Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The recent  communication for social change intervention  to address sexual violence on a University campus created by Ms. Monica Baey, a student of Communication, reflects some of the best practices of communication for social change. In her incredibly brave articulation of her experience with sexual harassment, Ms. Baey creates a simple message. A message that draws attention to her experience, and in doing so, clearly communicates the broader culture of sexual violence. Her narrative points to specific structural sites and spaces (police, university) where justice is typically carried out and articulates clear demands for change.  Most importantly, her creative uses of digital communication bypass the traditional channels of communication. Her experience shared on  Instagram  through powerful visual storytelling, circulates in accelerated networks of sharing, and finds its way into the mainstream media. The first story on her experience appears on an international channel (Sout

University Boards, Politicians, University Administrators often are representatives of the power class, the elite.  Mostly White men and women sitting in positions of power determine, constrain, and actively shape the discursive structures in Universities (at most of the Universities that count in the neocolonial rankings, located in the North). The occasional person of color brings diversity to the administration, and yet is often structured to perform within the hegemonic norms of Whiteness. As Universities perform their everyday functions within these structures of Whiteness, they generate ongoing public relations around multiculturalism, positioning themselves to a global market of key stakeholders, including students. Diversity sells, as long as it is managed with a cultivated strategic image. Embedded within structures of Whiteness, Universities reproduce norms that keep intact White power and privilege.  Mostly determined by power brokers embedded in the ideology of Whi

# thehypocrisyofsocialmediaposturing .  D esis in the diaspora posturing solidarity with victims of Islamophobic terrorism in Christchurch and vouching their support for the toxic hyper-nationalist Right Wing hate politics of Narendra Modi is a widespread phenomenon, enabled by the culture of social media posturing.  Social media posturing, rife with labels, buttons, profile picture modifiers enable the superficial and hypocritical show of solidarity with the victims of Islamophobia while at the same time funding, supporting, and voting into Islamophobic politics.  The same profile picture can one day read "Kia Kaha Christchurch" and read another day "Mein bhi Chowkidaar."

Tyranny often does its work on us through the normalization  of its methods. It turns itself into the norm, its methods incorporated into our everyday behaviors and interactions. We are turned into tools of the tyrannical structure, often through our consent to participate in it. From the routine forms of participation in the everyday demands of tyranny to carrying out surveillance to  delivering punishment on behalf of the structure, we make ourselves as the instruments of tyranny. We even feel glee doing the work of surveillance or doing the work of crafting out the right punishment to the non-believer. Tyranny recruits into its structures the very best among us. Leading us to believe in its methods and its legitimacy. Cultivating in us the faith in the methods of tyranny as necessary responses to the non-believer. To have the courage to reject the methods of tyranny is seen as an act of betrayal, therefore calling for legitimate responses of violence. Tyranny is om

O n November 26, 2018, my colleague Professor Marc Lamont Hill, Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions in Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communications, delivered a speech to the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People at the United Nations Day of Solidarity. In his powerful speech, Professor Hill offered an impassioned call for solidarity between people of color, drawing out a vision for anti-racist solidarity.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvzSv28z97o The speech made by Professor Hill is an excellent exemplar of principled communication scholarship that reaches out to the call for social justice.  In his speech, Professor Hill calls out Israeli state-sponsored atrocities and the ways in which these atrocities have systematically oppressed, colonized, and threatened the Palestinian people. He categorically outlines the violence, racism, and torture carried out routinely by Israel on Palestinians.

Over the past decade, CARE has had to negotiate the constraints on academic freedom across various spaces of our academic-activist-community interventions. The constraints on academic freedom of course differ in the form of questions asked, the tenor of the conversations, the scrutiny that the work of CARE is subjected to, and the arguments that are offered justifying the various forms of control that our work at the Center is subjected to. As a Center located within the University, CARE negotiates the structures within Universities as well as the broader structures in nation states, regions, and globally in its various projects of engaging and interrogating structures. Universities often are extensions of the hegemonic structures, with the discursive spaces of articulation shaped by these structures. Who can and can't speak at/in/from Universities is often dictated by the normative frameworks that are circulated by these structures. Whereas some of these strategies of

#canyouhearthewarcries Can you hear the war cries? The calls for revenge for blood, and more blood for the poor and tired soldiers from this side and that to be sent to the battlefields to protect the honour of the nation. Can you hear the war sounds? The planes hovering over in the skies manufactured by military corporations American, French, British the celebrations of #josh on this side and that. of bombings and hits of killings and deaths. Can you hear the war posts? on WhatsApp And Facebook And Twitter Manufactured images on TV screens Expert analyses of war rooms on channels. Made up stories Made up declarations Thumping chests and joyous hearts Beating to the sounds of the drum. Can you hear the war spin? The promises of a fascist king Of another 2014 A resounding victory. who will save the nation and her people from the Muslims and terrorists and anti-nationals? the promises to bring back the glory of a nation under the threat of war.

I had first met the Singapore Jolovan Wham in 2008 when I had started my ethnographic work with migrant construction workers in Singapore. Jolovan was with the Humanitarian Organization for Migrant Economics (HOME) and he generously shared his time and powerful insights about the exploitation of migrant construction workers and foreign domestic workers in Singapore. He gave me a scholarly tour of the oppressive conditions the migrant workers toiled in, the chilling effect of the crack-down on migrant worker activists that went under the label of the "Marxist Conspiracy," and the importance of pushing the  boundaries of the state to make space for migrant worker activism. What was so impressive about our interaction was Jolovan's theoretical clarity about the underpinning principles of social change and his crystallized applications of the ways in which these concepts applied to the advocacy work he participated in. When I returned to Singapore in 2012 to build the

Professor Mohan Dutta will deliver the plenary address at the International Conference on Media and Communication in Sustainable Development, organized by the Centre for Journalism and Mass Communication (CJMC), Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India. The talk is titled "Sustainable Spaces for Radical Democracy: Communities as Spaces for Socialist Transformations of Development". In this talk, I will draw on the culture-centered approach that I have been working with over the last two decades to examine the interplays of culture, structure, and agency in the articulations of voice. Addressing the interplays of communicative and structural inequalities, the talk will draw out the role of communication in creating and sustaining spaces for radical democracy through the participation of subaltern communities. Drawing out the concept of communities as spaces, I will outline the work of communication in socialist transformations of the globe, linking examples of indigenous st

In the island Where freedom Is lost In the glittering brands And shining skyline. ... In the island Where voices Are erased By manicured gardens And offers of security.  Where dreams  Are forever disrupted turned into disciplined repititions of accounts and numbers, of inverted facts. The colonial masters Rule with their Antiquated colonial laws. Their statues and memorials And talks of their legacies, Futures lost.

I have often been told by junior colleagues that they have been censured by University administrators for posting on Facebook. Other times, I have been told by junior colleagues that they have been sent friend requests by people thay know are spies of the regine. Yet other times, I have been told by junior colleagues that they are scared to like, comment, or share anything own my wall lest they face consequences from the regime. One colleague got so scared of the surveillance that she just deleted her account. The number of times I have learned about being surveilled has made me over the course of the past five years think about giving up my Facebook posts. In most occassions, I have learned about such surveillance through interactions with those in power who have interrogated me about my Facebook posts, which were mostly set to the "Friends only" setting. In these interactions, when facing questions, I have made three things clear: (a) my Facebook is a site for peda