Culture-Centered Approach

Miscellaneous queries regarding global inequalities

2012-02-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

1) In chapter 3, while talking about "experiences at the margins" the author says that culture-centered approach discusses the relevance of participatory dialogues in underserved communities. My question is, are the corporate structures even interested to pay attention to the perspectives of the subalterns? And more importantly, how can these "dialogues" play a role in making the corporate structures pay due attention to the concern of the subalterns?

2) Is there a just and right way to use land that belongs to indigenous communities for activities such as mining? In other words, if there is a great natural resource in lands belonging to tribals, for example, is there a recommended way to use that land without disrupting the lives of the tribals?

Neoliberalism,Agriculture & Communication

2012-02-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

In Chapter 3 of Communicating Social Change, Dutta (2011) unpacks how the logic of positive values attributed to technology and modernization are used communicatively to market Western agricultural agendas that displace Third World agricultural practices, consequently forcing Third World farmers to depend on the West. Examples of such communicative strategies include the rhetoric of innovative practices, modernization, mechanized farming, and high productivity. Dutta also discusses how the rhetoric of philanthropy, development, aid, and scientific legitimacy are utilized to diffuse Western agricultural concepts that disenfranchise and impoverish peasant farmers in Third World countries.
My Questions:
1. Given that local elites who own the spaces for the expression of alternative rationalities for listening to the voices of the Subaltern advocated by Dutta are often times accomplices in development projects, what other strategies can be employed to challenge the status-quo.
2. According to Dutta (2011) the promotion of modern technologies and concepts such as the genetically modified seeds in Third World countries are implicitly carried out in collusion with global development agencies. Given that the leadership of these agencies resides in the West, how can Third World countries disrupt these power structures in light of the material inequities that exist between both regions. What communicative strategies will help to change the power equation?
3. Could the negative impacts of Western agricultural agendas such as environmental degradation, loss of communal identity and economic power that often accompany modernization projects be regarded as unintended consequences by chance?

Biotech and Innovation

2012-02-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

1) Is there a way to adapt capitalism to a non-neoliberalist framework, or is it inherent in the model? In other words, is there a substitute for "profit" as a driving motivation for experimentation? One of the reasons biotech engineers plants that can't reproduce on their own is to hold on to the profit to be gained to offset the millions in research to develop higher-sustaining foods, etc., while allowing it to still be sold at a lower price so that more people can buy it over and over again than would be able to buy it if it was a one-shot deal. Non-reproducing plants also help ensure that even a ecologically unsustainable plant can be a) grown, and b)not get "loose". Given these conditions, would it be better to encourage biotech to sell to "exclusive" farmers and let the plants reproduce on their own?

2) Mohan discusses the difference between innovation and improvement. Since "innovation" is merely "different than what was there before", why does it carry the association with improvement? Is is actually driven by our need as neoliberalists to be "free", which then makes us curious as to our boundaries, and that leads to a need to know what is out there? In other words, is our thirst for all things new simply driven by our thirst for knowledge (a consequence of trying to find all our options under neoliberalism)?

Domains, Locations, and Practices of Power & Knowledge

2012-02-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

What are material andsymbolic domains of agricultural knowledge and practices, and where are theylocated? How are these domains situated in the culture-centered approach to globalagricultural issues? In what ways do the material and symbolic work together,and where do they diverge as privileged sites in understanding the issuesdiscussed in the chapter?

In what ways can becompare/contrast the enabling of the exploitation of local, predominatelyindigenous knowledges around the world by trade rules for intellectual propertyrights (TRIPS) to the academic project of research? In other words, how are thesystems of power/knowledge and logic behind TRIPS tied to or manifested in scholarlyresearch?

Communicative practices

2012-02-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

In Chapter 2 of communicating Social Change, Dutta (2011) discusses the communicative practices utilized by the West and transnational corporations in maintaining the status quo that continuously marginalize Third World countries. Dutta highlights the use of languages such as primitivism, modernity and culture as words that negatively frame the activities of Third World countries. Alternatively, the TNCs and the West use the language of development, enlightenment to carry out actions that perpetuate poverty in the South:
My questions:
1. What strategies can the South employ to change such negative framing of its practices?
(B) What are some of the communicative strategies to counter the rhetorical framing of cultural practices as barbaric and backward?

Disrupting neoliberalism

2012-02-07T01:40:00.000-08:00

1) In chapter 2 of Communicating Social Change one comes across a very comprehensive picture of how the World Bank along with the national elite promote neoliberalism and an overall societal ambiance where voices of the poor go unheeded. But when one tries to disrupt these structures, what does one do -- in practical terms? Where does one start?

2) Instead of disrupting the overall structure of neoliberalism, is there a way to ensure -- through proper policies -- that the profit that's made in a neoliberal market actually do trickle down to the lower segments of society? In other words, is there a way to ensure through appropriate policies that neoliberalism keeps its promise? Or is that idea itself an illusion?

Poverty

2012-02-06T14:29:00.000-08:00

1-Does defining capital as private versus public, as neoliberalist or marxist or otherwise, effectively change one's access to basic resources? Isn't the starving man starving whether he doesn't own bread because he doesn't own the money to buy bread or doesn't own bread because it's not a commodity? So neoliberalism might really only have an effect on the middle class, not the rich or the poor.
2-Is it possible to eliminate poverty without eliminating wealth? Can you ensure a higher standard of living for everyone (meaning, is it possible to change a uniform standard of living for the better)??

Knowledge Production and Agency

2012-02-06T08:49:00.001-08:00

What are the roles of research (or knowledgeproduction more generally) in understanding and acting upon poverty? How dothese roles change across the different theories of poverty and development? Inwhat ways does our own research reflect or constitute these roles?

How can the conception of agency outlined in theculture-centered approach help us in understanding how marginalized individualsand communities act in ways that uphold (or at least appear to uphold) thestructures of their oppression?

Traditions of communication in India or China

2012-02-03T04:24:00.000-08:00

US communication programs are increasingly repositioning themselves toward the Asian market, with the growing number of Asian students that are being drawn into US programs as the US markets take a downturn. Simultaneously, in search of markets abroad, these programs are repositioning themselves to set up shop abroad, making the teaching of communication skills a marketable commodity for a new market segment of students in China and India. As a result, many communication programs across the US are setting up satellite campuses across Asia.

This is a repitition of the same old imperialist strategy that has marked the conquests carried out by Western empires across the globe: the commodity that they are trying to sell here is "communication."

However, a quick look through most of these satellite campuses demonstrates that most of the academics who are placed to carry out the communication programs are not locals. From the vitas of these academics who are managing the satellite campuses and running the programs, you can't really tell whether they have any background whatsoever in China or India, or whether they have spent any amount of time in these countries learning about the local cultural contexts and the understandings of communication in these rich histories. In fact, the study and teaching of "communication" is so highly US-centered that after intense search on multiple databases, I came across two rudimentary books in "Eastern Communication."

So the exporting of communication is based on a simple logic that US programs of communication have something valuable to offer (a commodity) that is not present in the new market (i.e. a need or want in the market). What is however wrong with this logic of the market is that amidst its ignorance, it arrogantly assumes that these national cultures, with long histories that predate the history of Western empires and civilizations, have not produced knowledge about communication or communication skills. Of course, these American academics/marketers/planners developing savvy marketing plans for setting up skills training workshops and public diplomacy programs say in India are completely unfamiliar with the Hind Swaraj or Arthasastra.

What is however even more disappointing is that this market for US-bred communication skills in India exists because most Indians (myself included) are unfamiliar with either the Arthasatra or the Hind Swaraj. The country has been so thoroughly colonized by Lor Macaulay and the development of Eurocentric knowledge systems throughout that the discursive sites of knowledge production that speak of the rich history of communication knowledge in India have been rendered invisible. The onslaught of the next round of colonialism of communication knowledge can perhaps be countered through efforts of culturally-based scholarship that seek to engage with the rich traditions of Nalanda and Gurukul, embodied in contemporary institutions such as Shantiniekatan and Viswa Bharati that attempt to embody these cultural traditions and histories syncretically.

Questions about Resistance

2012-01-31T06:17:00.000-08:00

In Chapter 1 of Communicating Social Change Dutta (2011) unpacks the different approaches to social change, pointing out specifically how conventional approaches that are often top down in nature perpetuate injustice in social structures especially in Third World. Alternatively, Dutta’s 2011 canvass a new approach, the culture-centered approach which seeks to change the social structures that perpetuate injustice. One key point in this week’s reading is the importance of resistance in bringing about social change that the CCA promotes. According to Dutta 2011, collective resistance to social injustice is an effective strategy to bring about change in social structures. My question is:
1.Given that resistive actions that are geared towards disrupting systems of production are usually violent in nature often leading to the death of marginalized population, so I am wondering if there are specific communicative strategies to minimize the wanton death of the subaltern mass?
2.Having witnessed series of resistive actions in my home country in Africa, I have realized that often times, such resistance to oppression and social injustice are hijacked by groups with intentions that are unrelated to social change, consequently perpetuating actions that are antithetical to social change.Again,my question is: Are there communicative tactics that could help prevent genuine resistive acts from snowballing into unintended consequences, or how can communication specialists frame resistive actions without igniting broader violence

Queries surrounding the Culture-centered approach

2012-01-31T02:25:00.000-08:00

1) In the chapter 1 of Communicating Social Change, Dutta (2011) cites Ganesh et al. as emphasizing “the relevance of working with resistance movements in challenging the dominant discourses of neoliberalism, engaging with the discursive processes through which organizing gets constituted, developing new forms of organizing globalization from below that offer new ways of challenging the neoliberal structures” (p. 52-53). My question is, through what practical communication strategies can the dominant discourse of something as globally-pervasive as neoliberalism be effectively challenged? More importantly, how does one ensure that the success of a certain resistive movement is not simply local, but that it is has brought about a major structural change that will have positive effects elsewhere as well?

2) How does an activist or a researcher – as an outsider and someone who’s a product of the dominant structures – gain entry into and win the confidence of members of a marginalized community – especially one that has been abused and exploited – to the extent that they open up to the activist or researcher?

Symbolic-Material, Culture-Colonial

2012-01-29T20:57:00.000-08:00

1.) How does theculture-centered approach make sense of the material and symbolic worlds inwhich we live? Given this, can social change be envisioned and effected throughonly one domain, either material or symbolic means? Or must both be utilized,and if so, what is their relationship to one another?

2.) What are theepistemological underpinnings White’s and Bierstedt’s concepts of culture? Inwhat ways do these concepts reflect the colonial knowledges and imperialistimperatives discussed in Chapter 2?

Questions on neoliberalism

2012-01-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

1) In "A Brief History of Neoliberalism," Harvey ends hoping for "an open democracy dedicated to the achievement of social equality coupled with economic, political and cultural justice." But looking at how in the practical world money and power corrupts politics, I wonder whether such "an open democracy" is possible in the real world. Your thoughts?

2) With its existence tied to the logic of the neoliberal market, is there a way the mass media -- particularly mainstream journalism -- can critique and expose the negative outcomes of neoliberalism?

Materiality and Social Change

2012-01-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

Questions
1 From this week’s reading, we saw the critical role of the mass media in aiding and promoting the “hidden transcripts” of the ruling elite in the society. My question is given the business interest of media organizations, how can civil society groups get the media to unpack the hidden agendas of the ruling elite without compromising its own standards?
2.Given the level of violence and loss of lives that often result from overt resistance to neoliberal agendas, especially the use of military force by government to further marginalize the public, what are some of the strategies for resisting unfavorable policies?
3.Beyond theorizing about concepts such as “hidden transcripts”, how can the academe translate such theories to practical that help to address marginalization of the subaltern population? Where does one draw the line between academe and activism?

The Thickness of Power

2012-01-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

1.) Given Greenhouse’sdiscussion of James’ hidden transcripts and critique of hegemony, is it everpossible for hegemony to be total? How and why do hidden transcripts differbetween the powerful and the powerless? What sets hidden transcripts apart fromother discursive or communicative acts and practices?

2.) How do understandings of the workings and modes of power help ourunderstanding of neoliberalism and the movements challenging it? How might aview of power as ongoing practice, “as potential rather than property,something to be exercised rather than held,” as well as rejecting “dualisticdivisions between individual and society, structure and agency” resituate or reconceptualizedefinitions of change and acts of resistance?

Wikipedia, Free Internet Rights, and Neoliberalism

2012-01-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

1) Given that neoliberalism dominates U.S. policy on issues such as IP and Piracy, can the push for "freedom" against the IP Act by Wikipedia and other sites be seen as minority cultural discourses? Or a cry for change of the dominant view?
2) Harvey's book on neoliberalism seems to present the idea of this discourse as being orchestrated by intention and purposeful minds. Do you agree or disagree and why? Should Neoliberalism be viewed this way? What other kinds of "free" state might Iraq/Iran accomplish without the influence of the U.S.?

Little victories, the personal and the political

2012-01-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

Posted on January 21, 2012

Yesterday (January 20, 2012), Debalina and I went to meet with the Tippecanoe County school officials to contest the categorization of our son Shloke as a "English as a Second Language (ESL)" child. This was after I had written to the school administrator about how that categorization was incorrect and had asked to see race-based data from him about decisions that are made on the basis of the categorization (resources provided or denied on the basis of specific metrics, and the race-based breakdowns of these metrics. I was interested to know how often children of color were denied specific resources although they qualified under a certain metric as compared to Caucasian children).

At the meeting, the school officials were very gracious. They had also brought in a bilingual expert who specialized in Spanish and English, and who in someway understood our struggle although she was not conversant in Bengali. This particular expert worked with the increasing number of bilingual Spanish-English families in the school system. She shared with us that she understood our anger because she herself was of Hispanic origin and recalled how she felt angered when she was asked to take TOEFL to demonstrate her English proficiency although she had spent majority of her adult life in the US.

Our discussion with the school staff was productive, and we engaged in a dialogue about what the structural implications are when a child growing up in a multi-lingual context where there is a lot of language shifting that goes on is classified by the system as "English as second language (ESL)." A mistaken classification, that might often be on the basis of what school staff and volunteers want to hear in their heads, has large consequences for the child and the kinds of structural resources that he has access to. The school administrators admitted that there was a need for greater training and information-based advocacy directed at school staff and teachers.

This is a small victory for us and for Shloke, and this small victory points to the need for engaging in everyday struggles that challenge the assumptions that are built into our systems. You see, in a climate of political correctness and equal opportunity, nobody and particularly so with administrators of broader educational structures, wants to hear that their structure is racist. And yet there is so much racism that is built into the institutional processes of these structures and the seemingly well-meaning, good hearted people that inhabit these structures. That IS the hegemony of Whiteness.

The school official who had noted down that we had mentioned Shloke grew up primarily learning Bengali wrote that down because she wanted to hear that in her head and that is the perception she had walking into the door with. Even though we filled out a form in which we wrote specifically that at home Shloke spoke both English and Bengali, in that order, and repeated to her multiple times that we code-switched in our everyday conversations, she wrote down what she did because she had already made up her mind.

It is hard to speculate what went on in someone's mind when they decided to operationalize a situation in a particular way that seemed far from reality to us, the parents of the child; but what we learn from this situation is the increasing necessity of equipping our school systems, colleges, and universities with staff and administrators who understand the nuances of culture, are willing to engage in the complexities that constitute boundary crossings, and are open to listening and learning.

In a report of the consultation meeting, the school staff had noted that the "parents gave us contradictory information." The truth is that we said what we did all along, that we code switched often at home, and Shloke was exposed to both languages: English and Bengali in his home environment.

Yesterday, at the end of our meeting, the school administrator offered to re-write the evaluation and also offered to revise/edit out the statements about us giving contradictory reports that were written into the consultation form. You see in a world where the truths are often constituted on the basis of who gets to narrate the truth, our personal actvism allowed us to rewrite the story. However, we could not have engaged in this personal activism had it not been for the guidance of colleagues who directed us to resources and the advise of Hope Gulker and Jeanette Leonard, the faculty members of the Purdue Speech Lab who educated us, guided us, and equipped us with invaluable resources. To us, Hope and Jeanette were guardian angels who built our efficacy and empowered us. We also had the privilege of having my father, baba, with us at the time, whose personal politics of activism and advocacy in speaking out againts injustices offered us a template for action.

Debalina and I created an alternative narrative that challenged the process frameworks of a dominant structure and re-wrote its framing of us as liars by interrogating the processes of the structure and by being comfortable with "being uncomfortable" in asking these questions; however, we were "able" to do because of the structures we inhabit as Purdue academics. We are surrounded by friends and colleagues who ask difficult questions, and seek to engage with the complex answers to these difficult questions. In sum, we are privileged.

I wonder how many parents are so privileged to have access to the advocacy and activism resources to raise their voices when injustices such as this happen everyday through seemingly innoucuous practices. How would someone with lower levels of access than us to communicative structures and to their rules have responded?

How do we turn our personal sorrow and engagement to a weapon for collective organizing, as a resource in our community that challenges the well-meaning racist processes that inhabit our educational systems and struuctures? How do we turn our activism into educational opportunities for dominant structures, and in interrogating the games of racism that they play out everyday in excluding "the other"? Most importantly for us, how do we as academics inhabiting university structures turn these lessons of learning into entry points for advocating for systemic changes in evaluation systems that carry out their racist biases through their seemingly innocuous rules and procedures?

I can speak English Sir!

2012-01-18T10:57:00.000-08:00

How often is it that people of color negotiate with racist frames directed at them and couched in the form of evaluations? These racisms that one experiences are furher nuanced when one is a foreigner, with the foreignness marked on the skin/name/last name!

One of these instances happened very recently with the Tippecanoe County School System. Speaking to one of the school staff, I was appalled when she told me that our child grew up in an "English as a Second Language" (ESL) home. Her assumption was that we were Indian, so English was our second language.

I went on to use this opportunity then to tell her that what she said was racist because her biases were based on assumptions she made about what happened inside our home by looking at my child's last name and by perhaps assuming that we came from someplace else where people didn't speak English.

I then told her how I made my living teaching White kids from Americana how to read and write in English "properly," with their sentences full of grammatical errors, usage problems, spelling errors etc. I discussed with her how my wife and I often code switched between Bengali and English when we spoke with each other, and that we spoke in English often at home (not that I am proud of it, but that's a different subject!). She was both surprised and amazed at learning this because she had the impression that people from India spoke in "Indian."

What appals me about all of this is that we let our teachers, instructors, and administrators within academic systems carry out these ignorant racist stereotypes under the garb of evaluation. I shudder to think that some day my child would be subject to these racist evaluations by his teachers under the name of "evaluation" simply because of his skin color and because of his foreign last name.

Interesting how the very structures that spout off so much nonsense about "equal opportunity" hide behind the games of evaluation to silence, marginalize, and strip those that look/sound different of their dignity.

Technology and Activism

2012-01-17T18:11:00.000-08:00

1) While conducting culture-centered research, how does a communication scholar ensure that she is "listening" to subaltern voices in an unbiased way? In other words, being a product of the elite knowledge structures, how does she ensure she isn't inadvertently bringing the values of the dominant culture in her way of assessing the subalterns or their condition? Alternately, how does she also ensure that given her sympathy for the subalterns, she doesn't fail to see the entire situation facing the subalterns, in an unbiased way? And also, is there ever a way to avoid biases while doing research?

2)While "cheaper air travel and new electronic communication technologies have speeded up information flows and enhanced personal contact among activists thus forming 'a global electronic fabric of struggle,'" is there a way for people at the margins -- who themselves have no access to technology -- to bring their struggle to the attention of others at the margins elsewhere in the world, WITHOUT the intervention of activists?

The necessity for public structures of education and the simultaneous regulation of the educational sector

2011-12-28T23:02:00.000-08:00

I was reading today a facebook post from a friend about how there are several engineering, medical, and management institutes that are mushrooming all around India that charge exorbitant sums of money to afford admissions to large numbers of prospective candidates who are willing to pay the money for an engineering, medicine, or MBA degree.

The large scale and fast-paced growth of educational outfits all over the country is accompanied by the weak regulations of the education market, marked by rampant corruption and a climate of false advertisements. 100 percent placements, foreign collaborations, teachers from abroad- these have all become markers of educational outfits across India that promise the allure of success to anyone that enters through the door. Children, and more importantly, their parents are willing to shell out the money, sometimes going in debt, at other times even selling their valuable little savings in order to secure a bright future for their child.

What is however cause for alarm is the extent to which the slogans, advertisements, and marketing campaigns of the educational outfits are built on lies. Such forms of lying as integral components of the marketing logic have become fairly standard in the commodification of education. Loopholes are figured out so that institutions can claim that they offer internships abroad. Placement data are made up so that institutions can show 100% placement. Clearly, strong regulations, monitoring of curricula, and more importantly, monitoring of advertising/marketing campaigns are much needed. However, given the corrupt influences of money on Indian politics and vice versa, it is difficult to envision an overhauling of the educational system with strict parameters and processes of accountability.

Most importantly, in ensuring the accessibility of the poorer sectors of India (which is the majority of the country) to quality education, it is vital to foster public structures of education that create creative opportunities for students to participate productively in co-creating alternative rationalities.

American hegemony in Communication: Neo-imperialism and market-logics

2011-12-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

So much of the discipline of Communication research and the pedagogy of Communication is founded on the principles of developing communication skillsets for effectiveness. As global markets have opened up to the export/import of education, Communication skills training has sought to find robust markets abroad.

The assumption behind this marketing enterprise is that Americans have something to offer (in this case, a US-branded knowledge base about what makes up good and effective communication) to the rest of the world. The competitive advantage of the American brand of communication education therefore ties to this ability of the brand to develop a unique selling proposition and to sell it well to its target audiences abroad. So we have wholesale programs ranging from public speaking to writing that are attempting to make entries into Asian markets.

What I find completely misguided about this picture though is that it continues to reek of US-style imperialism and arrogance (based on the belief that the Americans can export their democracy, civil society, capitalism, nation building, communication skillsets to the rest of the world). It continues to carry on the basic assumption that Americans can teach others across the globe how to become better communicators (of course based on an assumption of effectiveness and superiority).

In addition to the basic problem of arrogance and American exceptionalism that is built into this logic, I also find the logic to be counterintuitive to the narrative of the market and market research. Market research begins with the basic premise that you first conduct formative secondary and primary data gathering to figure out who your audience is even before you start developing and designing your product. If US academics of Communication who so desire to market their communication skillsets to Asia want to be effective, my suggestion to them would be that they begin with first understanding their markets in Asia, the cultures that they are marketing to, and the needs that originate from within these market. However, I am not so sure that the US-style academic system is capable of doing this because of the fundamental problem of US exceptionalism that makes Americans arrogant and poor listeners in global arenas (you have to look at the history of recent decades of US diplomacy globally to get a sense of this).

To really be effective, US communicators who want to export US-style knowledge of effective communication skills perhaps need to begin by being humble and by unlearning the basic premises of communication that make them arrogant. The starting point is perhaps the recognition that US-style research and teaching of communication is just that, a cultural artifact that is deeply rooted in American assumptions about what communication is and what makes it effective.

Petty Bourgeoisie: Carrying out the misdeeds for the rich!

