While working on my earlier studies of cultural minorities and gender, I have always tried to bridge the two to understand what it is which makes me gravitate to these "forever and ever" projects where every solution for advancement generates new problems and issues which need further solutions and so on. The first reason which comes to mind is that they challenge complacent thinking about life and society, that if one works hard and has good values, justice will take its natural course and "then there will be justice". But this does not happen. Cultural minorities are becoming more oppressed, destituted through dwindling resources and lack of opportunities, forced out of their lands and separated from loved ones in search of work and income. At the same time, while women are making remarkable progress in education in secular developing countries, patriarchy and fundamentalism introduces systems of seclusion, segregation and discrimination which diminishes their sense of self-worth and social esteem perpetuating male-dominance in oppressive systems where women work hard and break their backs for the family. At the end of the day, they have nothing left for themselves except a grateful smile to be still alive to work for the family the next day. Again this goes on in a global society where women are making significant strides in politics, reproductive health, education and corporate culture. So these "left behind communities" continue to need "forever and ever" studies to provide solutions to poverty, exploitation and oppression in an increasingly divided world of the privileged and defeated.

The second reason which makes work on women and minorities a challenge is that women and minorities as disempowered subjects and citizens, express the axis of change and transformation in society. While the privileged can only reconfirm the power of capitalism and the material accumulation of resources relating to factors of production, the underprivileged through population movements, disparate migration and dependency, expose themselves to trying situations which question the nature of humankind and the character of modern civil society- human failings and strengths, essentialism and civil consciousness, greed and benevolence and social accountability and irresponsibility. Hence, the essence of good social ideas are not those which are ideologically associated with or justify the ‘modus operandi" of the competitive spirit in economic globalisation and liberalism but rather those which are able to challenge the mind to think productively beyond personal gratification or political and national wealth towards intersocietal connectivity and sustainability.

The growing need to establish new approaches to intersocietal order to avoid global chaos and catastrophes requires fresh insights in the social sciences –multi and interdisciplinary perspectives; critiques of economic wealth and new world order(s) theories embedded in instituted philosophical monopolies. It also requires a dire revisit of social wealth-the interconnectivity between social education, public and community health and environmental development which strengthens people’s capacity to harness the mind and body to think beyond the emotional self to empower cultures, communities and nations to move towards a consensual understanding of peace and productivity .A step towards a peaceful and productive global civil society is a step towards a safer more acceptable future. A better understanding of Asia in its cautious approach to economic globalisation and a better understanding of the West in its obsessive involvement with Asia will bring us in touch with different perspectives of political autonomy, freedom, democracy and justice; yet it is essential to understand this social dialectics before issues move beyond mediation to dissidence and violence. Intersocietal connections need to bridge critical ideational systems which are truly representational and accountable to a diverse audience with different intellectual histories. Hence it has to generate new knowledge which has the capacity to empower equally.

"New knowledge is power but power is only powerful if it empowers others to seek new knowledge"

 

Wazir Jahan Karim
September 2006