Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Global Media Journal  CALL FOR PAPERS Theme of Fall 2014 Issue Financialization, Communication, and New Imperialism Guest Editors: Mohan J. Dutta, National University of Singapore Mahuya Pal, University of South Florida The global financial crisis marks on one hand the ruptures in the universalized logic of neoliberal capitalism as a framework of global development, and on the other hand, narrates the story of the increasing consolidation of power in the hands of the global elite achieved through the language of the free market. As we have argued in our earlier work on globalization and communication, meanings constitute the center of global financialization, consolidation of wealth in the hands of the global elite, and the deployment of technocratic efficiency as the solution to development narrowly conceived as economic growth (Dutta, 2011; Pal & Dutta, 2008). Even as these shifts in global power depict the new networks of power that operate glo...

The increasing patterns of global inequalities that have been brought about by the global organizing of politics and economics on the basis of the ideology of the free market are empirically witnessed across global spaces. In a number of academic as well as think pieces (including pieces on this site), I have been writing about the evidence that documents the patterns of these inequalities, and the relationships of these inequalities with entrenched patterns of political and economic policies that have blindly favored deregulation, minimal state intervention, and the weakening of the public sector. The University along with powerful think tanks has been a key site in the achievements of the neoliberal revolution. A brand of elite academics at elite academic institutions have played central roles as the mouthpieces of capitalism, offering philosophical frames, political theories, and economic ideas for the shaping of the world in the free market logic. In short, the academe has playe...

In most of my own writing as well as in the writings of scholars seeking to understand the financial crisis, the trope of neoliberal governance offers a lens into the workings of the "free market" logic that played out in the financialization of global political economy, in the large scale inequalities across the globe, and in the dissolution of regulatory mechanisms to keep in check the behaviours of financial firms. This macro-level analysis offers a big picture, an understanding of the absence of government structures and processes that would keep in check the behaviours of financial organisations. However, what this analysis does not do is offer an insight into the everyday workings of the people that inhabited  these transnational organisations, the values they embody, the goals in life they aspire toward and the meanings they make of their professions. The macro analysis also does not offer insights into the frames of reference through which the actors working in and...

Each time I am in the field, conversing with disenfranchised communities about projects of social change and finding entry points to collaboration, I hear a consistent narrative. This narrative is utterly sceptical of NGOs and the work done by NGOs. Consistent in this narrative across geographic spaces of marginalization is a consistent suspicion of the middle class NGO worker or the elite foreigner who comes in for occasional visits, may be once a year or once every two years. Like one community member shared, "NGOs are bastards." She noted how NGOs come and go, with their own donor goals and absorbing most of the donor monies to support their own goals and agendas. In the voice of another community participant in a disenfranchised Santali community, "The NGOs will do whatever they can to help themselves. So the fancy car, the fancy trips with foreigners, and the fancy life. You ask, how much of this money actually helps us?" In these narratives, communi...

What should be the commitment of the humanities and social sciences in Asia in covering concepts and ideas rooted in Asia? How should these commitments play out in the composition of research and teaching faculty in Departments located in Asia? How is the project of de-Westernization to be accomplished when the majority of the teachers and researchers that inundate the Asian academe happen to be from the West or are trained in the West? How is the project of de-Westernization to be accomplished if the majority of the decision-makers who offer leadership are from the West? In other words, How does the question of representation play out in the composition of Departments and Faculties of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences located in Asia, and in the composition of leadership roles and structures within Departments, Colleges, and Universities?  What is the desirable composition of a Department of say Communication located in Asia? And what are the implication...

A number of my friends have shared with me their wonder at our decision to move to Singapore. They have shared their surprise as well as their inspirations. I had a pretty solid appointment at Purdue in a leadership role and Debalina had promises of a tenure track career at one of the leading communication departments that also has a lot of history in the discipline. Moving to Singapore and to NUS had a number of underlying reasons, a lot of them personal, and some really important ones that were professional. One of the most salient reasons for the move was what I thought was a truly transformative opportunity for putting my commitments to de-Westernizing communication to action. Of course, one could make the argument that the process of de-westernization needs to happen at the very heart of Empire. Through deconstructing and critique, the workings of power can be carefully examined within spaces of belonging in the Western academe. I had been doing that, sometimes successful...

As a Professor of Communication teaching in Singapore, I have often been struck by the absence of introductory or advanced texts that are grounded in Singapore or in the broader context of Asia. I find myself having to cover Western concepts of Perception , Stereotyping , or Media Structures as the fundamentals of communication and new media theorising, modifying then the readings in the texts to "fit" my students in Singapore by drawing in examples or cases from Singapore. As I pick an international version of a much-used US-based text, I am left wondering what it means to have an "international" version of an introductory text, where most of the concepts are US-centric. Singapore emerges in my pedagogy as a source of case studies, built into a comparative frame where the foundations are covered in a required US text. I remain dissatisfied with this strategy of adapting a fundamentally US-centric text to the Singapore context of my students (I am not even s...