2011-12-25T07:35:00.000-08:00

So we have known for a while that the richest 1% consume most of the global resources. We have also known for a while that the richest 1% use loopholes in legal processes to exploit financial rules and regulations to aggrandize wealth; having known this though, one of the questions that often strikes me is what structures and processes do the richest 1% utilize in order to carry out their injustices, illegal activities, and acts of corruption that facilitate the accumulation of wealth. The example of the tax havens I posted on earlier depicts the active and catalyzing role played by the middle classes, by a battery of executives and lawyers who are paid by the richest 1% to carry out the illegal activities by figuring out the legal loopholes in global policy structures and by configuring ways in which legal processes can be manipulated to serve the interests of the rich. In figuring out the loopholes and in manipulating them, the petty bourgeoisie are trained through management programs, policy programs, and law schools in the ways in which knowledge can be strategically manipulated to "legalize" illegal action. Typically, all of this is configured under the umbrella of corporate practices and corporate strategy so that the fundamental theft and corruption in these illegal activities is given a legal facelift. Therefore, in imagining and articulating spaces of social change, public pedagogy needs to be focused on disrupting the monolithic narratives of greed that occupy our professional programs. Questions of ethics need to take centerstage in discussions of corporate practices. The praxis of social change needs to be precisely directed at the social science and management-based disciplines of economics, law, policy and management, working toward continually disrupting the hegemony of academic disciplines that serve as the manipulative tools of the richest 1%. Global regulations ultimately are the very sites through which illegal corporate practices can be monitored and controlled.

The Interview: Campusing and the culture of greed

2011-12-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

This post was prompted by a Facebook post made by one of my doctoral advisees Rahul Rastogi. The post depicted the ways in which a group of students occupied a Recruitment session held by Goldman Sachs at Princeton University.

The occupation of the Goldman Sachs recruitment session, similar to many such occupations happening across the US, was innovative in its ability to draw our attention to the interplays of corruption and greed on college campuses, and in raising some fundamental questions about practices such as corporate recruitment on our college and university campuses.

Universities and colleges are often the breeding grounds for the unethical practices that are embodied in the corporate cultures of organizations like Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers. However, on many college and university campuses, and particularly among the elite students of elite MBA programs of these universities and colleges, for the longest time, these were the most coveted jobs. So what breeds in students the desire for fundamentally unethical organizations such as Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers. Is it the lack of knowledge? Is it the basic absence of a moral/ethical compass among these students? Or is it some combination of both?

I believe the ignorance that is typically evident among the MBA types who typically have not for instance read up on the (unethical aspects of) corporate practices of Goldman Sachs is also connected to the basic absence of a moral/ethical compass among these students. Many of these students grow up on the myth that everyone has access to basic resources, and one's ability to do well in life is tied to how much God-gifted talent they have (you can see Ayn Rand at work early on). Their parents feed them the notion from early on that as long as they take care of themselves, the world will operate just fine. I have heard articulations such as "The poor are poor because they are lazy," or "There are thousands of beggars that you come across everyday in India. You can't possibly ask me to feel compassion for each one of them" among this prototype.

So these students, finding their way into elite MBA programs, think of themselves as the children of God. They are the chosen few; the ones that have the brains and the ability to make it big. Their king-size egos are further fed by the variety of business school tools such as case studies, mock interviews, group discussions etc., where the more arrogant and pompous you are, the greater your reward and likelihood of getting ahead.The entitlement then works powerfully in subverting the capacity to ask critical questions or to interrogate the logic through which campus interviews, job talks, recruitment efforts are organized. Being critical would also mean that the MBA types would also need to interrogate the fundamental tenets of entitlement upon which their entire education has been constituted. Being critical would mean that we ask these students to start questioning the very articulations of greed that have constituted their life goals.

For college and university campuses to start engaging in questions about the values embodied in the organizations they desire to work for, courses on critical empowerment need to be offered not simply in the Liberal Arts but in the sciences, engineering, and management programs. Concepts such as transparency, accountability, and reflexivity need to be turned into everyday concepts that can be engaged in the everyday practices of living among our students. And most importantly, rather than turning our students into privileged minions of corporations without backbones, we need to emphasize the ways in which we can teach them to interrogate their privilege and put this privilege to use in actively imagining and creating a just world.

Academic leadership: What does it mean to me?

2011-11-22T06:18:00.001-08:00

For the last several years of my academic life, I have been drawn to leadership roles. But what does leadership mean in academia? What do we expect from our academic leaders? What roles do academic leaders play and what are the benchmarks through which we judge them? Is the only option in being a leader to sell your backbone to the dominant players of society?

When I consider my own journey in leadership, I wonder: What is the type of leader I want to be? How does my leadership role work within the context of my role as an academic interested in issues of social justice and social change? How does the desire to be a leader fit within the broader realm of my academic identity as a scholar studying social injustices and seeking to work toward spaces of solidarity with those at the margins in order to address these injustices through scholarship?

Do I get co-opted into a system that carries out the interests of the top 1% by chosing to participate in a leadership role in university structures that are increasingly becoming corporatized? What are the opportunities through which I can connect my leadership in projects of social justice with possibilities of leadership within academia?

These questions have increasingly occurred to me over the past one month, particularly as I have been watching the responses of campus leadership to the Occupy Wall Street movement on college campuses. These questions also occur to me when I think of examples such as that of Lawrence Summers leading Harvard? The Lawrence Summers of the world constitute one kind of academic administrators. To limit the possibilities for leadership to the kinds of Professor Summers severely limits the possibilities that can be imagined through academic leadership.

In thinking about my personal philosophy of academic leadership, I am drawn to one of my favorite quotes from my favorite Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore who envisioned spaces "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high." In academe, leadership is an opportunity for creating such open spaces where knowledge is co-constructed by communities and academics working together to break down the walls of impermeability in society. In this vision of leadership, the boundaries for creation of knowledge are not rendered impermeable by arguments of expertise made by a narrow set of parochial academics, but rather are opened up to anyone who is interested in participating in constructions of knowledge claims and in debating these claims. In this vision of academe, leadership offers a space to engage the terrains of knowledge which can hopefully work toward fostering a just world without barriers to who gets to participate in the processes of knowledge creation. To foster this vision of leadership however, university leaders are challenged to move away from the rhetoric of market intelligence, branding, competitive advantage, and unique selling propositions to visions of hope, sustenance, and equitable opportunities for access that foster transformational possibilities. Universities can play vital roles in leading societies and cultures toward questions of ethics, values, and practice. To lead universities into these leadership roles, leaders of universities themselves need to engage seriously with questions of values and transformative possibilities.

Although I do understand that universities ought to engage with questions of economic sustainability in current climates of budget cuts, I am not convinced that the logic of the market is the only logic through which universities can find the answers to such questions of sustenance. Or for that matter, whether we should let the logic of the market dictate universities and their missions? We need to first recognize that the logic of the market is perhaps one narrow model for thinking about universities and their roles, a model when applied without regulations is constraints that is likely to produce negative effects. Rather, in revisiting the fundamental missions of universities as spaces for creating opportunities for broader access to the production of knowledge, we perhaps ought to be sensitized to the pitfalls of being constrained by the neoliberal logic of the market, and work toward exploring alternative rationalities of organizing academic organizations.

Leadership then becomes a space for the enactment of positive power, in envisioning alternative logics and rationalities, in fostering spaces of positive transformations in societies by recognizing local capacities and by respecting these local capacities for decision-making, juxtaposed amidst the acknowldgment of the constraining role of the economic structures in contemporary neoliberal organizing of education. Such leadership is perhaps not easily stipulated in a recipe of leadership success or pathways to presidency; but this need to rearticulate alternative organizing possibilities perhaps is the very essence of the challenge of contemporary academic leadership.

Academic leadership to me is most fundamentally about having an opportunity to touch lives, and to foster spaces of nurturing for listening to many different ways of looking at the world and engaging it. When I think of the leaders who have shaped my own life, I think of those people who have nurtured my growth by articulating specific visions and by teaching me through their visions. These leaders however have also been people who have in this process of recruiting me to their visions taught me to trust my own visions and brought out the best in me in my desire to have an impact through my academic work. In such leaders, I have seen the openness to ask difficult questions, to entertain difficult challenges, and to create opportunities for engaging with these difficult challenges and questions. From these leaders, I have learned to trust my own journey in seeking to explore alternative forms of academic organizing that create opportunities for building solidarity with global agendas of social justice.

It is with this hope for academic leadership as being truly transformative that I wrap up these initial reflections on the meanings of leadership in academe.

The Games of Whiteness: Logics of mediocre racisms

2011-11-15T19:35:00.001-08:00

Whiteness, academe, silence Doing good, openness, equal opportunity Diversity, equity, justice Talk, all talk Talk that sounds good And gives me the reassurance that academe is somehow opening up To difference. And yet The talk is far from the truth Whiteness carries out in the actions of the benevolent White man and woman Who believes she has taught the world The logics of empowerment And takes it on herself To save the downtrodden and the oppressed From the Third. Whiteness and its specters Couched as doing good Couched as altruism and progress Telling me that I am backward That I have to refer back to the games of Whiteness In order to qualify as a participant. Whiteness and its specters Telling me That the knowledge of my culture is primitive So she is going to send her missionaries and mercenaries and democracy promoters and war mongers and public health professionals To teach me to behave To pick up the language So I could be empowered under her Imperial guises.

The logic of neoliberalism: "Humans are fundamentally selfish creatures"

2011-11-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

"Humans are inherently selfish creatures. So if we help ourselves, we inherently help others by taking care of ourselves." This logic of individual selfishness lies at the heart of neoliberalism. What is interesting about this logic is that I have heard it reiterated among the middle class elites in India in my years of growing up. During many of these debates, when I pointed to anecdotal examples of people that I knew who dedicated their lives to the service of others, the logic came back with the response "helping others is also a self-driven endeavour. When we help others, we do so because we feel fulfilled." Such logics then point to the self-actualization needs of humans as suggested by Maslow to note that helping others help us fulfill our self-actualization needs, which are also selfish in nature. Ultimately then, this is how the neoliberal logic justifies the individualistic greed of neoliberal subjects: You are being honest and being true to what is your fundamental human nature (i.e. to take care of your selfish interests) by pursuing those individualistic mechanisms of self-fulfillment that allow you to accumulate wealth as an individual.

For a long time, I have felt that there is something wrong in this logic. In this blog, I will work on articulating my argument.

The problem I have with the reduction of every form of human action to self-interest is the foregrounding of self-interest as the metric of human nature, and the conflation of self-interest into every form of human action such that it is no more possible to distinguish between human actions driven by self-interest and those that are not driven by self-interest. Human nature then is fundamentally defined in terms of self-interest such that every human action can be reduced into the residues of self-interest.

In contrast to this generalized definition of selfishness, the reality of selfishness in neoliberalism is enacted in the form of the ownership of personal wealth. The politics of neoliberalism ultimately plays out in the modes of ownership of property and within the notions of private property. Therefore, selfishness of human action within the framework of neoliberalism needs to be measured in terms of the desire for accumulating wealth at the individual level, in terms of the definition of human beings as property bearing citizens. For the purposes of operationalization, selfishness then can be defined in terms of the manifestation of human action in individual wealth accumulation. Although the reality of the inequalities produced by the neoliberal logic is ultimately tied to the differentials in private ownership of wealth, the extension of selfishness to define generalized forms of human action obfuscates the politics of neoliberalism.

What gets erased in the framing of human nature as fundamentally selfish is the value-driven nature of this assumption, and the effects that therefore are produced as manifestations of this assumption. To assume that human beings are fundamentally self-seeking justifies our individual greed and the desires for wealth accumulation at the individual level. Furthermore, the depiction of every form of human action as self-driven distracts attention from thoughtful criticisms of self-driven greed in wealth accumuluation, and the broader inequalities that are produced by the unregulated accumulation of wealth.

Ultimately then, to reduce other-oriented human activities to be rooted in human selfishness is an argumentative leap that obfuscates the unethical ramifications of selfishness that produce large-scale disparities between the haves and have-nots. In re-occupying the concept of selfishness as one that needs to be interrogated, a critical stance draws attention to the need for discussing the ethics of wealth accumulation and possibly setting limits to how much wealth accumulation is acceptable in society. Acknowledging that there exist a wide variety of human actions that are not selfish create openings for imagining alternative worlds.

US ethnocentrism and academe continued...Time for you to learn Chinese!

2011-10-28T02:16:00.000-07:00

The irony of the current American university system probably becomes evident to anyone that cares to carefully observe the current trends within these universities.

It was not that long back that University leaders and faculty members felt very comfortable talking openly about Chinese GRE scores, TOEFL scores etc., using these rationale to turn down competent students from China with stellar scores. It was not that long back that references to the English capabilities of the Chinese was somehow considered to be PC in a climate where most forms of talk are otherwise monitored by the PC-Police. It was not that long back that it was OK for faculty to discuss in meetings openly about the English capabilities of a student from China or Korea. The ability to speak English was used as the marker to strip students from elsewhere of their dignity. The pressures from undergraduate students and their parents was used as an excuse to carry out this act of stripping, with the logic that the instructors ought to at the very minimum be able to communicate with their key consumers, the students, in a language that is understandable to the students. This excuse was then used to reject strong graduate students applications, never raising the point that our undergraduates perhaps needed to have global communication competencies that at the very minimum expected them to have the capabilities to make concerted efforts to understand others who differed from them in "accent" and not use the foreign accent of their instructor as an easy excuse for their poor performance. The power of US ethnocentrism was (and is) articulated in the widely circulated notion that "If you are in the US, you have to be able to speak US style English."

Those times however have apparently changed. In an economic climate where most of US is owned literally by China, appealing to students from China is a mechanism for many US universities to survive. The survival of our universities is based upon our capability now to cater to a Chinese clientele because our States apparently don't have the money to support us. Where legislators have consistently voted to minimize the support for public Universities, catering to Chinese students has become a mechanism for survival. So the logical question (flowing from the earlier logic of English competency) for US universities with increasing large percentages (even what's likely to soon be majority) of undergraduate Chinese students in US classrooms is this: Are you now going to expect your faculty and graduate instructors to at the very least be conversant in Chinese in order for them to be present in the classroom? Are you now going to require a standardized Chinese proficiency exam put together by a Chinese institution for entry into graduate school and into the professoriate? The re-circulation of the typically circulated ethnocentric US logic ought to read something like this "If you are teaching to students from China, you better be able to speak Chinese at the very minimum." The gold standard for admission of teaching assistants into graduate programs ought to shift to measuring at the very least spoken Chinese proficiencies.

The discussion however in most public universities and in fora such as the Chronicle of Higher Education has taken a different direction and tone. The logic has apparently shifted to answering the question: "Are we offering the right English training for these incoming students?"

The arrogance of US Ethnocentrism lies in its ability to re-craft and re-fashion the hegemony of US-Ethnocentric standards in ways that privilege US-Ethnocentric ways of doing things, even when the economic base of US-centric hegemony seems to be fast dwindling. Although the appropriate logic that flows from earlier logics used by US universities ought to be that our Professors and Graduate Teaching Assistants need to at the bare minimum qualify the Chinese spoken exam, the logic is now being re-crafted to state that our undergraduate students need to have the English proficiency. If we carry on the market logic of needing to appeal to our students as stakeholders, it follows from the market logic which we have used over the years that University leaders and faculty start paying much-needed attention to the Chinese speaking capabilities of their instructors, and start mandating Chinese proficiency/cultural competency tests as minimum requirements for graduate teaching assistants. It also makes sense then that with the increasing number of Chinese undergraduates in our classrooms, we start increasing the number of Chinese graduate instructors who would have the competency to teach these students.

It perhaps makes even further sense that we start offering our courses in Chinese, particularly so with our Communication courses. This poses a fascinating challenge because it also means that for subjects such as Communication, we start paying attention to what Chinese communication research says about effective communication, which might fundamentally differ from what we teach as effective communication based on our US etnocentric understandings of effective communication. Oh wait, where do we even begin because all these years we have been telling the world about effective communication skills, presentation skills, persuasion skills etc. from our narrow ethnocentric vantage points, thinking that our US way ought to be the universal gold standard?

These questions are questions we are going to need to at the very least start asking if our classrooms are increasingly going to change demographicallly. What new skillsets do we need so as to not be redundant?

As far as I am concerned, I am making sure to register for Chinese 101 so that I don't become redundant.

The story of Mr. Rajat Gupta and for parents who want their sons to become investment bankers and their daughters to marry one!

2011-10-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

I have been posting on my FB site about the recent story of the US pressing charges on Mr. Rajat Gupta for his involvement in insider trading. This story comes across as the striking story of neoliberal greed that has inundated India, particularly so because Mr. Gupta has been the poster child of success in the Indian landscape, depicting the markers of success along the lines that middle class parents desire for their children to model into. These markers of success are carried out in India by the trajectory of the IITs and IIMs, ultimately ending up with the ultimate job of an investment banker on Wall Street. The value of the investment banker for his parents lies in the markers of materialism he has achieved. This story furthermore gets gendered as we move ahead to complete the story: the parents of Indian girls in the marriage market desiring for their daughters to marry a hot-shot investment banker with all the material resources. This is of course then framed within the framework of desiring a comfortable life for one's daughter, which seems to be a fairly normal and perhaps the only dream of most middle class Indian parents.

Amidst these dreams, the backside of the story goes something like this. As Indian parents spend their invaluable resources bringing up their child and training them for the competitive exams (spending loads of money on coaching centers), they also ensure that the child grows up with a tremendous sense of entitlement. One that tells him that he is somehow special. He is different, smart, intelligent, cut out from the rest of the population by his brilliance, separate from the teeming masses of the country.

He is after all an IITian with an MBA. He is special. This sense of entitlement then becomes the fulcrum of choices that are made by the son who then goes on to use this brilliance to make money. This money then becomes the ticket to the Armani, LV, Chanel, Burberry and the world of luxury. The cushy flats in the suburbs, the destination vacations in tropical places, the fancy meals in fancy restaurants...these become the material markers of having arrived, of having accomplished something and of having succeeded in the world. The parents now are really proud of their son and his achievements.

Where entitlement gets in the way however is that it also pushes one to use whatever means that are available to make this money, because in the market, making the money is the marker of intelligence. So if he is able to figure out some loophole in regulations and make money, this is a sign of his brilliance, and he is entitled to the money. If he cheats specific regulations and makes the money, he is entitled to it because he is smart enought to cheat the system. If he is able to fool some people, that is of course a product of his brilliance and he is entitled to it. If he gets a huge bonus in the face of the bailouts, he is entitled to it. If he is reminded of the number of people that have lost their homes, he is quick to point out that they should not have had homes to begin with. He smirks at regulations, looks at the poor disdainfully, and considers those who have lost their life savings as "dumb Americans" who did not deserve the money.

You see, the problem I have with the style of middle class Indian parenting that only cares about success in material terms is that it becomes the site for breeding pathology. The one thing that the story of Rajat Gupta teaches us is that we harbor these pathologies amidst us and celebrate them. The story of Mr. Gupta perhaps teaches us that we are the pathology. The one lesson that I hope we take from this story is that there are real consequences when these pathologies go unchecked, when our desires and greed become the sole markers through which we measure ourselves and those around us. For parents of Indian children with the incredibly desirable Indian dreams, the story of Mr. Rajat Gupta perhaps chides us to take stock and think.

When the markers of self-imposed marginalization simply become the excuse for mediocrity or laziness!

2011-10-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

One of the everyday aspects of doing culture-centered work is the engagement with the language of marginalization. The slippery slope however in working with the margins is when we come to identify the label of the margins with our own journeys, and even more so, utilize this label to justify our own mediocrity, lack of work ethic, or our sheer laziness.

For any of us that occupy positions within academe through which we gain access to the tools and languages for making knowledge claims, being marginalized typically does not mean the same thing as it does for the sectors of the population we typically work with, people who have been rendered invisible through those very knowledge structures that we inhabit. Therefore, to do CCA, one has to really step out of the comfort zone and work hard at figuring out the openings for engagement.

So although I am deeply aware of the experiences of being "othered" that some within academe have to work through (because of a variety of things including nationality of origin, color of skin, gender, etc.), I am also conscious of the notion that the label of marginalization can be co-opted by us within academe to justify our own laziness, mediocrity, and lack of work ethic. I am skeptical of identity politics that utilizes the language of marginalization to justify a cushy job in the ivory tower, separated from the "real politik" of the margins. I am even more skeptical when the language of marginalization becomes a tool for us to "whine" about our own lack of integrity. So when I am unproductive and lazy, this is not a reflection of how I have been marginalized as a brown man by the White structure, but rather a product of my sheer laziness and lack of work ethic. To blame the "Structure" for our own lack of work ethic can become an easy cop-out, one that those working with the margins have to be careful of.

As opposed to the identity politics of work that foregrounds our own marginalization, CCA challenges us to work through our experiences at the margins to work out a politics of solidarity that steps out of our narrow comfort zones. CCA asks us to transcend our own experiences of being "othered" to configure a work ethic that is intense, asking us to spend many hours in the field, and many more hours reflecting and writing about these experiences in the field. The hope through all of this is that our experiences of being disenfranchised in certain contexts would equip us with the tools and strategies for working out a politics of change with the margins. This is reflected in the dissertation works of Induk Kim, Iccha Basnyat, Ambar Basu, Mahuya Pal, Zhuo Ban, Sydney Dillard, Uttaran Dutta, Shaunak Sastry...they have spent many many hours in the field simply to initiate the first steps of CCA.

Therefore, being out in the field outside of the ivory tower is one key (although not the only) component of CCA work. I spend many hours in the field trying to figure out what this politics might be (I typically would not and do not write about my own work schedules, but I feel this is important in a blog that discusses work ethic in the context of CCA). There are days when I don't return home before 10 p.m. at night after having had a day of fieldwork (and this I typically do after having wrapped up my administrative duties for the day as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education). I make sure to work in the field, not just have my research assistants or an outside consultant gather the data for me; I do this because this is what is essential to any research endeavour. I make sure to organize our coalition meetings, to be present at them (often at the end of a busy day that these days is filled with meetings), and to participate in the co-constructions of problems and solutions with community members. Further along these lines, I spend many more hours thinking and reflecting about the field work and writing about it, staying up until 2:30 or 3 a.m. into the morning (typically after my son Shloke has gone to bed and after I have done my share of household chores). To me, this work ethic is singularly crucial to CCA work as one negotiates her/his commitment to doing field-based work. If there is one message that I try to bring into my projects, it is this: To "do" CCA, one can't be lazy! Even more, one has to continually push himself/herself to do well in the various facets of life that are brought to us by the contingencies of life.

Along these lines, working through CCA projects with my own students and advisees, I am incredibly touched and impressed by the sheer number of hours they put in when they work on CCA projects; this aspect of CCA research I work hard on making clear to them at the onset of our relationship, both through individual meetings as well as in group advisee meetings. They work through difficulties as they negotiate the field, and then they spend many many hours in the field trying to work out their commitments. I appreciate this commitment that they display because they are often surrounded by a culture of mediocrity that demands less from them, not more; because they are surrounded by a culture that rewards mediocrity and uses it as a gold standard. I am touched by their integrity and character because this is a choice they make when they could easily go out and make other choices such as not ever stepping into the field, recruiting through convenience samples within the university setting, paying someone else to transcribe their data for them (someone who has not been IRB trained or certified), even better training someone else to run their data analysis, and so on and so forth. In a culture that celebrates laziness and mediocrity through education processes that typically point toward the easy way out to earn a PhD even when these might be unethical choices (such as never stepping out into the field, or paying a non-IRB-trained person somewhere in the Third World to transcribe your data, or paying someone else to analyze your data for you), I recognize the integrity of students who step out of the cycle of mediocrity and say that they are not going to make these mediocre, easy, and unethical choices. In a culture where funded work often ends up being an alibi for paying "fat" salaries to people who don't do much work, I appreciate the commitment that students of CCA bring to the table about the need to justify the grant dollars that are spent on them. Ultimately, as I once noted to my AHRQ research team, in an economy where uneployment is on the rise, "we better find ways to justify the invaluable dollars that are spent on us through our funded projects."

