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David MacDougall

Convenor, Program in Visual Research

Centre for Cross-Cultural Research
Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
AUSTRALIA

I SEARCH OF A SOCIAL AESTHETIC

DRAFT 15.2.1999

Over the past two years I have been working on a video project about a
school in northern India. This project can be seen as part of a larger
effort by scholars in many countries to apply visual media to disciplines
such as anthropology, history and sociology that have historically
developed as disciplines of words. We are anxious to learn how film,
photography, video and multimedia can be useful in these disciplines,
both as research tools and accepted forms of professional publication.
Even more important, we want to see if use of visual media may in fact
transform these disciplines, leading to the recognition of forms of
knowledge that were not envisaged before.

The Doon School is a residential boys´ secondary school in the town of

Dehra Dun in Uttar Pradesh. The town lies in the Valley of the Doon,
between the Siwalik Hills and the foothills of the Himalayas. It enjoys a
comfortable climate and, along with the nearby hill station of
Mussoorie, is the location of a large number of schools and national
institutions, such as the Survey of India and the Indian Military
Academy.

Of the schools, Doon School is certainly the most famous, and perhaps
the most famous in India. It owes its influence to a number of factors,
but primarily to the important part its graduates have played in the
ruling elites of India since Independence, particularly in government
and industry. The school counts among its alumni former Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi, several cabinet ministers, a long list of members
of parliament, and major business leaders. The role of its graduates in
the professions, the military, the media, and the arts has been less
pronounced but is still considerable. An Air Chief Marshall, a number
of Army generals, and the writers Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh are
all Doon School graduates. The school´s impact on public affairs has
been greatly enhanced by a powerful and well-organized network of
`old boys,´ who display great loyalty to the school.

Doon School is also notable for spreading a particular style of education

to other schools: an egalitarian, liberal education based on a
commitment to public service and a belief in Western-style scientific
rationalism. It aims to produce `all-rounders,´ with equal proficiency (if
not brilliance) in studies, games and social skills. There is an emphasis
on setting one´s own goals rather than following the expectations of

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others. Doon School and Mayo College (in Rajasthan) have both at
times been called `the Eton of India,´ but in the case of Doon School
this is something of a misnomer. Although it was always a school for
the reasonably well-off, it was never the preserve of the upper classes
(this was rather the role of Mayo College), and in fact it attracted the
sons of the new technocracy that was developing in Punjab and Uttar
Pradesh at about the time the school was founded. It has been observed
that over the years many other schools have gradually been `Doon-
ized´, partly through appointing staff and headmasters who previously
taught at Doon.

Compared to many boarding schools in India, such as La Martiniere in

Calcutta (founded in 1836) and Lawrence School in Sanawar (founded
in 1847), Doon School is a comparative newcomer. It was opened in
1935 on the grounds of the old Forest Research Institute and was the
creation of a group of moderate Indian nationalists led by a Calcutta
lawyer, R.S. Das who, although he died before the school actually
opened, had lobbied for it assiduously during the 1920s. Das envisaged
an Indian school patterned on the British `public school,´ which he felt
had effectively trained young men to become responsible and
resourceful administrators throughout the British Empire. But in
contrast to British schools, he wanted an Indian school to be
nonsectarian and responsive to Indian aspirations. He and the school´s
other founders saw Doon School as the training ground for a new
generation of Indian leaders, who would take over the reins of
administration and government following Independence. By copying
the model of the British public school, the founders were attempting to
show that Indians could compete with the British on their own terms
without relinquishing their own identity. This reflected the views of
many Indian leaders and intellectuals of the time, but certainly not all.
Characteristically, Nehru welcomed the creation of the school but
Gandhi would have nothing to do with it.

***

The video study I have been making coincides with the publication of a
written study of Doon School (and two other north Indian schools) by
the anthropologist Sanjay Srivastava. His book, Constructing `Post-
Colonial´ India: ational Character and the Doon School, is based on
his doctoral research at the University of Sydney, completed in 1995. It
was Srivastava who first interested me in Doon School, although I had
previously become acquainted with several Indian schools during a
project in Mussoorie and Dehra Dun in 1988-89. He suggested that the
schools he was studying might be suitable subjects for a documentary
film, and over the years we discussed many possibilities. We have
remained in close communication about Doon School ever since, and
much of my understanding of the school has come from his
observations and insights.

