Documentation and the Discourse of Hegemony: Understanding “State” and “Non-state” Spaces

The present milieu, marked by Data and its Documentation has engulfed almost all domains of study and life in terms of availability of information that, in turn, offers validity and authentication. However, there remains a facet of humanity that stands beyond the domains of objective data: Culture. The scope and ken of Data and Documentation fall short when it comes to accumulation or ‘validation’ of Cultural information of a people or physical space. In addition, culture is not a singular concept as physical space comprises “State” and the “Non-state” spaces inhabited by peoples, as elucidated by James C. Scott in The Art of Not Being Governed. Moreover, whilst the State does document its culture owing to the luxury of a script, the Non-states, either cannot document their cultural data owing to a lack of script or are incredibly naïve to it owing to their primary focus on orality. This, in turn, generates a hierarchy where the State imposes itself on Non-state spaces. The paper tries to place Culture in its traditional as well as esoteric definitions before assessing how conventional data collection and documentation adversely affect the Non-state spaces and its implications on their cultural continuity. The paper concludes with a feasible alternative to traditional data collection and documentation that shall ensure, in State terminology, a ‘record’ of the fast-receding Non-state spaces