As I wrap up this blog then, I wrap it up with the understanding that the language of CCA (marginalization, power, status quo) can easily be co-opted within the gibberish of identity politics to justify our laziness. The parameters through which the integrity of a CCA project can be initially evaluated (although these are simply entry points) are the parameters of immersion and engagement. How much are we as CCA researchers willing to push ourselves? How much are we willing to spend time working on the field when there are many other easy options available to us? These are important questions to ponder upon as we initiate our journeys into CCA.

The structures of neoliberalism: Redefining social change

2011-10-04T03:42:00.000-07:00

In my book "Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency," I begin with the premise that how we define, operationalize, and measure social change essentially needs to be re-conceptualized in order to articulate an entry point for transformative politics in te backdrop of neoliberalism. I base this argument on the notion that traditional conceptualizations of social change perpetuate the status quo through their emphasis on individual behavior change in target populations and systematically ignoring the necessity for structural transformations. This is particularly true of social change as configured within capitalist formations, where the basic premise of social change has been co-opted within the frameworks of capitalism to keep intact the positions of oppression among the owners of capital, extracting profits through the exploitation of labor.

Therefore, for a transformative moment to be re-captured witin the context of contemporary neoliberal phenomena where the poor have increasingly been impoverished further, the middle classes have lost the economic base for finding sustainable means of engaging in work, and the unions have consistently been rendered ineffective through the co-optation of their resistive capacities, both local and global organizing efforts are needed that fundamentally redefine social change to activist politics, politics that seeks to de-center the positions of power. Efforts of social change need to be re-defined as efforts that are specifically directed at challenging structures, as opposed to efforts that masquerade themselves as social change and fundamentally reify and serve the interests of the status quo.

In the book, I work through examples of the works of Daniel Lerner, Wilbur Schramm etc. to note how the history of communication scholarship is precisely located at the moment of co-opting social change agendas within the agendas of US expansionism, imperialism, and service of the capitalist classes. Rendering this linkage in the history of the discipline visible I believe lies at the heart of re-defining the political capacity of communication scholarship as transformative, as social justice scholarship that sets out to invert the relationships of power written into the dominant power structures.

The examples of mass protests at Wall Street once again point to this transformative capacity of organizing that is directed at bringing about social change. The possibilities for communication for social change are endless, in terms of creating openings for resistance that challenge the established sources of power both locally and globally. The role of communication in re-presenting these stories of social change is tied to specific public relations functions in knowledge production in reverse (read more about this in "Communicating Social Change" and in a book chapter that I have authored with Mahuya Pal for "Public Relations in Global Cultural Contexts"), challenging the traditional forms of knowledge production that serve to carry out the interests of TNCs on the landscape of globalization.

Deep and shallow participation in CCA

2011-10-02T01:59:00.000-07:00

As we interact in different capacity in the Culture Centering Approach, one interesting dynamic that continue to play out is the dichotomy between deep and shallow participation. Some group members are deeply engaged and are very clear about the objectives in each phase of the project, and the processes. They are very innovative and always offer unique perspectives for achieving results. On the other hand, some group members seem not to fully grasp the CCA process on the surface, or unclear about necessary steps in each phase of the of the project. But the interesting thing is that while they may seem unsure about the process or may not be creative like the deeply engaged group, there is a sense of ownership and commitment to the project goals. You can decipher their deep commitment to the project through their non-verbal actions e.g. facial expressions, their enthusiasm and interest in the CCA processes during group interactions. Such kind of enthusiasm is worth acknowledging. This dynamic is representative of academic description of explicit and implicit participation. An important lesson I believe is our ability to recognize the enthusiasm in the collective interest and work with both deep and shallow participants. This is an important lesson because failure to acknowledge and recognize the unique contributions of every member might lead to the dismissal of some members as unimportant, a categorization that may negatively impact a CCA project.

Humility, conversations, and critical theory in social change

2011-09-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

At the Opening Seminar of the Center for Discourses in Transition, Professor Paul McIvinney brought together a group of scholars who I believe were connected together with their enphasis on interrogating neoliberalism and processes of social/cultural change. The talk today was opened by Professor Fairclough who walked us through a careful discourse analysis of the global economic discourse. Professor Fairclough's work clearly laid out the groundwork for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the ways in which CDA is tied to the interrogation of public discourses of neoliberalism played out in the articulations and arguments around the financial crisis and the economic benefits enjoyed by Bankers.

Professor Adam Jaworski offered yer abother entry point to engaging neoliberal privilege by interrogating the ways in which tourist guide discourses serve specific functions and occupy specific positions of privilege. Through his close reading of the micro data on the interactions at tourist sites, Professor Jaworski drew attention to the specific discursive processes through which the everyday affair is turned into spectacular events through the discourses of tourism.

I wrapped up the opening seminar with a talk about culture-centered processes of change, and the ways in which menaings/discourses fit into the intercations among culture, structure, and agency.

What was most interesting about the events of the day was the opportunity for me to simply be a student again and learn from scholars who define the terrains of critical discourse analysis. It was for instance incredibly gratifying to take notes about the ways in which CDA is conceptualized and conducted, and the intersections with CCA. What I was most impressed by today was the opportunity for cross-pollination that hopefully builds bridges for fruitful conversations.

The cyclical nature of CCA processes

2011-09-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

Methodologically, as we develop participatory processes in culture-centered research, these processes are both organic and cyclical. The organic nature of CCA processes suggest that when we work with community partnerships and community members, the relationships among the multiple stakeholders (and yes, given the circles of participation in CCA, these are indeed multiple relationships in multiple contexts at multiple levels) are continually evolving. Being open to participation in ways that are responsive to community needs suggests that we continually re-evaluate where we stand with respect to the choices and the decisions we make through the lifecycle of the project. This also means that the same decisions need to be revisited at multiple entry points at multiple levels of our relationships, partnerships, and roles within the CCA network. Moving the gamuts of decision-making through these multiple cycles calls for a great deal of patience as the same sets of decisions need to be re-visited again and again.

Operationalizing corruption: Hypocrisies and paradoxes in the Indian landscape

2011-09-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

In preparing for my talk in Denmark this coming week, I have been contempating on the corporate practices under neoliberal governance that epitomize corruption. These forms of corruption range from lying about specific actions and practices, to stealing the property of indigenous peoples and then patenting them, to stealing the lands of the poor under the name of development and urbanization, to using a wide variety of legal methods to silence the voices of the poor from policy and justice platforms. However, the beauty and effectiveness of neoliberalism lies precisely in its capacity of utilizing a variety of public relations tools to put forth a variety of labels and naming devices to hide the fundamentally corrupt and unethical nature of these practices.

In a piece titled "Public Relations as Knowledge Production under Neoliberalism," I put forth the argument that producing knowledge that is fundamentally untrue lies at the heart of this large-scale exercise of corruption. So when the seeds of the poor are stolen by pharmaceutical corporations and then patented under patent laws, the facade of Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) serves as the face for the straight forward act of stealing.

TRIPS under neolioberalism therefore exists to steal, and even further, after the act of stealing, to fundamentally deny the poor in the global South their right to these indigenous forms of knowledge. Furthermore, the corporatization of the act of stealing under TRIPS makes it perimssible to do so, also removing the act from interrogations of the legal or ethical ramifications of stealing.

But corporations are not simply entities that exist outside of the people that inhabit them, develop policies, and carry out these policies. Corporate practices are products of strategies and tactics carried out by individuals who work in these corporations. Therefore, by extension, I argue that the people (the army of corporate executives, lawyers, scientists, ethnographers etc.) who are employed by these corporations and are responsible for carrying out these practices ought to be litigable. The consequences for the crookish acts of stealing ought not to only pertain to some invisible corporate body, but also ought to be extrapolated to the men and women who carry out these acts.

By that extension then, any discussion of corruption ought to move beyond the practice of pointing fingers at seemingly corrupt and uneducated politicians (which seems to be the majority of the thrust of this Lokpal movement; notice here too the elitist thrust) to fundamentally interrogating the corrupt corporate practices that have become rampant amidst middle class and upper middle class Indians. We need to interrogate the fundamentally corrupt nature of the many of the jobs we are employed in, and the very corruption of these jobs. Much of the money we make come through corrupt means.

We need to ask serious questions of ethics about the ramifications of the jobs we do, and the consequences of our corporatized decisions on the poor. Here, corruption is not simply the act of giving or taking bribes, it is much much more than that. It is the act of re-naming stealing under patenting, re-naming manipulation under corporate social responsibility (CSR), stealing people's money in the name of investment banking to pay our heavy bonuses and fat salaries, and so on and so forth. So, for my middle class Indian friends who are ever so animated about the Lokpal bill, you have to begin by thinking about the ways in which you lie, steal, and falsify as an everyday practice in your job. You have to begin by thinking about where does your big fat paycheck that affords you your comfortable lifestyle come from?

Land Grab, Media Discourse, and Taken-for-granted Assumptions

2011-09-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/27/india-land-idUSL3E7IN05N20110727

Here's example of another news story in mainstream media that does not question the neoliberal logic of land grab in the context of development. Questions worth raising in this backdrop are questions such as: Who should have the ownership of the lands? What are the implications of the displacement of the poor to force top-down housing projects under the name of development and growth? What are the ethical principles that underlie the urbanization projects which are accompanied by the large scale displacements of the poor?

Once again, absent in the media story are questions of neoliberal greed that privilege the "rights" of Indian yuppies in the large metros to own property by paying Lakhs and Crores of Rupees. Absent in Indian public discourses are fundamental questions that interrogate the uneven nature of development? Absent are the difficult questions of displacement that are intrinsically tied to the projects of development and urbanization.

Landgrab in India, Corruption, and Middle Class Desires

2011-09-17T14:05:00.001-07:00

The city of Bangalore is an excellent example of the point I noted in my earlier blog.

The report shared on my blog points toward the political nexus behind the land grab operation. What the report does not bring into question though is the growing development of Bangalore as the IT hub of India, the burgeoning middle class in the city, and the epitomization of this middle class desire in the new complexes, housing development projects, and flats that have come up in the city.

The myopia of media coverage and public discourse on corruption in India (and this includes the short-sightedness of the Lokpal discourse) is its inability to fundamentally interrogate the desires and dreams of middle class Indians that underlie the nexus between corporations, criminals, and politicians. Although the politicians depicted here indeed need to be interrogated, we also however need to examine our own aspirations that fuel large scale landgrab all across the country.

For instance, after watching this video and reading reports such as this, how many of us in the middle classes are willing to examine and scrutinize the deeds behind the flats we own, asking questions such as: Who is the builder? How was the land acquired? What was here before the flat was built? Asking inconvenient questions such as these would go long ways toward addressing corruption in the context of landgrab in India.

Land, neoliberalism, and middle class desires

2011-09-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

When I hear the stories about their aspirations among friends and family, I am often struck by the narratives of making money by buying and selling property. The desire to make a quick buck by buying and selling property has become all too common of a story in neoliberal India, so common that it almost seems commonsensical to be a middle class Indian and to own multiple flats, each of which is seen as an investment opportunity that gives higher and higher return on investments (ROI). The neoliberal dream is embodied in the desire to own a flat, in Rajarhat, or Naui Mumbai, or Noida. Parents dream of their child's success in terms of the number of flats owned by the child. Fathers want their daughters married off to middle class boys with pockets that can afford them multiple flats in the Lakhs and Crores. The promise of the neoliberal dream for the middle class Indian is in the ownership of this piece of security and economic growth.

The promise of neoliberalism in India is deeply intertwined with the capacity of the logic to sell this dream as an everyday aspiration. In this context, the simplicity of the neoliberal middle class storyline in India goes something like this: you buy a piece of property dirt cheap, sit on it for some years, and then wait for it to sell at a much higher price, thus generating large revenues for yourself. You have arrived in the middle class scene if you have happened to secure this dream of a flat.

What however remains hidden in this apparently simple story is the non-apparent storyline underlying it.

Most of the flats bought and sold in neoliberal India happen in the hands of promoters who use a variety of strategies from threatening to extortion to bribing to murders in order to buy and sell land. The grabbing of land is essential to the development of complexes and to the building of flats. The deforestation of lands and the displacement of the poor are often deeply intertwined with the cleaning up of areas for the building of flats. Even more so, the nexus of promoters and developers is often situated amidst strong linkages with criminals, politicians and goons, who are quintessential players in the story of landgrab. Therefore, the promoters and criminals in this case do the dirty job of making the land available on which we build our dirty dreams as middle class Indians.

Therefore for my middle class neoliberal friends and family in India who seem so shocked at the corruption and criminalization of the country, the question I pose is this: To what extent are we active players in this game of criminalization of the country by fundamentally supporting the economic logic that underlies the corruption and criminalization? To what extent are our dreams and desires of pursuing our own economic interests at whatever cost integral to the criminalization of the country? To what extent is your desire of making a quick buck by buying and seeling property similar to the desire of the promoter to make a quick buck, albeit at a much higher price?

Culture of mediocrity continued: Presence

2011-09-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

Further building on our earlier discussions, I want to point toward the notion of "presence" in the field which has occupied a key position in CCA research. The co-constructive moment of CCA calls for the researcher to be "present" in the field, at the moment of the interaction where knowledge is co-constructed.

For my own research, this has meant that I spend substantive amounts of time in the field and on the road. For example, with the heart health disparities project with African American communities in Lake and Marion counties, I personally often spend between 6 to 10/12 hours in the field. Our CCA research team as a collective spends between 20-60 hours in the field collectively, in addition to our community organizers and community partners who are present at the field sites. Although all this presence in the field takes up both a lot of time as well as lot of energy, the fundamental tenets of CCA rely on these different forms of investment in order to create openings for culturally centered mobilizing in local communities.

This notion of presence then is tied to the epistemological assumption that the researcher has to be "present" at the field site at which he/she is doing the research. You at least have to travel to those field sites of a project where you are the principal investigator. You have to make some semblance of an attempt to get to know the culture before you can make cultural generalizations.

Therefore, with respect to communication research that seeks to make cultural comparisons in the context of specific communication variables, it is worth asking: To what extent has the researcher spent time in the field? To what extent can we expect anything authentic from a US-bred middle class White academic from the midwest for example (trained at midwestern institutions) when they are making cross-cultural comparisons of China and the US based on some random survey data gathered by some graduate students who happen to be from China?

To what extent can we expect any meaningful or useful data from an academic piece that is based on cheap and dirty surveys that have been given out to students at partner institutions abroad, and the researchers themselves have not cared to travel to these spaces or learn about the cultures? I guess we can point to the whole etic-emic debate to locate this conversation amidst the notion of different worldviews. Having said that though, I don't think we are relieved of our responsibility toward carving out valid cultural narratives that at least have some semblance of cultural relevance/meaningfulness when conducting cultural work.

Unfortunately, the culture of mediocrity perpetuates itself by making it acceptable for researchers to publish cross-cultural research projects that have the right kind of buzzwords. Unfortunately, our review processes don't ask reviewers to evaluate culture-based studies on the basis of questions about the direct presence of researchers at field sites. As a result, a lot of what gets produced under the name of cross-cultural communication research reifies specigic stereotypes about cultures elsewhere.

Culture of average continued: Farming out research tasks

2011-09-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

One of the most fundamental tenets of CCA is I believe the authenticity of the researcher in his/her relationship with the field site, which is tied to the fundamental premise that one needs to spend extensive amounts of time in the field, getting to know the field and making herself/himself vulnerable to participants and their stories, interacting with participants with an openness to listening to their stories, and co-creating theoretical and pragmatic entry points with cultural participants through their stories. For us as CCA researchers to co-script stories of change with participants, we need to be extensively devoted to our field sites, taking up the challenges of intense field work and sometimes when needed, placing our selves at risk so that entry points to change can be co-created with cultural participants at the margins (granted our taking up of these risks are minuscule when compared to the everydayness of the risks and threats that communities at the margins live under). When I think of the work of Mahuya Pal with the displaced farmers of Singur, I am reminded of the intense violence that had ensued in Singur at the time when she was doing this work. When Induk Kim wrote her CCA dissertation on activist organizing among farmers, she spent extensive amounts of time in the field, working among farmer activists and travelling with them to global sites of resistance. Most recently, when Uttaran Dutta travelled from the forested areas of the Sunderbans in West Bengal to the inaccessible mountains in Northern Bengal, traveling through hilly terrains, walking through difficult pathways, and wading in neck deep water, he depicts the fundamental commitment of the CCA reseacher/worker to his work, to hopefully making a difference by working on fostering solidarity with those who have been silenced and marginalized. What this translates into is that the researcher/author has to have close, intimate, engaged relationships with his/her participants, communities, and the data that are generated from the fieldwork, locating his presence in the field. In this sense then, getting to know the participants and the field site are crucial to any CCA process.

The idea then with CCA is very simple, that the researcher spend substantive amount of time in the field, and this is the entry point for someone doing CCA work. I say this is just the beginning because I am not sure that there is a yardstick for solidarity or authenticity which one can use to measure exactly how authentic they have been in their fieldwork. Even beyond the amount of time spent in the field, as I have noted in my work elsewhere, it is vital that the researcher work on developing relationships of solidarity with community members through long-term commitments to their participants and field sites. CCA therefore is skeptical of the sort of academic tourism where researchers go in, gather data, and come out. CCA is perhaps even more vigilant of projects where researchers pay locals to gather the data, transcribe it, and then supply the researchers with the cleaned up data to work on. It interrogates projects with the question: How much real contact has the researcher had with the participants?

Research tasks in CCA therefore can't be farmed out to research firms, data gathering teams, or transcription companies, at least if we as researchers are vigilant of our commitment and authenticity to both our field sites as well as our participants. It is from this entry point of commitment that I always insist on transcribing my own data; furthermore, I require that graduate student advisees transcribe their own data, and in cases of large projects, the data transcription is taken up by the research team. What messages do we communicate about our spirit of commitment and authenticity to our community partners if we don't commit ourselves to respecting the stories that participants have shared with us? Essential to this respect then is the idea that I will need to work very hard and be committed to working hard in my interactions with the stories that participants have shared with me.

Farming out data transcription not only interrupts the quality of the transcription, but also fundamentally takes the researcher away from the nitty gritty of the field site. The authenticity of CCA calls for us to reject our bureacratic urges of professional treatment of data through hiring of some other person to do our job for us. Furthermore, the ethical aspects of research compliance and data protection put into question the several levels at which research ethics codes might be violated if audio files are sent out to outside stakeholders for the purposes of transcription without proper human subjects training and approval.

What then do I hope from someone who comes to work with me and apply CCA? Our early stages of career are amazing moments for learning to be vulnerable. Unfortunately, the professionalization of graduate education often turns these moments of learning into contracts to be carried out, transcripts to be analyzed hastily, and research tasks to be shipped out to unemployed workers in the Third World who would do the transcription for "dirt cheap." Unfortunately, the professionalization of research processes sometimes leaves us and our students incapable of understanding the basic inequities and oppressions we partake in when we go hunting for dirt cheap transcribers in Bangladesh or Nepal. Inherent in this process of farming out research transcription then is the basic exploitation of Third World bodies within sites of neoliberal economies; we as researchers build our research careers as our third world transcription workers remain hidden beneath the texts that they have transcribed for us. To take this even further, in instances where researchers have someone else run their data analysis for them, the basic crux of research integrity and commitment are missing, also raising much more important questions about research integrity and lack thereof.

In summary then, I am comfortable fostering a policy among my advisees, research assistants, and collaborators that we have to do our transcriptions and analysis ourselves as CCA researchers; I am also comfortable noting that the first step of analysis has to always always be done by hand in the old fashioned way, and not through some technology that immediately takes over the task of organizing the data into categories. And I myself have led this by example, by working hour-after-hour painstakingly transcribing interviews. The pain in these instances of the transcription is also the joy of getting to know the participants some more through the conversations with their stories.

So isn't this somewhat of a stringent strategy that adds additional burdens on researchers? Here, as a mentor and an advisor I want to note that I am not interested in making the jobs of my students and advisees "easier." I don't believe that's why I am here as their teacher/advisor/mentor, or for that matter, making the lives of our graduate students easier should be the motto of a mentor. I care deeply about our relationships as entry points to solidarity, to making a difference; and what this caring means for me is that I push them to work harder, to excel, and to fundamentally be committed to the social change agendas they identify as important. Solidarity to me is not about being "nice"; it goes much much deeper than that. I am comfortable working with them through these moments of struggle with the hope that these moments of struggle teach us the value of humility, vulnerability, hard work, and the commitment to our co-conscriptors of stories.

What do you find so threatening?

2011-09-10T11:28:00.000-07:00

So here you go. I have often been puzzled as to what it is about CCA that threatens your typical academic. Why is it that when presented with the idea of CCA that your "typical" Comm scholar often has a gut response of defensiveness? (Of course, I am using the label "typical" to refer to a specific representation of the average, the middle, the central tendency that occupies the status quo; and of course, there have been a number of Communication scholars who have opened up, encouraged, and nurtured some of the basic premises of CCA). For this blog though, I am going to refer to that central tendency or the mediocre average that responds from various positions of feeling defensive, articulating this response in various froms of pettiness and petty politics (Marx is so right on target when he refers to the bourgeoisie as "petty").

Yesterday, during our Hunger Coalition meeting, one of our community members who has herself experienced hunger summarized her understanding of this defensive response among bourgeoisie academics. She noted, "when we speak, it makes a whole bunch of people uncomfortable."

So where does this discomfort come from? Perhaps a lot from the threat of one's privilege being challenged, from the threat of being rendered irrelevant and being asked to be accountable to those who have historically been erased.

Because if in this instance, the hungry were to be able to speak in a way that matters, in a way that demonstrates that people who have been historically marginalized may know a whole lot more than those who sit around the table and pretend to know a whole lot hidden in their psychobabble, it would put many of our average academics out of jobs. It would raise questions such as "How do you justify spending valuable $ on ineffective policies, programs, interventions that continue to demonstrate small and unsustainable effect sizes?" "How do you justify manufacturing a bunch of BS and labeling that as utterly meaningless constructs that have absolutely zero relevance for those that you target?"

The prospect of those from the margins speaking is ultimately utterly terrifying because it stands to de-center us from the privileged positions we occupy. And this political economy of personal-structural profiteering (because come on, we all know that we profit tremendously with these incentives within petty bourgeoisie structures) perhaps underlies the responses of feeling threatened by prospects of voices from elsewhere speaking up in ways that de-center the priviege of the middle. In the next couple of weeks, I am going to spend my blogs in interrogating the academic structures, processes, and systems that are tied to these fundamental responses of "being threatened" among the middle.

Fieldwork and gratitude

2011-08-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last evening, Debalina and I had a wonderful time having dinner with our friends Shaunak and Zhuo.

