This week's readings has many points to start a discussion. Many notable ones talk of pain as a human experience and situated in the body. Indeed, how do we manifest pain or is pain itself a manifestation? The health communication concern and the concern of the many health organizations in the US it to create constructs around it, quantify it, isolate it and advertise and sell treatment for it, the fancy "disorders" patented under exotic names. This is what Kleinman et.al., (1992) call the political economic transformation of pain and its treatment. I found myself wondering, of course we all agree that converting socio-somatic processes into biological terminology is reductionist but hasn't that been the enterprise of much of the positivist scholars and yet alive and kicking now in NSF funding criteria and erstwhile "Bush" science (St. Pierrie, 2006). My primary education being in Physics and Management, I am very amused to see all these scholars studying hu...
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.