Srivastava´s study focuses on how the school has both reflected and
shaped notions of the modern Indian citizen and Indian nation in the
twentieth century. My interest has been more in how the school, as a
small `artificial´ society, has developed a particular social aesthetic
through its informal daily life and its more formal rituals and
institutions. The idea of a social aesthetic is a difficult and sometimes

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elusive one, but I am convinced that it describes a reality of human life

of considerable importance, and one that is all too often overlooked by
anthropologists and historians. Perhaps because the aesthetic qualities
of life are more evident in some societies than others (those that I have
called `hyperaesthetic communities,´ such as schools, religious orders,
the military, and some ultranationalist states) I became particularly
conscious of this idea while at Doon School. It was also while living at
the school that I decided it was a subject worthy of further study.

`Aesthetics´ in this context has little to do with notions of beauty or art,

but rather with a much wider range of culturally patterned sensory
experience. (It is thus closer to what the Greeks originally meant by
aisthesis: sense experience.) It also includes much that derives from
nature rather than culture, such as the geographical setting of a
community, and even much in life that is onerous to its members but to
which they become habituated. Doon School´s social aesthetic is made
up of many elements, and consists not so much in a list of ingredients as
a complex, whose interrelations as a totality (as in gastronomy) are as
important as their individual effects. These elements include such things
as the design of buildings and grounds, the use of clothing and colours,
the rules of dormitory life, the organization of students´ time, particular
styles of speech and gesture, and all the rituals of everyday life
surrounding such activities as eating, school gatherings, and sport
(already itself a highly ritualized activity).

I am interested in the force of these aesthetic qualities in social life: the

extent to which they may influence decisions and events in a
community, along with the more commonly-recognized forces of
history, economics, politics and ideology. All these forces are, of
course, interconnected, but it often seems that the aesthetic features of
a society are assimilated into other categories, to such an extent that
they become invisible and are largely ignored. Or alternatively,
aesthetic features are seen merely as the symbolic expressions of more
profound forces (such as history and ideology), rather than influential in
their own right. My premise is that the aesthetic dimension of human
experience is an important social fact, to be taken seriously alongside
the facts of economic survival, political power, and religious belief. It is
important precisely because it often matters to people (consciously or
unconsciously) as much as anything else in their lives.

Some human groups (including those I have called `hyperaesthetic

communities´) seem to place greater stress on the aesthetic qualities of
life than others. This should not be interpreted as a special attribute of
these groups but rather as a more conspicuous expression of an aspect
of life to be found in all societies. It is an attribute that may take quite
different forms and be channelled in quite varied directions. Some
societies specifically emphasize artistic expression, others particular
codes of interpersonal relations, still others special regimes of physical
activity, and others again religious or spiritual experience. Yet each of
these variants can serve to define a familiar social space and one´s
sense of belonging, like a lock and its key. The aesthetic sensibility may
be attuned to the most humdrum activities, such as office work, or even
be defined by painful experiences, such as physical stress, grief for the
dead, and (in some religious sects) the self-infliction of wounds.
Appeals to aesthetic experience may also be a means of social control,

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as in those totalitarian states that create a powerful repertoire of public

rhetoric and ritual. This does not mean that these states are particularly
interested in the arts; indeed, rather than encouraging artistic
experimentation, their attitude toward the arts is more likely to be
conservative and prescriptive. Although we don´t know why some
societies stress the aesthetics of social life more than others, the
evidence suggests that those I have termed `hyperaesthetic
communities´ do so because they draw their membership from quite
varied backgrounds and find in the sharing of a particular aesthetic
experience a unifying principle.

***

When I first came to Doon School it struck me as a kind of theatre.

There was a performance going on. A bell would ring and everyone
would rush on to the stage dressed in a certain costume. They would
then depart. An hour or two later another bell would ring and they
would rush on again in a different costume. It was at that point that I
began thinking it might be possible to view a small society such as a
school much as one would view other sorts of created works. But who
in this case were the creators, the players, and the viewers? Clearly the
boys themselves were the raw material of this creation, upon whose
bodies the aesthetics of the school were imprinted. But at the same time
these same boys were also its foremost audience.