At the end of the evening (which usually rolls into late nights as conversations get more and more interesting), as I was getting ready for bed, I felt very grateful for our friendships and for the privilege that academe offers us to do the work we choose to do, to converse about this work, and perhaps to have the opportunity to continually evaluate the value of this work. You see, Shaunak and Zhuo are also my students and advisees, and they just returned from India and China respectively after having spent their summer doing CCA fieldwork for their dissertations. Shaunak spent time in India amidst conversations with truck drivers along truck routes around the issue of HIV/AIDS, and Zhuo spent her time in China conversing with workers on factory floors and living in a local church that housed the workers, conversing about issues of worker's rights in the backdrop of globalization politics.

Listening to their stories was heart rending at multiple levels. For starters, I felt a great deal of gratitude for the kind of human beings they have grown into through this process of fieldwork (this blog posting is going to focus on this aspect of growth).

When working at and with the margins, fieldwork tests your character. What I mean by this is that the gruelling circumstances of fieldwork are often the tests of patience and commitment; Are you committed enough to your project to "want" to come back to it? Even in circumstances where your familiar levels of comfort are no longer available to you, the strangeness of the fieldsite sits on your senses as reminders of the unfamiliar; are you comfortable with this sense of continually being unfamiliar? Are you comfortable having your privilege continuously sit uncomfortably on your soul, amidst the knowledge that you have the choice to walk away from the hardships that you have entered into and that these hardships are not permanent markers of your life? None of these questions have easy answers. Rather than offering us definitive pictures, they bring us face-to-face with the uncertainties within which problems at the margins are often located? And it is perhaps in the midst of these very uncertainties that your character is tested, that you face the task of asking yourself the meaning of your privilege and what you are going to do about it, and that you ultimately work on finding practical solutions that work for communities.

As I listened to the stories that Shaunak and Zhuo shared, I was touched by the many many hardships that they undertook without giving up. Sure, for me to spend time discussing these hardships perhaps points to the sheer amount of pain and suffering amidst which those at the margins live their lives (hardships that we can "escape" from through the simple choice of exiting the field). Sure, in our choices of entering the field, we need to make sure to note that these are still our choices so as to not undermine the reality of the lived experiences of the people that experience these hardships as products of the structural violence amidst which they live their lives.

And yet, I feel as their advisor that I am grateful for the difficulties they have embraced, for the integrity of their character in working in and working with the margins to try to find answers, and for the choices they have made in embarking in the difficult journeys of life. Sure, they have the "choice" to escape these hardships, but the bottomline is that they don't. They work through these hardships to search for answers which hopefully will make a difference in the lives of those at the margins who often have been robbed of the capacity to participate in discursive spaces that are marked off as too sacred for them. Rather then choose to sit in the comfort of their air-conditioned rooms in picturesque West Lafayette over the summer and recruiting student subjects to write their projects, many of my advisees make the "choice" to embark on journeys in the unfamiliar territories of the field, not only amidst the physical difficulties, but also working through the difficult emotional/spiritual questions that relate to what it means to make a difference in the world. Sure many of my advisees don't just sit in the comforts of their A/C rooms in West Lafayette to write a Marxist analysis of Survivor or some other irrelevant TV show/pop culture phenomenon or Bollywood flicks; they decide to spend that time getting to know the margins that Marxist theory points toward. In Zhuou's story of her life staying with the workers in the Church and participating in the daily chores, in Shaunak's stories of travels at truck stops and in trucks, I am touched by the strength of their character, at their ability to keep at it with dignity, and in their continual desire to make a difference in the lives of the people they journey with. As they partake in this journey, their bodies are shaken up, but even more so, their worldviews are continually tried and tested (For example, Zhuo's struggles negotiating her Marxist and postcolonial worlviews about the role of Christian imperialism (the mega-church phenomenon in Asia) with her understanding of the Church in the lives of the workers she lived amidst).

And for these choices they make, I am grateful to them. The journeys of CCA researchers amidst the politics of social change are ones that are filled with gratitude, first and foremost gratitude for the people in the field who gracefully open up their hearts and worlds to us so we could partake in this journey with them. It is their incredible kindness and love amidst the pains and hardships of their lives that makes CCA work possible. But it is also the gratitude we feel for each other. Gratitude for the cammarederie, love, and the sharing in this journey of love, disappointments, struggles, and hopes. Ambar Basu, Mahuya Pal, Induk Kim, Iccha Basnyat, Debalina Mookerjee--you have paved ways for the next generation of CCA researchers. Like guiding stars, you have offered us maps and visions. As the Lala Acharyas, Shaunak Sastrys, Zhuo Bans, Sydney Dillards, and Uttaran Duttas of the next generation embark on their own journeys of negotiations, they look at your stories (bounded in those thick black covers) as stories of inspiration.

For each of you my advisees and students, as I partake on my difficult journeys at field sites, share these field sites with you, and learn from your field sites, I am incredibly grateful to know that your camarederie stands in the backdrop as a beacon of hope!

I am grateful for the difficult choices you made/make in working with a "difficult advisor."

Bible, whole lot of love, and transformative potential

2011-08-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

Today we had one of our Hunger Coalition meetings in Tippecanoe county. The meeting went extremely well, much along the lines of how one might expect a community-grounded CCA process to unfold. The food insecure participants who experience hunger in their everyday lives came together today to lay out the steps of the coalition as well as the objectives of the coalition. I was incredibly impressed by how fast this project seems to be moving toward accomplishing multiple tangible goals.

But I am going to spend my blog today about an event that happened toward the end of the meeting. As we were wrapping up the meeting and I started packing my bag, Sara (we will use her pseudonym here) walked up to me in trepidation and stood by me as other community members were leaving the room. I felt she needed to share something with me. When I looked at her, she walked up somewhat nervously and asked me if I would not be offended to accept a Bible written in Arabic (now I can't really read Arabic although I can indeed read the English portion of the Bible) that she had picked up thinking that the Bible would be useful for me. She repeated multiple times about how she hoped that she did not offend me by giving me the gift of the Bible.

For those of you that know me, you know how I find it offensive to be handed over Bibles by everzealous missionaries.

I grew up following the ideals of my Marxist father, in a family that loosely followed Hindu rituals mixed into a broadly socialist ideology, and as I got older and came to the US, learned to really dislike the experiences of the Bible being shoved down my throat by narrow-minded White folks who believed that their way was the only pathway to spiritual salvation. For a long stretch of my adult life in the US, I grew to associate Christianity with parochialism, cultural arrogance, and imperialism.

But there was something so very different in Sara's gesture today. The warmth and openness with which she wanted to share her spiritual reading of the Bible with me came from a moment of solidarity, as a sojourner. Her invitation for me to read the Bible, albeit very subtly, was an offering of hope and camarederie, not one filled with the arrogance of needing to "save my Brown soul."

Increasingly as I have spent over the last few years working with the subaternized sectors in the US, I have grown to see the value that the Church holds for the marginalized, in offering them hope and entry points for social action. Although I understood this conceptually and have gradually worked on renegotiating my worldviews, none of these cognitive experiences were similar to the one I had today. For the first time I felt the power of solidarity to move me beyond the ideological constraints of specific worldviews. For the first time in many years, I wanted to open up the Bible and set it beside my summer reading of Marxist Theory. For the first time in many years, I actually picked up a verse and read it.

PS: For those of you getting ideas of saving my soul though, this is not an invitation!

The influence of one's roots in the arena of an interview

2011-08-02T05:16:00.000-07:00

Reading Carol Warren’s chapter on Qualitative Research brought back to mind a comment a senior colleague once made to me when I was a journalist in California. Speaking about feature stories – personality profiles, in particular – he pointed out how interviews often revealed that people rarely overcame their roots, their childhood experiences, their pasts, no matter how far they went in life. I recall, we agreed unanimously that people’s roots indeed had the greatest influence on their worldview and their philosophy in life. At that time, though, it never crossed my mind, to what extent my own roots could be coloring what I heard in the numerous interviews I did throughout the day as a reporter. Being the “objective” journalist – that I presumed I was – I was oblivious of the fact that the discursive space of an interview was an arena where both my interviewee and I were engaging actively and simultaneously in the act of meaning-making; and that I, as the interviewer, was participating in the interview “from historically grounded biographical as well as disciplinary perspectives.”

But recently, while interviewing employees at Food Finders in Lafayette, I realized the truth behind Rubin’s statement as cited by Warren that “no matter how far we travel, we can never leave our roots behind. I found they claimed me at unexpected times, in unexpected places.”

In my case, as I listened to employees at Food Finders discuss the issue of hunger and food insecurity in Tippecanoe county, I found myself thinking about the food insecure back home in India – children and teenagers who came fresh from villages to big cities like my native Calcutta to do domestic chores so they could be assured of three meals a day; beggars on the streets, who we ignored thinking begging was their profession.

As I listened to workers at Food Finders articulate their zeal to help the hungry, I wondered what it would be like if we had non-profits such as Food Finders in Calcutta, with their mobile food pantries and warehouses where companies could donate food. I also remember thinking how great a task it would be to cater to all the poor in a metropolis as huge as Calcutta.

As the interviews went on, I also realized how, over the years, I had actually become a lot more sympathetic and aware of the needy than I was in urban India, amidst the financial security of the upper-middle class. Over the past eight years – first as a new international student in Nevada, then a modestly-paid reporter in over-priced California and now a married graduate student in Indiana -- I’m a lot more acquainted with financial stress and what it means to struggle to make ends meet. And although the woes of those that Food Finders caters are a thousand times graver than mine, I could perceive the agony of the food insecure through the lens of my own experiences with financial hardships.

So when I read Warren talking about the intersections between the meanings constructed by the interviewee with the lived experiences of the interviewer, I could at once see what she’s saying. After all, during my interviews at Food Finders, I had often encountered such intersections and paused to introspect at those crossroads.

Why are the white folks doing all the talking?

2011-08-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

In preparing for my Communication Theory undergraduate course that I will teach this coming Fall, I am struck by the the whiteness of the theories presented in the text I am using in class and by the limitations in seeking to offer alternative worldviews that open up the spaces of pedagogy to imaginations of communication from elsewhere. What is most important to note here is that irrespective of the paradigm of the theories one picks from, the theories are essentially white in terms of where they have been picked from, which theorists talk about them and cite them, the political agendas of these theorists, the ideologies written into the theories, and most fundamentally, the location of the theories within the neo-colonial sites of knowledge production that reestablish the hegemony of whiteness. Inherent in the articulation of the theories in the pages of the texts is an assumption about the superiority of whiteness as the legitimate producer of knowledge. Simultaneously, written into these theoretical articulations then is the undermining of other possibilities from elsewhere as legitimate forms of theory making. I was intrigued by this one section in the opening pages of the text that seemed to demonstrate its liberal openness by discussing the possibilities of Eastern theorizing of communication, and then went on to note how such theorizing was beyond the scope of the book because it dealt with non-linear wholistic concepts that did not really fit into how theories have come to be defined in the discipline. I am particularly intrigued by these so-called liberal theories that propose to listen to voices from elsewhere and then continue to carry out the same logic of building their work in reference to other white theorists, and simultaneously downplaying formations of knowledge from elsewhere (as if these theories from elsewhere are not really theories as understood in the lingos of the institutionalized structures of whiteness). As I think more about this question about what it means to teach communication theory to undergraduate in the US academy or for that matter elsewhere (I could imagine going through the same exercise in seeking to offer a course on communication theory to students in India), I am intrigued by the possibilities that might be opened up in provincializing Europe and in articulating frameworks and agendas that speak from elsewhere. As Dipesh Chakrabarty wonderfully articulates, this position of provincializing Europe takes as reference Europe as the entry point to knowledge. How then does communication theorizing and pedagogy entertain fissures and ruptures that foreground logics from "other" spaces, turning these logics into logics of the center? How does one pedagogically engage possibilities of counterhegemonies from elsewhere? What are my starting points, given the simple and profound ways in which my own being, my understanding of what makes theory and the methods to engage in, are colored with the lens of whiteness?

The measure of success...

2011-07-24T19:40:00.000-07:00

I have increasingly thought about the number of times that I have heard Indian parents talk about the success of their kids, planning for a good career, and finding the right kind of enabler/ladder so that the child would adequately climb to the established measures of success. This quest for the child's success among parents on one hand is understandable. Every parent wants their child to do well, to have a secure future, and to have the resources they need to live a comfortable life. The desires, on the other hand, often singlehandedly play out in a linear narrative, and this is the part that needs to be deconstructed critically...the career path to success seems to be utterly narrow and well laid out: get an engineering degree, and after you get an engineering degree, get an MBA. This to most Indian parents seems like the easiest route for their child to be successful. Education, thus narrowly defined, is initially loaded up with the emphasis on the sciences, followed by the engineering coursework, and then culminating in management courses (that too, specific tracks of management that are the highest money earners).

Inherent in this dream then are a multitude of desires; desires such as your child would become utterly rich, that he would own many flats in many cities across India, and that he would make an extremely good living that would make you proud as a parent. These markers of success are far removed from other questions such as "What kind of values does your child embody? Does he care for others around him? How does he treat those that are less fortunate than him?" Your child has made it to the pinnacles of success when he has earned all the accolades of material ownership that are considered the markers of modern middle (upper middle) class India: owned a car, bought many flats in multiple Indian cities, put together a promising investment portfolio in the share market etc. This is the dream of Indian (I say middle class mostly, as education remains a commodity out of reach for a large percentage of India's poor) parents, a dream that is continually circulated in your Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan movies, the Indian ads on diaspora TV, the Bollywood music videos, and so on. The culture industry coming out of neoliberal India parades this dream like a poster, from your billboards to your TV screens to your Bollywood song-and-dance sequences. The glossy lure of success lies in pursuing the linear narrative of success, ending up in ownership of the things that are taken as the indicators of success.

And this is the part where cultural deconstruction becomes necessary in understanding this widespread cultural logic in neoliberal India. Indian parents, typically, don't equip their children to ask questions of ethics, with questions such as, "How am I going to earn the money?" "What is the ethics in how I earn the money?" "What are the consequences for others in how I earn the money?" "How is my earning of money tied to the approximately 80% Indians who struggle to make a living?" An amazingly well-crafted neoliberal narrative sets into the mindsets of the young and the successful, "I am special. I am pretty darn good, better than the rest. So I earn the money that I do." This is perhaps the very reason why when talking to friends in investment banking about the financial crisis, I have heard them blame the financial crisis on "people who got into houses that they should not be owning at the first hand (and this might be at least partially true, but my question is one of value and not one of accuracy)." The crisis of neoliberalism perhaps lies in this fundamental inability of the neoliberal subject to have empathy, to feel for those who are less fortunate, who have much lesser access to resources because of where they have been born and the resources they have had access to because of where they have been born. One of the basic lessons that we learn from the financial crisis is that it was/is a product of a pathology, a pathology of collective consciousness that had long stopped feeling for the other. It is this pathology that justified the selling of CDOs by those very organizations that had betted against them.

One of the things that resulted out of the financial crisis is the discussion of business ethics. However, as I listen to MBA programs both in India and in the US talk about business ethics, I wonder to what extent these will once again be co-opted as PR ploys in business programs much like the way in which much of CSR has turned into a public relations tool to promote the organizational image and minimize public resistance to organizational operations. To what extent are these calls for ethics mere window dressing in the face of the large-scale public opinion that has begun to call for stronger regulations on businesses? For discourses of ethics to truly be meaningful, the dialogue has to start not just with our business schools, but also with our schooling systems and parents, in reconsidering what we come to value as success and how we measure the markers of success. The shift has to come at a cultural level where we critically engage with our priorities and the values that underlie these priorities.

Experiences of Food Insecurity

2011-07-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Shifting my focus from policy-related books, I’ve devoted my attention this week towards absorbing information in the academic literature related to experiences of food insecurity. Broadly, I’ve learned that the experience of food insecurity is collectively shared. While I dislike making generalizations across geographic locations and communities, it is easy to see that those facing hunger in the rural communities of Oregon and Appalachia are quite similar in their perceptions of the experience to those we’ve interviewed as part of our Voices of Hunger project.

In De Marco, Thornburn, and Kue’s (2009) analysis of the experiences of the food insecure in rural Oregon, similar contributors to food insecurity were noted, including a lack of health insurance and foregrounded requirements to pay for bills and rent, as well as the administrative hurdles potential recipients face in determining their eligibility for national safety-net programs. I was particularly intrigued by their discussion of the increased difficulties faced by rural food insecure, as this is a dialogue I’ve been interested in joining. The authors note that even when low-income rural residents are able to obtain employment where they live, community resources such as public transportation and child care are often limited. Most jobs in rural communities are not within walking distance, and rural residents without cars are unable to get to them. These factors collectively contribute to the lower incomes that make food insecurity more likely. In addition, rural communities face other conditions contributing to food insecurity, including limited access to supermarkets and limited and highly priced food items. I was also very interested in the response of their participants regarding the stigma associated with using food pantries in rural communities. Particularly, the use of food pantries is difficult for those in small towns due to the lack of anonymity inherent in rural living. Coming from a small town myself, I’ve seen the stigma associated with visiting food banks or accessing food assistance programs, paired with the lack of privacy inherent from living in small towns where one person’s business is everyone’s business, keep needy individuals from accessing services. And even academically, in multiple situations I’ve faced difficulty in describing my interest in rural health disparities with fellow scholars, particularly because many of them feel as though the disparities faced by the urban poor are much more recognizable and thus worthy of study. However, the factors noted above substantiate the need for increased attention paid towards rural populations as well.

Hamilin, Habicht, and Beaudry’s (1999) discussion of the social implications of food insecurity was interesting in its expansion of the existing boundary of how we conceptualize the impact of food insecurity at a societal level. The authors suggest that social implications of food insecurity include decreased productivity, an inability for educational attainment, increased powerlessness, increased need for healthcare, decreased constructive participation in social life, and an erosion of transfer of knowledge to the next generation. Considering these implications, I’m left questioning why we (mainstream media, public and academic discourse) fail to frame the food insecurity crisis in such broad context? Failure to do so, focusing only on the proximal impact of food insecurity (and sometimes not even that), seems to maintain a culture of discouraged support for broad social policy change.

Finally, I was most impressed by Hamilin, Mercier, and Bedard (2010)’s analysis of the perceptions of both food insecure households in Canada and community stakeholders involved in food insecurity projects. Juxtaposing the responses of the food insecure against those who volunteer and coordinate food assistance programs clearly substantiated the need for better administrative coordination of food insecurity services. And, ultimately, it was extremely disheartening to see how far public perceptions of food insecurity are from its lived reality. For instance, stakeholders largely misperceived that households wouldn’t have much concern for the nutritional quality of food they received from food pantries. Additionally, most households reported at least one positive influencing factor with regards to food security and healthy management practices in terms of assets and food. However, less than half of the stakeholders remarked that households possessed either one of these elements. These divergences are of great concern. As the author’s suggested, “It has already been observed that many food assistance staff strongly believed that households would go hungry if not for food donations; this perception could make them dissociate themselves from the needs of their clients, and even poor quality food would then be considered as necessary donations.”

It was also troubling to see that a majority of the community stakeholders had no prior experience with food insecurity. Their knowledge about food insecurity would therefore come from other sources. Community workers had the opportunity to make many direct contacts with food-insecure households, but managers and donor agency representatives relied on indirect information via field workers’ perceptions, reports from their organization, or published literature on food security. This is particuarly troubling considering that these individuals are often those most responsible for the administrative and sustained success of local food assistance programs. Perhaps encouraging interaction between the food insecurity and food assistance workers at all levels would aid in promoting a better understanding of food insecurity. A community-based approach that includes the food insecure’s own perceptions of the problem would be useful here, especially to work towards empowerment and perhaps alleviation of food insecurity problems in place of continued reinforcement of reliance on the food assistance system.

Poppendieck's Sweet Charity

2011-07-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

In moving forward with my food policy readings, I’ve spent the last few days absorbing “Sweet charity: Emergency food and the end of entitlement” by Janet Poppendieck. While she hasn’t been as straightforward in declaring her positionality on the food insecurity issue as was Winne, I have really appreciated her writing style as a member of academia, a sociologist specifically, who is consistently able to blend her scholarly understanding with practical sensibilities. She spends a brief portion of her introduction detailing her methodology, which included participant observation, interviews, and archival analysis at food pantries, food banks, food rescue programs, and soup kitchens in nine different states across the span of 7 years. From the start, I was drawn into the book per my sharing of Poppendieck’s most notable fear: we are becoming attached to our charitable food programs and increasingly unable to envision a society that wouldn’t need them. As she suggests, we are so busy building bigger, better programs to deliver food to the hungry that we are losing sight of the underlying problem and its possible solutions.

Particularly, what I’m starting to find most interesting is that emergency food programs really don’t views themselves to be solutions to the problem of poverty. They are simply responses to the urgent needs of the hungry. The recipients, volunteers, and system itself rarely question why people are in need, why they continue to be in need, or how long that need will last. And as Poppendieck suggests, we’ve been inherently trained since birth to equate food with security in such a way that seeing others without food makes us intensely uncomfortable. We come to support providing it to those who lack it without consideration of what underlies that continual provision. She notes, “An enormous outpouring of effort (the monumental task of sorting and packing 280,000 pounds of food, logistically complicated, labor-intensive) is needed to get a can of carrots or a jar of baby food into the hands of a hungry family, a result that could probably be accomplished far more simply by raising the food stamp allotment, or the minimum wage.” As she discuss the inadequacies of the outdated 1996 poverty income thresholds, the Thrifty Food Plan that determines food stamp allotments, and the increased focus on quantifying an un-quantifiable “hunger count” of food insecure Americans, I’m once again left conflicted. In donating my time at the local pantry, rather than working instead to educate others regarding the weaknesses in domestic food policy, am I a complicit contributor to the food insecurity crisis? How much involvement can a scholar put forward towards policy and activism when we see injustice and have the resources available to help a cause garner public attention? More so, is that seeming potential even legitimate when others control the standards for what is and is not publishable?

(Not) Talking about Hunger: Experiences from the Mobile Pantry & Insights from Winne

2011-07-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

This week, in addition to reading Winne’s “Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty,” I had an opportunity to visit another mobile food pantry offered by Food Finders in West Lafayette. While my primary purpose wasn’t to serve as a volunteer for Food Finders (instead distributing and helping participants complete the community needs assessment from the health department that I’ve worked on for some time), it was difficult not to once again share in the experiences and listen to the voices of those visiting for free food. First, I was pleasantly surprised to run into 5 of our participants from the “Voices of Hunger” project. Seeing them there was a reassurance that they are all surviving amidst their hardship, and brief conversations with them spawned two interesting thoughts in relation to my food policy readings.

First, I chatted with one of our former participants (of the most engaged in the project) about a conversation she had with a Senator a few weeks prior. I’m not sure of the context of their conversation, but she had used the time to discuss with him issues she shared with us regarding the inability of reformed felons (out of jail and trying to survive) to receive food stamp benefits. His response to her was to create a petition, and with enough signatures, she could pass the petition on to him (for what purpose exactly, I’m not 100% clear). However, it was difficult to not share in her complete excitement for the potential to have her voice heard and appreciated. I let her know that once it was created, we’d do what we could at the university to help in any way. I was hopeful for her cause, and proud of her for working through the bureaucratic system to get her voice heard. But ultimately, I’m extremely critical of what the Senator was able to suggest. Giving this woman, and those who sign the petition, false hope of a policy change that is unlikely to occur amidst the conservative, monetarily-drained Indiana legislature is deceptive. I’m not quite sure how to reconcile my excitement in her engagement with the reality of the situation at hand.

