Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The peer review process is held up as the bulwark of science.  In my discipline Communication Studies for instance, the scientific process is enacted through the performance of double blindness. A double blind peer review means that the assigned reviewers aren't able to tell the identity of the author(s), and the author(s) aren't able to tell the identity of the reviewer(s).  The double blind process of peer review is projected as integral to holding up good science, with the strategies for masking the identity of both the authors and reviewers seen as necessary to the production of knowledge. As a discipline, we have accepted uncritically the sanctity of this process, assuming that it works to hold up scientific knowledge. What this uncritical upholding of the review process leaves unchallenged is the underlying ideology that shapes the construction of knowledge within established structures. The ideology is constituted within the ambits of capitalist power and control, with t

Theory work in the CCA is intricately tied to its method of working in the field, through participant observations, in-depth interviews, forming advisory groups, implementing advisory group meetings, and most vitally, co-creating solutions at the margins by working alongside those at the margins. The body of the academic is re-oriented to conversations in communities at the margins, guided by the intention of co-creating solutions that are meaningful to the lived experiences of community members. This re-orientation fundamentally transforms what we come to understand as academic labour and the performance of it.  First, and this is key, academics working in/on/with culture-centered interventions are held accountable to the communities at the margins we work with. That means that the power of decision-making turned into the hands of communities at the margins shapes the nature of academic work, from research to advocacy. The question, how does the academic labour translate into actual i