Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

When we begin with the fundamental CCA question in our journeys of co-construction, we seek to understand the meanings of health among communities that have historically been erased from spaces of discourse. The dramatic difference that emerges throughout my CCA fieldwork is the gap between the meanings of health in the subaltern sectors of the globe and in the spaces of privilege inhabited by those of us who are counted among the haves. The politics of health as desire lies precisely in this gap, in this basic difference in our understanding about what health is, that is shaped by our material access to structures and the inequities that are written into the ways in which these structures are organized. The politics of desire then is precisely mapped into the politics of inequality, in the basic assumptions about what is "enough" or "sufficient" to have a healthy life. The challenge to the dominant structures in the mainstream that perpetuate these inequities can c...

My take home message from this week's readings was that in many instances focussing on "adapting behaviors" would do much good than focussing on "prevention". Of course, ideally, we should work on prevention behaviors but there are situations in which culture, structure and agency make it difficult to display the preventive behaviors. In such circumstances, an adaptive behavior makes sense.  Lifeskills training, training to negotiate, skill building on taking the optimum decisions within the context are ways in which we promote "adaptive behaviors". Of course I am trying to connect culturally situated approaches with the "behavioral" approaches. Focussing on adaptive behaviors also has a good match with the "prediction" objective; as they are more efficient and achievable.  Consider the oft discussed case of vegetable and fruit consumption as a cancer prevention behavior being advised to the inner city population. Here, we would not...

Culture. Identity. Politics. Health. Four different concepts and ideas and yet they are so intertwined. What is culture? Although this question may sound simple to many people, social scientists consider this to be one of the key questions in the field. Many social scientists have tried to define this in their own way, but have failed to come to any solid conclusion. Interestingly, I had this long debate with someone recently about how many people it needs to create a 'culture.' I agreed with the author (cannot remember the name right now) who said that it only takes two people to create a culture. But my 'opponent' did not agree with me and she resisted this notion of at least two people strongly. Her opinion was that such a concept can perhaps (and only) define a sub-culture, as those two people will have many things in common with other 'major' cultures. I tried to convince her that, just as Airhihenbuwa (2007) says, any culture cannot be entirely unique of ...

I enjoyed some of the readings from this week. Many things caught my attention that I did not know before or was unaware of. For instance, I thought the Tuskegee experiment was the key to Black people not trusting White medicine or treatments. But then I read about how medical racism goes back at least 100 more years before Tuskegee. I read in horror how three Black women were operated on over 30 times without anesthesia. I read about how Black men were buried up to their shoulders to test the affect of prolonged exposure to sun, and how the Tuskegee experiment should be called the U.S Public Health Syphilis Study. It is depressing to see how the politics of cultural identity use race and ethnicity to the advantage of the White people. Education about such issues sounds more like assimilation than aculturation. "In the United States, race allows us to define the problem within a historical context, whereas ethnicity provides us with the cultural identity framework for affirming m...

My first book "Communicating Health: A Culture-Centered Approach" published by Polity is getting ready to be launched into the market. It should hit the UK and the US in November/December. I outline the key theoretical and methodological assumptions of the culture-centered approach in the book. Key points are illustrated with examples from a variety of contexts across the globe.