Additionally, in seeing 5 of our 6 voices of hunger participants at the mobile pantry, I’m led to question the true purposes of the “emergency” food system in “solving” the hunger crisis. What is the mere provision of free food doing to create a long-term food security plan for this community? The continual reliance of the poverty-ridden on the food bank system and the subsequent provision of food does little to aid or encourage these individuals to find a way to improve their life situations such that they are able to decrease their reliance, or to change the way we think about governmental hunger policy at a national level. As Winne suggests, “we must seriously examine the role of food banking, which requires that we no longer praise its growth as a sign of our generosity and charity, but instead recognize it as a symbol of our society’s failure to hold government accountable for food insecurity and poverty.” He continues by suggesting that food banks should no longer serve as a “dumping ground for the waste and surplus of American’s food industry,” instead returning to the role of addressing genuinely short-term community emergencies. While I’m grateful that such services are available in our community to help those in need, I’m conflicted in the true good such services do in the long term scheme of ending hunger here in Lafayette. With federal funding consistently wavering, and in this economic climate, often unavailable, what happens to those who rely on this system when the food industry ends its so-called “charitable” provision of leftover food to banks and money from private donations runs dry? How are we to argue for improvement of federal systems (such as food stamps) when opponents to change see that the food stamp ineligible are still able to get needed food from other community services?

While this doesn’t relate to my conversations, it was quite a site to see of West Lafayette’s most wealthy citizens (the pantry was located and sponsored by a church, which put up $1000, in of the wealthiest communities in West Lafayette) drive by the location gawking in astonishment from their Hummers, and the pampered college students staring from their parent-subsidized front doors, at the line of 500 of Lafayette’s most needy in their backyards. Did any walk over and offer to help? Not one. The looks on their faces were more of anger at the intrusion. For me, it was one of the clearest displays of the increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots I’ve ever witnessed.

Finally, I was particularly moved by one of the final conclusions made by Winne in the final pages of his book, which seemed strikingly similar to the agenda afforded by a culture-centered approach to understanding food insecurity and spoke directly to my experiences at the mobile pantry this week. Within his suggestion entitled “Race, class, and privilege: Make way for the next wave,” Winne notes:

“The fact that our food system is racist, classist, and sexist should come as no surprise to anyone…people of color, low-income households, and women are the first to suffer. Who is affected by the food gap and who participates in the efforts to narrow that gap are questions that deserve much more than a few paragraphs…indeed they deserve a book until themselves. As a person of power and privilege, I have been intensely aware of both what I can and what I cannot do. There are few examples in the social movement literature of one class of people bringing about change for another class of people. As with these movements, the struggle for equity, access, affordability, health food, and food security will ultimately be won by those with the most at stake. Yes, I am privileged. And as I use the talents that God gave me- carefully honed as they were by education, opportunity, and a middle-class upbringing- to make the lives of others at least a little better, I will pave the way for, make way for, and get out of the way of those whose voices more genuinely call out for change than mine ever could. Policy efforts to change the food system and close the food gap must be most inclusive of the lives we are attempting to improve. They can pursue that goal through public policies, faith communities, and individual and organizational acts of charity that give everyone a seat at the table. But most importantly, they must share the same meal.”

Beautifully put.

Constructing the Discourse of Food Policy

2011-06-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

For the second week of readings in my study of food policy, I was introduced to the historical origins and current developments in the food insecurity policy landscape. In reading Eisinger’s (1998) Towards an End to Hunger in America, as well as a number of academic articles from public health, nutrition, and social policy studies, I began to note the ways in which a scholar of communication (across sub-disciplines) could contribute in a multi-dimensional way to discussions of food insecurity. These readings were extremely insightful for me, so bear with the length.

First, one particularly interesting point for discussion relates to merely defining food insecurity. Specifically, discursive conflicts have occurred in distinguishing hunger from food insecurity. While this debate began with the first political discussions of food insecurity in 1960s and 1970s, the settling of a clear definition of food insecurity and/or hunger is still yet to be achieved. The Committee on National Statistics recommendations to the most recent 2006 USDA report on national food security states, “The word “hunger” should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.” However, is hunger merely a clinical concept related to malnutrition, or in defining hunger in the realm of food insecurity, is it something best conceptualized as a political construct with clear social implications? The CNSTAT panel also recommended that the USDA consider alternative labels to convey the severity of food insecurity without using the word “hunger.” However, as Eisinger (1998) argues, hunger elicits more emotion and resonance in the political landscape than does an issue of “security”. How might mere definition of these terms lead to more or less mobilization of public concern for food insecurity? Lack of broadly accepted definitions makes it difficult for the public to demand accountability and complicates the flow of information and education about the importance of hunger and food insecurity. And most importantly, why haven’t we asked those experiencing hunger to help us in the process of definition, rather than relying solely (as we have for years) on multiple Congressional subcommittees and large national data gathering institutions? This plays directly in to the communicative erasures a culture-centered perspective would bring forward for criticism.

Another interesting communicative framing in the context of food insecurity relates to participation in federal food assistance programs, such as food stamps. American perspectives on social welfare are often based upon ambivalence; while individuals are interested in being generous to the genuinely destitute, they also believe that large numbers of recipients of social welfare are cheats or lazy. As Eisinger notes, discursively focusing on abuse of the system leaves society with a general sense of doubt that truly hungry people do need help and downplays the administrative complexity of the food assistance system. Investment in such programs also creates a quid-pro-quo scenario where, if society invests in the well-being of a needy group, the group is expected to owe society greater productivity and achievement in return. This shifts the blame for failed policies from the policy itself towards individual merit and one’s return-on-investment, intentionally commodifying the food insecure. In considering the underlying purposes behind food assistance, we are left questioning whether our interest is truly to help the poor verses creating a market for surplus farm products (as bulk donations to food pantries are largely commodity excess) or a workforce able to compete with (and fight against) other nations in the future.

Additionally, according to Cook (2002), new rules and regulations under the Personal Opportunity and Work Reconciliation Act of 1996 enabled states to place additional restrictions on eligibility for federal food assistance programs. The new law placed an overall five-year limit on receipt of benefits for most recipients, and transferred primary responsibilities for design, implementation, and oversight of welfare programs to state and local governments. Subsequent analyses have shown that those leaving the caseloads of federal food assistance programs are relying more heavily on private emergency food sources like food pantries and soup kitchens. Charitable groups often substitute for governmental aid altogether, with a number of eligible citizens never accessing federal program benefits. Why is this the case? And more importantly, in framing the charitable sector as an alternative to public food assistance or a safety net for those without government aid, are we leaving ourselves with little pressure to support or augment these broad social welfare programs?

Finally, I was also very intrigued by Eisinger’s discussion of volunteers in the charitable food sector, and in this I saw great potential for communication scholars to contribute, especially in consideration of our work on the Food Finders project. He first notes that we know little of the dimensions of more sustained volunteering in providing food to the needy (beyond a mere one time donation). Studies have found that pantries have 2.1 paid employees but more than 28 volunteer workers, with a value of more than $400 million per year to some organizations. However, recruiting and training volunteers requires a considerable investment, and most are short term with high levels of burnout. In the realm of persuasive study and organizational communication, one might be interested in asking how the degree of bureaucratization and structuration in charitable food groups alter volunteer commitment. How do we balance the “bureaucratic” requirements such that they don’t lead to volunteer burnout while also maintaining and sense of legitimacy and professional to the system? Should a better training program for volunteers be crafted in this light? What can we do to persuade more individuals to invest in long-term volunteering? As a critical scholar, I was also interested to find that 55% of food charity volunteers participate for altruistic purposes, while the remainder do so for moral satisfaction or to fulfill a personal purpose. In framing volunteering as a charitable act, the recipient of the service has no entitlement. Is this truly serving the interests of the needy?

Initial thoughts on food insecurity and food policy

2011-06-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

After doing quite a bit of scholarly reading to start off the first week of my independent study on food policy, I’m now starting to sense the complexity involved in tackling the problem of food insecurity. The problem is widespread and has a variety of health-related outcomes that pose an increasing threat to our health system. One particular statistic noted that for those who meet federal poverty guidelines, 35% identify as food insecure. With a variety of definitions of “food insecurity” floating around in the academic literature and policy venues, it is a bit difficult to know exactly what this means. A number of articles made reference to social capital and community connectedness as significant factors influencing food insecurity, and while I remember talking about this construct in my public health class and in prior blog postings, I also remember recognizing that operationalizing social capital can be extremely difficult. In similar light, I was pleased with the Larson & Story (2011) literature review that I read that noted that studies are increasingly examining the potential influence of local availability of retail food stores and farmers’ markets, access to public transportation, social capital, and family structure as interconnected determinants of food insecurity. Bernell, Weber, and Edwards (2006) also highlight this notion in their piece, which was my favorite read. They suggest that there are 3 primary levels of determinants of food insecurity: household level (personal choices about marriage or child bearing that increase vulnerability), state level (wages, unemployment, costs of living), and federal level (federally funded programs, like food stamps). However, less considered in the research and an area to which I’d like to devote my own attention, is that of community level factors, like county-level economic opportunity, social programs, and conditions that lead to food insecurity. I agree with these authors that food insecurity is much more than a problem arising from individual choices. The local community food security infrastructure, which includes elements like housing and social support, significantly affects the likelihood of families experiencing food insecurity. Pulling all of these levels apart to understand how they interplay is a daunting task, though.

More broadly, I have a number of thoughts as I begin my work for this summer’s independent, particularly in consideration of the work that I’m doing on another CCA-related grant project related to African Americans and heart health. After being exposed to the tribulations and rewards of working with community stakeholders in an under-privileged setting, as part of a project much farther along on the community sustainability continuum than where we left off with the “voices of hunger” project, I’ve grown extremely anxious to see what could come of our coalition-building efforts with the food insecure in this area. I see similarities in how the problem of heart health in the African American population from Lake and Marion county and food insecurity here in Tippecanoe county are discursively framed and positioned by those experiencing the marginalization and those working with the marginalized. Just like the community organizers in the heart health project, Food Finders employees must actively manage their roles as liaisons among multiple stakeholders that often have conflicting wants and needs when it comes to project initiation and development. Similarly, however, I also feel a sense of true passion and commitment from these individuals to improving the lives of those around them. Both the food insecure and the marginalized African Americans share stories of access barriers, under-managed policies, and disenfranchisement in the spaces where their voices have a right to be heard. In this, I’m growing increasingly fond of the quote by Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”

Brown, muslim, male...

2011-05-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

Brown, muslim, male
An interrupted body
the savage marker
of primitiveness
in need for his savior.

Brown, muslim, male
An interrupted story of violence
enacted on his body
through generations of enlightenment,
progress, and modernization.

Brown, muslim, male
wanting to make a living
with simple dreams,
interrupted through interventions
wanting to recreate an enlightened world.

Brown, muslim, male
simply wanting to be silent,
to be indescript and hidden,
interrupted through excavations
of the imperial gaze.

Brown, muslim, male
wanting to live
wanting to breathe
Silenced, erased
And lost.

When voices make a difference in engaging structures

2011-05-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

One of the concepts that we have continually discussed in the culture-centered approach is the vitality of communication as the gateway to social change. The idea built into the culture-centered approach is fairly simple: that when communities at the margins that have been historically erased from the dominant structures find a space in mainstream platforms, their wishes and desires no longer remain the sites of erasure. Rather, the articulations of agendas of community members working individually as well as in communities as collectives become the reference points for structural transformations. Voices of community members when engaged in dialogue with policymakers, program planners, and mainstream audiences, offer entry points to change through the creation of nodes of listening in these policy and program platforms.

This concept of listening to the voices of subaltern communities as an entry point to achieving change was beautifully elucidated at the PhotoVoice exhibit today that brought together the clients of Food Finders and local food pantries in conversation with food pantries (we had one area pantry represented) as well as with the staff and volunteers of Food Finders. Issues and problem configurations articulated by the food insecure participants in our project, both as individuals as well as collectives, were shared with the Food Finders staff and volunteers. Through the sharing of these issues, the leadership of Food Finders developed insights into the everyday problems of hungry community members who interact with the food pantries. In doing so, the leadership discussed strategies of addressing these problems, as well as discussed the possibilities of additional dialogues that brought Food Finders, the food pantries, and the food insecure into dialogues through group discussions.

Personally, the most gratifying part of this work for me was the viability of communication as a conduit for structural transformations. In the articulations of the Food Finders leadership, I heard articulations of changes in specific policies that marginalized the food insecure. That sualtern communities at the margins know and understand best their own experiences and therefore are the most insightful partners in developing solutions that are meaningnful them was once again reiterated through the project. The tremendous capacity of individuals facing food insecurity to throw deep-rooted insights into the everyday problems of structural injustices offers hope into the promise of CCA to create spaces for structural transformations through acts of listening that foreground the agency of communities at the margins. The stories that we had listened to as a team were also stories that were now starting to create avenues of change. Change that albeit looks small in the beginning, but change that I also believe is big in its fundamental acknowledgment of the fundametal dignity of the food insecure as active meaning-making agents.

Voices of Hunger: Come listen to stories of hunger in Lafayette/West Lafayette

2011-05-04T06:44:00.000-07:00

Voices of Hunger: Thursday, May 5, 2011, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.; Patty & Rusty Rueff Galleries, PAO Hall

Dear friends and colleagues,

You have followed our blog postings drawing on the reflections from the "Hunger Project" over the last few months.Finally, it is time to voice these stories that have been weaved together collaboratively by community members in West Lafayette/Lafayette who experience hunger in the current political and economic landscape. The stories will not only draw you to the everydayness of hunger amidst which communities at the margins negotiate their lives, but will also offer you insights into the tremendous courage and conviction with which community members negotiate their lived experiences in the midst of absence of fundamental resources.

The purpose of the project titled “Voices of Hunger in Tippecanoe County,” is to develop a collaborative partnership between Purdue University, Food Finders, and its clients to listen to the voices of hunger in Lafayette/West Lafayette, and to develop solutions addressing food insecurity in Indiana. The partnership with local community members who experience hunger seeks to create channels to identify problems related to food insecurity, and the corresponding solutions from within the local communities of the food insecure in Tippecanoe county that are developed through the participation of the food insecure in culturally centered processes of change.

Through in-depth interviews and PhotoVoice projects conducted in partnership with the food insecure in the area, the goal of our collaborative partnership is to draw attention to the problems of food insecurity in the Lafayette/West Lafayette area. At the event, we will listen to the stories of hunger, brainstorm about strategies, and consider the ways in which the partnership between the food insecure, Food Finders, Purdue and the broader West Lafayette/Lafayette community can work toward addressing the challenge of hunger experienced in our community.

The project is supported by the College of Liberal Arts (CLA)"Home" Community Building Program. Programs such as "Home" creatively and innovatively support engaged scholarship that seeks to make a difference in our communities. Also, special thanks to my colleague JoAnn Miller for supporting this project through the "Home" program, to the College of Liberal Arts for its leadership vision of engaged scholarship, to Professor Harry Bulow of Visual and Performing Arts for so generously sharing the gallery space, to the graduate students in the class (Abigail, Agaptus, Christina, Haijuan, and Sirisha) who have worked tirelessly on the project (spending many hours in the field above and beyond the requirements of the classroom), Katy Bunder and the staff at Food Finders, and most importantly, to our many participants in the "Hunger Project" who so generously shared their time, efforts, and stories with the goal of making a difference in the lived experiences of community members who experience hunger. Your generosity of spirit is a reminder of the tremendous potential of the margins in de-centering the structures that marginalize.

Call for Books: Critical Cultural Studies in Global Health Communication

2011-04-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

Critical Cultural Studies in Global Health Communication
Series Editors:
Mohan J. Dutta, Purdue University &
Ambar Basu, University of South Florida

Global changes in migratory patterns, the increasing health inequalities faced by the poor, the health risks faced by communities at the margins of global societies, and the communicative nature of health problems have drawn additional attention to the relevance of studying health communication processes across global cultures. This series will challenge West-centric ideals of health and human behavior by publishing theoretically- provocative, pedagogically-critical volumes addressing the intersection of communication principles and practices with health concepts and structures. The series editors seek book proposals that address (a) the storied nature of health communication practices that are globally situated; (b) structurally-constituted nature of health communication; (c) individual and collective processes of communicating through which cultures negotiate meanings of health; and (d) local-global processes of participation and organizing through which local communities seek to bring about transformations in unhealthy global structures. The intent of the series is to foreground knowledge that creates openings for transforming structures of injustice and exploitation underlying global health inequalities.

Books in the series will be single authored books or strategic edited volumes making coherent arguments about the intersections of globalization and health. Although the series will occasionally publish research monographs based on comparative global research, the emphasis will be on publishing topical books that can be used both as advanced undergraduate-graduate texts as well as reference materials. Manuscript proposals should be addressed to series CO-editor Mohan J. Dutta at

In response to first food insecurity project training session

2011-04-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

Walking away from the first focus group and training session, I was especially surprised by the ways in which, through means of our brief 2 hours session, the attendees had begun to build a sense of camaraderie. Immediately upon entering the room, one participant recognized another from receiving services at the food pantry. Spawning from their acquaintanceship, a number of participants then began to share advice about receiving services, such as what pantries were open at particular times and locations. Others ended the evening by offering a ride home to an attendee that had missed the bus. I have written in my project journal about an emerging theme of selflessness and gratitude in my interviews, and being witness to such acts verifies my prior assertions. Particularly, a common critique relates to the ability of the food assistance system to provide enough quality food to all patrons in need. Getting access to food is a personalized need, basic to one’s survival. Despite the personal nature of this critique (I need food, they don’t have enough food for me), many individuals discuss situations where they believe that others are in more dire need of food than themselves (children, elderly who cannot visit food pantries or kitchens). This shifts the experience of needing food away from the individual. In sharing one’s experience about accessing food, a communicative tension is crafted between such services relieving a personal need verses a collective need. In the context of the focus group session, while individuals were ultimately in attendance to receive personal monetary compensation, the act of being together as a collective spawned the forming of a community where selfless acts of sharing information and services was of primary interest.

Ultimately, I was overwhelmed with excitement (and some preparation anxiety) for what was to come of our project. The conversions about barriers of access were disheartening at minimum, but they did provide an excellent amount of empirical justification for our claims through means of dynamic, evolving group consensus. It was outstanding to see what group synergy really looks like at play! There were numerous times where individuals were talking over one another, and while some would stand, others would shout in agreement. There was little shared in relation to suggestions for the project’s direction, which was a bit disappointing, but the conversations did shed light on the most mutually meaningful definitions of the food insecurity problems in this community as articulated by actual voices of food insecure. Vocalizing their problems as part of the training workshop seemed to give a sense of personal legitimacy to what these individuals were experiencing. It left no questions in my mind regarding the communicative potential that a group of passionate individuals could have once brought together as a collective. And, it was especially moving to see the foundations of culture-centered work at play in a real project.

Role of Social Capital among the Food Insecure

2011-04-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, I questioned my assumption that there was a lack of a social network among food insecure. Did this commonality of interviewees happen to be a fluke or a norm? As I read through Chapter 8 in Communicating Health I realized that low social capital could be a possibility.

However, I guess I now find myself at a crossroads with more questions than I do with answers. The presence of social capital lends itself to more established networks and a sense of solidarity within the community. As a result, what should be seen then is a more advantageous interaction with agency, structure and culture on behalf of the community. When social capital is lacking or absent, there is a missing framework on which to introduce opportunity and improvement.

Perhaps where I find myself with the most questions is when social capital is lacking or non-existent within a marginalized audience. If the individuals we have interviewed lack the networks and solidarity like I sense that they do, and the culture-centered approach lends itself as a tool for solidarity and coalition building to emerge, what is happening within and among these individuals at the cognitive level? How is it that a lifestyle that has been lived for so long can begin to have emerge from within it the desire to connect with others in the same “community?” Dutta refers to Bandura (social cognitive theory) in this context as it relates to an individual’s tendency to engage in a healthy behavior through the influences of the connective community and associated behaviors. So, how is the cognitive level really playing out here? Also, is it possible that certain communities, regardless of the researcher involvement as a co-participant in the narratives, just cannot pull together in a way that lends itself to coalition building? If so, then how, as the researcher/co-participant, do you even begin to recognize this?

Enacting Resistance as Food Insecure

2011-04-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

Dutta’s chapter on culture and resistance poses some interesting questions regarding the processes by which marginalized communities enact their agency through offering opportunities for structurally altering the systems that sustain their positions at the margins. After reading, I found myself immediately considering some of the interview responses for the food insecurity project that individuals had shared. It seems as though, despite their underserved status, those in the food insecure community still find ways to enact resistance against the unfair practices of the food provision system in this community. Often enacted at the micro-level, these resistive acts work to open up spaces of social change by creating new meanings and by offering alternatives to the dominant discourses. For instance, I spoke with an individual yesterday who detailed the injustices present within the food pantry for union members, which allegedly refuses pantry access to those long-standing union members (often the most in-need) who aren’t able to pay their union dues. After hearing responses from the charity organization that works with the union to supply food to the pantry that its services were being “tapped out” in this community, the participant visited the pantry on multiple occasions to merely observe from outside how many patrons visited. And, not surprisingly enough, the use of the pantry was minimal. Why then are those in most need being denied access? In listening to the participant detail the ways in which she had confronted pantry workers, engaged in her own form of “investigation,” and sought to share this information with as many people as she could, it was easy to see how the participant was interested in offering an alternative to the dominant discourse offered by the food pantry, union, and charity organization, instead privileging the voices of the marginalized as they were denied access to essential services.

Dutta also suggests that marginalized populations can resist culture itself, particularly as practices within the culture can embody conditions of inequality. As individuals question the taken-for-granted assumptions within their culture that constitute particular cultural traditions, new meanings emerge, bringing forward new opportunities for communicating. In a number of the food insecurity interviews, an overarching theme of pride has emerged. Namely, individuals note that one barrier inhibiting those in need of food from accessing pantries is an overwhelming sense of pride that accessing pantries takes from them. I’m not quite sure if the pride is in relation to one’s ability to provide food for their family without assistance or if it stems instead from a broader cultural context where asking for help is considered shameful. Regardless, as I listened to participants note times where they’ve gone to the pantries themselves to get food for these others who refuse to visit, I could see how some had chosen to resist culture itself by questioning the assumption that receiving help during a time of need wasn’t a shameful act. Rather, it was a way for them to create a new meaning, an alternative meaning, to the existing cultural framework of those living in food insecure poverty.

Communication and Resistance: A tale of Nigeria’s Niger Delta

2011-04-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

The intersection between communication, resitance and social change is a key point that strikes me as unique in this week’s readings. I am intrigued by this overlap because of incessant conflict between oil corporations and indigenous communities over seismic operations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
The contexts may seem somewhat divergent on the surface in that the readings highlight resistance in health-related contexts. By contrast, the resistance in Nigeria is tied to marginalization with respect to dearth of basic facilities in indigenous communities despite several years of oil exploration and concomitant environmental pollution. Given the overlap between structural marginalization and health, both scenarios provide opportunities for convergence. I use convergence here to mean similarity of prevailing /unfavorable circumstances that trigger agency or resistance from indigenous communities.

