Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Whether you look at feudal, communist, or capitalist systems, a seamless link that runs among the practices of these various forms of governing is the power held by networks of the power elite, and the transference of power within kinship ties. The power elite continue their rule over generations not simply by coercion but by manufacturing systems, processes, and strategies that work to propagate their power. This inbuilt power enables the movement of their future generations into the structures of power. This inter-generational transfer of power works both communicatively and materially, being symbolically perpetuated through the rules, tools, and requirements of entry into symbolic spaces of privilege. The effectiveness of the power elite in ruling spaces is precisely tied to the access of the power elite to resources through which they can perpetuate their power and control. The dominance of the power elite plays out across generations, ascertaining specific forms of entry

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

Part I: Running Saviors  Humanitarianism is a troubling idea. If we are to believe Adorno, it exists primarily on the idea that the object of humanitarian intervention is outside of rationality (enlightenment), and must be brought under the realm of the sensible through the humanitarian gaze: to look at the other and firmly believe that they "deserve to be treated as are humans." At some point, humanitarian logic has been neatly entwined with the liberal logic: in that acts of humanitarianism are always associated with some kind of consumptive gestures. From Project [RED] T-shirts, Livestrong bands (quite another story, there), and Starbucks lattes that alleviate part of one's late capitalist guilt with each sip through the donation of x percent of the proceeds to "farmers in Africa", the relationship between consumption and humanitarian logic holds fast. Ending TB epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing AIDS drugs to sex workers in Cambodia, and help

In the two year sentencing accorded to Rajat Gupta on October 24, 2012, the judge Jed Rakoff noted  “He [Rajat Gupta] is a good man,… But the history of this country and the history of the world are full of examples of good men who did bad things.” The stories of the trial point to the large number of character certificates that had poured in for Gupta, citing his global track records and his history of doing good deeds. Rajat Gupta and his global networks News reports documented the broader context, setting up the case for the character of Mr. Gupta. It seems that the news reports much like judge Rakoff operate on a worldview that differentiates between between good and bad on the basis of the logics of power. The very discussion of whether Gupta is a good man or not enters into the discursive space because of his networks of power and because of his ability to manipulate these networks to achieve specific goals. That Bill Gates writes in letters to the judge attests to t

In your language I learned to see the world And imagine it. In your language I learned to share my thoughts And pen my opinions. In your language I learned to hear the stories Of your conquests. In your language I learned to witness The tales of your tyranny. In your language I learned to unlearn The hypocrisies of your freedom songs. In your language I learned your history of lynchings and slavery. In your language I learned about you And your lies.

You see, in CCA work, as we discuss how we capture and narrativize what we experience in the field, we discuss the notion of bounded narratives. Bounded narratives are drawn upon the notion that the stories that we tell our audiences are always displaced, always incomplete, always removed from the experience. How then does the storyteller live with the ethical implications of these incomplete stories? How does one live with the knowledge that the story I tell today of an experience is not the experience itself, but some representation of the experience constituted at the moment of writing? Writing then is an act of re-creating some version of the experience at the moment...here...now. My recollection of the many hours of wait after the surgery is one that is filled with uncertainty. Baba was unconscious the day after. When we would go in to see him, talk to him, he would not respond back. He seemed like he had crawled into a space deep inside. A space inside himself. I almost

A subarachnoid heamorrhage is described as the accumulation of blood in the area between the brain and the thin tissue covering the brain, referred to as the subarachnoid space. The usual sympton of a subarachnoid heamorrhage is a severe headache, often described by patients as the "worst headache ever." When I had arrived home, baba's head was hurting severely and he was finding it dificult to keep his eyes open. He also was vomiting a great deal, another sign of a subarachnoid heamorrhage. In the high dependency ward, his consciousness was gradually dopping. He was in deep pain, and after a lot of pushing and pulling, would respond to questions. Gradually, this response level started sinking further and further, with him rarely opening his eyes, and rarely being able to respond to stimuli except to pain stimuli. He was supported by a team of junior and trainee doctors. The doctors took the time to explain to us in detail the different steps of the diagnosis

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE A Cross-Sectional Survey of Public Opinion toward the Affordable Care Act in Indiana CARE White Paper Series, 2012 Volume 1 Indiana Minority Health Coalition, Inc. 3737 North Meridian Street, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46208 317-926-4011 www.imhc.org Contact: Troy Julian Gibson, Media Liaison troyjulian@gmail.com 317-797-7216 Indianapolis, IN, Thursday, August 9, 2012 – The Indiana Minority Health Coalition (IMHC) cordially invites you to attend the public release of the results of A Cross-Sectional Survey of Public Opinion toward the Affordable Care Act in Indiana. A study conducted by the Center for Culture-Center Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) at the National University of Singapore. The study was funded through an award to Purdue University by the Indiana Minority Health Coalition. In 2010, Indiana was among the leading states to incorporate aspects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This study was conducted

Worker with No Name Your name, hidden somewhere in the wood, cement, and scaffolding. Your dreams, erased from our public deliberations and analyses. Your desires, written over by Ours. July 17, 2012.

I will share today an example of listening from our CCA grant on heart health funded by AHRQ. On this grant, we have a very strong community partner that has tremendous community presence. We also have a strong media partner that has done a fantastic job with the production of the content. Our team collectively has a lot of expertise at developing and running large campaigns and doing community-based work. In spite of all this expertise, one part of our community-driven work in one of the Counties hit a major roadblock because the media partner did not end up inviting the local leadership (state representatives, legislators, Black caucus, mayor's office) to our press launch in spite of being told consistently by the community organizer as well as by the Purdue team that this was very important. It turns out that one of the key leaders, a state representative, a champion of health inequities and health disparities work from the County called up our community partner and expressed h

So July is here, and the move has finally been completed! After awaiting with excitement for all these months, saying our goodbyes to friends, collaborators, community organizers, community partners, and students at Purdue, we have finally arrived in Singapore, and are starting to settle in. So the work of the "Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation" (CARE) has also begun. This blogsite will gradually turn into the primary blog site for CARE, connecting the CARE projects with ongoing CCA projects elsewhere across the globe and gradually emerging into a resource for community members, community organizers, activists, policy makers, and program planners in engaging the culture-centered approach (CCA). As I consider the origins of the CCA, I go back to the inspirations for CCA that I had received from primarily reading the work of Collins Airhihenbuwa . Collins had written a book, " Health and Culture: Beyond the Western Paradigm " and I