Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Aotearoa New Zealand is celebrating this week the effectiveness of the policy measures taken by the leadership in curbing the spread of COVID19. Globally, and at home, the Prime Minister has been celebrated for her strong response that is grounded in compassion. Her social media presence, supplementing a sequence of strong public health measures reflect leadership anchored in empathy. This does not however mean that the New Zealand public health response has not been criticized. Or that there can be no criticism of the New Zealand response. For instance, a number of my Māori colleagues have said that we should not get carried away by the "Jacinda Magic," as CARE graduate student and researcher  Christine Elers  puts it. A number of my Māori students and community organizer colleagues have educated me about my own blinders that limit my ability to see the entrenched inequalities in the COVID19 response in New Zealand. They have challenged me, educated me, and in...

In response to the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrating Singapore's COVID19 response, I had noted in an earlier  post  that international organizations play important roles in foregrounding the vitality of democracy to the prevention and management of public health crises.  Citing   Singapore  as an exemplar of COVID-19 response, WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom, linked to the speech of the Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong as an exemplar of pandemic response.  Attack on communicative equality and neoliberalism In my earlier blog, I had drawn on the key theoretical tenets of the culture-centered approach (CCA) to argue that the absence of communicative equality in the "Singapore Model" threatens the health and wellbeing of communities, and particularly of communities that exist at the margins of Singapore's extreme neoliberal economy. The "Singapore Model" is the ultimate seduction for neoliberal market...

Image courtesy Julio Etchart as part of CARE's "Migrant Worker Rights" campaign (with Thanks to Monishankar Prasad, Julio Etchart and Abdul Rahman) Epidemics render visible the grossest forms of inequalities that constitute and reflect the societies we live in. In Singapore, the record number of single-day cases, with the largest concentrations in dorms housing low-wage migrant workers, makes visible the political, economic and social organizing  that render legitimate these inequalities. The plight of low-wage migrant workers, often tucked away by carefully crafted public relations narratives mainfests the deep inequalities that constitute Singapore. The poor working conditions, eevryday racisms, workplace abuse, and poor living conditions experienced by migrant construction workers in Singapore is juxtaposed in the backdrop of their labour that forms the foundation of Singapore's "smart" urban infrastructure. The techno-seductive appeal of a sus...