Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

In ‘Dialogue Theory in Marginalized Settings: A Subaltern Studies Approach’, (Dutta and Pal, 2010) propose that dialog in marginalized settings can be used to question the co-optation of subaltern populations into neoliberal agendas, and secondly dialogue can be used as a resistive strategy to engage the subaltern with the spaces of knowledge production that are inaccessible to them. The authors emphasize the importance sincerely listening to subaltern voices, finding the alternative knowledge claims that disrupt neoliberal hegemony and building solidarity with the subaltern. This approach to dialogue theory in marginalized settings has immense potential to bring about change in the ways knowledge is created and practiced in the academe as well as in society where the Eurocentric civil society maintains hegemony over public opinion and public discourse. Yet, when operationalizing this approach to dialogue theory, certain peculiar issues occur. The subaltern, traditionally mar...

The paragraph “Theorizing about resistance offers opportunities for conceptualizing and enacting social change in the global arena, challenging the dominant structures of power that create and sustain the conditions of marginalization” from Pal and Dutta’s ‘Theorizing resistance in a global context’ instantly reminded me of the article “India's highway of death creates village of widows” by BBC on 28th September, 2015. This story highlights the resistance of the marginalized tribal south Indian villagers against the neoliberal forces of the state and its aftermath. It was published during the same period when the slogan of ‘Digital India’ peaked; a sheer contrast to the booming ‘Digital India’ agenda. The ongoing craze of ‘Digital India’ has gained spectacular attention from different spheres. People are showing their solidarity by flaunting their facebook profiles in the tricolor. One of the goals of the ‘Digital India’ project is to to empower 60,000 villages with broa...

While reading about the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Chiapas and marveling at how the Zapatistas have been able to resist the onslaught of neoliberalism since 1990, I am reminded once more of how violent globalization can be by just looking out of the window. The deadly haze enveloping Singapore and Malaysia is now into its third week. And I do not use the word "deadly" lightly. There is plenty of documented evidence showing that the tiny particulates that make up the haze coming from deliberate slash-and-burn fires started in Indonesia can give rise to asthma, allergies, premature death to people with underlying lung and heart conditions and even stunt lung development in infants. And who is behind the burning? Of late, commentators and the local media have called attention to not only the farmers, but to the large transnational corporations (TNCs) that buy these raw materials, such as wood, pulp and palm oil. These TNCs include produ...

It is suggested that women in farming households are separately impacted by the adoption of genetically modified cotton in India, and not just by a trickle-down effect caused by increase in family income. Subramanian, Kirwan, Pink and Qaim (2010) have said that Bt cotton technology contributes to higher income of female laborers because harvesting of cotton is primarily female activity in India. Higher the yield gained by Bt cotton, higher is the employment for female laborers and therefore higher income for them. The additional income acquired due to Bt cotton leads to withdrawal of in-house females from farming activities and raises their quality of life. These arguments obviously side with the argument that genetically modified crops yield economic benefits for he agriculture.   A different argument comes from a separate faction. Pionetti (2005) for example has suggested that women farmers’ practices of saving seeds contributes to self-reliance in seed, crop, nutrition, an...

“Hegemony is conceptualized as noncoercive relations of domination in which subordinated groups actively consent to and support belief systems and structures of power relations that do not necessarily serve—indeed, may work against—those groups' interest”- This powerful statement made by Mumby in "The problem of hegemony: Rereading Gramsci for organizational communication studies" aroused my interest to juxtapose it with the current upheaval in India with beef ban. Hindutva, one of the hot topics of India, has brought India into the lime light globally. One of the recent disrupts was the ban on cow slaughter to bulls and oxen, and the sale of beef as punishable. This law has affected the livelihood of thousands of butchers, vendors, restaurants etc. This law has been implemented in several states like Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh. Hindu fundamentalist groups are celebrating their victory. Their aspiration is to bring India back to its religious values. Cow is sacred. Bu...

In Dutta's Communicating for Social Change, he speaks of neoliberal governance of global health by powerful institutions such as the World Health Organisation and how their agendas are in line really with the interests and agendas of powerful transnational actors. This brings to mind an important incident in 2007 after the avian H5N1 flu virus started moving from southern China to parts of the Middle East and Europe. The virus had flared anew the year before in Indonesia. The latter outbreak was worrying to the scientific community because it happened in a single extended family in Karo, Sumatra, where the virus showed sustained transmissibility, passing from relative to relative at least three times over. This opened up the possibility that it may have mutated to becoming more easily spread among humans. But what shocked the scientific community next was how Indonesia refused to share its seed virus with international scientists. Its argument was that once released, ...

Subramaniam and Kawachi's (2004) meta-analysis and research into the strength of association between income inequality and health is at best inconclusive. In their paper, they say the relationship between the two is furthermore confounded by factors such as individual income, education, regional effects and potential lag effects. Having lived in southern China for nearly two decades, I am not one to be easily sickened by bad air. During all those years, I was perhaps affected three or four times and each time, it took me around a month to get over a night cough. But this week, plantation fires in Indonesia started deliberately by Big Business to slash and burn for the next planting season has blanketed Singapore and parts of Malaysia and Indonesia with a deadly, choking haze. The pollution index shot to as high as 250 PSI (pollution standard index), which is in the "very unhealthy" range. This means even healthy persons are advised to avoid pr...

Increasingly, health communication scholarship has been arguing about the marginalized population to become the focus of health campaigns in reducing the health disparity between the health rich and health poor. The culture centered approach advocates participatory cultured centered research by deeper understanding of culture. It reinvigorates the health advocacy campaigns by listening to the health problems faced by the communities, and in looking for solutions that are meaningful to cultural members and not dictated by external entities (Dutta-Bergman, 2004). The culture-centered approach exemplifies the need for creating a space for greater critical dialogue (Dutta & DeSouza, 2008). In this blog, I seek to elucidate the need for a space in Indian news media for the marginalized community, ‘high risk’ community, while addressing HIV/AIDS. National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), a division of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that provides leadership to HIV/AIDS c...

In this blog I want to draw parallels in the ethnographic inquiry as a methodology used in feminist research and that used for CCA research. Women’s Studies programs in the academes emerged from women’s movements outside of academe. ‘Feminism’ itself was and is, first and foremost, activism, and then an academic enterprise. Starting with the movements for voting rights for women, and moving to ‘sisterhood’ and collectivity, and sexual rights over own bodies, to the ‘third wave’ feminism that seems to emphasize women as individuals rather than as a unified group, feminism and feminist scholarship has moved hand-in-hand. Feminism as an academic enterprise began with questioning the ‘objective’ inquiries often undertaken by male sociologists in the working sites that employed men. Feminist scholarship took women scholars to the field sites that were populated by women, such as domestic spaces. They foregrounded the knowledges that women possessed, and attempted to give what was un...