Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The social sciences offer insights into social, cultural, political, economic phenomena through empirically-driven work. The quest for empiricism essentially means that the social scientist has to pay close attention to data in drawing her conclusions. Good social science is not simply about running an equation or generating a simulation on the basis of assumptions, but actually putting these observations and assumptions to test. For instance, mathematically drawing out how two players may make specific choices in a game based on a rational actor model is perhaps irrelevant unless tested through empirical observations. The observation of social phenomena thus is grounded in a commitment to generating truth claims, however contingent and incomplete. It is possible that some or many of these truth claims that emerge from honest social science scholarship disagree with the broader assumptions or foregone conclusions of the dominant power structures in a given social-political-eco...

Culture is integral to how we live our everyday lives, how we experience health and illness, and how we negotiate our health seeking behaviors. Cultural context is a salient aspect of our everyday experiences of health, giving meaning to our negotiations of health. Yet, culture is often either neglected in health promotion efforts emanating from the West or deeply ingrained in Western values. Even more problematically, these Western-based ideologies of health promotion often work to precisely turn culture as a barrier to healthy behavior, instead working to change cultures elsewhere based on Western scripts, values, and concepts. Culture thus emerges in health promotion efforts as backward and as the object of Western-style health promotion campaigns, using the narrative of health thus to disseminate Western-style values of health. What we have as a result often in the name of health promotion is a Western hegemony of health, pushing behaviors that are deeply Western,...

Elitism often survives on the sense of entitlement among the elites. Thinking that "I am better than the rest" is often offered as a self-justification for a variety of benefits and deviations that elite claim for themselves. New rules and new normative guidelines can be created to justify this sense of entitlement, always operating under the notion "I am better than the rest." For elites, this heightened sense of self is accompanied by a sense of disdain for the "other," especially for the margins. The trials and tribulations of the margins are justified by the argument "They are not good enough." This argument therefore results in the conclusion "They are deserving of the way they are treated." The notion that "they are not good enough" is usually some mix of "they are not hard working enough" and "they are not capable enough." Both of these judgments about the poor work ethic and the poor abil...

One of the challenges of an organizational structure built on the rhetoric of meritocracy is its inability to put checks and balances in place to hold accountable the structures of power that are accumulated through claims to meritocracy. The logic of meritocracy works precisely on the acceptance of inequality as natural to a structure that is built on merit, with merit standing in as a signifier of capability. Inequalities are justified to the extent that they are based on differentials in merit. Inequalities in differential labour, differential assigned workloads, differential pay structures can all be justified to the extent that they can be justified by some claim to merit. The powers that be in meritocratic structures determine the rules of the game to justify these inequalities. Now all of this would work in a meritocratic system if the system was devoid of the workings of power and the traps to equal access that are put up by structural differences in access to opportun...

In global education, established universities are seeking partnerships with India to build their brand presence in the country. Noting the large market for education in India, multiple international institutions are exploring building partnerships. For these institutions, while building linkages with India, it is vital to make note of India's most recent round of attacks on academic freedom. Partnerships and collaborative works with Indian universities stands threatened in a climate that is actively seeking to thwart academic freedom, silence thoughts, and turn education into a skills-mill. While the skills-mill approach may sound enticing for a global partnership, the drawback of such a skills-focused approach is its lack of engagement with critical thought. Education in many ways in India now is being modeled into a factory for producing obedient workers for the global neoliberal economy. Add to this training in obedience an unhealthy dose of nationalism filled with...