Poster of the No Singaporeans Left Behind documentary I had directed While working in Singapore for six years, what was most powerfully evident to me was the capacity of the authoritarian state to continually deploy communicative inversions. Communicative inversions are symbolic resources that turn materiality on its head. I crystallized much of my thinking on communicative inversion while working in Singapore, witnessing the academy as an extension of the state continually play this game of communicative inversions. Even as I was being continually called into meetings with management regarding the work of my research team at the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) with migrant workers and with households experiencing poverty, I would be lectured by the management on how these meetings were really meant as friendly guidance. When questioned about the attacks on my academic freedom, management would offer me polite stories about how my academic freed
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.