1996. I began fieldwork in Jangal Mahal, among Santali communities experiencing disenfranchisement both materially and symbolically. As a scholar interested in health outcomes and community participatory processes for securing health, the lived experiences of community members with extremely limited access to health resources was an entry point for developing communicative spaces where community members could come together and articulate their health needs, and seek out a variety of material solutions for addressing these needs. Amid the extreme forms of marginalization, disenfranchisement from access to resources, discourses of resistance often appeared in community narratives as strategies for securing access to health. When these narratives of resistance took material form in 2006, I stopped writing about my field sites as a decision that seemed natural to one of the key tenets of the culture-centered approach: reflexivity. Reflexivity in this context meant that I ha...
This blog offers Mohan Dutta's reflections on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach, examining the interplays among Structure, Culture, and Agency in shaping marginalisation and the ways in which communities at the margins challenge structures. Writings on the blog are continually being revised to reflect the organic analysis of structure and agency.