Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

I have often wondered this in carrying out our ongoing research on racism and its effects on health and wellbeing in global contexts. Much like a lot of other things, the scholarship on racism within academia is structured within the logics of Whiteness. On one hand, to research racism, intersectionality, and forms of inequality is a seductive brand positioning. On the other hand, to commit to dismantling racism in the broader society and in the university structures is a threat to the status quo. The neoliberal university loves the identity games, what with addressing inequality codified into one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). You will even contribute to your university's rankings and global "coolness quotient" when you publish on racism. One will even witness many White scholars studying racism, opining on the presence and extent of racism in society. It is an altogether different story though when you, as an academic o...

Image credit: Julio Etchart as part of CARE's campaign on poverty When the poor speak, the stories of poverty disrupt the carefully crafted propaganda of the regime. When the poor speak, the regime's natural legitimacy to govern is brought to question. When the poor speak, the rationality of authoritarianism as the method of efficient governance is disrupted. When the poor speak, questions such as, "Why are everyday citizens deprived of their basic rights to housing, food, and health?" "If governance is so efficient and effective, why do the poor struggle with shelter?" "If the governance of the regime is so efficient and effective, why do the poor struggle with food?" are brought to the forefront. When the poor hold control over the narrative, the corrupt strategies of manipulating narratives to retain the power of the regime lie exposed. Narrative control in the hands of the poor disrupt the expert-driven poverty pornography that sust...

When the scavenging was done, And the vultures had landed one by one, eating away at the scraps, peeling the left-over flesh that had been rotting, the soul, still renewing itself from the blows of death, rising little by little one day at a time, knew all too well That one day it will rise. Knowing deep inside That it will live to tell the stories of the violence and games of death. That one day the rogues of the regime will be held to account in the court of justice. That one day it will sing again the songs of joy of hope and truth looking the regime in the eye.

Without an axis in political economy, without an anchor in materiality, postcolonial politics is often the site for reproducing elite power and control, consolidating the power of capital. I have expressed my skepticism toward postcolonial theory over the years, keenly aware of the ways in which an air ride to the US often serves to erase the oppressive positions that postcolonial academics often occupy within postcolonial societies and yet turn to playing the identity card as it conveniently works toward making careers. I have personally found apolitical postcolonial politics to be rife with back-biting, self aggrandizement, sheer careerism, and the worst kind of opportunism. "Look I am so marginalized" is often the trope deployed by postcolonial academics to erase their oppressive positions that are rife with caste, class, and linguistic privilege (most postcolonial academics, because of class access, secure access to convent education left behind by the British). I ...

One of the strongest emergent themes in our fieldwork on experiences of racism in Singapore is the use of the "dirty Indian" label that is thrown at Indians by members of the Chinese majority in Singapore.  Participants in our fieldwork often describe experiences of being harassed with labels associated with dirt. These experiences of being labeled as dirty span the lifecourse, from childhood to schools and the university to workplaces to community interactions to media portrayals to interactions on social media.  Brown skin colour is equated with dirt in the hegemonic Chinese construction in Singapore, and in many other Chinese majority countries across East and Southeast Asia.  The term "smelly apu nene" for instance gets used by members of the Chinese majority culture as a tool for discriminating against Indians, often in playgrounds, at other times in classrooms, and yet at other times in workplaces.  Indian women discuss experiences of being ...

   Third annual conference Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research & Evaluation (CARE) School of Communication, Journalism & Marketing Massey University May 15-17, 2020 Palmerston North, New Zealand Culture as radical transformation In its third annual conference and the first to be held at Massey University in Palmerston North, the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research & Evaluation (CARE) invites dialogues and conversations on the active work of imagining culture as a site for radical transformations. Interrogating the interplays of racism, imperialism, and capitalist extraction, the conference invites critical interrogations of the incorporation of culture into hegemonic articulations of neoliberal growth and suppression of democratic voices. Juxtaposed in the backdrop of these critical interrogations, we then seek conversations in spaces of activism, social movements, and academe that radically re-i...

There are times when turning ethnographic fieldnotes into fiction offers theoretical insights about a phenomenon while protecting participants and observers. There are other times when authoritarian forms of control limit the scope of ethnographic accounts, making fictional forms of representation vital tools for developing insights. When writing about academic structures within authoritarian regimes, often equipped with tools of litigation and other forms of measured control, I have found the work of fiction to be a vital strategic resource. Through the emplotment of events that reflect materiality and yet are woven into narrative accounts that offer layers of interpretive disguise, fiction offers insights into the workings of power. This fictional account of surveillance then is organized on the basis of fieldnotes. In other words, the "I" in this piece is a creation of fiction, drawing upon observations across spaces and national contexts to create the account of the...