To; Dr.Cristiana Bastos DearCristiana,
I guess mylatest message to you deserves further elaboration. What I meant to say isthis: 1. On thebasis of what you wrote it appears that you may not know that in the particularsocial sub-group and in the particular sub-culture where I grew up in Goa,being a gentleman and insulting anyone, particularly a lady, are incompatible.So I will repeat what I said over and over: Nothing in this series of posts should be construed aspersonal animosity against you which I have none. I disagree with some of youropinions and interpretations, but I respect you as a researcher, and I am gladI had an opportunity to have this conversation with you about a topic of mutualinterest. 2. BeforeI decide if I am going to have a debate/conversation about a topic with aperson, I ask myself three questions: (a) Do I have expertise on this topic?;(b) Do I know this person from her/his publications/presentations?; and (c) DoI respect this person from her/his publications/presentations? If the answer tothese three questions is “yes”, I proceed with the debate/conversation. In yourcase, the answer was “yes” to all three questions. Obviously this is asubjective decision. 2. I donot believe I “teared your work apart”. I repeat what I previously stated. Iagree with you on some things, disagree on other things. I documented extensively on issues about whichI disagree with you and presented both the data and the reasoning that led to mydisagreement. (For example, your statement that graduates of Escola Médicacould not teach in their own School, when there is abundant evidence that theycould and did it well, and I presented some of that evidence.) I could haveeasily said that labeling Goan doctors who risked and sacrificed their healthand their lives as “Doctors for the Empire” and “colonial doctors” and calling theirSchool a “subaltern center” are insults, but I did not say they are insults becauseI do not believe you meant those labels to be insults. I think they are basedon a conceptual framework that is inapplicable to the events we are discussingand I explained why I think it is inapplicable. Every time I disagreed with you,I explained and documented the reason. For the most part I used the samesources you used. 3. What ismy theory? My conceptual framework (I would not call it a theory) is that theevents that took place in Goa during the Constitutional Monarchy and the First Republicare a unique phenomenon and cannot be explained in terms of theories borrowedfrom other authors who attempted to explain the interactions with Europeans inother societies. For lack of a better expression, I called it the “Goanexceptionalism”. What I mean by this and why I said this was also explained in detailin one of my previous posts and I do not believe I need to repeat it here. 4. Theissue of training is more complicated. Time and again we have examples of individualswho made major contributions with hardly any training. As far as I know,Charles Boxer never had any formal training in history. Piaget’s training wasin zoology, not psychology. Erik Erickson did not have any training more than ahigh school diploma. Jerome D. Frank argued that the active ingredients ofpersuasion and healing are the same, whether it is psychotherapy done bypsychiatrists or interventions done by shamans. At any rate, you do not knowwhat my training was in social sciences because I never told you. If you feelthat my training or lack of training affected my reasoning and conclusions, Iwould like to know how that happened, and I will do the same to you. Given thatour times are precious, my preference, however, is that we stick to the issuesrather than discussing each other’s trainings. Bestwishes, John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/1038338410.4058736.1704163890756%40mail.yahoo.com.
