Praxis is a serious introspective process where one reflexively looks into ones own social reality.  “Praxis is a type of human engagement that is embedded within a tradition of communally shared understandings values, that remains vitally connected to people’s life experience, that finds expression in ordinary linguistic usage, and that rather being means through which they achieve outcomes separate from themselves, is a kind of enactment through which they constitute themselves as persons in historical community” (Joseph Praxis: Dunne, in Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techne’ in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. Marx in his “Theses on Feuerbach” says “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach included)…that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, praxis, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism - which, of course, does not know real sensuous activity as such.” (Theses of Feuerbach, trans. R. Livingston and G. Benton in L. Coletti (ed.) Early Writings, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975, 421-3.) Marx’s disappointment with theoretical theory and looking forward for a theory of practice and theory of action can be read from his concerns.

Praxis is a process in which the agent philosophically analyses his/her immediate social reality. It demands an intellectual and moral disposition toward right living and the pursuit of human good and hence different form of reasoning and knowledge. The knowledge generated out of this can be referred as deliberative excellence, practical wisdom, or practical reason. Associated cognitive virtues are understanding, judgement, and interpretation. Praxis is concerned with the timely, the local, the particular, and the contingent. This addresses the question – what should I do now, in this situation, given these circumstances, facing this particular problem, at this time?

Praxis is a very personal rational process in which understanding real life nitigrities are given prominence over interpreting them with established or taken for granted theoretical positions. Praxis is looking everything anew. It is a deliberate cognitive practice of understanding. Understanding is an event that happens within a relationship of vulnerability to that which one seeks to understand. It is a process that enables one to make critical-moral-political judgement in their practical life.

Praxis can be differentiated from practice and theory. Practice is an action in response to real life challenges taking the agent’s real life environment as granted. The cognitive process the agent undergoes is a stereotyped one. The rationality has no element of progressive dynamism. In practice status qua is not reflexively challenged. Practise and praxis is concerned with every day life. It is spatially and temporally located.  Theory assumes atemporality. In theory there is a deliberate attempt to grandiose its interpretation to the universal reality. Theoreticians attempt to fit the everyday reality into their framework. Now ness is less important for them. The more it is universalised the more it is alien from the day-to-day life.

The term is used in Marxist, existentialist and pragmatic philosophy. The term occupies a central place in the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The term is widely used in the theories of critical sociology of  Jürgen Habermas and reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.

Praxis Intervention

Praxis intervention is a learning programme (not a training programme) designed to facilitate the process of praxis among the vulnerable to reflexively understand their social reality and work towards changing it.

The process involves:

1. Orientation of self from contracted self identity to an expanded one. It is the process by which an individual is facilitated to critically look at him/her self  from historical, structural, communitarian, ecological perspectives. S/He is facilitated too look his/her fields of activities, positions in relation to that of the others and realise the political process involved in it.

2. Triggering his/her rational process from the status of practice to praxis.

Praxis Intervention Programme

Details of the praxis  intervention Programme:

The programme is targeted at elected tribal representatives of the grama/block Panchayats and volunteers suggested by the elected representatives.

The learning programme is designed as an intense classroom fieldwork interphased programmes for 4.5 months and continues the subsequent three years with less intense classroom sessions with a more focus on fieldwork.

 On the first experiment of the methodology:

1. The first workshop of the programme was conducted on 28^th and 29^th of January 2002 in which SAARC Poverty commission chairman Dr. Ponna Wignaraja participated. In the workshop a module was presented for the programme.

2. Constituted a core group to deliberate the conduct of the programme.

3. A pilot phase of the programme for two days was conducted inviting elected tribal representatives of grama/block Panchayats in the month of April 2002. On that workshop Atappady was selected as the place where the programme will be first initiated.

4. A field research was conducted at Wyanad and Attappady for understanding the basic issues to be covered in the learning programme.

5. Frequent Workshops were conducted to carefully design the programme. From the workshops the following decisions were taken: 

1. The programme will be conducted for a minimum of 4.5 months of intense classroom and field work sessions.

2. Each Classroom session will be for about five days, and each fieldwork sessions will be for about one month.

3. Classroom sessions will be posing questions for their research and field work. The other sessions will be arranged to facilitate their enquiry.

4. Each participant has to select an Ooru ( tribal Hamlet) and facilitate the entire Ooru to go under the process of praxis through the learner.

5. The fieldwork will be monitored by the course director. This will be done by calling a review meeting at the site of field work. The course director will also visit the locations of fieldwork.

6. Initial field work phases will be of analytical nature, and the latter phases will be of action phases.

7. The following subjects will be given prominence in the programme which will be reviewed time to time as per the demands from the field work: (i) social Construction of Social Reality, (ii) Exploring the history of livelihood of the region and Oorus. (iii) Exploring land relations, its utility patters and its history. (iv) Exploring personal history of men and women from their memories and critically interpreting them. (v) Exploring the nature and history of communitarian life. ( vi) Critically exploring the development history of Attappady.(vi) Food security and health. ( vii) Emerging gender relations. (viii) Ecological issues.( iv) Issues relating to agriculture and farming (v) education            and (vi) exploring opportunities from the decentralised planning initiatives.

8. The following were the basic assumptions with which the core group designed the learning programme:

·   Social reality is socially constructed.

·   Hence it can be de-constructed and re-constructed.

·   The re-construction does not just happen.

·   Praxis intervention may possibly help the poor to reconstruct their social Reality.

 ·   Praxis intervention attempts on bringing about desired change in the internal disposition of the individual and community habitus concerned so as to bring change in the reproductive schemata of social reality.

·   Intervening in the creation of economic capital requires an intervention in constructing virtual and actual capitals of cultural, social and symbolic kinds

·   A village society is not a homogenous whole. It is with full of contradictions, conflicts, and positions of various self-interests.

Conduct of Course

Phase I

Phase II

Phase III

Phase IV

Phase V

Phase VI

Phase VII

Phase VIII

 Phase 8 will be of a two days workshop. The date will be decided later on.