Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Over the last few months, as I have been reviewing articles and paying attention to the posturing of scholars of a particular breed who are clamoring for legitimacy (most of this is related to resources), I have become particularly aware of the mediocrity of intellectual participation that is ironically shrouded in arrogance that gains legitimacy by putting down others, other ways of doing scholarship, other ways of thinking, and other worldviews. Sometimes, I am taken aback by claims such as "autoethnography is not scholarship." Where does such arrogance and intellectual pettiness come from? I am especially taken aback when I hear a graduate student, or a junior faculty member, or for that matter a senior faculty member make such claims. In most instances, I am confident that the person in question has probably never touched an autoethnography. Even more so, when you press the person to give you a reason, you hear them spelling out some heuristic such as "Oh, that&#