Skip to main content

Role of Social Capital among the Food Insecure

A couple weeks ago, I questioned my assumption that there was a lack of a social network among food insecure. Did this commonality of interviewees happen to be a fluke or a norm? As I read through Chapter 8 in Communicating Health I realized that low social capital could be a possibility.

However, I guess I now find myself at a crossroads with more questions than I do with answers. The presence of social capital lends itself to more established networks and a sense of solidarity within the community. As a result, what should be seen then is a more advantageous interaction with agency, structure and culture on behalf of the community. When social capital is lacking or absent, there is a missing framework on which to introduce opportunity and improvement.

Perhaps where I find myself with the most questions is when social capital is lacking or non-existent within a marginalized audience. If the individuals we have interviewed lack the networks and solidarity like I sense that they do, and the culture-centered approach lends itself as a tool for solidarity and coalition building to emerge, what is happening within and among these individuals at the cognitive level? How is it that a lifestyle that has been lived for so long can begin to have emerge from within it the desire to connect with others in the same “community?” Dutta refers to Bandura (social cognitive theory) in this context as it relates to an individual’s tendency to engage in a healthy behavior through the influences of the connective community and associated behaviors. So, how is the cognitive level really playing out here? Also, is it possible that certain communities, regardless of the researcher involvement as a co-participant in the narratives, just cannot pull together in a way that lends itself to coalition building? If so, then how, as the researcher/co-participant, do you even begin to recognize this?

Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde   Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation.  These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South.  The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...
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 wit...
Read more