SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

---

Discussion on the papers by Benner and Afsar, at SASNET’s Workshop about Global Networking in Lund on 27-28 August 2001.

Full list of participants in the workshop and the discussions.

Session 1, Papers discussed

• Mats Benner, Research Policy Institute, Lund University: Advantages and disadvantages of scientific networking in the era of ”globalisation”. Full paper available (as pdf-file)

+ Some final points by Mats Benner presented at the conference

 

• Dr Rita Afsar, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Dhaka: Globalization, international migration and the need for networking; the Bangladesh perspective. Full paper available (as pdf-file)

+ Comments on Rita Afsar´s paper by Jan Magnusson

 

Discussion chaired by Dr Eva Hellman

Eva Hellman introduction:

Before opening the floor for a discussion, I would like to formulate some of the issues raised in both the written papers, which are directly relevant for the programming of SASNET. Because as I understand from Benner´s paper, he really argues for the importance of formulating a direction for SASNET. All these issues that he raises in the paper points to the urgency of somehow arriving at a direction for this network.

So, to paraphrase Manuel Castells, I call it the ”the programming” of SASNET, because that is what it is all about. I also have a drawing from your paper, you did not mention these things, but I hope they are not unimportant to you.
However, then we can ask the questions on how to organize or manage a dynamic, multidisciplinary, multi-organisational, problem-oriented, region-oriented network for research, education and information.

When I read your article I think you made a suggestion which somehow dealt with this model of governance for the steering of research. Would you think it would be appropriate to discuss that model, because when you described it you formulated academic as well as non-academic targets that has to be set, and you speak about a discursive harmonisation of interests, and I think that point must be vital for a network like SASNET. So that might be some points from the written article, besides the points you formulated verbally.

And from Afsar´s article important points to be discussed could be ”What should be the social and ethical direction of SASNET?” And that would be directly connected to these non-academic targets that Benner spoke about.
Afsar also raises the question how to make IT an instrument for advocacy.
These are, at least some points raised from the perspective of social science or in forming a network of SASNET. But this is just a suggestion, and I open the floor for any questions. And Mats will be here to help direct the discussion.

Graham Chapman:

Can I start with an observation. I don´t think I have seen much of multi-disciplinarity or inter-disciplinarity at any stage in the last three or four decades. It has always been the case that people try a little bit to go somewhere. Everybody involved in academic world, I am not talking of academic work, that is not fair, has a career trajectory, and mostly the career trajectory, the career ambition, in terms of the entire crew, and they are being compared to a crew. It is extremely difficult to get away from that. And just by simply saying we do have a multi-disciplinary network we do not remove the prime obstacle to the network functioning, which is that people's long-term aspirations, long-term objectives, are probably rather different.

Mats Benner:

There are more forms of the trajectories of the various environments of the network, which is one of the first issues here. I get the idea that the question is about the establishment of a non-guided network, which somehow becomes what it becomes. But I think it is very important, and I also tried to emphasize that in my presentation, that people are very much formed by their organisation or location. This gives them varying degrees of possibilities of being full-fledged members of a network, in the sense that they are committed to transgressing these organisational boundaries.

At the end of the day, in most academic systems, this is becoming increasingly so, you are evaluated according to what you have written in the best journals or published in the best publications, which is a very conservative process. And if you look at the number of multi-disciplinary journals outside our medicine or natural sciences it is becoming very few, extremely few. And those who evaluate the work are not necessarily those who belong to the same network. So I do not have a solution. There is a lagging behind of the academic infrastructure in relation to the demands of the society, funding agencies and so forth.

I once interviewed a medical researcher who said: ”For us it is very important to work in networks. The problem is that you are not promoted in the system if you don´t have 20 original publications.” There is a contradiction between these two norms system, which we are all in, all of us. To the first issue, there is no easy solution to the problem of formulating a stable intellectual foundation and also a stable organisation for intellectual participation. Perhaps the question of incorporating institutional foundations belong to that framework.