Nigeria’s Niger Delta region represent the eight oil producing states in Nigeria globally reputed as notorious due to persistent conflict between indigenous communities and the oil exploration corporations over the absence of basic facilities and the marginalisation of the indigenous communities. The conflict recently became prominent in global media due to the increasing kidnapping of personnel of oil corporations in the region by ethnic militias purporting to be resisting further marginalization.
My intent in this reflection is neither to support the violation of the rights of innocent personnel, who are caught in the web of the crisis, nor to defend the marginalization of the indigenous communities by the structure, but to illustrate the role of communication in the resistive process.

First, the emergence of various ethnic militias acting as resistive agents against marginalization in the region is of interest. Also intriguing is the emergence of intra-ethnic militias that resist internal structures suspected of complicity in the marginalization of indigenous communities is worth noting.
The resistance in Nigeria’s Niger Delta is particularly intriguing in that the militias have become strong source of cover stories for major news media. Perhaps a stunning dimension to the scenario is the role of new media, e.g, Internet, facebook in the conflict. The militias often email media organizations to claim responsibility of disruptions in oil pipelines, and the kidnap of personnel of the oil corporations.

The resilience of the militias compelled Nigeria’s government to create a Ministry of the Niger Delta, aimed at addressing the needs of the communities. Also more recently, the government started an Amnesty Program aimed at providing restive youths in the region with skills to better their living. Despite the challenges in the implementation, both schemes fundamentally exemplify Dutta’s (2010) argument about the intersection between resistance, communication, and social change.

Politics of authenticity...who gets to ask the questions!

2011-04-14T06:18:00.000-07:00

In reading Sirisha's post that poignantly addresses the pathologization of the Third in mainstream discourses in the West as epitomized in the Oscar winning productions "Born into Brothels" and "Slumdog Millionaire," I am reminded of a social gathering a few years back. "Slumdog" was released, was an Oscar nominee at this point, and was all the rage in the popular culture circuits. At this gathering, a colleague (you guessed it, Caucasian and male) walked up to me and asked if I had ever really visited a slum, because he referred to an NPR story that supposedly made the argument that it is Indians who haven't really seen the slums that have problems with the movie "Slumdog Millionaire." [Granted that the materiality in the frames of Slumdog do have a base in the deep-seated inequalities in contemporary India, the frames in the movie I would argue further perpetuate these inequities by participating in the circulation of a neoliberal reading of India through cinematic text...but that's for a different post]

Whereas on one hand I found the comment incredibly insulting, given my work with poverty in different parts of rural Bengal, and the years of fieldwork as well as activist work before I entered into the US academe, I also found the comment to typify a discursive move that embodies the arrogance of Eurocentric hegemony, particularly as it relates to the use of specific communicative processes through which discursive entries from the South are silenced through these assumed hegemonic positions of knowledge and evaluation occupied by our Caucasian colleagues in the Euro-centered mainstream. Note first in this comment the question of authenticity that gets used by this colleague to shut me out; possibilities of communicative engagement in a real sense are foreclosed through the interrogation of the authenticity of the scholar from the South in voicing a narrative about the lived experiences in the South. Time and again preceding this incident and following it, advising dissertations for instance that are based in the global South, I have seen this process of legitimacy-making unfold, as Third World scholars participating in the Eurocentric mainstream have had to take the extra steps to justify their legitimacy as participants in the discourse.

In asking me whether I ever visited slums or not, this colleague immediately puts me as a Third World scholar in a position of having to explain my legitimacy to him in order to earn my credibility to participate in the discussion of the "Slumdog Millionaire." Now this would have been a fairly harmless question that could be read as emerging out of ignorance, but chosing to read the interaction as a marker of ignorance writes over the politics of power and control that is embedded in the arrogance attached to this type of Eurocentric ignorance. It is precisely this ignorance that underlies (neo)colonial occupations. It is precisely this ignorance that undermines the "other" as a legitimate participant in discourse. It is precisely for this reason that for how petty this one incident seems to be, it is also powerful in throwing light on the communicative processes in the Eurocentric mainstream that work through our everyday interactions in silencing imaginative possibilities from the South, in discounting critiques from the South, and in thoughtfully engaging in possibilities of co-constructing development policies and programs that are fundamentally guided by the knowledge of actors from the global South who actually understand the terrains of lived experience in the South.

Trust building: Not an easy task !

2011-04-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

The reading on the Participatory change among the Commercial Sex Workers in both the programs viz., SHIP and New Light Project has created an urge to point out towards the problem of building trust among the people we work with and amongst themselves in programs such as these which aim at bringing a "social change" through the solidarity networks among the community members. The first hurdle that I could identify while reading this piece is about gaining trust among the sex workers. It needs, not a simple effort but a very time consuming and confidence exhausting one. Gaining access to such areas in itself is so tough and this hurdle is further made tougher to cross by the earlier researchers or film makers or whatever they may be who have selfishly used their obnoxious stories for their goals of controversial movies or dissertations and publications in case of academicians or funding agencies. Most of them have exploited these people and left them with no hope for improvement and also have blocked whatever little passages available for the new researchers and other professionals who would actually intend to work to bring the change. Another example of such an exploitation can be anthropologist Jacques Lizot's study of the Yanomami. He has exploited these people for his sexual pleasures and dismantled the trust these people would have for other "outsiders" who would want to communicate with them. They do not trust the people anymore and cannot be blamed for the same. Another such example (though a different context) is Danny Boyle the film director of "Slumdog Millionaire" who, in my personal opinion had exploited the slum dwellers of Dharavi in Mumbai. He is very well put to use what goes on in these slums and earned himself all the accolades including the Oscar and have not done much to atleast help the children that were part of the movie. Instances like these have permanently blocked the pathways and made the reaching out to the people nearly impossible.
Building trust amongst the members of the society is also tough due to their own misconceptions and prejudices about themselves. This is multiply magnified when it again involves funding agencies and other professionals or institutes and ultimately becomes a vicious circle. More work and training in the realm of trust building, thus is needed, to be able to work with people and especially the marginalized communities to reach the set goals, be it their empowerment or advocacy of health intervention. And i am sure this cannot be learned in classroom or a workshop but has to be experiential and can be comprehended through real interaction and it demands ethical conduct of research which is not an easy task!

Conversation Continued: Strategically Disrupting Eurocentric Hegemony

2011-04-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

This is a comment in reponse to Yogita's well articulated point about history of ideas...sometimes, comments tend to be hidden, so am posting this again.

Thanks for referring to the James Scott piece on domination and resistance, as that's precisely where I would like to then build from in attempting to work out my half-baked ideas of social change articulated through subaltern narratives shared at the margins. As policies and programs carried out within the neoliberal configuration and directed at projects of development continually use the Eurocentric vantage point, albeit working closely with the local elite, to put forth specific development programs and policies, the work of contemporary SS scholarship has to reinvent a strategically organized politics that works on change from the margins by fundamentally disrupting the Eurocentric hegemony, and by acknolwedging the legitimacy of subaltern viewpoints that have otherwise been treated as magic and sub-standard by these very same structures of knowledge.

This is something I conntinually have struggled with in my own writing. Although I must acknowledge the grace and openness of many scholars situated within the Eurocentric mainstream who have continually engaged with the possibilities of openings, there has been a much larger presence of Eurocentered scholars who deep down believe in the Europeanness of Enlightenment and play it out within values of progress and modernity that celebrate Europe as starting points for progress. In this larger body of work, the European standards constitute the universals, and for any argument made from elsewhere, there are references to pre-existing Eurocentric thought as the sources of origin. The argument then works to show subalterns across the globe that whatever points of knowledge get worked out wherever, they ultimately draw upon European sources. The logic then works out this way: all thought that is worth noting originated in Europe. Power ascribed to Eurocentered knowledge in this way, I argue, fundamentally underlies the (neo)colonial project.

Let me elucidate this with an example. Recently, I was browsing through a JoC special issue on ferments in the field that had engaged with the directions that the field ought to be engaging with. One of the pieces in there written by a noted scholar discussed the idea of multimodal spaces of knowledge and opened up with a quote from the Panchatantra, referring to it as an Indian wisdom...nowhere then did the piece really engage with the notion of polymorphism that emerges as a thread in the panchatantra tales or cite the orginial text. This to me typified intellectual theft in a powerful way; ultimately we have to depend upon the Eurocentered scribe to teach us a concept which I believe might have been integral to the cultural mythology that one might have grown up with. So now, when talking about polymorphism in a Communication journal (and believe me, I tried out this experiment), one has to refer to this so-called seminal piece in JoC, which I believe was really stolen from the notions of polymorphism as played out in multiple strands of Hindu thought and more directly the tales of panchatantra (I am not sure of the author's intention, but that is beyond the point).

Ultimately then, the point of my note is that reclaiming the history of ideas within the domain of postcolonial politics is in and of itself a project of social justice. The purpose of such reclaiming, building on the work of Fannon, is to narrate for us, as postcolonial subjects within (neo)colonial spaces strategic entry points for interventions.

The networks of knowledge structures: Pillaging Third World knowledge

2011-04-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

This is a reflection of a recent experience with a piece I had sent out for peer review. This piece drew upon Subaltern Studies theory to articulate the processes of erasure in the Eurocentric mainstream. One of the reviewers responded to this piece by noting that this argument has already been made in the Communication literature (citing a piece in rhetoric that was published in 2000 by a Caucasian scholar at a mainstream American university). So I went back to the piece with the idea that I had something new to learn, although even on its face, the reviewer's argument did not work as the postcolonial and Subaltern Studies literature predate to arguments made by South Asian and Latin American scholars starting in the 70s. I still wanted to check out this 2000 piece to see if it was indeed citing some of this postcolonial work (as far as I knew, other than the works of Raka Shome, Radha Hegde, Radhika Parameswaran, and some other scholars of Latin American and South Asian origins, these arguments were not really being made in the US communication literarture). To my surprise, the piece talked about voice, erasure etc. without referring to any of the Subaltern Studies pieces. To me, this appears as blatant plagiarism and intellectual theft, as defined within the languages of intellectual honesty that are applied by mainstream US institutions. So what is it in this process of intellectual theft of knowledges from the Third that constitutes the hegemony of Eurocentrism, paradoxically within those very pieces of multiculturalism that sound all progressive and radical in their calls for listening to voices from elsewhere? To me, clearly these high sounding calls for voices from elsewhere were themselves not listening to the voices from elsewhere.

Contemplating about the networks of Eurocentrism that constitute knowledge structures in academe, and specifically in the Discipline of Communication, we discussed about all the ways in which conferences, committees, associations work to silence voices from elsewhere and continue to perpetuate Eurocentric hegemony. So, publications committees, editorial boards, research committees in our associations get constituted through Eurocentric networks that play out to Eurocentric knowledge claims. What is central to these knowledge claims is the development of processes, strucures, and systems that carry on Eurocentric hegemony, and simultaneously deligitimize knowledge that is produced by elsewhere. Therefore, knowledge producing processes that make specific claims about the legitimacy of processes work to establish and reify Eurocentric hegemony, creating a field of knowledge where it would appear that the "real" production of knowledge that is taking place is taking place only in the US and in Europe.

An excellent example of ommissions for instance is the ommission of the extensive body of work in postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies in communication scholarship that makes references to questions of erasure, silence, voice etc. Although the postcolonial and indigenous work predates the multicultural move in Eurocentric articulations of erasure, close examination demonstrates that this work really does not find its way into our journals making similar arguments. This erasure verges on plagiarism; the sort of plagiarism that has been carried out on the Third World by the colonial enterprise for centuries. This exemplifies the sort of plagiarism that underlies the violence done by European colonialists on the Third World through the fixing of the Third World as the subject of intervention, as incapable of producing knowledge that is of value. What is powerful about this hypocrisy is then the move by Eurocentric scholars in pointing out the ommission of their Eurocentric work in postcolonial pieces that draw upon the postcolonial roots of the work on erasure and voice.

In responding to this hypocrisy through resistance in writing, I have often followed one of two strategies: (a) to go back to the root pieces in postcolonial and Subaltern Studies theories such as Spivak, Guha, Escobar, Said to articulate arguments about erasure and voice, and to articulate these seminal pieces as entry points to knowledge creation (knowing fully well that the geography of space is intertwined with the production of knowledge); (b) to cite the Eurocentric pieces and then discuss the erasure of postcolonial theory in these pieces as a paradox that reifies the erasures that have been central to the (neo)colonial project. In these instances, my argument then works as resistance and as a pedagogical entry point for students, to draw them to the idea that postmodern reinventions of (neo)colonial logics continue to operate through the erasure of the Third as a space for the legitimate production of knowledge.

Ultimately then, I am starting to become more and more aware of the need for identity politics as yet another entry point to knowledge. Even as I articulate my own position of privilege in my fieldwork, I am also increasingly drawn to the need for making arguments about the ways in which the Eurocentric structure works to silence the positions through which I work out the co-creation of knowledge from spaces in the Third. For the student of postcolonial theory, the very process of producing knowledge is a political process, one that has to continually draw attention to the rape and the pillage of Third World knowledge that happens in the hand of Eurocentric knowledge structures that come in pretending to save the Third World and to do us good. Pointing out therefore to the hypocrisy of Eurocentrism (particularly the liberal multiculutural kind that talks about progress precisely with the goals of erasing) is a starting point in the postcolonial politics of knowledge production.

The rhetoric about baby formulas versus breastfeeding

2011-04-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Two key points that got me thinking in this week’s readings include the erasure of women’s breastfeeding knowledge by the biomedics, and the double speaking that characterize breastfeeding initiatives (the chapter by Emily Kripe in Zoller & Dutta). First,I consider the erasure of women’s agency.

I begin with a quotation that accurately reflects the plight of women in Third World countries with regard to breastfeeding: “This transfer of breastfeeding knowledge from its practitioners to the domain of medical professional, from being embodied to requiring learning, involves a privileging of headwork that not only reinstalls the mind-body dichotomy of the Cartesian subject, but disempowers women as mothers at a time when their corporeality is most active and symbolically significant” (Barlett,2002,p.376) quoted in Zoller and Dutta (2008). The move to deny women of their agency interests me because of current trend in some developing countries. In Nigeria for instance, Not for Profit Organizations have emerged, championing the crusade for breastfeeding awareness. It is commendable to champion breastfeeding, but the delegitimization of the women as recipients of breastfeeding knowledge is illogical.

The second point that strikes me as unique in this week’s reading is the current emphasis on breastfeeding which Zoller and Dutta (2008) draw attention to. Hitherto, traditional Nigerian communities, it was a social taboo for a nursing mother to fail breastfeeding her child. Such highly cherished traditional practice was altered by the introduction of baby formula that was framed as “modern” and became a status symbol. I remember growing up in a remote community, where families preserved empty cans of baby formula consumed by their new baby as status symbol. Interestingly, the tone has again changed, and breastfeeding has become the preferred baby feeding option. Thoughts that kept resonating on my mind are: why was breastfeeding initially framed in negative light? Was the negative framing an error? Or was it intentional? .

Culture cannot be a caricature

2011-04-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

In reading the final chapter of Communicating Health: A Culture-Centered Approach, I found it very helpful to have a complete overview of the entire culture-centered process in research, understanding, and necessary structural shifts. What was also reinforced for me was that this approach is both challenging and critical, especially when one is willing to recognize that erasure has taken place within a marginalized community.

However, something also struck me as I read and was reminded that culture is dynamic and that the “values, beliefs, and practices that constitute the culture become meaningful when articulated in the context within which they are realized” (p. 256). Of course, this definition has been a common statement made in our weekly discussions. But, how it was substantiated for me this week as I read it again comparing it to a notion I recently read in Charles Tilly’s book Durable Inequality. In the opening pages, Tilly describes James Gillray, who was Britain’s first professional cartoonist. His work is in the form of caricatures, portraying unforgettable images of British life under George III. Tilly goes on to describe later in the book how theoretical models can, in many ways, portray a social phenomenon in the form of a caricature… where certain characteristics are exaggerated, and others are understated. Of course, this ultimately does the theoretical framework, and the social phenomenon that it is trying to describe, a tremendous disservice.

So, as I read the definition (again) on page 256, I contemplated the Culture-Centered Approach and considered the possibility of a caricature portrayal. No. This approach, if done right, has the ability to create a rather definitive portrait of the people, the life, and the culture.

What I also found encouraging, as I continued to read and compare this chapter to Tilly’s book, was how (in Tilly’s terms), those who are being exploited by the dominant structure, actually have the ability develop new community norms, based on existing local meanings. Tilly actually suggested that this was not possible and that those who were being exploited would eventually just adapt or be more accommodating to the dominant structure. While this may be the norm, CCA actually allows for (in Dutta’s terms) culture to intersect with structure and agency.

Okay, so while reading loads may be in abundance, I’m always thankful when readings begin to intermingle in context, providing a sharper and more critical understanding of important concepts.

Communication gaps, incompetence, and healthcare systems

2011-04-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

So here's a story of an immediate experience this morning that relates to the conversations we have been having about structural barriers. As I share this story, let me first share that I am a health communication scholar with a graduate education and with almost a decade of experience listening to stories of individuals, families, and communities about their experiences with healthcare. On one hand, I believe that my education and scholarship have given me the skillsets to ask questions, to engage critically, and to push the envelope; on the other hand, I also believe that I miss many opportunities to ask questions, simply because of the length of the interactions in the provider's office.

Today's experience that I will share with you relates to billing. So we had gone in to the physician at one of the Arnett locations for a regular physical. The co-payment was made at the counter ($15), and we walked away with the assumption that the rest of the bill ($128 as I would come to learn later) would be taken care of as that's what happens with our CIGNA insurance we have had (Note that Purdue as well as I pay pretty heavy premiums for this insurance).

Two months later, CIGNA had sent a claims detail noting that it was not going to cover the bill. The explanation of benefits form noted the trip to the physician's office as not being covered by CIGNA and put the alphabet A by the note. In a footnote, it stated in capital letters "YOUR PLAN PROVIDES BENEFITS ONLY FOR COVERED EXPENSES FOR TRATMENT OR DIAGNOSIS OF AN INJURY OR ILLNESS." Now what had changed so dramatically from our last visit to the physician for a physical? How was it that the yearly physical was now not being covered? Although these questions occured to me when I received the note from CIGNA toward the end of February, I did not find the time amidst my work schedule to call up CIGNA within the regular business hours.

This morning, we received a bill in the mail from Clarian Arnett that stated the remaining $128 needed to be paid by the patient, and that the patient amount was due now. The note stated "The balance due is your responsibility. Please pay the entire balance due upon receipt of this statement or contact our office immediately if you cannot make payment in full. It is our policy to refer delinquent accounts to a collection agency. Your assistance in resolving this bill is appreciated. Please disregard this notice if payment has already been made." The statement from Arnett was frustration causing to say the least, as this was the first time I was seeing this, and there was no room for acknowledging a billing error. The implicit assumption in the message was that the patient was at fault for not having the bill. Also, the threat of sending the account to a collection agency was explicit.

So I opened up my schedule to call up CIGNA and speak to the claims department at CIGNA to ask why the claim had not been covered. After pressing through eight different buttons and providing information/making choices, I got to a CIGNA staff member. The CIGNA staff member noted that the category that the claim was filed under by Arnett was not covered by CIGNA under our plan coverage. She assured me that she would send the file for research and took down my number to reach me at. Now this was a plain and simply physical I thought, one we have been diligently having every year and that has been covered in the past. So what had changed? I pulled up my coverage information on the benefits website and from the site it seemed like nothing had changed. Armed with this knowledge, I called back CIGNA. Now when I spoke with the CIGNA staff member and shared the information that physicals are supposed to be covered by my CIGNA plan, she informed me that the code under which the information was entered was not a physical, and this specific code was not covered by my CIGNA plan. So unsure about what a code is, I asked her to explain. She noted that this is something that is entered by the doctor's office at Clarian Arnett and suggested that I speak with Arnett.

After hanging up with CIGNA, I pulled up the bill from Clarian Arnett and called the billing line. After referring to the account number and service date, I got to a billing clerk who stated that she worked for IU Health (Arnett is now IU Health). The billing clerk noted that the claim had been denied by CIGNA because it was not covered. She used terms such as EFR and code, and stated that the code entered by the staff at the clinic did not stand for a phsycial. So what was this EFR and the code? I asked for clarifications again, and she noted that this is information that is typed in by the provider's office. But wasn't she at the provider's office at Arnett? After a few back and forth exchanges trying to clarify the bill and the coding process, she said that she will send the bill back for research (by this point, I am confused about what research really means to her as to me, research seems to be the catch-all term) and then have it reviewed by the doctor's office to chek on the code under which the service was entered. She apologized for the inconvenience and noted that Arnett will get back in touch with me.

I thanked her for her apology and understanding, and asked her what Arnett was going to do to be proactive about fixing the problem, and also about making sure that the problem does not happen again. I also asked her where I could note down my complaint officially and how could this complaint be made visible to other patients chosing Arnett. I also asked what remedial measures her organization would take. I did not get a satisfactory answer from her, as probably I believe she is not really positioned within the structure to answer the questions I was asking. She did note that she will bring it to the notice of her supervisor. I asked her that I would like to be called back not only with the information about how the billing issue has been resolved, but also with information about the proactive steps Arnett would take organizationally in addressing the so-called billing errors (as this is not the first time that I have had a billing misunderstanding with Arnett).

The incident this morning raises many important questions. Whereas on one hand, the consequences for not paying the bill are threats of the account being sent to a collection agency, what are similar consequences for healthcare organizations? What are the consequences for Arnett for instance for its incompetence, failure of communication, and so called billing erros? The morality of forgiveness here takes on an unequal narrative. When the patient for instance has not made a payment, he/she is threatened with the threat of being sent to a collection agency. What are the consequences of the billing errors on the part of hospitals and health organizations? What are the magnitudes of these consequences and how do they match up? What would be the equivalent of a collection agency for the health organization that stands to negatively impact its operation, reputation, credibility, and economic viability? Is the apology enough when the health organization has taken up 2 hours of your work day? Who is paying for those 2 hours? When we calculate the cost of healthcare, how do we meaningfully take into account the number of hours and the amount of labor that go into patients attempting to clarify billing issues? And even most importantly, what happens with patients who simply do not have the resources to spend 2 hours on the phone with the health insurance and the healthcare provider?

Biopsychosocial healing is desirable in contemporary medicare

2011-03-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

I find Mansfield et al.’s (2002) piece on the intersections of faith in God, healing, and meaning of illness interesting for two reasons. First, Mansfield et al.’s revelation that faith and religious beliefs represent important variables in patient’s healing process is intriguing. They found that: “Many people in this region of the Southern Eastern United States (80%) believe that God acts through medical doctors to cure illness. Almost 9 out of 10 African Americans in this region see physicians as instruments of God’s will” (Mansfield et.al.2002, p.406). As illustrated in the quotation, faith in God is central in healing among Christians.
As a Christian, I could not agree more with the authors. Among the Christian community, it is a norm to state that “God willing, or by his Grace”, coinages that represent our faith in the power of God to make all things possible.
Second, I find the piece interesting because of its similarity with emerging trend in Nigeria. The proliferation of Pentecostal churches in the Eastern, and South Eastern part of Nigeria, fundamentally influences people’s faith and perceptions about healing. For instance, preliminary results of a literature review of religious factors that influence people’s behavior to unhealthy behaviors found faith in God as an important variable (Work in Progress).
Based on these, I could not agree more with the authors that: “Regardless of whether there is faith factor and irrespective of whether the physician can be or should be convinced of it, there is value in broadening the biopsychological model to include the spiritual” (Mansfield et al.2002, p.406).Biopsychosociology is the concept that a combination of biological, psychological and social factors play fundamental roles in human function with respect to illness. In the context of biomedicine, it would mean listening to the social, psychological views of patients.

