Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Professor Reshmi Dutt -Ballerstadt is a Professor of postcolonial literature and theory, feminist theory and creative writing at Linfield College. Reshmi is a vocal critic of the cultures of Whiteness in academia and the ways in which the norms of civility held up by Whiteness erase possibilities of articulation from the gendered, raced, classed margins. I came to know Reshmi and learn about her work when my mentor and cousin Professor Shampa Biswas , the Paul Garrett Professor of Politics at Whitman College and a scholar of postcolonial nuclear politics introduced us to each other because of our mutual interests in critically interrogating civility norms. Reshmi was editing a collection on academics being targeted with the civility regime and I contributed a chapter to her collection on the weaponization of the incivility trope to maintain raced colonial hegemony. Reshmi has been a vocal presence in academe in theorizing the academe, interrogating the habits of the university

The repressive university is a product of the neoliberal turn, and a robust instance of the authoritarian nature of the neoliberal ideology. The neoliberal ideology, articulating the idea that the "free market will take care of societal ills and challenges" promotes itself on the rhetorical appeals of freedom and opportunity. As I have argued elsewhere (Dutta, 2017), the perpetuation of this ideology relies on communicative inversions, "the turning-on-its head of materiality." The ideology itself needs repressive strategies for it to be perpetuated. Let's take for instance the neoliberal university's culture of monitoring and controlling faculty facebook posts, what my colleague Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt refers to as "tone policing." Norms of civility are typically used to justify and perpetuate this repression. That a faculty member has violated some norm of civility, embedded in ideas of those in power, becomes the basis for the haras

In the land where the regime dictates what academics will read, what they will write, and where they will write, bureaucrats in universities serve as gatekeepers of the regime. With their bureaucratic tools, often decorated in neoliberal logics of risk management and performance optimization, managers  define the boundaries of thought for academics, defining the limits and terrains of thought, legitimizing state control in managerial logics. Bureaucrats ask questions such as: How are these books relevant to your research? How do the books contribute to your research program? The definition of the research program of an academic based on bureaucratic rationality becomes the basis for identifying the relevance of reading lists to research programs. Once the appropriate reading list to be read from is defined, the regime can then exert its control on the academic for deviating from the reading list. The tools of the manager are also the tools of the regime. Consider for insta

Metricide, death by metrics, is catalyzed by an accelerated culture of irrationality that parades itself under the guise of reason. I think of the epidemic of metricide each time that I speak with a junior colleague, each time that I write a promotion and tenure letter, and each time that I sit on a review committee. Mentoring assistant professors is an everyday reminder of this death by metrics. The burden of metrics is borne by the most junior academics, subjecting them to a continual state of anxiety. The suicidal anxieties produced in academics by the race for metrics has deleterious health effects, in many instances resulting in poor mental health outcomes among academics; and in some instances, resulting in death (recall the stories of a colleague dying of a heart attack in the office next door). Beyond killing academics, metrics kill academia. They take the creativity, joy, and freedom of academia, and turn these positive emotions into an accelerated chase for numbers.

In academia, the act of evaluation often works to reproduce the hegemonic formation. The hegemony of a particular way of thought, of a particular racial group, of a particular religious group etc. can be maintained through strategies of evaluation based on double standards disguised as meritocracy. So two different standards are applied to academics as they are evaluated. Let's take the category of race. Say in a particular culture, the majority race X is given privilege across all positions and ranks, with entirely different standards applied for members of X as compared to members of other races. Movement to the top is dictated by standards that are often arbitrary. Various positions of decision-making are held by members of X, all the way from College level positions to positions at the level of University leadership. The racist ideas held by members of X are circulated as normative, obfuscating the ways in which these ideas then privilege members of X within instit