Jan Lundquist:

As Mats mentioned, I am a person who comes from, what others call, a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary department at Linköping University, Tema Vatten. We are working in a setting where we have colleagues from both the natural and experimental sciences like chemistry and microbiology. Then we have people from hydrology, physical geography, economics and sociology, and also from the humanities. And most of us do use the term, and we do not describe or interpret ourselves as an interdisciplinary group as such.

But what we think is important is ”How do we formulate the research questions”? You mention that the society raises the question. And I believe that in many disciplines these questions are developed out of a paradigm, which is the prevailing one. It gives a lot of satisfaction if we can formulate the questions in some kind of dialogue, open milieu, where people with different cognition, experiences, different backgrounds can interact. But then we have to use the disciplinary competencies. We can not put a sociologist doing experimental work, it doesn´t work simply, so in a way we have to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. There is a need for a strong disciplinary competence in what you call a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary network.

So our experience, is that both for the PhD students who come to us as well as for us – who are the teachers – it is a very stimulating set up to discuss what are the important questions both from a societal as well as an academic point of view. What is the kind of questions that would promote the generation of new and well-defined knowledge. So we see it as a combination of methodology – doing the research – and raising the relevant research questions. People usually think that multidisciplinarity/interdisciplinarity is a mixture of everything. I think that is a little dangerous.

Bo Lindblad:

Mats, you touched upon many things that have to do with what I think is important for SASNET, that is to educate the universities on some points. I can take one thing: We have a research student from Pakistan at Karolinska Institutet, who is the first Aga Khan registered PhD student. It is obvious it should be very important for that university to have that PhD student successfully defending her thesis. She has a core supervisor at Karolinska Institutet and she is doing part of her work there. It is not possible to be registered at two universities, and I think that should be changed. One should be able to register as a research student both in South Asia and in Sweden. That is important for the department, as it gets 100 000 kronor per PhD student. But if they are not registered the money does not go there, and the department will not look at that student with the same eyes. That is one example where we have to influence the universities.

The other thing is how the career is determined, and how priorities for careers and appointments are made at the university. I have seen examples from biochemistry where definitely you are prioritised if you are deep and narrow and not broad. I do not know the actual situation, you must know much more about that at the Research Policy Institute. I do not know how many people are working there, but it could be interesting for me to know, because SASNET must obviously work with such an institute very closely. Can you tell me something about it, how you are influencing the university and if you have thought about these things, like double registration for research students.

Mats Benner:

It is a fairly small institute. We are 6–7 people there. But we actually do work in the field. The universities are more progressive than the disciplinary infrastructure. They are familiar with these issues. They have internalised the need for aligning with society and transgressing some of the obsolete boundaries, whereas the promotional system is still very much run by peer review systems. If you look at university departments, they are normally evaluated by people in general mainstream positions within the discipline, to which the department belong, with little understanding of the dynamics of new fields.

It is, of course, a nightmare for a traditional mainstream researcher within a well-established discipline to have a multidisciplinary, multi-organisational set up. It is on the surface a contradiction to intra-disciplinary development, whereas if you look at how new academic specialities develop, they develop through a dialogue with the society. What you see as narrow and somewhat stupid disciplinary environments try to open up the social sciences, biomedicine, or whatever. This is how it works. There must be some brave people, before new specialities are institutionalised, so I would be more than happy to follow the development of SASNET over the years. I will follow it from a distance, because it is a very interesting experience. It incorporates all of these aspects.

Zulfiqar Bhutta:

We are just beginning to get into the discussion on the subject, so what I am going to say is pretty preliminary. In the context of the broad objectives of SASNET it is very true that multidisciplinary groups or networks like this, which try to bring health and social sciences and humanities together, are a relatively rare concept. Not just in terms of functional universities and departments, especially in South Asia, leave alone in a western setting, but also in the eyes of donors and funders of research. By and large, in outsider development agencies people are not prepared to consider research projects, which are broad in focus.