By the creation of a social aesthetic, I specifically do not mean here a

system of signs and meanings encoded in school life, but rather the
creation of an aesthetic space: a sensory environment. Signs and
meanings there clearly are at Doon School (a great deal of history and
ideology underlies its aesthetic qualities) but these qualities both exceed
and are experienced differently from any symbolic interpretation that
might be placed on them. Nor would such a symbolic interpretation
necessarily be understood by the boys themselves-either upon first
arriving at the school, or indeed ever. What does speak to them is a
particular structure of sense impressions, social relations, and ways of
behaving physically. This must be assimilated and acted upon (and
therefore be `understood´) in quite a different manner.

In the process of trying to register the distinctive aesthetic make-up of

the school, and the sensibility it produces in its students, I wanted also
to see how both were reproduced and communicated to new
generations of students. One of the best ways of `discovering´ this was
by following the daily experience of new students as they themselves
discovered it. I found another conceptual key in the phenomenon of
homesickness, and its successor among former students,
`schoolsickness´. I therefore devoted considerable attention to students
in their first year-in one instance, from the very first day of their life at
the school. Over approximately eighteen months, seven of them spent
at the school, I have so far filmed some eighty hours of material. This
has resulted in a kind of visual ethnography of school life, focussing on
certain themes, as well as more detailed coverage of the lives of several
individual boys of different ages and backgrounds. From this material I
plan to edit three or four complete films and various additional
compilations of footage for other purposes. Not the least important
purpose of these last is to return material to the boys themselves, their

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friends, and their parents. From the parents´ point of view this is a
precious resource. Most of them long to see what has been happening
to their children, growing up so rapidly in a world that remains largely
inaccessible to them.

This is a cross-cultural study in several respects: first, because it

registers my encounter, as an outsider, with one small microcosm of
contemporary Indian life. Next, because it involves the intersection of
India´s colonial history with its modern identity; and at another level,
the school´s intersection, as a cultural enclave, with the wider Indian
community. Lastly, because it involves childhood, and what is
increasingly seen by anthropologists as a separation between the
cultural worlds of children and adults. In the case of a boarding school,
this separation is made even more marked by the added distance
between home life and institutional life.

Like many projects, the ideas with which this one began were
overtaken by ideas that gradually assumed greater importance. I
thought I would be producing a study of diverse cultural cross-currents
at the school. Instead I became increasingly interested in what was for
me a new way of thinking about the configuration of forces in
community life. Rather than investigating a multiplicity of intersecting
histories and cultures (postmodern anthropology´s currently ascendant
conception of social experience) I instead found myself concerned with
a cultural phenomenon that might more accurately be viewed as
homogeneous or, at the very least, a temporary coalescence of
elements. What became apparent was that the students of Doon School
lived neither in a homogeneous society nor a multiply-fragmented
global one, but in both. Like many of us, they moved between `little
worlds´ (of family and school) and a larger world that they encountered
in the streets, during their travels, and on television. And like many of
us, they learned to accept and adapt to a state of more or less
permanent cultural confusion. Perhaps all the more reason, then, for
them to bind themselves closely to the islands of relative cohesion in
their lives.

If the pursuit of `social aesthetics´ sometimes seems quixotic, it is not, I

believe, because this is an illusory category of human culture, but
because, on the contrary, it is both very obvious and yet highly
dispersed through a wide range of cultural phenomena, many of which
have already been closely studied in other contexts, such as the
anthropology of art, ritual, and symbolism. Perhaps for that reason, the
broader aesthetic properties of social life, and aesthetic experience
itself, appear to many scholars to have been adequately accounted for
as aspects of something else. To a certain extent this is the logical
consequence of the fragmentation of academic studies, but it has also to
do with the constraints of expression. Most anthropological description
is beholden to the writing skills of scholars. To describe the social role
of aesthetics properly (its phenomenological reality), we may need a
`language´ closer to the multidimensionality of the subject itself-that is,
a language operating in visual, aural, verbal, temporal and (through
synaesthesia) even tactile domains. To me, this suggests a new line of
approach to what has long been inadequately called `visual´
anthropology.

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________________

ote

The approach outlined here clearly has antecedents and parallels in the
work of many others, but as is often the case, what they had to say only
became resonant to me once I had begun exploring these ideas myself.
Some of those whose writing seems to me particularly relevant to the
concept of a `social aesthetics´ are: Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Herzfeld,
Jeremy Coote, Steve Feld, Vladislav Todorov, Robert Desjarlais and, in
an earlier era, Ruth Benedict.

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