Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

"Borderlands are folded over and crossed again, and recrossed. The membranes of the border are of varying porosities, closures and openings, subversions and states of exception, checkpoints and circumventions, surveillances and (in)securities, orders and disorders, fears and displacements, with the Real gazing back from holes in the defences." (Fischer, 2008). This could be a snapshot from a war zone or from an emergency room of the Home hospital. Borderlands are also the places where resistance is enacted.  Dutta (2008) posits that resistance is intrinsically communicative as it communicates certain meaning about social structure. It could be an organizational structure too as Granzow and Theberge (2009) find in their investigation of workers experienced meaningful participation in the participatory project and some of the main barriers to worker participation. Dutta-Bergman (2004a, 2004b), defines resistance as a process of enacting agency in opposition to the structures th

The first article from the package I read this week was Mallory's article on women at risk for HIV because of survival sex. I was excited to read about this topic as it somewhat feeds into my research area. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was very disappointed when I was done reading. Mallory's research topic was great and I think the questions asked made a lot of sense, but I was hoping she would present more of the responses from the women they interview instead of trying to press her findings in a more than questionable theory. Also, did anybody else get upset with her figures? Luckily the next article I read was the one by Martyn on 'tough girls' rewriting negative scripts, now that is what I call qualitative research and I was thinking to myself: that's how it needs to be done! I liked the article's thick descriptions and how it presented the topic from various viewpoints. It allowed the reader to be part of their experiences although I doubt any

I thought this is interesting as we are in health care to some extent. This video is less than 2 minutes long.

In a previous posting, I talked to some extent about a teacher I had in school who died of breast cancer. She never sought biomedical treatment for her disease. She was afraid. She never tried local/ alternative health care in terms of homeopathy or Ayurveda. She went for the religious healing that did not help her save her life. People subscribe to different ideologies and practices for their health outcomes. Their reasons are as varied as the ways they choose. But still, to a large extent the biomedical model has come to dominate the most of the world. As this week's readings elaborate more on this, we find out about the Flexner Report. The Flexner Report (also called Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four) is a book-length study of medical education in the United States and Canada, written by the professional educator Abraham Flexner and published in 1910 under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation. Many aspects of the present-day American medical profession stem from the Flexn

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/03/28/health/1194838918148/translating-health-care.html?hp

A couple of interesting questions arose while reading this week. Let's start with Arakelova's article on healing practices in Armenia. Being somewhat close to this ongoing fight for years by being a German citizens and by experiencing cultural clashes between Yezidis and Kurds on a weekly basis, this article was especially interesting to me. At some point, when the article talked about ethno-religious groups, I started to think about the question we had discussed many times before: What defines identity? What does it take/need to be a culture of its own? Can a culture extinguish because the passing on orally of traditions fails? Another topic that evolved in this reading, but also in Kim's article on Korean elderly was assimilation or acculturation. Arakelova talks about "necessitated assimilation". I wondered, after moving to a new country, is assimilation a voluntary, mandatory, or automatic and completely subconscious process? Is it easier for some but nor for

The first question I want to raise is that "does pluralism means agency"?   Meyer's makes a substantive point with his poignant account of Beverly. Quoting him, "the ground upon which chronic illness is made meaningful becomes profoundly unstable when the conditions of experience fail to conform to standard disease categories and their symptomatology." We have come across this thread in previous readings too when we have seen biomedicine being applied and experience reduced to "measurable", "diagnosable" categories.  The other question is what else to do and how to reconcile? In today's world, when movements constantly take people across borders and translational locations, where people exercise their agency (do they?) to get into stultifying systems...what are the options to negotiate health? How do they then exercise agency? Beverly exerts agency when she decides not to apply for social security benefits as then she might be judged inca

This week's reading discussed the possibilities of alternative ways of healing and health. The debate between traditional methods of cure/ preventing illnesses and the dominant biomedicine was the center of the discussions. With examples from different parts of the world, the authors promoted their viewpoints. Mansfield et. al (2002) focused their research on the religious practices and spiritual beliefs of people regarding health care in people from rural eastern North Carolina, USA. Their research says that "health professionals should consider the faith of patients, not only in God per se, but also in how patients believe that God may act through a health professional in the healing process" (p. 407). Without getting into any criticisms of the study, I would like to share something from this research that reminded me of a personal story about how during critical times of illness people may lean more towards the unexplained and spiritual that what is explicitly availab

This weeks readings dealt with alternative ways of healing and knowing, wonderful readings that taught me about rituals of healing in other cultures, but also about the struggles that people from these cultures have to deal with on a regular basis due to the forces of Western medicine. Mansfield wrote about spiritual practice and beliefs related to healing. It sounded like a very promising article to begin with, but for some reason did the concept of measuring religiosity and believes in respect to healing NOT sit well with me. I don't understand why people are always trying to put everything within the frames of measurements - I do see that this will help them compare and in Mansfield's case, help to create a model (thinking about it, how stupid is that to begin with???) - but why is there this constant need to compare so one can look better than the other? You can tell from my strong reaction, I think Mansfield's article was maybe worth a big laugh, nothing more, nothing

What is a culturally appropriate intervention? What is a "culturally appropriate" AIDS intervention? What is a "culturally appropriate" safe motherhood intervention? How do we deal with the critique of "medicalization of sexuality" vs the "sexualization of consumption"? How do find the right path, the balance between a development - commercial - government - multilateral - private sector collaboration? Is the territory of health and sex still uncharted?  Are all local values and meanings "cultural" and should we consider all services, methods, models to be "appropriate"? What "can" be done and what "should" be done? Assessments of "can" and "should" are bound up with views of the "culture" in question, assessments of its boundaries, its integrity, its authenticity, its very location "in" some places, some practices and some knowledges but not in others. If this is tru

"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