So I think there is a tremendous need for education in that context as well. I think the closest you can come at this point in time to multidisciplinary community-oriented development groups in South Asia are within the NGO set up. Because, by and large, they are based in the grass roots community levels, and they have a broad view of community needs and development. And it would be useful for SASNET if it was to try and develop these nets, because they would be educationally viable to look at. And I do not think we should worry too much about the slowness of this process, because all of this will take time.

Mats Benner:

I don´t think you should under-estimate the tendency among the auditing and funding agencies. There is a general conviction outside, that the universities are confronting a major challenge, that the universities are not necessarily the place where the most inspiring or useful knowledge is produced. The universities have lost its monopoly in knowledge production, which they before that had had for a thousand years. There are older institutions that have died. There is nothing in itself that says that universities may be the primary producers of knowledge in a hundred years from now. And this is well known in administrative circles and among funding agencies. If you look at the British funding agency, they are very progressive by international standards in their orientation for centres designated to interdisciplinary activities and so forth.

So I would say that the real issue here is to escape from this easy route to look inside and turn into the interdisciplinary mission, discouraged by the lack of appreciation of interdisciplinary research. So I think there is an opportunity for initiatives also from political or administrative sides. This is innovative, and it is really emphasised. Look at the European Union, which has introduced a novel concept, which might be of interest to you, ”Networks of Centres of Excellence”. EU will only fund such large-scale programmes, like yourselves, that integrate many universities and many different specialities, it is a kind of designated target which is not defined theoretically or intra-disciplinary only. I think this really is a model worth developing. It has a future as a potential for the universities.

Ron Herring:

I want to thank Mats for a superb presentation of how these things actually work according to my experience. My experience is in fact based on working with natural scientists, social scientists and humanists dealing with processes of very large and complicated diversity. It is an extremely good presentation, and I agree with Graham that for all our talk of more interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity, the sociology of disciplines works against the kind of insight which we are talking about, but not so much in the natural sciences.

And for those of us who are in the non-natural sciences, there is something we learnt here, and I am not sure how we learn it. SASNET has a very nice vision of how we like to move in that direction, but I am worried how it works. And it is natural scientists, perhaps because of the nomothetic structure of what they do, who are integrated, and find collaboration and cross-disciplinarity quite natural. So in the creative fields, like chemical ecology, originally biochemistry, there is no problem creating these, because people are working on natural processes, that can only be explained through integrated forms of investigation and knowledge.

Regarding social sciences and humanities on the other hand, I fear, and this again is based on my experience, that we draw up walls around our disciplines, precisely because the disciplines themselves are very shaky. The walls are there because we don´t really have knowledge. Ken Boulding, when he was president in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that we will never be very scientific in the social sciences, and he gave all these reasons, but one of them was that the multiple paths of causation and the impossibility of determining causation makes us inherently non-scientific if you use predictive power as a criteria of science.

We have a standard view of science, we never get there, and I think it creates sociologically bounded disciplines that do not have internal reward and promotion systems. It is almost as if we create these palaces and castles around Europe. It is like we have to create those. I am finding my own discipline, political science, becoming increasingly like that, increasingly the professionalisation of the discipline, making it a real discipline, is a strong trend in my entire lifetime. And that has implications for what young people do, how interdisciplinary they can be. How much attention you pay for areas.

One last thing about this: University administrators in the United States are suspicious of Area studies. The social sciences research councils even want to abolish area studies. And the grounds for that is there is a great fear that people that do area studies are people who are not very good at their discipline. And there is a certain amount of truth in this, and I hate to say this because I am an area studies person. There is a certain amount of truth in this.

I use as a major question, when I am asked to review articles for periodic journals: ”What is the relationship between my expertise and the articles I am asked to review?” And for Area studies journals, like Journal of Asian Studies and Modern Asian Studies, the area journals for which I am asked to review, it is often as though they do not care all that much for my expertise. I am a kind of an Asianist and probably I can figure it out. Whereas if I am asked to review for the American Political Science Review, that is journals within my own field, they have a very precise idea of how exactly my expertise fits to the model in the article I am dealing with. They are much more professional, they make a better match between what I know and what the article is about. So there is a great fear that people escape the strictures of discipline to go in for area studies, and that means we are always under a certain amount of suspicion from university administrators. And since we all have limited time, your cost of networking is absolute accurately a cost. We have the problem but that does not take us anywhere.

