Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Te Tiriti O Waitangi In settler-colonial Aotearoa New Zealand, whiteness perpetuates its dominance not through crude denial but through sophisticated mechanisms of co-option, inversion, extraction, appropriation, and erasure. Te Tiriti o Waitangi—signed in 1840 to affirm Māori tino rangatiratanga while establishing partnership terms—has been systematically domesticated: tokenized, commodified, and filtered through white interpretative frameworks that evacuate its decolonial potential. Using the culture-centered approach (CCA) to center marginalized Māori and migrant voices of colour, this analysis exposes how colonial power operates through inversion—framing genuine decolonization as "divisive" while superficial biculturalism becomes the mechanism through which white supremacy reinvents and sustains itself. Theoretical Foundation: Structure, Culture, Agency, and the Unmarking of Whiteness The CCA framework examines the dialectical relationship between structure (material c...

  Far Right Influencer in White Identity Extremist Networks Andrew Tate The phrase "boys will be boys" slips easily off tongues in school corridors, playgrounds, and staffrooms across Aotearoa. Uttered with a knowing smile or a resigned shrug, it appears to offer a simple, biological explanation for rough play, aggressive posturing, or boundary violations—as if testosterone and youthful energy alone account for harm. But this casual dismissal is anything but innocent. "Boys will be boys" operates as a sophisticated ideological apparatus, deeply embedded within Pākehā white settler culture, meticulously designed to reproduce whiteness by naturalising and protecting dominant masculine behaviours that sustain entrenched racial and gender hierarchies. This phrase does not merely describe boyhood—it actively constructs it, delineating which boys deserve protection, which transgressions warrant forgiveness, and which forms of masculinity are celebrated versus pathologis...

Figure 1: Hindutva violence targeting Christians in India The recent decision in certain Indian states and institutions to deny Christmas as a public holiday—replacing it with mandatory observances for "Good Governance Day" commemorating Atal Bihari Vajpayee—exposes a deeper crisis in India's secular fabric. As highlighted in a recent analysis, this is not an isolated administrative choice but a deliberate assertion of majoritarian precedence under Hindutva ideology. In Kerala, staff at Lok Bhavan were required to work on December 25, 2025, while schools in Uttar Pradesh under the Yogi Adityanath government mandated attendance for Vajpayee's birth centenary programs, effectively marginalizing Christian celebrations. Similar disruptions occurred in Uttarakhand, where Christmas events in Haridwar were cancelled amid protests labeling them "anti-Hindu." These symbolic exclusions are part of a broader pattern of hostility toward Christians, fueled by Hindutva...

A speech delivered at a recent rally against antisemitism in New Zealand, published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand, offers a revealing case study in what the culture-centered approach identifies as communicative inversion —the strategic appropriation and reversal of liberation frameworks to serve structures of domination, violence and terror. The speech names me directly as someone requiring "apology and self-reflection" for my appointment to a counter-extremism research committee. This targeting is not incidental but symptomatic of a broader communicative strategy that demands careful analytical attention. The Architecture of Communicative Inversion Communicative inversion operates by appropriating the vocabulary, rhetorical structures, and moral authority of anti-racist and anti-colonial movements while deploying them in service of precisely the power structures those movements challenge.  The speech exemplifies this strategy throughout its construction. Consi...

The culture-centered approach (CCA) interrogates the entanglements of whiteness, power, and violence within settler colonial frameworks in Aotearoa New Zealand. This lens prioritizes the voices of marginalized communities, such as Māori, Pasifika, and brown migrants, to expose how dominant structures obscure oppression. In this blog post, I expand on my analyses to examine how violence—including physical, cultural, and sexual—is normalized in Pākehā culture as a cornerstone of the settler colonial project. I'll link these patterns to micro-level school dynamics, where bullying and sexual violence flourish under excuses like "boys will be boys." These cultures reward aggression while sustaining white mediocrity, fueling white backlash against brown excellence—particularly that of high-performing brown girls, including migrants. Critically, I'll trace how sexual violence and rape culture must be understood in continuity with colonial roots, perpetuating harm against mar...

White nationalists and counter protesters clashed at a rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017. (Source: Shutterstock) In neoliberal multiculturalism that upholds the underlying structure of white supremacy, terms like "unconscious bias" have become commonplace in diversity trainings, corporate HR policies, and even casual conversations about equity. But what if the very language we use to discuss unconscious bias is itself a mechanism designed to preserve the status quo? Far from being a neutral descriptor, the phrase "unconscious bias" serves as a linguistic structure that diffuses responsibility, minimizes systemic harm, and ultimately reinforces white supremacy, power imbalances, and mechanisms of control. Drawing on the culture-centered approach (CCA) to communication, this analysis examines how "unconscious bias" discourse operates through what we might call communicative erasure—the systematic silencing of marginalized voices while centering elite...

In Aotearoa New Zealand's educational landscape, Education Outside the Classroom (EOTC) programs are widely celebrated for fostering student engagement, curriculum enrichment, and real-world learning. These initiatives, which include outdoor activities like hiking, camping, and adventure challenges, aim to build key competencies such as resilience, confidence, and 21st-century skills through experiential learning. Programs like the William Pike Challenge Award exemplify this approach, combining EOTC with community service and passion projects to develop leadership among Year 7-8 students. However, a closer examination reveals how EOTC is deployed as an infrastructure for teaching and evaluating teamwork and leadership, often embedding and perpetuating whiteness in its ideological framing. This blog post critiques EOTC's role in NZ school education, exploring the values it centers and the erasures it sustains in a multicultural and bicultural nation. The Roots of Whiteness in EO...