Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Of late, I have been increasingly amazed at the number of folks publishing in our journals making blanket statements about "doing" science and then using that pulpit to outright put down what they consider to be lay public opinion. In these instances, the language of science is being used to silence opinions that are contradictory to the status quo that our so-called communication scientists serve. The scientific terminology becomes a mechanism to silence and erase, a way to fundamentally ask people to "believe" without questioning because that happens to be the recommendations of these "high priests and priestesses" who have dominated knowledge for centuries. Much like the Church, they want us to take them at face value, and don't really care to offer backing and warrants in their arguments. Many of the arguments go like this, "anyone questioning a behavior (say immunization) must be unscientific because the behavior (say immunization) is scienti...

As noted in ths history of colonial Empires, the language and methodology of "science" have often been used to systematically turn human beings into populations to be studied and scripted, into subjects of interventions, as passive objects to be examined through the methodology of the scientist. The collection of systematic processes has in such instances been set in motion in order to precisely carry out the colonial project through the generation of knowledge. The ways in which knowledge has been produced have been intrinsically connected with the uses of such knowledge to perpetuate the oppression and exploitation of the subaltern classes, simultaneously keeping the subaltern sectors of the globe out of the discursive spaces of the mainstream. It is in this very backdrop that the native is once again silenced because she is told that she can't participate unless she trains with the masters, uses their tools, and speaks their language. The legitimacy of science is used ...