Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The nationality of origin of migrant communities participating in intervention development  In co-creating infrastructures for voices at the "margins of the margins," the culture-centered approach (CCA) attends to the question "Who is missing from the dominant discursive spaces?" "Whose voices are not here?" "Who are located at sites of ongoing erasures?" This question then guides our theoretical sampling, with the sampling frame driven by the voices of those at the "margins of the margins." Drawing on the ley tenets of Subaltern Studies theory, the concept of "margins of the margins" is anchored in seeking to understand ongoing and continual processes of erasure. This informs a methodological reflexivity that requires the research team of community researchers, activists, and academics to continually explore the interplays of power and the co-constructive process of co-creating communicative spaces.

The racist politics of whiteness is convergent with the feudal politics of caste (Wilkerson, 2020). Both white supremacy and caste supremacy work through the erasure of the voices of the outcaste, even as the outcaste is turned into the object of interventions. Brahminical privilege in the diaspora colludes with Whiteness in perpetuating caste oppression.  Caste oppression, picked up and circulated into the networks of White  Pākehā culture, find new modalities of perpetuating its violence. In response to the work of the culture-centered approach (CCA) (Dutta, 2004), imagine this scenario, a White  Pākehā  person and a White Brahmin person having a conversation about the "margins of the margins," a key concept of the CCA.  The conversation goes somewhat like this. White  Pākehā (with a grimace, expressing disgust) : And what even is that, "margins of the margins?" White Brahmin (picking up the  Pākehā grimace and perfecting it) : Oh really, how disgust...

By  Ngā  Hau Christine Elers and Mohan Dutta  One of the vital strategies of whiteness is "talking behind your back."  Reflecting on this strategy of whiteness, notes Nga Hau: "I write this as Māori woman, who has endured many experiences in my life, of toxic and racist kōrero conducted behind my back by Pākehā, while undertaking my work duties. Sometimes, eventually that kōrero has made its way back to me. Recovering racist Andrew Judd, explained to our Feilding advisory group of Māori participants, at the end of last year, that is very common for Pākehā to engage in disturbing and even racist kōrero behind our backs, whilst appearing supportive to our faces.  Not only will some Pākehā do that with other like-minded Pākehā but they will also seek out people of colour, including Māori who are receptive to the mechanics of Whiteness to justify their own racism, because if people of colour engage in this type of kōrero then it must be true. And that they begin by ...

The expression of White supremacy in the U.S. capitol is not an exception. It exists in continuity with the everyday work of the machinery of White supremacy. The White supremacist terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol is reflective of a larger infrastructure of White supremacy. It is in many ways both a mirror and a culmination of the ongoing work of powerful political and economic interests invested in keeping White supremacy alive and in perpetuating it.  This infrastructure of White supremacy has been held up by the political class, enabled by it, and reproduced by it.  It has been funded by the capitalist class, finding support in powerful economic forces.  White supremacist messages have been and continue to be circulated in the mainstream media. Digital infrastructures of White supremacy are funded by powerful economic interests.  In other words, the political class is complicit in the perpetuation of White supremacy, funded by powerful economic forces.  I...

  A corrupt university system with administrators that are deeply complicit in perpetuating a culture of sexual harassment and faculty predatory behaviour surveils, hounds and punishes student activists for bringing the sexual harassment to light and for speaking up against sexual harassment. For all its PR speak about remedies, it is this truth that we must hold close, and continue to agitate to dismantle the culture of sexual harassment. We must also organize to protect those, especially student activists, whose bodies are on the line. A corrupt system that is deeply complicit in perpetuating sexual harassment blames me, the CCA, and CARE for teaching students to organise on sexual harassment. It gives us and the CCA too much credit. And most importantly, deeply complicit in technocratic authoritarianism, it fails to see the agentic capacity of students. It is the role of Ministry of Education and the Minister of Education specifically to protect student activists that bring sexu...

On January 4, 2021, Singapore's Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Tan told parliament that the contact tracing programme TraceTogether introduced by the state in June 2020 as a technology for COVID prevention and management can also be used "for the purpose of criminal investigation."   The TraceTogether programme is rhetorically constructed as a voluntary programme that uses either a smartphone app or a bluetooth token to track locations that users check into as well as monitor who an user has been in contact with. During and since its launch in June, 2020, the programme has been celebrated as an exemplar of technology-enabled COVID-19 prevention and management, having been projected by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as an exemplar of effective COVID-19 response. As with various facets of Singapore's technocratic management projected as models, the "Singapore model" of COVID-19 management held up the TraceTogether programme as an organizing f...

The peer review process is held up as the bulwark of science.  In my discipline Communication Studies for instance, the scientific process is enacted through the performance of double blindness. A double blind peer review means that the assigned reviewers aren't able to tell the identity of the author(s), and the author(s) aren't able to tell the identity of the reviewer(s).  The double blind process of peer review is projected as integral to holding up good science, with the strategies for masking the identity of both the authors and reviewers seen as necessary to the production of knowledge. As a discipline, we have accepted uncritically the sanctity of this process, assuming that it works to hold up scientific knowledge. What this uncritical upholding of the review process leaves unchallenged is the underlying ideology that shapes the construction of knowledge within established structures. The ideology is constituted within the ambits of capitalist power and control, with ...