It is simply that the integration that you said and as Graham said, it strikes me, is pointing in very difficult directions. The social sciences and humanities, that really do need work together in area studies, have great difficulties in doing so. Scientists often find it easy to work with us, they understand that society is part of the science that they do, but they find it so frustrating because we do not really have good answers to things. We end up just producing a morass in which they sink, and they have got labs to run, results to find, they have journal articles that have to be very short and precise, with a clear abstract. And they feel like marching into the quicksand. Yet they understand the importance, at least among the scientists that I am working with, the importance of the social context and the social preconditions for the benefit of the study. I just want to say that we have got a wonderful start from my point of view. It has stimulated me to think about it in a broader context on how difficult it is for SASNET to come to the wonderful outcome.

Eva Hellman:

Are there any more ideas on how to transcend interdisciplinaty boundaries?

Catarina Kinnvall:

Just a short comment, which follows on Ron´s input, which I fully agree with. I think it is a special platform for political science, because it is a very new field. It is a field that does not have roots as sociology. But I think sociology is interesting because what I think we need is some kind of a broker field. A field that can actually break the disciplinary boundaries, which I think are strong. I think it is a good field to illustrate with, because of the newness of the field, the fact that it is a field still looking for its roots within an academic context. I think sociology, in that sense, can work as a kind of broker discipline. It has already raised all the controversial questions within social sciences. Social sciences are problematic, from the psychological reasons, and you have to go through some kind of way to break social sciences into any kind of interdisciplinary work.

Bo Lindblad:

Last year I made an experiment. I suggested a project to three different groups that met, humanists, economists, social scientists, and health scientists. It was no problem at all to get a very good response from the health sciences and from sociology. But when you come to humanities I am aware of the fact that I am speaking a language which is not my own and I would like the English speakers to say what is the actual difference between research and scholarship. Because I am married to a scholar in English literature, and I am completely aware that they work in a completely different way, thinking in a completely different way and I think one has to be extremely open-minded and maybe a little bit learned to be able to cross this boundary.

And then you have to go back to how we are educating ourselves at the universities. We are not reading Latin anymore, we are not reading the great poets in medicine, etc. So how are we going to transgress – I am completely aware that we have to work with people representing religious studies in the project which I am interested in. I am aware of the fact that in literature there is a great literature that has a great impact on the way peoples' minds are working in connection with these fields. But how to do this is extremely difficult. And what is the difference really. I put scholarship up here and research a little bit below. But what is the actual authentic American view of this word, as people do not speak about scholarships.

Eva Hellman:

But Bo, you will realise when the problems tie together from different disciplines you will realise what the methodologies are. So, just go ahead.

Bo Lindblad:

My experience, though, is that I have no problem with sociology, but you need to be educated.

Mats Benner:

Can I just add some final reflections? What you are doing now is what we are all doing, from the humanities to the social sciences to natural sciences and biomedicine. Research is much more dirty, so to speak, than science, but we are involved in a dialogical process of confronting society, being confronted with society, confronting different social issues. I know you all feel somewhat frustrated when you meet single-minded disciplinary peers who do not understand the dynamics of research. But you have to live with that. I think, and I am fairly convinced, that science or research is in a process of radical transformation. If you look at social sciences, the very reason that they are so insolent is that is that they are so context-rich. The context is so strong, the society asks so many questions to a political scientist. Everyone understands political science, not everyone understands biochemistry. It is easier to put questions to a politcal scientist than to a biochemist. This means the social sciences try to isolate themselves from this dialogue, because it is felt as a threat to the intra-scientific development.

