Engagement and Dialogue are Desirable in Health Communication

I find these two key words “Engagement and Dialogue” in chapter two of the Culture Centered Approach to Health (Dutta, 2008) particularly striking, because the words reminded me about a conversation I had with five of my colleagues in my Cross-cultural communication class over listening to the “other” person. In our conversation about the co construction of cultures, we agreed that through listening to the “other” we could get a better understanding of their values that inform their actions and inactions. From our conversation, it became glaring that listening to the “other” is profound because it enhances communication considerably.
To arrive at this position, we looked at several contexts. For this brief illustration,I use the example of offering food to a visitor, and how our cultural norms shape our reaction in such an encounter. In some cultures, it is a norm to offer food to a visitor. In such cultures, it is offensive for a visitor not to eat your food before talking to the host. While in some other cultures, it is wrong to eat in public, or in a stranger’s house. This scenario has played out multiple times in my interaction with some friends. Often times,I have been easily labeled as “pushy” because of over stepping the limits of politeness in offering food. The question is,at what point do we make evaluative judgment of what is considered good or bad? Or rather than judging an individual as timid in their actions, could it be reasonable to hear their reasons for turning down our offer. Listening to the other in our everyday dialogue for effective communication is akin to the two key words “Engagement & Dialogue” which the Culture Centred Approach to Health communication advocates in chapter two as alternative to dominant top down approach to health interventions.

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 ...

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems with w...

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...

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