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Showing posts with the label Cultural Competence

The sirens are calling!!

In the rather excellent readings this week, I discovered many theories, the postulates and positions of which I have often discussed but not the names. An interesting one is the "Dependency theory". The theory posits that Euroean development was predicated by the under development of the non-European world (Peet and Harwick, 1999). Certainly, the theory holds water if we trace the development of the world since the renaissance, the emergence of the industrial revolution, and parallely the enlightenment. Many scholars opined that this does not hold true anymore and Peet and Harwick mentioned the World Systems theory. But I would argue even today, the dependency theory can be applied to myriad contexts and used to explain them, though we have to replace the "European" with the "Western" and use the framework of even newer theories. Development aid is an area which offers itself to such critiques and indeed is rife with discrepancies and anachronisms. I was r

Ethnorelativity and Praxis

I am often asked what I am studying here at Purdue University. Upon hearing Health Communication, I am always asked what might that be. So I tell them that in easy terms, I study the interaction between doctors, patients, hospitals, governments, and other policy-making agencies. I then have to look into the person’s expressions and follow my answer up with an example. “Think of a time you went to a doctor and had a really bad experience with him/her,” I tell them. “And now think of a time when you really liked your doctor.” “What changed? What influenced your experiences? To a big extent, this is what I study.” I use the above explanation not only to share in an easy way what I study but also to remind myself what got me interested in this field. Reading some of this week’s contents reminded me the practicality of such explanations. Teal & Street (2008) shares in a simple yet insightful way about the need to have a cultural competency in a doctor patient relationship, treatment, a