Where is their network?

2011-03-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

Today I had another interview with one of the volunteers for our project. Something she mentioned to me in our conversation was that she is a private individual. She has no family who live in the area. It’s just her boyfriend and her. She admitted that they have no friends really… no one they share experiences with, commiserate with, and celebrate milestones with. I asked her what encouraged her desire to be private. Pride. She and her boyfriend do not want to make widely known their tough circumstances. She doesn’t want others to feel like she is relying on them for anything that, perhaps, they are also struggling to maintain. While the strong sense of pride is unique among the three interviews I’ve been involved with so far, the lack of a network is not.

My interview with this woman took place shortly after I had read the article on breastfeeding. In this article, Cripe discusses the difference in privileged, educated women/mothers and low-income mothers. She offers a quote from USDHHS that states, “The lowest rates of breastfeeding are found among those whose infants are at the highest risk of poor health and development: those 21 years and under and those with low educational levels.” Cripe also refers to the Healthy People 2010 Report, which states that college graduates (women, of course) demonstrated the highest rates of breastfeeding, with 78 percent breastfeeding after birth and 40 percent still breastfeeding after six months.

Her research examines the experience of breastfeeding mothers through a breastfeeding support group. This, of course, is a network of mothers who actively want to better their understanding of available options and gain knowledge through others’ experience. This is a network for them in this particular area. She didn’t state what SES these participants fell within, but I would venture to guess that the majority of them fell in more the average/middle income bracket.

So, as I write this, my intent it to not provide an explanation, but more so to offer a question that I believe needs more exploration. Does the presence or absence of a social/support network have a significant impact an individual’s ability to negotiate the available resources in their environment and develop a better understanding of (and even increased confidence in) how to successfully utilize those resources?

We all work our way through circumstances because we actively collect feedback from peers and trusted sources who have similar experiences. If this were not the case, then the example that Cripe offered regarding the mothers of the support group who encouraged co-sleeping with their babies (and minimized the doctors warnings against it) would not have led to other mothers feeling more at ease for their choice to do so.

Do families who are food insecure lack social networks more often than those who are food secure? If so, then is this something that needs to be examined more critically? If research has been there and done that already, then please forgive me for my lack of knowledge about it.

Integrative Medicine vs. Traditional Practice

2011-03-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

In considering the “alternative ways of healing and knowing” theme for class this week, as well as the accompanying readings, I was encouraged to push beyond my own traditional conceptualizations of “appropriate” medical care to acknowledge the ways in which complementary, alternative, and oriental medicine can be equally, if not more, beneficial. I felt myself constantly questioning if the potential benefits of fully adopting an integrative approach to medicine could outweigh the potential problems (or perhaps better framed as “additional work”) that such adoption would present.

As I read the report commissioned by the IOM summit, I couldn’t help be surprised at the many ways an integrative medicine approach could be used to aid our ailing health system. For instance, a guiding principle of CAM rests in the idea that interventions that are natural and less invasive should be used whenever possible. Drawing from a prior post of mine regarding the problems of overtreatment in the medical system, I was immediately attracted to this perspective, particularly when evaluating the costs associated with unnecessary medical tests and treatment. I was also attracted to the “continuity of care” ideas put forward. The cost-saving potential in devoting increased effort towards record continuity, site continuity, the continuum of care, and continuity as an attitudinal contract is enormous.

However, as the readings suggest, there are a number of barriers to implementing a wholly integrative medical system that would have to be addressed. The interview results presented by Barrett and colleagues demonstrate the skepticism and perceptions of mistrust shared by CAM practitioners towards those practicing traditional medicine. And, as the IOM report suggests, crafting a sense of competencies for both systems in understanding the perspectives and practices of the other would be essential before an integrative approach could be taken. Cho’s piece also brings to light the ways in which interfering with existing medical systems, specifically oriental medicine and the biomedical practice in Korea, can lead to exploitative and socially-reconstructive consequences.

Ultimately, while my internal debate wasn’t fully resolved, I’m left appreciating the culture-centered approach even more. As the piece on the Druze women notes, rather than beginning with the construction of health as absence (which forms the core of the biomedical model), the elderly Druze women began their articulations of health by expressing their gratitude for the gift of health. Such a response crosses the cultural boundary as our preliminary interviews of those experiencing hunger in rural Indiana share a similar theme. Regardless of system practiced, traditional or alternative, such an approach privileges an understanding of why one practices, opening up spaces for all voices to be heard.

Humility as knowledge

2011-03-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight in our "Culture and Health" class, we discussed the meaning of humility in the lives of scholars, about how without humility, we become the "frog in the well" who defines her/his lifeworld from the boundaries of the well. To this frog in the well, the well is the best place in the world because it offers democracy, freedom, liberty, modern medicine, scientific progress and everything Western. Also, to the frog in the well, other cultures are unenlightened and need to be saved. That the frog itself might be in need for enlightenment does not ever cross the frog because she/he is content with the messages of cultural chauvinism that have been fed to her/him since childhood.

That other cultures and ways of knowing have something valuable to offer, that "others" whom we have been trained to construct as primitive have invaluable life lessons and knowledge to educate us, that our so called civilized practices might be most fundamentally uncivilized: these are all things that come with the openness to being humble and the quality of being open to reflecting upon one's own positionality. In imagining a polymorphic worldview that is built upon dialogues among very different and often contradictory worldviews, the quality of humility lies at the heart of what we do in CCA. To do CCA well, and this hopefully moves toward engaging your question Abigail, one has to have the fundamental capacity to stand corrected, to be proven wrong, and to stand up corageously to the spirit of criticism.

CCA is most fundamentally about learning the dignity to be humble with our knowledge and to continually dwell in the boundary spaces that point toward the limits of what we know, and the limits of the methods through which we know what we know.

The age difference of the biomedicine and Holistic medicine doctors

2011-03-24T12:00:00.001-07:00

A lot of patients choose holistic medicine have been surveyed about why they chose holistic therapies said that they did so for spiritual reasons:
They( Holistic doctors) had experienced events in their own lives that shifted them toward a holistic worldview in which the disparate pieces of reality seemed to fit together.
This description in Zoller and Dutta (2008) reminds me of the understanding of traditional Chinese medicine. All the achieved doctors are senior aged. If patients entered a traditional Chinese medicine clinic, they expect someone who is the age of grandfather that rich of experience of medicine and life. Suppose there is a 30 years old doctor, patients will doubted inside previous anything he might say. Quite opposite, patients are more likely to accept some younger biomedicine physicians. They are supposed to be trained by the modern medical school and know more updated technology and method. Should we say that patients go to the holistic clinic for the communication and interaction of the worldview, but go to the biomedicine clinic for the new technology and method?

The Bone Healer Story in Nigeria

2011-03-24T05:57:00.000-07:00

The holistic pain management clinic in Zoller and Dutta (2008), and the bourgeoning popularity of Acupuncture as an efficacious healing method remind me of Mathew, a famous bone healer in a neighboring community in my home country Nigeria. Mathew was famous for miraculous fixing of broken bones resulting from different kinds of injuries, namely car accidents, football games, and more recently commercial cyclists. Accident victims with different degrees of injuries found succor in his magical skills.

Mathew’s popularity assumed a crescendo in the 1990’s when the influx of motorcycles popularly known as “okada” a local coinage for a fast means of circumventing traffic in big cities led to rising cases of road traffic accidents and fracture injuries.

Particularly interesting is the treatment of patients from orthopedic hospitals reputed for plaster of Paris (POP), which was a standard mode of treating patients with bone fracture. POP, which is a biomedical treatment, lasts for several months occasionally resulting in the amputation of the arm or leg.
Although Mathew has passed on, the skills were transferred to his sons, and grand children. To date, there is an influx of patients in their dingy apartment in the rural community. Interestingly, referral to Mathew’s bone healing home is by word of mouth, yet patients continue to troop in. So I ask: does Mathew’s inability to articulate his technique in lingua franca render his skill less efficient?

Could I at least get a hug?

2011-03-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

In reading Mohan and Christina’s posts below, and comparing these to the reading on holistic healing, I can’t help but think about what it means to feel sick or experience pain. One of the excerpts from an interview with a patient includes the statement, “I think the acupuncture did gradually help, but, really, getting a hug from [Dr. Aparna] was the best medicine.”

Sickness and pain truly are such a personal matter and, as we’ve discussed in class, a truly personal experience. Like any other personal issues we are faced to deal with, we, as protective individuals, are selective in whom we let into our inner circles of “knowing.” Most often, we let into our inner circle not just a loved one, but a trusted loved one. This is someone who is going to care deeply about what we’re dealing with. They don’t want us to hurt anymore (physically or emotionally).

When I was a kid, I can remember having a high fever and my mom often telling me how she would take on the fever herself if that meant I could be rid of it. Even as a child, I knew this was not possible. But, the notion of it was comforting, endearing. It was a “medicine” that I greatly appreciated.

As an adult, I’ve dealt with some medical issues that have had no direct solution or remedy. To the doctor, I definitely felt like a statistic… “Based on your circumstances, and others like you, your chances of dealing with this again is at 75%.” In a mind-body-spirit consideration, is this type of feedback appropriate? I definitely felt like I was at a loss when I walked out of the office.

Directed to the doctor, a patient allows him/her into the inner circle of personal business... probably not by choice, but by necessity. When the issue is significant, personal, and painful to deal with, is the best response to that patient one, in which, you share with the patient where he/she falls within the national statistics? Or, would a hug and a glimmer of compassion amidst the unknown be the best?

Remembering nana

2011-03-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

Christina's previous posting and our discussion of meanings of healing this week in the "Culture and Health" class remind me of my grandmother. Christina reminded me of the void in knowledge that has been left behind since nana passed away almost a decade back.

Nana, as we 18 siblings growing up in our joint family called her, was and always remains with us as an incredible source of knowledge and wisdom, as a repository of guidance during hours of need. At the deepest moments of needing knowledge and wisdom about decisions in life and directions for action, I try to remember back to what nana would have said, or what she would have uttered, or how she would have guided us siblings. Nana was an incredible repository of knowledge from perspectives that were gathered through her culture, her readings of books and newspapers (I remember her as reading newspapers and books throughout the day, all day, right until the point she passed away), her upbringing as the daughter of a physician and as the niece of one of the architects of Indian engineering, and her lived experiences in mothering her thirteen children and grandmothering her eighteen grandchildren.

So nana would often have remedies for sore throat (the warm padding from the lamp), stomach upsets (the soaked mixture of herbs and the specially cooked meals that looked particularly appealing because of how tasty they were), fevers (the anise seeds soaked in water), and the list goes on. The one treatment that I needed a lot of was one for sprained ankles and it worked wonders (turmeric heated into a paste and applied over the sprained area). As I remember these remedies, I also remember the amount of wisdom, knowledge, and love that went into them. I also remember how irreplaceable these remedies are. Their healing was intrinsically intertwined with the healer and her love for us.

I also remember how during the change of seasons, we would be made to eat the neem leaves and the bittergourd vegetables to fortify our immune systems. Although the bitterness of these recipes sometimes made them formidable, they also were part of a life that was fortified in the stories of love and under the umbrella of nana's watchful eyes.

For me, the remedies are reminders of nana. They are reminders of her presence in our lives as the healer of our pains and wounds. We knew, and I knew, that we could go to her for the wisdom and knowledge that we could not obtain from course materials, visits to the doctor, or from the instant pills that came in the colored boxes.

The miracle of her healing was and is still tied to the promise of the touch that would make everything alright!

Biomedicine, Polymorphism, & "Alternative" Healing

2011-03-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

Just about a year ago from today, I was finishing an ethnographic project for a qualitative research class where I spent 4-6 hours a week at the local health department’s free clinic observing the behaviors, conversations, and interactions among those waiting for vaccinations or check-ups in the waiting room area. Interestingly enough, after reading Dutta’s chapter contrasting the biomedical method of curing and healing with various other perspectives, my mind was full of examples of situations where the biomedical system was forced upon individuals as the only viable and legitimate mechanism for improving one’s health. I remember overhearing a conversation between two elderly women regarding a doctor’s disbelief in one woman’s accusation that her back pain was more than mere arthritis and old age. Numerous parents would share with one another their frustration in being forced to vaccinate their children for conditions that they “couldn't even pronounce.” The waiting room itself was plastered with posters, in both English and Spanish language, advertising local smoking cessation and childhood obesity programs, many of which were “graciously” offered at little cost to patients. Through appreciation of the lived experiences of these individuals, I was able to better understand their perceptions of health, illness, and curing.

Strangely enough, as I sit here coughing myself from the havoc wrecked on my body from spring allergies, my first reaction is to turn to a cure for my increasingly sore throat. And as I sip my cup of hot honey, sassafras, and chamomile tea, I wonder what aspects of my culture have led me to turn to the herbal remedy suggested years ago from my Cherokee grandmother instead of the Theraflu and Robitussin in my medicine cabinet. Perhaps it stems from my increasing distrust in the hegemonic pharmaceutical system? Is this a small act of personal resistance? Or, is the limitation afforded by the fact that I’m pregnant and unable to take many “normal” medications, as the biomedical system (and my obstetrician) suggests, regulating my decision? Why is my herbal tea any more or less primitive than the next way of curing? As I continue to engage with the polymorphism enmeshed in my own view of health, I struggle with coming to terms with how the complex nature of a polymorphic approach allows for reconciliation between multiple ways of healing such that equally meaningful treatment decisions, across systems of healing, can be made.

Reading the story of Henrietta Lacks

2011-03-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

Purdue has chosen this year "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" as the reading for its Common Reading Program. I have been invited as a panelist to speak about some of the key themes that emerge from this beautiful narrative of medicine, disenfranchisement, and social justice. Let me first say, What a great book choice for our freshmen

As I have read this book and its chapters over and over again, I am touched by the stories of disenfranchisement of those very sectors of the population who have often constituted the foundations for the development of knowledge. The power in turning human lives into bodies for exploitation by knowledge structures in the mainstream is a theme that works throughout the sub-plots of the book. In one part of the book, author Rebecca Skloot describes for the readers the process through which Henrietta's cells were removed from her body and then entered into the technologies of medicine as sources of knowledge and economic gains.

On one hand, I am touched by the story of the immortal contributions of the HeLa cells to the development of medical knowledge and medical solutions that worked toward healing and curing. On the other hand, I am haunted by the violence that was enacted on Henrietta and on her family by the very structures of knowledge that produced these solutions.

Reading "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" makes me wonder: How do we engage with the ethics of knowledge in the context of social justice when considering the subjective experiences of those at the margins who have been the targets of the very structures of knowledge that have promised progress and development?

The Biomedical Model Influence: How do I know what I know?

2011-03-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

To situate myself in the mindset of the biomedical model is not difficult to do. I’ve done this my entire life. I was brought up in this school of thinking, through the pathways of treatment my mom exposed me to when I was sick, the preferred technologies in combating loved ones’ illnesses, and the medical knowledge readily shared through the plethora of available media channels. As an adult, I’m readily supporting this model as I have come to rely on it and refer to it for my own daughter. And, thus, the dominant power and its social construction of reality continue to be supported by me, a life-long member. Oh, and should I mention that I’m a white, middle class female with advanced degrees?

In the depth and breadth of the CCA discussion, and after the strangely difficult-to-admit-truth above, I find myself wanting to take the opportunity and consider a redefining of Marx’s class consciousness. What does it mean to me, and how does my position, my beliefs, and values contribute to an ever-widening gap between the dominant structure and those marginalized communities that obviously are in desperate need of learning how to shift their external locus of control into an internal locus of control (insert strong sarcastic tone here)?

Chapter 5 in Dutta provides a strong depiction of how the biomedical model is situated in the context of the dominant structure. Of course, over the last couple of months, we have been continually challenged with the question, “How do we know what we know?” and “How does our application of knowledge affect the audiences we are drawn to serve and help?”

On page 125, there is an excerpt from the New York Times, highlighting a discussion of two university scientists who contemplate the need for an “Office of Alternative Medicine to evaluate unconventional practices.” They are quick to note that it would not be intended to elevate “magical notions to matters of serious scientific debate.” While this is just a very quick snapshot of the argument in its entirety, it does an excellent job of demonstrating how, even when there is an attempt to acknowledge these alternative approaches (even the word alternative quickly offers it a marginalized position within the dominant paradigm), it is readily interpreted by and through the biomedical model. I assume that if such an Office was established, it would be housed with the likes of the university scientists leading this discussion. Of course, CCA is quick to pick up on this and states that this approach should be considered a major faux pas in the context of curing and healing. In essence, what a waste that would be of taxpayer dollars.

The last couple of months have challenged me to reconsider the personal epistemology I’ve grown to hold and support over the last few decades. How do I know what I know? And, what has brought me to this point of knowing? I often think about the story of Suzanne (Dutta, pg. 17) who recently graduated with a PhD in health communication. Her interests were the issues of global health and she was aware of the funding potential opportunities to support her research interests. With little physical exposure to the issues of global health, she was ill-positioned to be an effective researcher, working with audiences that need to matter the most. Even with the advanced degree, a tenure-track faculty position and potential access to grant dollars, Suzanne is still not adequately prepared and could unknowingly do more harm than good in her research. How closely aligned is my epistemology to that of Suzanne’s? And, more importantly, how do I ensure that I am not just like her when I am in that position?

Globalization and Health: "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome case study"

2011-03-03T12:43:00.000-08:00

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a respiratory disease in humans which is caused by the SARS coronavirus . Originally, SARS spread from the Guangdong province of China to rapidly infect individuals up to 37 countries around the world through international communication and flights. It is a typical case demonstrated that how a local government responds to a crisis is intrinsically linked with the ways in which the local government is constituted in the global discourse, which in turn also influence the global policies and reactions to it.
Because of the exposure of the media worldwide, China and the whole south Asia’s reputation were damaged. The traveling business was hugely decreased. Most of the international flights were cancelled due to the disease. And here, we could not miss the role of WHO in the whole process of this disease: gave highly attention and support, for example, network was set up for doctors and researchers dealing with SARS; airline passengers were requested to screen for the symptoms of SARS. Along with the help and the pressure from the WHO, Chinese government reacted fully to this disease. From my personal experience, most of the main cities in China was in panic during the spreading of the SARS, the transportation inside or between the cities were highly suppressed. Most of the University were recessed and closed, students took their temperatures daily and free personal oral digital thermometers were available.
Not only China, other countries like Japan and Singapore also made a lot of policy change due to the WTO discipline. Here is one example: “On 23 April 2003, the WHO advised against all but essential travel to Toronto, noting that a small number of persons from Toronto appear to have ‘exported’ SARS to other parts of the world. Toronto public health officials noted that only one of the supposedly exported cases had been diagnosed as SARS and that new SARS cases in Toronto were originating only in hospitals. Nevertheless, the WHO advisory was immediately followed by similar advisories by several governments to their citizens. On 29 April WHO announced that the advisory would be withdrawn on 30 April. Toronto tourism suffered as a result of the WHO advisory, prompting The Rolling Stones and others to organize the massive Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto concert, commonly known as SARSstock, to revitalize the city's tourism trade.”

Essential: Cross-Disciplinary Expertise

2011-03-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

This week’s reading was, again, a clear reminder of what it takes to be an expert in the field… As a communication scholar, the desire to walk the walk and talk the talk entails SO MUCH more than grabbing hold of a fist full of theories, staking a claim with positivists or post-positivists, and rolling out relevant research questions that easily identify with current social issues. Early on in my graduate work, this is how I interpreted the field of research, and I would venture to guess that many other young scholars have done so, too. While I am, by no means, proficient and well versed in my selected academic arena, this last year and a half has begun to reveal to me how credible (and beneficial) research needs to be so much more than just a theoretical framework and an appropriately paired methodology. In fact, I begin to feel a wee bit of excitement when I recognize the relevant areas in which I do not know. Of course, while the landscape of the unknown becomes wider and greater, I’m thankful that I’m beginning to see the expanding boundaries and how they have an essential place within and among my own research interests. It is only at this point that I’m can see where truly grounded research questions can begin to unfold.

Of course, the culture-centered approach has definitely broadened my own boundaries. But, for me, it also filled in some gaping holes to questions that I’ve continually held near and dear to me as they relate to culture, underserved audiences, and a desire to make a difference… not for myself, or my area of research, but rather for the people who have entrusted (and will entrust) me with their wellbeing.

So, this long, drawn out personal diatribe leads into my notion of cross-disciplinary expertise being essential. Taking the chapters for this week’s reading as a case in point, the discussion revolves around culture, globalization, economics, health, communication, politics, public policy… and, of course, marginalized audiences. It is reasonable to say that such discussions put us at that often debated intersection of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economics, political science, etc.

While this might seem like such a simple and naïve statement, it seems necessary (at least for me) as a stark reminder to lay out on the table that if, as researchers, we desire to enter into the public discourse on access to health care by marginalized populations, we better darn well be confident in our working knowledge of globalization trends, current policies, issues in healthcare, and, perhaps most importantly, a willingness to hypothesize and prove why certain public service movements may primarily be economically driven at the macro level. If we can do this, then we are closer to being positioned as effective liaisons between two vastly different worldviews. If we cannot do this, then the desire we may have to serve these underserved populations will fall right back into the hands of the dominant powers that be… and, perhaps, without us even fully recognizing the ramifications.

As I continue to read through the literature, I’m beginning to question more if a greater number of researchers in our field are not as capable in the manner I just described than we’d like to admit (or can even recognize). While this may sound like I’m gloating that I’m well on my way to being a well-rounded researcher, and others are wading around in their very compact research paradigms, I assure you I am not. Perhaps, more importantly, I sit here asking if young social science scholars are being mentored and challenged to look beyond the confines of their immediate discipline to find, not only the answers, but even the questions.

Rhetoric and Public Policy: A Case Study of Nigeria’s Free Information Law

2011-03-02T07:14:00.000-08:00

Broadly, this week’s readings centre on how corporations and the elite influence policies. The readings remind me of some important scenerios in Nigeria that exemplify some of the issues raised. Of particular significance is the Freedom of Information Bill, an important policy that will enhance accountability and meaningfully impact the lives of several Nigerians.Interestingly, the bill has been characterised by intriques.
To put issues into proper perspective, and to illustrate how the Nigerian scenerio fits into the rhetoric in policy making revealed in the readings, I begin with a quotation from Conrad and Jodlowski. The authors poignantly capture the rhetoric used by the elite class and corporations to shield the public from effectively participating in open decisions that shape policies that significantly impact the lives of the public in the following expression: “The simplest means of privatizing public policy making is to press for the creation of structures that allow corporate elites to hide information about their operations. This can be done directly through legislation or regulations that allow corporations to obscure their operations in the guise of protecting secrets (Zoller and Dutta, 2008). Of particular interest is the tactics employed by the elite class or corporations to evade or suppress the public’s participation in policy making. Having seen how the elite carry out this,now let me explain how the drama in Nigeria exemplify the picture painted above.

