Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Engagement taxes the body of the engaged academic. Some days, when the body is tired, and the spirit has been beaten up by the insistence of structures to be impervious, the engaged academic wonders: What is the price we pay for engaged scholarship? Engagement assumes a sense of willingness/openness of structures "to" engage. Engagement also assumes the continued openness of communities at the margins to engage, to come to conversations, especially when their lived experiences with engagement often teaches them to not trust structures, to not have hopes in the possibilities of making spaces within structures. In this dance between community life and organized structures of social life, the engaged academic negotiates power, the privilege of the engaged position, and the challenges that come with it. Because in so much of my earlier writings I attend to Spivak's evocative concept of "privilege as loss," in this post, I will attend to the

Society and impact are the two definitive constructs that make up the concept of social impact. Yet, this very nature of social impact that is guided toward the question of social good and the role of knowledge in contributing to social good is increasingly obfuscated from corporatized metrics for measuring social impact and from the benchmarks put forth by university administrators speaking to this corporatized structure of Universities globally. In this narrowly corporatist view, social impact is defined and measured in instrumental metrics that serve the interests of transnational capital. The guiding principles for articulating and evaluating social impact are narrowly constrained within corporatist agendas. Metrics such as industry engagement, patents, and revenue generated are thoughtlessly calculated and put forth as metrics of social impact. Inherent in these uncritical adoption of corporatized metrics is the fundamental rift between social impact and the corporate a

The meritocratic rhetoric works well in cultivating an ideal of providing opportunities for those with merit. The very notion that if you have merit you can move through social structures is seductive. In extolling the virtues of merit as individual ability and sheer hard work, the meritocratic rhetoric obfuscates the structures that constitute merit. Merit, however, does not exist in a vacuum. It is produced in societal structures, amid overarching inequities and differentials in distribution of power that define what is merit and then reward certain forms of merit. Merit is a product of social networks and circles of influence. The ability of an individual is cultivated in relational ties, and in socially held bonds. These socially held bonds are further cultivated in schools of merit-making. For instance, the sites of educating merit are themselves further sites of producing elite networks of the meritorious that can then leverage these networks for a wide variety of

Structures often reproduce their oppression through the trope of culture. The concept of context is brought about to justify another oppressive policy or another disenfranchising aspect of the status quo. For the status quo, culture is a tool, one that conveniently allows the powerful to bypass critical interrogation. To the extent that structures can render structural oppression as culturally situated, the conversation on transforming structural inequities is deflected. There are no basis for the organizing of social change as the structurally constituted inequity is constructed as cultural. The explanatory framework of culture thus emerges as a tool that reproduces the marginalization of the disenfranchised, consolidating power in the hands of the status quo. One such example of the reproduction of the culturalist narrative to justify and reproduce violence is the "Asian cultures" frame. The depiction of "Asian cultures" as justifications for structural

The bulwark of health communication is built on the premise of communication as a tool of behavior change. Since the invention of film, communication scholars, practitioners, and policy makers have been obsessed with the power of media technologies to transform behaviors of audiences that can be targeted through messages. Mass media as tools of propaganda are invested with miraculous powers of transformation. The power of communication to bring about magical transformations in the behaviors of those it touches forms the mainspring of the lay obsession with magic bullet theories of the media. The media effects literature over the last four decades has robustly debunked the magic bullet ideology. These magic bullet theories have been witnessing a catalytic return since the advent of social media in the form of the renewed interest in behavior change theories, now packaged in big data analytics, nudge, and behavioral insights. What these renewed fascinations with media technolog

We need all the solidarity we can have, you say, Now is the time to stand up Brown, black, yellow, White All together Voices raised together. You say, Now is not the Time for critique Within As the power must be checked We need all the solidarity We can have. But solidarity Can't be dictated you see. I don't trust you. Don't trust your brand of imperialism that stinks of its colonial overtones and undertones. Your solidarity doesn't stand by me I remember In your liberal glory I become another victim, a relic of incivility. But now, You want my solidarity? No, I just can't roll over and lend you my solidarity. For solidarity is won shoulder to shoulder through struggles fought and bodies on the line.

