Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

When I came to graduate school in the mid 90s and started learning about many of the health communication theories by reading the empirical literature, I was taken aback by the number of studies that were published out of samples in US classrooms. These were theories tested by scholars embedded in Eurocentric hegemony and were tried out through tests on subjects who were embedded within the same hegemonic configurations. In contrast, the number of concepts and theories that were advanced by scholars from elsewhere or were developed through methodologies that were open to engaging with alternative publics were simply absent. The lopsidedness of the voices that made the knowledge claims and that served as the building blocks for making these claims in the backdrop of those that were absent was initially jarring. I must say that I continue to be jarred by this lopsideness even after having survived the academia for over a decade and for perhaps having risked being co-opted through the pro

My first book "Communicating Health: A Culture-Centered Approach" published by Polity is getting ready to be launched into the market. It should hit the UK and the US in November/December. I outline the key theoretical and methodological assumptions of the culture-centered approach in the book. Key points are illustrated with examples from a variety of contexts across the globe.

Very often in health and development communication efforts targeted at the Third World, we hear our First World colleagues say things such as "We ought to be able to judge certain practices as inherently bad, ought we not?" Take for instance the Taliban's treatment of women in Afghanistan. According to these colleagues, we ought to be able to critique the Taliban and it's treatment of women. One of the things I would however like to point out in this context is that it was after all this impetus for freeing the women of Afghanistan from the Taliban regime that played out in US war efforts in Afghanistan. That the Taliban's treatment of women needs to be critiqued is a legitimate point. I would, however, like to add to this criticism by further suggesting that we also ought to locate our critique of the Taliban and its practices within the broader sociohistorical context of the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the role of the US in equipping the warlords in A

Many of the public diplomacy initiatives targeted at the Middle East focus on "winning the hearts and minds" of the people of the Middle East. To the extent that the objectives and strategies of public diplomacy initiatives are built around the goal of winning the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East, such initiatives are most likely destined to fail. This failure is inherent in the emphasis on persuasion built around top-down agendas directed at changing the attitudes and opinions of the targets of the message so that they would be more closely aligned with the goals of the sender of the message. Inherent in the idea of winning the hearts and minds is the notion of wanting to change the receiver of the message so that they would be more closely aligned with the sender's agendas. In the context of US public diplomacy efforts, the goal is to ultimately create positions of support for (a) US policies, (b) US corporations that might operate in the Middle East, a

Current public diplomacy efforts talk a great deal about cultural exchanges and creating cultural understanding. In most of these efforts, cultural understanding is defined in terms of cultural exchanges of artists, performers and writers rather than focusing on "real" points of entry for listening to various cultural communities (see for instance, the following report by the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy). Although the arts and performances do provide insights into a culture, these are in many ways only some aspects of cultures. Arts and performances are important and yet only some of the more visible and easily accessible aspects of cultures. Ignoring the values and beliefs of cultures and the contexts within which these values and beliefs are negotiated leads to a short-sighted approach that ultimately does not engage with the deep-seated logics of the culture, which might in many instances be contradictory to the values and beliefs of US culture. Ultimately, t

In my other blog, Critical Thoughts , I discuss the inherently dishonest nature of public diplomacy efforts targeted at the Middle East. These efforts have been driven by a top-down agenda seeking to "Americanize" the Middle East, with the notion that an Americanized Middle East public would be more favorable toward the US and its agendas. An Americanized Middle East would be more closely aligned with US values,and hence would be favorable toward US security interests and would supply markets for US multinational corporations. In recent years, the language of dialogue and listening have been incorporated into these public diplomacy efforts although they continue to be driven by one-way agendas of changing the target audience. This outward show of listening serves to hide the top-down agendas of current public diplomacy efforts and makes these top-down communication strategies look more humane and dialogical. Pointing out the failure of such strategies as they are inherently d

In my discussions of the culture-centered approach, I suggest that health communication scholars and practitioners need to shift attention away from merely discussing individual-level health behaviors targeted through health promotion efforts to looking at the underlying structural conditions that create and sustain conditions of violence that fundamentally threaten human health across the globe. Acts of violence (many of which are state sanctioned) typically lay hidden from the mainstream media and from talks of global health promotion initiatives. Although more fundamentally aligned with issues of health because of the very nature of risks they pose to human health, these stories of violence have remained largely absent from the work we engage in. These stories need to be told and health communicators have a key role to play in interrogating violence and bringing to public attention forms of violence that threaten human health. Ultimately, we as individual academics and as communitie