Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

July 5, 2010. In an article titled " The trophies of Operation Green Hunt ," the academic Nandini Sundar interrogates the complete erasure of stories of large scale violence deployed by the Indian state on its tribal subjects. She documents the rapes, murders, arrests, and encounters, most of which are disproportionately carried out on women. The unprecedented degree of state-sponsored violence carried out on indigenous women is the subject of her critical interrogation. Most of these stories of violence go unnoticed and unheard. We don't feel outrage as middle-class subjects of Shining India, having been led to believe that this is collateral damage that is natural to our democracy. The media mostly don't cover the cases, and even when they do, the story is buried somewhere in a back page in a small paragraph. And even when we see these stories, we pass on, getting on with our lives. We are normalized into not feeling empathy. Noting this collective inabili...

Even in death, the politics of race shapes what we remember, who we remember, and how we remember. A Black US President feels for the children of Newton. He imagines them as his children, and is lost for meaning at the loss of the White children in rich suburbia of Newton. His solidarity for these children is expressed in the pain that he visibly feels and the responsibility he takes for collective action. The President’s sense of solidarity connects his experiences as a father with the fathers of the children of Sandy Hook. His tears offer a moment of authenticity through which we connect with him and with the pain of being a parent who has lost a child. Like him, as a father, I feel pain. I also feel pain for the children in Gary, Indiana, a place a few miles South of Chicago where Black children die from gun violence. I have heard stories of suffering and hope that community members in Gary share. In Gary, the politics of race is written into the everyday organizing of sch...

A story on Al Jazeera Television memorializing the victims of the Newton shooting describes the short lives lived by the children, describing their lives, remembering their acts of kindness, and describing their innocence. As I bear witness to the stories memorializing the children that were killed violently in the Sandy Hook shooting, I feel pain in seeing the faces of the children whose lives were taken away. Seeing their faces, reading their names are acts of memorializing, of remembering them, and of acknowledging the dignity of their lives. Recognizing the names of the children gives meaning to their lives and offers a space in our thoughts for recognizing their everyday lived experiences, the potential they could have achieved, and the people they could have become. As we feel pain in witnessing the lives of the children, we connect with them. We empathize with their journeys, and find a way to link our separate stories with theirs. Our feelings of pain and empathy thus ...

From the screen of the Television set which is playing a John Wayne classic, gunshots are flowing everywhere. The good guys on horses are killing the bad guys. And the gun is their weapon. The gun is the salvation in a plot of good versus evil. It will kill the enemy and the hero will use it adeptly and expertly to seek out moral justice. For the Frontier man, the gun is the weapon for justice. Owning the gun and using it against the enemy is embedded within the broader cultural story of "good versus evil." Guns bring about liberty. And owning the gun is the right of the citizen, understood in a storyline of democracy and liberty. Citizenship is connected to the right to own. And more specifically, to the right to own a gun. The gun symbolizes a technological innovation, an innovation that is able to carry out mass killings. Its sheer force lies in its technological ability to kill at a distance. The greater the distance and the greater the ability of the...

On Thursday, 6/12/12, two Chinese workers workers perched themselves on a tower crane to protest outstanding wages that were owed to them by their employer Zhong Jiang (S) international: http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/two-workers-china-charged-criminal-trespass-after-crane-protest-201212 The workers were charged with criminal tresspass for their crane protest. From the preliminary findings from the Ministry of Manpower, it is apparent that the two workers Zhu Guilei and Wu Xiaolin had approached customer relations of MOM on Wednesday, 5/12/12 over the outstanding salaries but did not have any supporting documents. In my fieldwork with migrant workers, listening to their voices, I have often heard anecdotal accounts of unpaid wages. From a communicative standpoint, the question that relates to the complaint registered by the MOM focuses on "What supporting documents were needed by the ministry?" "How are these supporting docum...

Tomorrow, we bring several different voices at the table on a conversation on "Communication and Social Change" at CARE. http://www.care-cca.com/communication-social-change-emerging-technologies-a-global-symposium-dec-4-6/ We will have a chance to hear from an NGO how they conceptualize social change and the work of social change that lies ahead. We will hear from an industry partner who works on private-public partnerships and CSR what social change means from an industry perspective. And we will have an opportunity to hear from activists and academics about the relevance of social change from the standpoint of communication theory. What is embodied in the forum tomorrow is a coming together of diverse understandings of the meanings of social change, raising critical questions, offering analytical frameworks, and fostering spaces for contention and collaboration. What is the most important part of CCA is its impetus on reflexivity, bringing multiple viewpoints i...

The hunger of the body sits silently as loss in movement from one country to another in search of a living in fulfilling a promise of a home, of savings of a future for the children. The hunger of the body sits silently in search of sense in a job that would secure the promises. The body works harder, even harder in search of meaning in search of the promise in search of dignity, the promises made And the dreams unfulfilled. The hunger of the body sits silently as shame because the body must be tamed must be silenced must be erased Meanings don't belong here shuttered, lost, long betrayed. Dignity does not belong here As the body must work, and learn to be silent.