Skip to main content

A Revelation. An Orthogonal Model. And A Lot of Emotion.

There are three things I want to share regarding this week’s reading and fieldwork. I apologize for the length, but since I can't be in class, I figured I just speak my mind here...

ONE: “… a dominant paradigm is located within a meaning community – the community of scholars and practitioners who have come to define what it means to theorize and practice within the discipline” (Dutta, p. 46). What struck me with this statement, and with those that followed it, was the whole idea of meaning, tools, and the universal criteria used by the dominant paradigm in health communication. In many ways, they represent a conditioned approach, one that is well practiced. It is the norm; it is the most logical; it makes sense; it works; and it is dependable. What made me begin to mull this over and think about this so carefully was because, as I sat at home reading this, my five-year-old daughter sat next to me, playing a matching game on the computer. As she uncovered the hidden animals, a voice with an English accent would state the name. “Rhino.” “Robin.” Each time the voice stated the name, my daughter would repeat it out loud… in a perfect English accent. As I heard her do this a few times, I wondered how I would have repeated the word. Of course, I would have said the animal name, but it would not have occurred to me in the slightest to incorporate the accent. Therefore, in carrying this shared word to a new recipient, I would have lost part of its meaning (not in what the animal is, but the source from which it came). Plus, if I had tried to include the accent, it wouldn’t have come out right, it wouldn’t have sounded natural. Turn this back to the dominant paradigm (yes, I know, I loose connection), but such an observation in a matching game helped me to consider one of the ways in which the dominant paradigm can easily look past certain components of meaning in order to gather the most “pertinent” pieces of the social issue.

TWO: The orthogonal model that categorically explains the approaches to the study of culture offered a very different way to understanding very prominent research paradigms. So often I’ve broken down approaches from simply the methodological approach, or the creative theoretical framework applied to the research questions or hypotheses. But this model actually allowed me to see specifically where my current research project fits… in the culture as a barrier (cultural sensitivity) quadrant. Of course, I realize that this book is a proponent of CCA, by which I’m very much intrigued. Therefore, other approaches are going to be a little less desirable. But, it does make me consider the weaknesses that exist in our approach: (1) We’re looking for stable characteristics on which to stake a claim and develop targeted messages; and (2) we’re not necessarily bent on trying to identify cultural inconsistencies that may exist.

THREE: Yesterday three of us went to the mobile pantry and volunteered. Obviously this was the time where we were able to actually interact with the individuals and families who were there to partake in the available food. This was an eye-opener for me to see the magnitude and impact of what the mobile pantry can do. I was charged with asking a few survey questions with each individual moving through the line. These questions were for the Food Pantry to use in their grant writing. There were three simple questions (which we, as students, later severely critiqued…):

  1. Do you have access to enough food to feed the members of your household on a regular basis? Always, often, rarely, never?
  2. How do you provide food for your family? Food Pantry, Mobile Pantry, Food Stamps, Grocery Store, Soup Kitchen, or a combination of these?
  3. How much does the mobile pantry help your family? Does it add to your food supply? Would you have to skip a meal(s) if you didn’t have access to it? Do you still have to skip meals even with the mobile pantry?

Three basic questions… but wrought with emotion and a stark reminder of why they werethere. All were very willing participants as I engaged them in a discussion to answer these questions. Some, though, shared with me stories of why they are there for the first time; others revealed circumstances of their life and how thankful they are for the resources such as this pantry; and others, still, began to tear up, answering the questions very quietly and briefly. The moment I saw pain and shame in some of the faces, I found it difficult to move through the three simple questions. To me, it reminded me of what I really thought of these questions, and I often found myself struggling to not tear up with them. I was there to help, and be a positive light in their day. But, in the end, I think the tables were turned.

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
Read more

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...
Read more

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...
Read more