Can Pedagogy of Care be Practiced in Precarity? Lived Experiences of Contractualization of Academic Labor from India

Abstract

Contractualization of academic labor has been a dominant feature of Higher Education Institutions in India in recent times. This has been evident in how ad-hocism—a form of contractualization—has operated in the University of Delhi. The neoliberal push towards universities’ self-managing their funds is fundamental in making academic labor precarious. They are expected to operate as corporations focused on skill development, event management, and producing market-ready workforces rather than sites of critical thinking. As such, faculty well-being and security often take a back seat, with casualization seen as a cheaper solution. In this paper, I ask the question: Is it realistically possible to practice a pedagogy of care in structural systems where contractualization of academic labor is a norm? Should contractual teachers be expected to teach with care in uncaring educational institutions that are hostile to them? Using a combination of qualitative research methods, including auto-ethnography, lived experiences and in-depth interviews, I illustrate how the pedagogy of care framework is insufficient to understand the teaching−learning system when structural discriminations such as contractual academic labor exist. The structural discriminations are manifested in the hierarchy and inequality in the workplace, and the lack of academic freedom in the classroom. I argue that contractualization is antithetical to the very idea of what has been called a pedagogy of care.