CCA: A new but necessary lens in my research

If the act of developing a working knowledge of a theoretical framework using the culture-centered approach is like jumping off a diving board, then I’m certain I just left the board. While my own research has continually revolved around the area of culture, CCA is a lens that provides a wildly new view. I gladly embrace it for its valuable insight and ability to establish a dialogue with and among audiences that have typically been set out on the peripheries of the social environment. But, frankly, it is just plain hard… not because it is hard to accept, but because it is hard to practice. For the first time in my education and research, I have to deconstruct many of common understandings of audiences and social dynamics that I’ve been taught over the years and begin rebuilding them simply to be more purposeful in my research.

Therefore, I’m thankful for the readings which challenge me with this new lens. For example, the Boddy article regarding spirit possession was, of course, a hurdle using my CCA lens. The difficulty was not in the content… I can understand that anthropologists are often pushed to “demystify analytical terms and resist being seduced into thinking that they dispassionately reflect reality…” (p. 408). This, of course, is not surprising when it comes to the topic of spirit possession. It’s seems reasonable to break down the phenomena through rationalization (i.e. medical terms, physiochemical body issues, and psychiatric disorders). Rather, the difficulty came for me when I personally began to consider the differences between central and peripheral possession. As Boddy identifies and discusses the rationalized research, it became very challenging for me to set the medical, psychiatric and even sociological explanations aside and simply look at spirit possession as a functioning and, dare I say, necessary component of the structure, agency and culture of each of these groups.

This challenge I’m faced with doesn’t make me doubt the applicability of CCA. Rather, I become more adamant of recognizing how this fits and why it needs to become a necessary component of my research. I’m certain it has a place and I look forward to a few months down the road when this lens is much more comfortable.

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit

Disinformation, Zionist propaganda, and free speech: Far right cancel culture

Thursday October 12, 2023. The settler colonial occupation had unleashed its infrastructure of violence over the Palestinian people over a period of five days. Gaza was being indiscriminately bombarded, with mass civilian casualties that Amnesty International noted " must be investigated as war crimes ." At 3:32 p.m., my office phone rang. I was occupied and the call went to the voicemail. "Dutta, you are a murderous, f***ing, racist c***. Go back to where you belong...I will see to your termination in New Zealand." A couple of hours before that, an email had gone out from the Zionist Dane Giraud to the email listserv of the Free Speech Union, performed as a supposed apology for attacking my academic freedom. In the email, Giraud referred to my earlier b log post on the interlinkages between far-right Zionism, attacks on academic freedom, and the free speech union, noting how he had been enraged by the following statement on my blog: "I was therefore not surpri

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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