The above scenario seems to reflect a scene in Nigeria. Since Nigeria’s return to Democracy in 1999, civil society groups have been pushing for the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill (FOI),a law that will upturn the official secrecy act that impairs media access to public documents. Passing the bill into law will boost transparency and accountability in that it will enable the media to have unfettered access to corporations and government documents to stimulate public debate. In the Nigerian scenario, the rhetoric of “official secret” is employed by corporations and government officials to shield the public from engaging in constructive criticism. Due to the electioneering campaign, the House of Representatives, Nigeria’s lower Chamber passed the bill, but whether the Senate, which is the upper legislative Assembly, will endorse the bill and forward to the president for ratification to become a law remains to be seen. Superficially, the Nigerian scenario may seem different, a closer look shows that it is akin to the strategies used by the elite class to limit public access to policy formulation.

Linking Economy & Health: Unnecessary Care

2011-02-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

In examining how issues of security and economy are linked with health, Dutta brings to light how global policies can come to impact local actions, particularly in light of determining the availability and distribution of resources. By continually framing health intervention as an opportunity for scientific and technological advancement, coupled with the interests of commercial organizations, health is deeply connected with economic questions at the global level, bringing forth the role of structures in influencing health.

Wasteful bureaucratic overhead, high prices, high levels of uninsured, malpractice...it goes without stating that the American healthcare system is in crisis. As a communication scholar, I was intrigued by Dutta’s posing of the question, “How are particular communication strategies used by key political actors to background, discursively, the problems of healthcare?” I began to consider this in light of a side-interest of my own related to the communicative practices underlying biomedical overtreatment and unnecessary testing through perpetuating feelings of fear and anxiety in the public. Contrary to the common American belief that more spending, more drugs, and more technology equals better population health outcomes, Americans spend between one fifth and one third of their health care dollars on care that does little, if nothing, to improve health. Each year Americans undergo millions of tests, including MRIs, CT scans, and blood tests, that do little to actually help doctors diagnose disease. Often times, these tests lead patients to worry more than necessary about conditions that they would’ve never bothered with if never been found. Shockingly, according to Brown Lee (2008), over 30,000 Americans are estimated to die each year due to unnecessary care. Patients contract lethal infections while in the hospital for elective procedures, and medical errors are more likely when the volume of care required of physicians, nurses, and general medical staff is higher.

The communicative environment set forth by policy makers, government-funded health institutions, and commercial organizations with the economic benefit of overtreatment in mind, from those who craft the pieces of CT scan machines to those who control the distribution of rubber gloves to phlebotomists, is one that fuels anxieties about outbreaks of disease through straying from the facts to incorporate inflated fears about what is unknown, undesirable, and misunderstood (Alcabes, 2009). As such, treatment has become even more politicized as a commodity bought and sold in today’s neoliberal, “technical-medical-capitalist complex,” and anxiety about the health environmental of today is a central contributor to increasing the demand for care. Solving the healthcare crisis in America requires a solution to our mounting national medical bill, and in this, uncovering the ways in which stakeholders discursively frame overtreatment as “necessary” care seems paramount.

Songs of hope: Dreams from you baba...

2011-02-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

Growing up as a child, I remember the stories my father taught me...stories of the First International, American Federation of Labor (AFL), and of May Day. These were stories of the American working classes, their struggles, and their organizing to secure eight hour workdays for workers. The stories of 1877, the mass action of the American working classes, the Chicago strikes, and the Haymarket Affair were stories of inspiration. The stories of Joe Hill and worker organizing were stories that were uniquely American in the seeds of hope, solidarity, and global organizing they sowed.

The stories of labor however were hidden from much of the mainstream discourses when I came to the US in the 1990s. The images of malls, shopping, advertising, abundance were images that made these stories of workers seem redudant and irrelevant. In fact, I found it difficult to relate any of the stories I had grown up listening to with the images of the US in the 1990s, surrounded by songs of nationalist progress, Christian conservatism, and corporate achievements. Organizing seemed like a communist conspiracy to most Americans, and May Day had now become a day for relaxation, enjoyment, and celebration. And stories of worker's seemed absent from any public discourse. The chauvinism of American-style modernity and progress seemed to be the only stories that occupied US mainstream discourse. AFL seemed to turn more and more into a fascist organization that served the interests of the power structures. Iraq and Afghanistan became the markers of the new American imperialism, rife again with the stories of crusade and conquest.

I became an US citizen in 2007, and hadn't been really sure since as to the reasons for this move beyond the functionalism of making things convenient as I carried out my international fieldwork, traveled around, and lived in different parts of the world. US citizenship seemed like a convenient way for living my life. I couldn't say that I felt the pride of becoming a US citizen, but then I couldn't say that I felt that pride in carrying an Indian passport either for a very long time. So this choice of citizenship to me seemed like the choice of convenience for a middle class Academic who needed easy access to spaces. It is however amidst this general pessimism I felt that I remember you baba always reminding me that Americans will rise and will transcend the greed and individualism of neoliberalism, that Americans will one day once again show the spirit of the Haymarket Affair.

In the recent past though, I have felt more and more sense of ownership in being a US citizen as I have witnessed these promises of the Haymarket Affair. As I have seen more Americans break through their stupor in speaking out against the systems of oppression they live amidst, I have felt a lot of joy! I have felt a connection in what it means to be an American as more and more stories of the working classes have entered into the discursive spaces, offering us hope once again for a global solidarity.

I have felt joy in exploring the roots of working class organizing in America as these stories once again connect in their calls for solidarity with working classes across the globe. Cairo is no longer a Third World subject of Orientalism, but all of a sudden, a beacon of hope for American workers standing in solidarity. I have been amazed at my colleagues in Schools, Colleges, and Universities in Wisconsin who have stepped out of their comfort zones to speak out as a collective. They offer inspirations for us all. As the organizing narratives of Egypt and Libya have entered into the frames of organizing in WI, I have once again seen the hopes for tomorrow. These hopes for tomorrow push me toward revising the very scripts about America that I have constructed in my postcolonial work; the story of America as labor, as solidarity, as working class collectives is one that begins to once again offer some inspirations. The hopes in a global working class solidarity that raises its head in the protests in Wisconsin are the hopes for tomorrow! Thank you baba for always believing and for teaching me to dream.

Faces of hunger; Day at a mobile food pantry

2011-02-25T06:19:00.000-08:00

Today, the first half of the day, Agaptus and I spent at the mobile food pantry in Monticello. Most of our work was broken down into two tasks: unloading boxes and setting up food on the tables, and serving as personal shoppers for the clients of the pantry. These tasks in some ways were the other side of the "specific tasks" we have been doing at the organization, such as sorting food, packing them into boxes etc.

The experience of serving as a shopper was overwhelming in many ways. That individual shoppers needed to be guided through the process also meant that we had to tell them how many packages of meat, how many packages of ketchup, how many packages of canned corn/beans etc. they could pick up depending upon their family size. The family size was already figured out at the check-in desk by the volunteer who did the registering. This part of telling how many items to pick up felt difficult to do, particularly as one could tell the discomfort and the pain in the moment, the loss of face that was threatened by the question I asked, "What is your household size?". A simple question, and yet a question imbued with complexities, with the terrifying threat of disrupting the politeness of interactions in the mainstream, and with the potential to disrupt normative expectations of civility. And yet, it is also a question that became acceptable within the structures of the bureaucracy. The (im)politeness of the question took on a different meaning in the context of addressing food insecurity...

I realize that in the bureaucratic functioning of a pantry and with respect to the task being needed to be done, this is an important question. And yet, it is precisely in this moment of asking the question that I also realize how many other questions remain unasked, how many other stories remain untold, how many possibilities are foreclosed. The eyes filling up with tears, the face lowering down in the loss of dignity, the avoiding of eye contact...and the stories that remain untold. The moment of vulnerability in this interaction lies in the publicness of sharing that which is so private in the mainstream structures of capitalism. The moment of vulnerability lies in the erasure of suffering and structural violence that has been so effectively accomplished in the public sphere. I feel shame asking this question because my shame is attached to the positions of privilege I occupy within this capitalist structure. My shame is attatched to the material access that I have been blessed with. The act of offering food at a food pantry is constituted within these very tensions.

Significance of context and values in CCA

2011-02-23T18:48:00.001-08:00

The second chapter in the book has an excellent explanation of CCA and its principles. The section on values and context reminded me, some of my personal research experiences which I thought could fit into it very well. When I was working among the "Chenchu" people in Andhra Pradesh on my Masters dissertation project I noticed that the huts in the hamlets had small rooms next to them which were either empty or filled with old things. I asked the people around, about the utility of these rooms and they said that they were "latrines" built by the state health and hygiene department. I was surprised to know that latrines were provided by the government officials in such a remote "tribal" area. I probed further as to why they are not using them and they said that they are not used to defecating in these closed room for a various reasons. First was that they treat the hamlet land as sacred and hence would not be doing such a polluting act. They believe in defecating outside the periphery of their hamlet to ensure hygiene and sanctity. Second was that the officials have built these rooms but did not build a sewage system to let out the water and other waste either into a "tank" under the ground or system which would let the waste flow out of the occupied area. The health intervention has miserably failed as they did not care to take the opinions of the people and the context in which the people live into consideration. This is an example to show how critical values and contexts are for an intervention.
Another incident which came to my mind when I was reading this section was during the Cervical Cancer and HPV introduction project. I interviewed a 46 year old women in a village and asked her about the acceptance of a vaccine which could prevent Cervical Cancer among the adolescent girls. The woman was very furious at my question and said that introduction of the vaccine would not be accepted by her and others as she believed that this would encourage young girls and boys to indulge in sexual activities as they lose fear of getting infected by STDs ans STIs. The vaccine would act as protection against the disease but would indirectly make the young students to indulge more in such activities leading to diseases further, according to her. CCA with an emphasis on engagement and dialogue, I anticipate would give a solution against these hurdles in health intervention attempts.

Engagement and Dialogue are Desirable in Health Communication

2011-02-23T14:38:00.000-08:00

I find these two key words “Engagement and Dialogue” in chapter two of the Culture Centered Approach to Health (Dutta, 2008) particularly striking, because the words reminded me about a conversation I had with five of my colleagues in my Cross-cultural communication class over listening to the “other” person. In our conversation about the co construction of cultures, we agreed that through listening to the “other” we could get a better understanding of their values that inform their actions and inactions. From our conversation, it became glaring that listening to the “other” is profound because it enhances communication considerably.
To arrive at this position, we looked at several contexts. For this brief illustration,I use the example of offering food to a visitor, and how our cultural norms shape our reaction in such an encounter. In some cultures, it is a norm to offer food to a visitor. In such cultures, it is offensive for a visitor not to eat your food before talking to the host. While in some other cultures, it is wrong to eat in public, or in a stranger’s house. This scenario has played out multiple times in my interaction with some friends. Often times,I have been easily labeled as “pushy” because of over stepping the limits of politeness in offering food. The question is,at what point do we make evaluative judgment of what is considered good or bad? Or rather than judging an individual as timid in their actions, could it be reasonable to hear their reasons for turning down our offer. Listening to the other in our everyday dialogue for effective communication is akin to the two key words “Engagement & Dialogue” which the Culture Centred Approach to Health communication advocates in chapter two as alternative to dominant top down approach to health interventions.

A Revelation. An Orthogonal Model. And A Lot of Emotion.

2011-02-23T08:59:00.000-08:00

There are three things I want to share regarding this week’s reading and fieldwork. I apologize for the length, but since I can't be in class, I figured I just speak my mind here...

ONE: “… a dominant paradigm is located within a meaning community – the community of scholars and practitioners who have come to define what it means to theorize and practice within the discipline” (Dutta, p. 46). What struck me with this statement, and with those that followed it, was the whole idea of meaning, tools, and the universal criteria used by the dominant paradigm in health communication. In many ways, they represent a conditioned approach, one that is well practiced. It is the norm; it is the most logical; it makes sense; it works; and it is dependable. What made me begin to mull this over and think about this so carefully was because, as I sat at home reading this, my five-year-old daughter sat next to me, playing a matching game on the computer. As she uncovered the hidden animals, a voice with an English accent would state the name. “Rhino.” “Robin.” Each time the voice stated the name, my daughter would repeat it out loud… in a perfect English accent. As I heard her do this a few times, I wondered how I would have repeated the word. Of course, I would have said the animal name, but it would not have occurred to me in the slightest to incorporate the accent. Therefore, in carrying this shared word to a new recipient, I would have lost part of its meaning (not in what the animal is, but the source from which it came). Plus, if I had tried to include the accent, it wouldn’t have come out right, it wouldn’t have sounded natural. Turn this back to the dominant paradigm (yes, I know, I loose connection), but such an observation in a matching game helped me to consider one of the ways in which the dominant paradigm can easily look past certain components of meaning in order to gather the most “pertinent” pieces of the social issue.

TWO: The orthogonal model that categorically explains the approaches to the study of culture offered a very different way to understanding very prominent research paradigms. So often I’ve broken down approaches from simply the methodological approach, or the creative theoretical framework applied to the research questions or hypotheses. But this model actually allowed me to see specifically where my current research project fits… in the culture as a barrier (cultural sensitivity) quadrant. Of course, I realize that this book is a proponent of CCA, by which I’m very much intrigued. Therefore, other approaches are going to be a little less desirable. But, it does make me consider the weaknesses that exist in our approach: (1) We’re looking for stable characteristics on which to stake a claim and develop targeted messages; and (2) we’re not necessarily bent on trying to identify cultural inconsistencies that may exist.

THREE: Yesterday three of us went to the mobile pantry and volunteered. Obviously this was the time where we were able to actually interact with the individuals and families who were there to partake in the available food. This was an eye-opener for me to see the magnitude and impact of what the mobile pantry can do. I was charged with asking a few survey questions with each individual moving through the line. These questions were for the Food Pantry to use in their grant writing. There were three simple questions (which we, as students, later severely critiqued…):

Do you have access to enough food to feed the members of your household on a regular basis? Always, often, rarely, never?
How do you provide food for your family? Food Pantry, Mobile Pantry, Food Stamps, Grocery Store, Soup Kitchen, or a combination of these?
How much does the mobile pantry help your family? Does it add to your food supply? Would you have to skip a meal(s) if you didn’t have access to it? Do you still have to skip meals even with the mobile pantry?

Three basic questions… but wrought with emotion and a stark reminder of why they werethere. All were very willing participants as I engaged them in a discussion to answer these questions. Some, though, shared with me stories of why they are there for the first time; others revealed circumstances of their life and how thankful they are for the resources such as this pantry; and others, still, began to tear up, answering the questions very quietly and briefly. The moment I saw pain and shame in some of the faces, I found it difficult to move through the three simple questions. To me, it reminded me of what I really thought of these questions, and I often found myself struggling to not tear up with them. I was there to help, and be a positive light in their day. But, in the end, I think the tables were turned.

Reaffirming the CCA Perspective: Volunteering at the Mobile Pantry

2011-02-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

After volunteering at the mobile food pantry earlier today, I’ve come to realize that spending time in a classroom discussing health experiences for the marginalized does little in comparison to actually witnessing the effects of marginalization on vulnerable populations firsthand. For the first time in this project, I saw how the meanings of those experiencing health disadvantages were overshadowed and neglected by the structural interests of those in privileged positions. Consequentially, I also recognized how traditional approaches to health communication could blatantly neglect these perspectives, leaving the problem of food insecurity far from resolved.

As Dutta suggests, “The silencing of voices of community members is achieved through the circulation of discourse that continues to construct the community as passive and voiceless, and advances policies and programs without the participation of the community...which constructs the community as incapable of participation.” My co-volunteer was asked by a program coordinator to ask 3 questions of individuals before getting in line for food, including an assessment of how often they struggled with getting food, where they got food from, and how they made use of the mobile pantry. Each response was tallied to create a numeric count, and as the program coordinator explained to us, such results would be used in crafting grants for the parent organization. As I overheard her asking these questions to individuals, it was hard not to listen to the emotional stories and experiences shared, to want to cry with them, simply in response to 3 very short questions. The act of turning their voice into a tally mark to be used for structural purposes, de-individualizing and de-contextualizing the person and moment, is so disheartening. These individuals have a voice that they want heard, but it seems as though no one has been willing to listen. Is there food insecurity in rural Indiana? After today, I have no doubt. It is a very real problem experienced by real people who have stories to tell, and it is truly unfortunate that their voices are so often neglected. Today, my commitment to the culture-centered approach was astoundingly affirmed.

Through the lens of the dominant paradigm, problems of food insecurity would be framed as problems at the level of the individual, where changing attitudes and beliefs to control behavioral enactment would be marked as intervention goals. I was assigned to pass out brochures to individuals from the SNAP food assistance program today, and I couldn’t help but think that I was furthering a message-based health communication perspective where one might believe that giving individuals information in brochure form, seeking to change attitudes about food assistance and their efficacy to take part in such a program, would magically solve the food insecurity crisis. Dutta notes, “Individual-level interventions posed by those in power at the center continue to look at health as a commodity and simultaneously remove any type of discussion about redistributive justice.” I was a part of the center today, distributing food as a commodity to those more in need than myself while ignoring the fact that this food would likely be gone in a week or two, leaving these individuals in a position of submissive reliance on a powerful system that I’m not so sure has their best interest in mind. As a number of individuals stopped to thank us before leaving, I couldn’t help but wonder if receiving thanks was appropriate.

Science---really? Give me a break!

2011-02-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

Of late, I have been increasingly amazed at the number of folks publishing in our journals making blanket statements about "doing" science and then using that pulpit to outright put down what they consider to be lay public opinion. In these instances, the language of science is being used to silence opinions that are contradictory to the status quo that our so-called communication scientists serve. The scientific terminology becomes a mechanism to silence and erase, a way to fundamentally ask people to "believe" without questioning because that happens to be the recommendations of these "high priests and priestesses" who have dominated knowledge for centuries. Much like the Church, they want us to take them at face value, and don't really care to offer backing and warrants in their arguments. Many of the arguments go like this, "anyone questioning a behavior (say immunization) must be unscientific because the behavior (say immunization) is scientific."

The interesting part is that the folks who are making the arguments are not scientists themselves, they belong to a breed called "social scientists" who are first and foremost by arguments of expertise not qualified to make scientific claims (for instance, my colleagues making claims about immunizations as scientific are communication scholars and mostly have no clue about the debates about immunization in the medical literature, and therefore, don't really have any expertise base whatsoever to make these claims)...In other words, social scientists are anything but scientists although some of them making these grand claims would like us to believe as such. They would like us to give them the credibility of scientists because they can "huff and puff" about how their work is scientific (note the pattern of claims and then supporting those claims by additional heuristics about how these claims are scientific). The part that is ironic in this huffing and puffing is the fundamental misunderstanding among this breed that the process of scientific knowledge production is one of critique, of refutation and questioning, not one of blind faith. You can't blame them though as many of these folks came into the social sciences by virtue of avoiding the sciences in their undergrad coursework as these were the tough courses.

The high priests and priestesses in the social sciences that want us to simply believe them in the face value are perhaps so desperate because they are struggling to be credible, they want us to believe in them and give them the time of our day because they have some sort of inferiority complex, knowing fully well that often they really are not qualified to make arguments in the same ways as say physical scientists are qualified to do (and this is precisely where the problem starts to begin with, that the social sciences "begin" by setting themselves up to be like the physical sciences). What they don't realize is that credibility is established not through posturing or through demagoguery or through pretending to be superior, but fundamentally through the openness to being questioned, to being vulnerable, to being corrected, to laying one's claims to knowledge open to questioning, irrespective of who it is that is asking the questions (communication scientists of course wouldn't know that as they have, myself included, been brought up in the culture of posthoc explanations and discussion sections explaining away results of all forms and varieties).

If everyday folks, the ones that are discarded by this breed of PhDs, are raising questions, I say: open up the gates of questioning. Before you use the language of science to silence someone who hasn't had your privilege (of going to College and earning a PHD), spend time reading the works of scientists who came from amidst the most underprivileged settings and learn from them. Remember, some of the best scientists were not produced through bureaucracies minting out PhDs, but through processes of questioning and interrogation. So if Science truly means something to you, forget the posturing and the rogue claims, and come to the table with openness to learn from others, with humility, to be taught outside the boxes that have turned you more into methodological drones than thinkers. Most importantly, learn to think!

Advising, Authenticity, and Legitimacy

2011-02-17T20:38:00.000-08:00

This is a posting that celebrates the news about one of my former advisees winning a Young Scholar Award...it is a moment of pride and a moment of joy!

It is one of those wonderous moments when one sits back in awe and looks at the trajectories of meaningful work that has been created by a student, a mentee, and a friend. It is also a moment of reflection about what makes some teaching and mentoring relationships so very special, so very personal, and so very influential. Some of these very special relationships grow into friendships of a lifetime, relationships of solidarity, and partnerships in a lifelong journey of learning, living, and loving.

When I think back to this one friend of mine, I remember that sense I had from the first time that I received an email from him expressing interest in my work. It was a conviction that this was someone with a purpose, a purpose that intrinsically connected to the politics of social change.

In the years that we grew together, I learnt as much from him as he probably did from me. More importantly, I learnt from his authenticity...from his courage to question things and walk with me in my journey of raising uncomfortable questions that rubbed the occupants of the status quo wrongly. Working out a space of authenticity often meant that things that were uncomfortable within the status quo needed to be articulated and challenged. He was right there in raising these questions, and stating what needed to be stated. This also meant that our personal politics be connected to our professional politics. At each moment, we negotiated the processes through which the political entered our academic roles and visions, continually questioning each other in the spirit of growth. CCA emerged out of this impulse to question, to not be comfortable with the ready-made answers in the status quo, and to engage with the erasures. In this sense, authenticity therefore also meant that we learn to come face-to-face with the limits of our expertise as academics. It is in these interrogations of our limits that spaces opened up for journeys of solidarity with the poor; at the roots of these journeys were our individual and collective searches for relationships of authenticity that guided us both within the field and outside of the field.

Even as we worked toward this space of authenticity, we came to learn about the need for legitimacy. Legitimacy comes with engagement with the structures, with the tools of the structures, as well as with languages that are configured into these structures. When authenticity becomes the guiding frame for legitimacy, we also learn that legitimacy in culture-centered work has to build on the very authenticity of the work, and its commitment to serving the politics of change as articulated through the voices of local communities at the margins. This authenticity is first and foremost in our relationships and the value they hold for us, personally and even more importantly, politically...

Whereas some of the superficial and yet vital elements of legitimacy such as getting publications out can be both modeled and taught fairly easily, I believe it is much more difficult to model and teach authenticity in relationships. How do you mentor your students and advisees into learning about spaces of authenticity in CCA work? What does it even mean to be authentic? How do you translate the vitality of authenticity in fieldwork to experiences in the sanitized classrooms in the US? How do you take the "here" of authenticity and turn it into a universal space for articulation of alternative narratives that challenge the status quo? And most vitally, how do you embody the values of authenticity for the students you mentor?

So as I sit into the midnight and ponder about authenticity as Debalina finishes up her assignment, here's a toast to an advisee, mentor, and friend!