Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

This week's readings has many points to start a discussion. Many notable ones talk of pain as a human experience and situated in the body. Indeed, how do we manifest pain or is pain itself a manifestation? The health communication concern and the concern of the many health organizations in the US it to create constructs around it, quantify it, isolate it and advertise and sell treatment for it, the fancy "disorders" patented under exotic names. This is what Kleinman et.al., (1992) call the political economic transformation of pain and its treatment. I found myself wondering, of course we all agree that converting socio-somatic processes into biological terminology is reductionist but hasn't that been the enterprise of much of the positivist scholars and yet alive and kicking now in NSF funding criteria and erstwhile "Bush" science (St. Pierrie, 2006). My primary education being in Physics and Management, I am very amused to see all these scholars studying hu

I was excited about reading the Basu/Dutta article on sex worker in India. Not only because this topic partly falls into my own research area, but also to see a first usage of the culture centered approach. I was shocked, but really not surprised, to read how many people in the process of setting up e.g. SHIP are throwing themselves in the way of people who are only trying to improve their own living condition without really interfering in anybody else's life. I can see now, once a program like SHIP is in place, it is not all peace and happiness. I can see now, how the struggle and fight is not over and how people in marginalized spaces have to keep fighting for their rights/health/dignity...on a daily basis still. Beck's article reminded me once again of the categorical imperative, I believe he even quoted Kant somewhere along the way. I still can't make up my mind about progress, decisions that have to be made and risks that need to be taken in order to achieve progress,

In the rather excellent readings this week, I discovered many theories, the postulates and positions of which I have often discussed but not the names. An interesting one is the "Dependency theory". The theory posits that Euroean development was predicated by the under development of the non-European world (Peet and Harwick, 1999). Certainly, the theory holds water if we trace the development of the world since the renaissance, the emergence of the industrial revolution, and parallely the enlightenment. Many scholars opined that this does not hold true anymore and Peet and Harwick mentioned the World Systems theory. But I would argue even today, the dependency theory can be applied to myriad contexts and used to explain them, though we have to replace the "European" with the "Western" and use the framework of even newer theories. Development aid is an area which offers itself to such critiques and indeed is rife with discrepancies and anachronisms. I was r

I am often asked what I am studying here at Purdue University. Upon hearing Health Communication, I am always asked what might that be. So I tell them that in easy terms, I study the interaction between doctors, patients, hospitals, governments, and other policy-making agencies. I then have to look into the person’s expressions and follow my answer up with an example. “Think of a time you went to a doctor and had a really bad experience with him/her,” I tell them. “And now think of a time when you really liked your doctor.” “What changed? What influenced your experiences? To a big extent, this is what I study.” I use the above explanation not only to share in an easy way what I study but also to remind myself what got me interested in this field. Reading some of this week’s contents reminded me the practicality of such explanations. Teal & Street (2008) shares in a simple yet insightful way about the need to have a cultural competency in a doctor patient relationship, treatment, a

The readings on Marxism and enlightenment got me into thinking about mankind, virtues, and morals. What is the inner drive of people that seek power through oppression of others? Are morals and virtues a result of our upbringing or rather the result of a personal argument with ourselves, asking who do I want to be, how do I want to be when in company with others, how do I want to express myself, where is my place in the world and what is my calling? As a big fan of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant I felt the need to look up the English translation of his famous work, the categorical imperative. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." I liked Mani's writings on feminist scholarship in the age of multinational reception. I find similarities between both her and I, as I am also a scholar that has lived in the the US for 5 years, yet doing research on the effects of culture on sexual behavior i

I realized my reactions will be different for week 2 because sitting in on class and discussing the readings definitely has an influence on your thought process and eventually on your response, anyway, here we go... On performances…I believe as much as every person has their preferred channel of expressing themselves to the outside world (e.g. acting, painting, singing, writing, or through communication), we also have our preferred way/channel of receiving the expressions from others. An example of this might be that an individual loves to read plays by Shakespeare, yet, going to see a play acted on stage is just not their cup of tea. In the context of health and illness and with an individual expressing their true feelings, I think it is crucial, that more than one way of expressing/ receiving exists. Like that, more people have the chance to comprehend the content of one's inner feelings and this opens another "door" to engage in dialogue. On politics...when I was young

Culture. Identity. Politics. Health. Four different concepts and ideas and yet they are so intertwined. What is culture? Although this question may sound simple to many people, social scientists consider this to be one of the key questions in the field. Many social scientists have tried to define this in their own way, but have failed to come to any solid conclusion. Interestingly, I had this long debate with someone recently about how many people it needs to create a 'culture.' I agreed with the author (cannot remember the name right now) who said that it only takes two people to create a culture. But my 'opponent' did not agree with me and she resisted this notion of at least two people strongly. Her opinion was that such a concept can perhaps (and only) define a sub-culture, as those two people will have many things in common with other 'major' cultures. I tried to convince her that, just as Airhihenbuwa (2007) says, any culture cannot be entirely unique of