Students carry forward the work of a research tradition. This is certainly true of the work of the CCA. I have long held the knowledge that it is in the work of our students that the openings for new imaginations are created. With their passion and courage, they build new paths for articulating and carrying forward the spirit of social justice. Their authenticity and commitment, not jaded by the parochialisms of academic power plays and seductions, speak truth, taking on power and challenging it. This is the facebook post and the valedictory speech delivered by my PhD advisee Dr. Pauline Luk. Pauline is currently a Lecturer in the Li Ka Shing School of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. Pauline's speech embodies many of the values that are so fundamental to the work we do: "Prof. Mohan Dutta , thank you very much for your teaching, encouragement, support in the past years. It is a very fruitful journey for being a supervisee under your mentorship. I learned a

On July 19, Thursday, three of my most recently defended advisees will walk in the Commencement Ceremony at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Each of these three PhDs embody the ethic of the culture-centered approach (CCA), living and negotiating through structures to create anchors for change. Every doctoral advisor is proud of her students. My pride in my students goes beyond this sense of having worked closely together for over three years and witnessing the completion of a significant project to having an immense sense of gratitude in being able to work with graduate students that embody the values of the CCA: courage, care, and commitment. Dr. Gui Kai Chong, a superbly gifted teacher, the anchor for many of the students in the Department of Communications and New Media (CNM), came to work with me while serving as a full-time instructor. To be a full-time instructor is to teach a large load of courses. This is something Kai Chong excels in, delivering each course w

My work in Santali communities in what is now described as Jangalmahal started in the mid-1990s, attempting to understand the communicative production of marginalization. This work was driven by the questions: What is the role of communication in producing material marginalizations of Santalis? How does communication work to reproduce these forms of marginalization? What are the imaginaries of resistance articulated in the backdrop of such marginalization? These questions and the emerging ideas formed the bases of the culture-centered approach (CCA), attending to the role of communication as an instrument for perpetuating power and for reproducing the marginalization of indigenous communities. The communicative disenfranchisement of indigenous communities is deeply intertwined with their material disenfranchisement. The struggles against displacement, exploitation, and erasure from sites of access to resources mirror the indignities, stigmas, and erasures experienced by Santalis.

Let's consider this narrative account: Thanuja left her long cherished position as an Administrative Manager in an academic department because the harassment she was being subjected to by a clique of academics was becoming untenable. She had held this job for a decade and knew her job well. Her colleagues enjoyed working with her because they trusted her competence and assertiveness. Faculty members relied on her for getting things done. Things quickly changed when the clique started coming in and forming itself. The clique felt that a non-academic should not have so much say. It was threatening to see the degree of trust Thanuja enjoyed. She had to be cut to size and shown her position as a non-academic. Threatening emails. Insults couched as instruction. Insults in face-to-face meetings. Public shaming. Shouting at Thanuja, and taking turns shouting. Reminding her she is not an academic. The everyday stress was taking a toll on her body. The academics would come in

One of the forms of totalitarian control is the control over discursive spaces and sites of knowledge production. The totality of control is achieved through the tools of surveillance, systematic management, and manipulation of academic spaces, constructed within the logics of state and market power. The market reigns precisely through the arms of the state that give legitimacy to forms of resource extraction in the hands of private capital. The state, thus reorganized as a capitalist tool, legitimizes various forms of control through explicit communicative tools such as policies as well as implicit tools that set the expectations of communication. One such tool of totalitarian control exerted over knowledge production is research calibration. Research calibration works as a method for aligning academic work with the agendas of the state, setting implicitly the limit imposed on what can be studied, how studies are conducted, and the ways in which studies are circulated. For

CARE collaborators activists Vanessa Ho & Sherry Sherqueshaa The CCA begins with the recognition that to address health inequalities, unhealthy structures need to be fundamentally transformed. Without changing these highly unequal structures, the overarching conditions that threaten the health of the poorest and the most marginalized remain intact. The health inequalities persist because the structures continue to threaten the health of the most vulnerable, producing precarious conditions of life and livelihood. As an explicit framework for communicating for health equity then, the CCA brings about a paradigm shift in traditional health communication. Acknowledging the limits of behaviour change programs that individualize health risks, the CCA shifts the role of communication to advocacy directed explicitly at resisting and transforming structures. CARE's activist-in-residence program models this framework of social change communication as integral to the transformati