There is a tendency towards transgressing the boundaries between different knowledge traditions, developing new forms for scientific communication, developing new qualitative criteria. This is not done overnight, but it is done with the support, as I said earlier, from at least enlightened university management, from research funding agencies and from society. So you would not expect the traditional forces in the universities to just say ”we lost, you win”. It is a battle, and it takes enormous time for the universities to be transformed. Our idea of what knowledge is, how it is produced and being used in society undergoes tremendous change. And I am certain that there are at least fifteen meetings like this taking place at this very moment in the World, where people try to define new knowledge specialists, new areas, also complaining about the difficulties in doing so. You have chosen this yourself, it is your own fault.

Eva Hellman:

Before we close this first question, about how to transcend disciplinary boundaries, I want everyone who wants to say something to do that now.

Staffan Lindberg:

I think that there is one thing about the construction of SASNET that is very important. SASNET must simply be flexible enough to accommodate a number of approaches to this problem. Because people are so differently situated. And we must have some kind of intensive intellectual work in formulating the directions for SASNET. We have had a very strong emphasis on inter-disciplinary co-operation, but we have now changed that formulation so that we make room for intra-disciplinary institutional collaboration etc. Because, there are large differences between for example biotechnology, medicine, history of religions, sociology and economics.

I have been sitting in the SAREC research council for seven years, and for two years in the Swedish research council for sociology, anthropology, ethnology and social work. I have a lot of experiences of funding in interdisciplinary direction – and with colleagues saying ”this is not good sociology because it is being mixed up with economics or what ever, we must defend the discipline.” I have seen all these different situations, and I can also see that there have been some political changes over the years. I really believe what Mats is saying is true, that we are into a change in terms of what society asks out of science. In order to make a interdisciplinary attempt in your topic you have to interact with your peers in a new way. I think you can gain a lot of power in your research if you can formulate your research questions in a context that Jan Lundqvist was talking about. Some of us have done research for 20–25 years, we are professors, senior researchers, we are also part of defining that disciplinary peer group today, which we could not do yesterday.

In addition, our students are facing a demographic change, there will not be enough students to fill up the existing professorial positions within 10 years when the 40´s years generation retires. Then they have the fantastic revolutionary opportunity of removing old structures at the universities, and realising their wishes, not just the old dying generation's wishes. So there is a dynamic situation, and I think SASNET should take all the chances of strengthening various fields of South Asians studies, like for example history of religions, strengthening collaboration between social sciences and medicine in that place and so on. We find people, we find entrepreneurs, people who are doing things. It is very good to know these stumbling obstacles to co-operation. And that is why we are here.

A final thing. SASNET is not a very exclusive or new idea. As Mats said, it is in the air, we are children of our time. We have not invented anything really new, but we are grasping the opportunity to do what we love and like to do.

Peter B Andersen:

Staffan has already said it, but I think it might be necessary to say it again. A lot can be done by networking, but when it comes to research, interdisciplinary research projects, you shall not think that a research project should be purely interdisciplinary. You have a research problem to solve and where you need different disciplines for the solution. That is a way to create interdisciplinary research. Then SASNET can do something because of its aim, which research councils do not always do, namely SASNET can aim at creating a researcher and scholar base with interdisciplinary capacities. SASNET can say ”we want to support interdisciplinary research but also support it in such a way we can hope that some of the people involved in 10 years will have other qualifications than just researchers passing through a project.”

Pamela Price:

When I think of these issues my mind goes in many different directions. I am thinking about the main question, which Eva has posed here on interdisciplinarity, but also on the point Mats made about it ,and strategies for SASNET in relation to the demographic shift that Staffan was referring to. My feeling is that, in terms of what SASNET should focus on, SASNET should think in terms of helping first Swedish, because this is funded by the Swedish state, and the Swedish state is going to look for benefits when it comes to evaluation. But keep in mind that we want to bring Swedish graduate students, who are interested in South Asian topics together, so they can make networks among themselves in Sweden and also with Nordic students. Because the pool of South Asia scholars is very small in Sweden, it is very small in the Nordic area, but I think that in the long run the closest ties are probably there because the personal element is so important in freeing creativity and getting support from others.

