Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

1.) As noted in the readings, organizing for social change fundamentally occurs on a collective level, with frames, identities, issues, resources, etc deriving from individual experience to gain collective resonance. Given this, what is meant by the term “collective agency”? In other words, in what ways are individual and collective agency similar and different both in conceptualization and in practice? 2.) The CCA approach to empowerment foregrounds the perspectives, rationales, and agency of the marginalized, which serves to challenge or provide alternatives to dominant structures precisely through the privileging of those who have been excluded from discursive sites and processes of decision-making. This stands in contrast to the participatory development approach, which relies on experts imparting to the marginalized various skills and knowledge derived from the repertoire of the status quo to empower communities to act within the dominant socio-political-economic system. W...

This week's reading theme was Culture and Prevention. The overarching theme was how different factors (culture being one) play a role in preventive measures and perhaps cures to illnesses in today's world. Susser & Stein (2000) talks about how culture plays a role in the sexuality and sexual relations in the women of Southern Africa, specifically in situations of preventing HIV/AIDS. The authors conducted a study in different location of Southern Africa and tried to find out factors effecting women's sexual practices and birth control methods that are accepted by both men and women of that region. The authors mentioned many times how all their subjects were excited about using female condoms and almost in unison they said this is what they need. They say that "with regard to women at least, each community needs to be studied in terms of the local situation, and the preventive measures advised and facilitated for residents must take account of the differences betwee...