Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

"Believe it or not, rice can diagnose your ailment" Source : OTV Bureau published on : 3/18/2009 11:32:24 AM Rayagada: You must have heard of tribal people resorting to medicinal plants to cure themselves of different diseases. Witchcraft is another remedy for these illiterate inhabitants. Now, rice can also do wonders on patients.    Believe it or not, Dandasi Senapati, a tribal ‘doctor’, as he is widely called, of Sirikana village near the district headquarters town of Rayagada gave a queer definition of medical science by adopting the unique healing method - rice treatment - in the tribal dominated region. Be it superstition or firm faith, Senapati’s rice treatment has many takers in the locality.    Senapati’s healing style is quite funny. Patients are asked to bring a handful of husk-free rice and Rs 20 as doctor’s fee with them. And then Senapati prescribes medicine, mostly medicinal herbs and shrubs for any physical ailment.    What is more interesting is the diagnosis

I grew up in a family of five that included my parents. I would say that it is an average family size in Bangladesh. Growing up, I was close to my parents, especially to my mother, although the idea of calling my mother my best friend (or even friend for that matter) never occurred to me. I was quite terrified of my father, as he would frequently ask me to memorize chapters from my text books all the time. For example, before going out to work in the morning, he would ask me to memorize chapters one through three in my physics, chemistry, and biology books. "When I come back form work in the afternoon, I will test you on your memorizations" he would say. So every second of the passing clock made me more worried as that would bring me closer to seeing my father again. But still, I felt close to both my parents - I loved them and respected them and I knew they will be there for me when I needed them. And still, they were not my friends in the way we use the word 'friend'

After going through this forest of pages, I am at a loss as to where to anchor my BLOG post and how do I articulate so that I am able to talk about many of the things I have read.  In the readings about Indian Ayurveda, dominant and erased cosmologies, local politics with global connections, Chinese geomancy, KFD as a disease of development, commodification of medicines, health services, identities.....what comes across is the complexities, the dimensions and their constant movement. Achieving a healthy status is a complex exercise. In our normal day to day lives, we unconsciously/ consciously perform a set of actions located within our culture, structure and agency and lay claim to our "health". The understanding of the complexity is important to us as health practitioners when we strive to improve the health of others through our campaigns, theories, arguments and other contritions.  Dutta (2008) in his "pathways to curing and healing" chapter lays down such case

Two things have been coming to my mind so far after having read all of the articles for this week: For one, all the stories that talked about health tradition and believes in other cultures reminded me of something we do in Germany when someone suffers from diarrhea. We are told to eat brezels and drink coca cola. I have not once in my life wondered if these two medical advices had a deeper biological meaning, with that said, you can tell I am already trying to relate to Westernized medicine because that's what I was brought up with. I came to thinking, the salt on the brezels might help the loss of water in the body, maybe the sugar in the coke is supposed to bring you easy energy? Or are those two medical advices supposed to even be closely related to anything physical, but are rather a tradition that has survived for many many years because people believed in their powers? Therefore, relating to the readings which I found very interesting, I learned many new things when it comes

The story that I enjoyed reading the most and that probably stimulated my thinking the most was Hawkins' story about Dr. Lewis and Mr. Pearsall. I pondered for a while over the statement or rather justification that Dr. Lewis used to make himself feel better after he first told Mr. Pearsall about his treatment option: "He didn't lie to Mr. Pearsall about those side effects, because Mr. Pearsall didn't ask." It make me think about how may people I know that go by the motto "don't ask, don't tell" and the fact that they can live and deal with their consciousness of NOT telling. There has to be a cognitive process that fights your inner feeling of what is right (can we call that morals or maybe instinct) and justifies your actions. Are those morals/instincts learned or do they reside in all of us naturally? Do your emotions influence your decision-making and your justifications when you have to make choices in life? According to Hawkins in case of D

The different narratives of a situation by the different people involved in it reminded me of a movie very close to my heart, Rashomon . As Connelly (2002) succintly puts it, the decision to retell a story will depend on the personal reasons/ motivations of the reteller. In today's world of health communication we have so many competing narratives. The search for the "real" or "right" narrative is not important but what's important is not to ignore these stories. Narratives provide us invaluable insights into a human beings life, suffering, existence, surrounding, health. In many ways it provides us a ground to move ahead, take decisions.  In emergency response, in the first 48 hours, usually teams do not find much records or information as most records are affected and the normal information channels are in a disarray and non functional. So, the way the response team moves ahead is by collecting narratives: "so please tell us how did the flood waters c

