Culture: Epistemology & Ontology

After reading the work of Darby and Svoboda (2007) on genital mutilation and Hahn and Kleinman (1983) on the connectedness between belief and body, as well as in evaluating the ways in which I’ve been witness to the impact of culture on medical reality, it seems evermore evident to me now the ways in which one’s wider culture can come to profoundly affect what one knows and thinks about health. What does "sickness" mean? How are the mind and body connected in a way that can promote or deter healing? Consequentially, how might my answers to these questions fit into the larger order of power, agency, and resistance present within my cultural environment? It is in the negotiation of a space and appreciation for multiple answers to these questions that a critical-cultural approach to health values.

My personal background as a white female from rural Indiana situates me within a realm of conservative Western medical perspectives. Here, the normality of medicine is often determined by its acceptance within broader social constructions of what is “appropriate” to do with the body that God has graciously given you. In normative fashion, health is standardized such that deviation from any socially-determined “normal” belief or action set forth by a particular community is viewed in a negative light. Female genital mutilation is one example that fits these criteria, as such a “deviant” action would likely show, in this cultural boundary, a lack of appreciation towards the well-crafted body God provided.

In being reflexive, I am able to position myself while also being mindful of the ways in which my culture has and will continue to impact my views of medical reality and the conclusions I draw. These may differ greatly from the views put forward by different cultures. In this, I appreciate how knowing and valuing culture bring richness to understanding health. It is unfortunate that such cultural, epistemological, and ontological perspectives are rarely made explicit, especially in academic spaces.

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...

The Suit Walks the Corridor

The Suit Walks the Corridor At ten past nine on a Monday the corridor on the top floor of the administration building fills with the sound of expensive shoes. The carpet up here was laid in the last refurbishment and still gives slightly underfoot, the way a good hotel lobby does, and the doors along it close with the soft, well-engineered thud of a German car. Along this carpet, in the direction of the lift marked Executive, comes the suit. It comes in navy and in charcoal, in the odd daring pinstripe, in the female version too, a tailored jacket over a silk shell, and heels that announce themselves on the tile of the lift lobby a full three seconds before the person arrives. The suit carries a flat white from the good cafe, the one that closed the student cafe to open, and a lanyard that swings with the confidence of a thing that opens doors. The suit passes the framed founding professors, who were photographed in gowns and look, at this distance, like a row of disapproving pe...

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...

The Margins Review · Culture-Centered Approach

Search This Blog