The White liberal is in essence an interventionist that fundamentally believes in the God-ordained American right to intervene in the World to spread the message of democracy. She comes in many colors, White, Brown, Black, Yellow. But in her heart, she is White. Her Whiteness is epitomized in her unshakeable faith in her American values of democracy that must be spread the world over. She is the defender of democracy. Spreading democracy is her moral responsibility. The dazzling glare of Whiteness leaves no room for critique or reflection. For the White liberal, the colonial nature of Whiteness must be erased as it is an inconvenient truth. Any conversation on democracy and the imperial mission is a distraction, we are told. To retain the hegemony of Whiteness therefore is to place your unquestioned faith in the pillars of White liberalism and its uplifting message that saves dark souls. The parochialism of Whiteness is in essence the tool that perpetuates the hegemony of

Elitism guts human soul. As a way of dis-engaging from the world of the people, elitism defines the beings of experts, who, sitting from their elitist positions, make evaluative judgments and decisions about the "people," the population. Essential to these judgments are value positions that accord legitimacy to elite expertise. The elite class knows best. The elite must decide policies and programs. These decisions must be removed from the people to give them the legitimacy of expert knowledge. The elite vantage point is one of distance, cultivated through strategies that put up walls, distinguishing expert knowledge from populism, the way of the people. The first step to elitism is the exhumation of the human-ness of connecting to people. To become an elite, one must first be disconnected. To be an elite is to stand out, to be different, to climb the established ladder of hierarchy to the desired position of power. Essential to this climbing to a position

I have been struck by how often we call for dialogue only to silence difference. The call to dialogue is usually from power. Dialogue, or the performance of it, thus is a strategic tool for the powerful in such instances. As a strategic tool, dialogue is inherently un-dialogic. It is un-dialogic because it is strategic. Cultural centering of dialogue is a radical departure from this strategic notion of dialogue as a tool of the status quo. To culturally center dialogue is to open to the idea of dialogue as difference. Dialogue as difference is articulated "from" or "with" the margins, recognizing the human agency of those at the margins as participants in production of truth. The recognition of margins as legitimate sources of producing truth claims inherently turns dialogue as a site of difference. Rather than serving as an instrument of the status quo to reproduce truth claims as seen from the vantage point of those in power, culture-cen

In the post-Trump U.S., following from post-Brexit U.K., the safety pin has emerged as a symbolic declaration of solidarity, the declaration of a safe space. In the face of the rise of bigotry and hatred in public discourse, the safety pin signals a clarion call to stand by those in U.S. society feeling the brunt of the climate of intolerance. We could certainly use more solidarity at this juncture of U.S. history. Wearing a safety pin is also a material marker of standing by the marginalized in public spaces, where bigotry has been making its appearance. As much as the symbolic show of safety pins points toward an entry point for solidarity, it is important interrogate the symbolic nature of solidarity. The sudden expression of solidarity marked by an event (election of a bigot as the President of the U.S. whose campaign has anchored itself in a narrative of hate) declares that event as the moment of crisis. The marking of the election as a crisis moment obfuscates the his

In conducting fieldwork with communities living in poverty, I have often had to interact with bureaucrats in a variety of countries. Although these interactions are contextual and culturally constituted, one feature that tends to resonate across the interactions is the impermeability of the bureaucrat. For most community members, the bureaucrat is intimidating. Usually selected through some kind of a grade-based/exam-based system, in a number of these countries, the bureaucrat is identified by his/her pedigree. Strong academic performance. Strong performance on entrance exams. While these qualities prepare the bureaucrat well in analytical thinking, they alone are not sufficient. Without humility and compassion, the bureaucrat becomes the impermeable face of the State, disconnected from everyday people, their lived experiences, and their struggles with making a living. Without the exposure to the reality of the everyday struggles of the people, the bureaucrat beco