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (Venosa, December 8, 65 BC - Rome, November 27, 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. Horace said that literature should at once teach and delight. Narratives, as part of literature should do the same. Narratives "capture [an] incredible tangle of necessity and freedom in human life, and plot enacts it in the selection and ordering of events and in the quasi-casula implications of its telling" (Chambers and Montgomery, 2002, p.77). They argue the necessity of choice in our moral lives, but that our predispositions and options are always conditioned by our past and history. Russian formalists distinguish 'story' from 'plot', defining the first as actual set of events and the latter as the teller's viewpoints. Chambers and Montgomery further argue that there can never a story without a plot, and plots vary from situation to situation and thus also influenc

This week’s readings once again created a very emotional response…I am usually a very optimistic person but the readings are trying to make me turn 180 degrees. Dutta illustrates in chapter 7 how there are many more marginalized groups, not only the ones we have so far talked about. The fact that your mere gender, age, or race can be reason for marginalization is very sad. The reason for my rather pessimistic outlook after reading has to due with the fact, that to me it seems like, most of the dominant structures are not seeking any change. Why would they? For them the world is a little happy place with food on their plate, a roof over their head at night, access to medical services, etc. Is there even a chance to change these structures if the people who run them and create them are the ones that don’t want change and at the same time fear change because they could/would mean they had to give up parts of their little happy world in order to help others? The connectedness of agency, st

Wilkins (1999) says that "development communication refers to the strategic application of communication technologies and processes to promote social change" (p. 197) and that all future trends in this field needs to focus on the issues of power - both in theory and in practice. Wilkins says that power as a variable should be central to policy developments, and that it is imperative to understand how the power framework effects social change. Using Simmel (1986) and Foucault (1986), Wilkins says that "power is unevenly held but established through interaction within existing networks" (p. 198) and institutional discourse helps promote agency in people and cannot be apolitical. Governments and other agencies try to promote social changes using political, economic and ideological power and institutions. However, such policies/programs look at interventions in a sort of us versus them way. It is more of a foreigner perspective on things local. This links well with the

After reading Farmer's account, I stayed silent for a long time; it pushed me into deep introspection. It reminded me of the displacement colony in Koraput. There are some unique tribal families living there in the colony. They were once very prosperous with acres of land and beautiful home in the ravine land irrigated by the Kolab river. Then came "Pembangunan". Orissa constructed the Upper Kolab hydroelectric project to electrify the capital towns and business hubs thousands of miles away and these families' houses, lands and villages  were submerged by the Kolab dam reservoir. The villages are still visible when the water goes down, an eerie, beautiful sight. The families moved to a nearby place. They again dug up foundations and built their houses. "Pembangunan" came again in form of a huge factory which manufactured aircraft parts; the proud leaders declared that we have been blessed with the important project by the Indian government. It produced jobs,

Marginalization and related articulations comes across strongly in this week's readings. Dutta (2008) writes marginalization as" being at the periphery of a dominant system and that marginalization is embodied in the position of being under, of being silenced, of being without a voice and of being without resources". Marginalization can be caused by poverty, ignorance, location, access, positionality in the societal and economic system (pecking order!!) and in God's own country, insurance!!  From a critical cultural perspective, marginalization occurs from basic structural deprivations, created and sustained by structural inequities and unequal distribution at resources, further created and sustained by unhealthy practices which are in turn created and sustained by those in positions of power (Dutta, 2008). True, and I feel this is ingrained in our lives. The principle and declaration of human rights (1948) say "all human beings are equal...etc...". There ca

Once again we see and read about the necessity of putting the participant voice in decision making, especially on issues related to health outcomes. The narratives of the Santali lives and views on health was immensely powerful in describing the above need. Academicians and policy makers tend to make marginalized populations as the subjects of health interventions designed by them, primarily from Eurocentric and post-positivist ways which do not seem to answer the question of essence properly. And yet, most research found on health issues and policy developments are designed by people who do not participate in the living experiences of the group being worked on. Here lies the key - policy makers are working on the people and not with the people whose voices are absent from the main stream. It is foreseeable that an all White group of policy developers may not be able to realize how the tribal population of Nepal (for example) negotiate their beliefs of healthy living. Many studies have

I enjoyed (enjoy is probably the wrong word in this context, because once again these readings made me look at the world with disgust) the readings for week 5, I felt they were a great summary of what we have been talking so far. The book chapter on culture and marginalization got me into thinking about what constitutes a marginalized group. Dutta defines marginalization as "at the periphery of a dominant system." What about a population that is not at the periphery, but yet the health issues that this population is concerned with is not addressed? I even want to take it as far as: the dominant system knowingly doesn't inform this population of certain health threats they face. Are we talking of a marginalized group here as well? The articles on the Santalis and the FM patients once again served as a great example of how the voices of the marginalized are unheard and not cared for in the main stream. When coming across Nietzsche's quote (see headline) while reading I