Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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 eng

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

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 buil

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

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 Statist

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 & St

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.

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

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

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

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 persona