Professor Mohan Dutta delivers keynote at International Conference on Communication and Media, 2018. Resisting culture as neoliberal development: Indigenous imaginaries of alternative economies With the incorporation of culture as a tool of development, neoliberal cultural studies have articulated the imaginary of a post-ideological global order to extract cultural articulations as sites of privatization, free market promotion, and extraction of labour and raw material. The turn to culture in neoliberal development under the framework of cultural intelligence, public culture, creative city promotion deploys the logic of culture precisely as an instrument for market promotion. Drawing upon the culture-centered approach that offers a framework for solidarity at the margins that resist the neoliberal order, I will attend to indigenous imaginary of alternative economies rooted in cultural articulations of socialist development and social justice.
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.