So I just interviewed three people in a row about food insecurity (See transcripts 2, 3, 4, to be posted at a later date). One man, his girlfriend (debatable?), and her dad. I'm not sure if the girlfriend was a girlfriend, since he called her his girlfriend but she called him her roommate in the the interviews. Here were stories about kidney failures, medical problems generally, and being so bored that you spend your efforts on thinking of ways to kill time in your life. And yet, in comparisons to other interviewers, I was not emotionally moved by these stories. Sometimes that makes me feel soulless, not because I think anything is wrong with me, but because I feel like others must think there is something wrong with me for being such a dispassionate person. Maybe it's because in some ways I don't relate at all, even though in some ways I do understand. For example, I understood the boredom of the participant who would rather pay for cable and eat less than pay for
This blog offers Mohan Dutta's reflections on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach, examining the interplays among Structure, Culture, and Agency in shaping marginalisation and the ways in which communities at the margins challenge structures. Writings on the blog are continually being revised to reflect the organic analysis of structure and agency.