My talk in CNM titled "Returning the White Man's gaze: Reimagining social science research" generated some amazing conversations with my colleagues, who pushed me further through their questions to imagine what a politics of change might look like that works through a project of decolonization. One of the questions raised and that stayed with me was, "What about Third World oppressions that are carried out by indigenous subjects on other indigenous subjects?" Working out a politics of change from the Third is a dance of hope and hopelessness as Ambar Basu so eloquently writes about in his work with sex workers in the SHIP project in Sonagachi. You see, resisting the colonial gaze has to be the starting point in a poltics of social change as much of the inequities at the structural level are embedded within the Eurocentric logic and the foregrounding of Euro-centered rationality that privileges private property owning subjects as participants in the public
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.