads ‘Explorations in Reflexive Anthropology’. Version: 1
Last Editor: Samuel Pushpak & Avik Ganguli Date: 09/02/2012
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Project Deep Roots Proposal Document
Semester II Project for the course: Research Methodologies
In Lieu of an Agreement So while this event will take place we will be documenting the entire process via video recording, still photography as well as written documentation (including the final report). It is imperative that both the project team and the school shall have equal authority over all of these materials. However, before disclosing a whole or any part of this material with a third party (except if it is an academic body), a grant of permission by the other co-signor will be mandatory.
The Project Team Executive Team Manu Kamath Anindita Dutta Avik Ganguli Jenil Malavia Samuel Pushpak Ashna Lisa Sunny Padmini Hegde Jinisha Gajjar Manan Oza Mihit Goel
Project Supervisor / Faculty Prof. Vishvajit Pandya
Version: 1
Last Editor: Samuel Pushpak & Avik Ganguli Date: 09/02/2012
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