It is important that we focus very much on graduate students both in their early stages and senior stages, to bring them together on multi-disciplinary topics, and to help them in the first place form bonds in the Nordic area. For me that is a very important focus for SASNET. It is not the only focus of course, but one thing SASNET might do is to go to various people both in the Nordic area and also outside and give us a lifeline, a career lifeline. We do not have to give this new names, but you make important connections building creativity and expression in your own work, keeping in mind looking forward as Mats says and, as Staffan says new possibilities, a new world by new technology. We have past experience and new possibilities, and also to be precise, as this is Sweden, increasingly feeling we have less time, the personal element is very important for human activity.

Rana P B Singh:

What I am going to tell you is coming from my own insight. You are talking from that big network, how to make the whole thing, and try to understand everything. I had a very similar experience two months ago when there was an another international meeting on South Asia in Sweden, with a title similar to this workshop – on networking – and with representatives from different disciplines, biologists, technicians and others. The problem is that of inside and outside. How are we really going to understand the inside realities?

A second thing about levelling. There is no problem at all with disciplinary boundaries. It is very clear cut that the problem is this: We must learn to understand from the grass roots. We may well go into the field and stay for a few days, do our work in the lab with quantitative analyses and all that, but we must also be part of the society. Then let us come at the level that we can also communicate our science and research to the people. It is very easy for us to use our codes, write wonderful papers and promote ourselves, but to what extent do we realise which are our duties for the people, and how can we communicate with them. That is another issue. To what extent do we understand their codes of conduct, their symbols, metaphors, etc? They use different types of notion, and we need some integration with the grassroots. You have to walk in the mud, then only you can feel what mud is, otherwise not.

Eva Hellman:

Besides touching upon questions that everybody else have done, Rana P B Singh also introduced additional topics, that we can perhaps ponder on. He touched on the inside–outside tension, the energetic problematic, which Staffan also referred to previously, that we must not take our own perspectives as the given perspective. And you asked for the relevance of the research, which is of course a crucial question. And you hinted at that research should be for the benefit of the underprivileged. Very important topics that you just mentioned. They are not the main points, but worth reflecting upon. Anybody else wants to go ahead?

Staffan Lindberg:

Just one small thing. I think we should also discuss something about the ideas presented by Dr Rita Afsar. Of course it is about a very different problem, but still it is about creating networks among people, and perhaps there are some parallels? But it is also difficult for SASNET to do something useful here. It so happened that the person at SAREC who gave the money to SASNET, in the first instance – he handled the applications one year ago – Anders Johnson, is now the Swedish ambassador to Bangladesh. He happens to be an IT specialist and enthusiast, and he has previously been behind the Swedish aid in the computerisation at Sri Lankan Universities. The least we could do is to send Afsar´s paper to him and discuss it with him.

Piet Terhal:

I just like to give a first reaction to this question of yours, combining the last few words which were exchanged, and particularly the stress upon let us say social problematic as a focusing point for research, which would help us to transcend disciplinary boundaries. If that type of help would be a crucial element in the SASNET network, and also the strategy for overcoming these boundaries, I think not only the substantial social interest which these people from Bangladesh has given us to do something in this direction, but also the internal logic of the work of SASNET would profit by including this type of projects into your overall schedule.

If you would have a window for this kind of project which has a direct impact on human rights issues or helping the establishment of societal networks supported by new technologies which would break the barriers of information restrictions which give a more free flow to open information about the world, and would consider that type of project as an integrated part of the SASNET work type , it would build into your work a kind of motivating tool which would also profit a more scientific work, give it a certain ethical direction.

Graham Chapman:

I like to ask a question. It covers number 1, possibly No. 2, and certainly No. 3 and 4.
The oldest network that I know, which is most similar to what SASNET might be according to my own experience, is IPTRID, International Programme on Training and Research on Irrigation and Drainage. It was funded by the British equivalent to Sida – ODA (now DFID – Department for International Development). The network changed over time, but it was technology based. More than 10 years ago, at a time when computers were not as much in use, it was already computer based. I am certain that ODA must have done an assessment of what this network has done.

