Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Critical Cultural Studies in Global Health Communication Series Editors: Mohan J. Dutta, Purdue University & Ambar Basu, University of South Florida Global changes in migratory patterns, the increasing health inequalities faced by the poor, the health risks faced by communities at the margins of global societies, and the communicative nature of health problems have drawn additional attention to the relevance of studying health communication processes across global cultures. This series will challenge West-centric ideals of health and human behavior by publishing theoretically- provocative, pedagogically-critical volumes addressing the intersection of communication principles and practices with health concepts and structures. The series editors seek book proposals that address (a) the storied nature of health communication practices that are globally situated; (b) structurally-constituted nature of health communication; (c) individual and collective processes of communicating ...

Walking away from the first focus group and training session, I was especially surprised by the ways in which, through means of our brief 2 hours session, the attendees had begun to build a sense of camaraderie. Immediately upon entering the room, one participant recognized another from receiving services at the food pantry. Spawning from their acquaintanceship, a number of participants then began to share advice about receiving services, such as what pantries were open at particular times and locations. Others ended the evening by offering a ride home to an attendee that had missed the bus. I have written in my project journal about an emerging theme of selflessness and gratitude in my interviews, and being witness to such acts verifies my prior assertions. Particularly, a common critique relates to the ability of the food assistance system to provide enough quality food to all patrons in need. Getting access to food is a personalized need, basic to one’s survival. Despite the persona...

A couple weeks ago, I questioned my assumption that there was a lack of a social network among food insecure. Did this commonality of interviewees happen to be a fluke or a norm? As I read through Chapter 8 in Communicating Health I realized that low social capital could be a possibility. However, I guess I now find myself at a crossroads with more questions than I do with answers. The presence of social capital lends itself to more established networks and a sense of solidarity within the community. As a result, what should be seen then is a more advantageous interaction with agency, structure and culture on behalf of the community. When social capital is lacking or absent, there is a missing framework on which to introduce opportunity and improvement. Perhaps where I find myself with the most questions is when social capital is lacking or non-existent within a marginalized audience. If the individuals we have interviewed lack the networks and solidarity like I sense that they do...

Dutta’s chapter on culture and resistance poses some interesting questions regarding the processes by which marginalized communities enact their agency through offering opportunities for structurally altering the systems that sustain their positions at the margins. After reading, I found myself immediately considering some of the interview responses for the food insecurity project that individuals had shared. It seems as though, despite their underserved status, those in the food insecure community still find ways to enact resistance against the unfair practices of the food provision system in this community. Often enacted at the micro-level, these resistive acts work to open up spaces of social change by creating new meanings and by offering alternatives to the dominant discourses. For instance, I spoke with an individual yesterday who detailed the injustices present within the food pantry for union members, which allegedly refuses pantry access to those long-standing union members (o...

The intersection between communication, resitance and social change is a key point that strikes me as unique in this week’s readings. I am intrigued by this overlap because of incessant conflict between oil corporations and indigenous communities over seismic operations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The contexts may seem somewhat divergent on the surface in that the readings highlight resistance in health-related contexts. By contrast, the resistance in Nigeria is tied to marginalization with respect to dearth of basic facilities in indigenous communities despite several years of oil exploration and concomitant environmental pollution. Given the overlap between structural marginalization and health, both scenarios provide opportunities for convergence. I use convergence here to mean similarity of prevailing /unfavorable circumstances that trigger agency or resistance from indigenous communities. Nigeria’s Niger Delta region represent the eight oil producing states in Nigeria ...

In reading Sirisha's post that poignantly addresses the pathologization of the Third in mainstream discourses in the West as epitomized in the Oscar winning productions "Born into Brothels" and "Slumdog Millionaire," I am reminded of a social gathering a few years back. "Slumdog" was released, was an Oscar nominee at this point, and was all the rage in the popular culture circuits. At this gathering, a colleague (you guessed it, Caucasian and male) walked up to me and asked if I had ever really visited a slum, because he referred to an NPR story that supposedly made the argument that it is Indians who haven't really seen the slums that have problems with the movie "Slumdog Millionaire." [Granted that the materiality in the frames of Slumdog do have a base in the deep-seated inequalities in contemporary India, the frames in the movie I would argue further perpetuate these inequities by participating in the circulation of a neoliberal readi...

The reading on the Participatory change among the Commercial Sex Workers in both the programs viz., SHIP and New Light Project has created an urge to point out towards the problem of building trust among the people we work with and amongst themselves in programs such as these which aim at bringing a "social change" through the solidarity networks among the community members. The first hurdle that I could identify while reading this piece is about gaining trust among the sex workers. It needs, not a simple effort but a very time consuming and confidence exhausting one. Gaining access to such areas in itself is so tough and this hurdle is further made tougher to cross by the earlier researchers or film makers or whatever they may be who have selfishly used their obnoxious stories for their goals of controversial movies or dissertations and publications in case of academicians or funding agencies. Most of them have exploited these people and left them with no hope for improvemen...