Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

The casteist structure of Brahminical society works powerfully through the production and circulation of the outcaste.  The outcaste, as the outside of the caste structure, is the subject of myriad forms of hate, mistreatment, and abuse in savarna society.  The normative structure of caste society makes these forms of violence normal, producing them as the necessary instruments of disciplining to retain social order. The social order is one that serves the power and control of Brahmin men within the structure of the community. A wide range of communicative strategies from social boycotting, to threats of boycotting, to stopping access to community resources are deployed as strategies of maintaining caste power and control.  Powerful examples of these forms of violence are visible in community norms around issues of common resources such as drinking water. Outcaste households are denied access to community water in one example of caste violence.  There are serious con...

Whiteness, the hegemonic structure that imposes the values of white culture on diverse communities across the globe, is the key organizing instrument of colonization. It works through the creation, reproduction, and circulation of binaries. The creation of binaries is an essential element of the colonizing project, forming the infrastructure of the divide and rule policy that makes up the administrative apparatus of colonialism.  British colonial rule drew on this fundamental logic of whiteness to seed division and circulate hate, reproducing hate to serve the hegemony of colonial rule.  The whiteness of colonialism in British India drew on and catalyzed Brahminical forms of power and control and Islamic fundamentalism to seed hate. The 1905 partition of Bengal epitomized this infrastructure of hate, imposing the geographic division of Bengal along colonial lines with the goal of quelling the anticolonial resistance. Both the political formation of Hindutva as ethno-nationalis...

COVID-19 pamphlet in Bangla targeting migrant workers in Qatar In a piece published in Communication Theory in 2007, titled " Communicating about culture and health: Theorizing culture-centered and cultural sensitivity approaches ," I had outlined the hegemonic forms of co-option of culture into health communication. The dominant approach to health communication, embedded in the individualizing logic of whiteness, turns to cultural essentialism to target diverse cultures with messages that are supposedly aligned with cultural values. In this essay, I argued that this form of incorporating cultural values props up and reproduces the hegemony of whiteness, keeping intact its individualizing logics.  The dominant approach to health communication  addressing health disparities falls within this cultural sensitivity framework. Cultural characteristics are extracted and then turned into the sites of targeting through communication messages that are designed to respond to the cultur...

The deployment of communicative inversions, turning materiality on its head, is a necessary tool of white supremacist attacks on anti-racist pedagogy. These attacks, as we witnessed in the attacks of the Trump administration on the teaching of Critical Race Theory, play out through the portrayal of anti-racist interventions as racist.  For instance, critical analyses of white privilege are projected as racist toward white people. To perform this communicative inversion, the very nature of the critique is inverted, displaced from the analysis of structures of whiteness to individualized performance of hurt expressed by white individuals. For white supremacists, the denial of anti-racist critiques through their portrayals as racist, uncivil, terrorist, and even extremist, as not belonging in civilized society, serves as the basis for the ongoing politics of erasure of whiteness, a system that as upheld and reproduced as universal the value of Eurocentric white culture. This politic...

Rahul Banerjee is an Indian activist whose work on agrarian sustenance forms the frontiers of agrarian transformations in India, offering a register globally for re-imagining agriculture. His inspiring work offers new ways of conceptualizing agriculture, ecosystems, and Indigenous lifeworlds. He is alum of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where I received my pedagogy in agricultural engineering and came away disenchanted because of its anti-people forms of pedagogy. Rahul develops his work on agrarian transformation from amidst his journey among the Indigenous community of the Bhils in central India. He builds a way of thinking about agriculture that is the urgent need of our times amidst global climate change and large-scale commoditization of food systems. It was therefore an honor when he asked to read a copy of my book, "Communication, Culture, and Social Change" and offered his critique of it. Sharing here is critique that he generously shared on Facebook. ...

Facile engagement is the neoliberal state's response to hate that has been actively cultivated by decade-long white supremacy. The performance of engagement communicates the impression of a response while the lack of deep engagement fails to address the deeper underlying issues. As superficial performance, engagement keeps the infrastructure of whiteness intact, failing to address the underlying reasons that make up the infrastructures of white supremacy. The performance of engagement is meant to assure communities that the state is taking actions while being complicit in the reproduction and recirculation of white supremacy. In a recent example of this in Aotearoa New Zealand, in the backdrop of the Christchurch white supremacist terror attack, the Crown had organized a meeting on Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism, inviting experts to discuss the evolution of terrorism risk in New Zealand, online extremism, the role of media, and the consequences of hate.  The meeting, ca...

This is one recognition that is the closest to my heart, and I cherish it dearly.  The award citation states: "We are pleased to present this year’s B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award to Dr. Mohan J. Dutta. The multitude of voices represented in his nomination praised his mentorship as characterized by a selfless spirit, a principle of committed care, a nurturing approach to working with his students, and a deep commitment to social justice. These voices conveyed genuine appreciation for helping them navigate the obstacles and hierarchies frequently encountered in the academy, and they expressed gratitude for his gentle guidance in helping them see the importance of their work in helping those in communities outside of academics. As his nomination states, “The discipline is more inclusive today, to a large part because of Mohan’s tireless advocacy. Mohan’s courage in questioning consistently disciplinary #Whiteness is one of most powerful testimonies to his mentorship. This mentor...