My question is very simple. How do you evaluate the performance of a network, how do you evaluate the performance of this programme, how can anybody in four years time tell what are the obstacles; which are the indicators showing that let us say SASNET is performing at a good level, satisfactory level or superb level. If it has been a total failure, or whether – which I hope – it has been all superb. What are the diagnostics? Have you yourselves looked at other cases, like the IPTRID one, where there are evaluation programmes of networks, and which include the social and ethical factors and so on.

Mats Benner:

I think it is a fairly unusual obstruction, in the sense that in the programmes I have been involved in I often had the experience of some kind of peer programmes, similar initiatives, people from similar environments able to evaluate them on their own basis. There are many examples on these initiatives being evaluated by traditional peers. The normal thing is to refer to publications in this or that journal etc, so it gives very predictable results of this kind of usual evaluations.

What I would suggest, although I might be an interested part in it, is to have a dual evaluation. It would be very easy for you to come up with a number of peers, who have integrity but also an understanding of this field, of its growing or its dynamic state, and who do not evaluate it from a mainstream say geography perspective, but from a sort of a sympathetic but critical perspective. But you also have to have an integrated organisational evaluation, understanding of the overall effects of the programme, etc. So I would suggest, and I don´t think there are any comparable phenomena. Networks in this form are fairly young, 10-15 year phenomena. If you look at international environments, this is a fairly recent phenomenon and it is very difficult to evaluate in a traditional formula.

So the best thing is a multi-fold form of evaluation where you have some kind of peer group but also a social and organisational evaluation. Then you have to accept, that you have to integrate all these, because the intention is not only to have good research in 10-15 years, but to develop something new. It is very easy to evaluate the Department of Theology – just bring in five eminent professors in theology from around the world who can read Swedish or whatsoever. It can be arranged. This is more difficult. You have to be very selective, and very elaborate in developing the evaluation. You can not just screen people with disciplinary background and not only focus on scientific dimensions.

So that would be my idea, and also for the board to discuss this very seriously. Because it is very easy to say that this shall be evaluated, everything is evaluated. But evaluation in academic terms means you are favoured by disciplinary colleagues, who might appreciate what you are doing, but it might be the wrong answers, not the ones you are looking for.

Pamela Price:

Thinking of Piet´s suggestion, I am not sure what he had in mind as far as committing ourselves towards a concrete development project. I don´t think SASNET has all that kind of might to be involved in development projects. I think Staffan´s initiative here to pass Afsar´s article on to someone in the ministry in Sweden who may find it interesting for development projects is good. I think SASNET, in terms of information provider, co-ordinating, this is a good point. I do not think SASNET has the capacity to cheerio such projects. There are all kinds of applications being made now to research councils in the Nordic region that deal with IT capacities for post-colonial societies. It is not the responsibility for SASNET, which is a virtual network.

Bo Lindblad:

I think that this question of evaluation is so important and it is the first thing one should think about before even starting. And I am sure that Staffan and others have thought a lot about it. What did attract me to SASNET from the first moment was the word ”study” in ”South Asian studies network”. It is not only a research network. It encompasses not only research but also scholarship.

I think it is very easy to evaluate research, but how do we evaluate scholarship? I went to a conference on Indian literature in English in Copenhagen last year, and we were after a while discussing all the literature that was not translated into English, which is an enormous literature. It gives an interesting aspect on peoples' beliefs, etc, and I thought it is important, and I like to know from SASNET, or we should discuss that, how much is going to be research? Because for me research means search for that has been done, and research adds a small point to our general, universal knowledge. But scholarship means educating ourselves very much, and it is a different thing. How do we evaluate that? How am I a better person tomorrow than today?

So I think it is important. I think people in the humanities must know more about that. The research councils are discussing evaluations, because without evaluations you will not get any more money from Sida. I had a project that was running for 18 years, with support from SAREC. It took 10 years to build it up, 10 years to do the research and another 10 years to evaluate. So Sida would like to know after two or three years what remarkable things you have done, but I think it takes 20 years before you can really measure it, that is my experience.

Eva Hellman:

Well, that is a good question for the SASNET board to ponder upon.

Zulfiqar Bhutta:

I want to come back to this question of evaluation, and although it may be a little premature to expect answers, when even in a specific discipline like health research people are still struggling with how to best evaluate health research and health research systems. And there is no question that it can not be totally quantitative. It needs to have the qualitative dimension, which people do not have a very good handle of. I am sure that you are going to spend a lot of resources for the next 3–4 years precisely to try and understand how to evaluate health research systems.

When you bring into a multidisciplinary group, it becomes that much more complex, and particularly when it also has an advocacy in development role, it becomes that much more difficult. The closest that I can come to suggesting a model is one which was used by another network, CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, with its own network in terms of linking institutions and people. They have a model which does has a substantial qualitative evaluation aspect that, when eventually it comes to looking at SASNET, might be worth to emulate.

I think one advantage of a network like this is that because it is an integral virtual network, a meeting of minds, you do not necessarily have to evaluate it in terms of hard outcomes in a short time. How do you evaluate scholarship, how do you evaluate learning? One of the advantages of a network like SASNET is that is brings people together, and provides an educational role which is an ongoing activity, based on resources available within that network, educational self-learning training. Some of those are very difficult to measure, and I think it should be clear from the outset that you set upon a task, which should not be measured and evaluated in a classical quantitative form.

Mats Benner:

I want to add. That is the difference between a traditional research project and a network. The first ones are easily evaluated according to how many publications and in what forms, whereas this has a broader intention, formulating new knowledge areas more or less in the long term. It makes it very important to escape these narrow quantitative understanding of what the networks and the outcome should be. I want to strongly emphasise this with the funding agencies.

Jan Lundqvist:

When Graham mentioned the irrigation network IPTRID I probably have heard about it. There are a number of networks which are dealing with specific issues, I belong myself to what could be called a network in water. Perhaps it is a question rather. If you look at the background paper presented by Staffan and the talk of possible research themes then you covered a number of different aspects, there could be networks within the network, and that may be an important point. How to keep the group together? Because there will be people interested in certain aspects, e g health aspects, water, environmental themes, there will be different groups, and if you have a very small secretariat you will not be able to steer or influence it, it might be a very multi-grouped thing. How you keep that together is one issue.

For myself, and as Mats said, you have to invest time, and for the individual persons it is nice to meet, but there is a limit to time and the number of encounters you can take part in. There must be some kind of direction. Certain issues or topics will have to be defined, or will you leave it to the research funding agencies to decide what will be funded? An open question: is there any open framework or you would like to promote a certain type of projects? Would it be possible to put SASNET around10 different projects? It would be a very big research organisation.

Staffan Lindberg, concluding remarks:

Each network will have one root node. Maybe you are entering this network as a doctoral student via SASNET. After a while it is not SASNET that matters, but this network on water, common property or whatever. When applying for funds to various research councils, obviously SASNET has no say in terms of evaluation. But maybe we have something to say about the priorities among types of research to fund. We should put pressure on the research councils to give more funds for South Asia related research. This is one role for SASNET, initiating, supporting new networks on various themes, releasing creativity in new networks by promoting them but not controlling them.

What will happen if we are successful in the sense that people will soon forget that it all started with SASNET and are now networking among themselves? Then SASNET may lose its legitimacy. People may ask: ”Why should we have SASNET?” Networking creates smaller networks, etc., which will be very different in character depending on what people are doing and in what situation.

I think SASNET's role is very much a question of community, a kind of minimum meeting of the souls in such a way that we can keep the wider network together. But I also think that SASNET can be instrumental in continuously creating new networks and help to keep them going in the early phase.