Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

"The academic outsider always comes into our communities and takes." This is a sentiment that I have often heard articulated throughout my fieldwork, and beyond that, have also felt as a community member looking at many interventions that have been carried out by clueless academic experts. Later in life, as I grew into becoming a scholar within those very ranks of academe that seemed so impervious and out-of-touch, I used the term "academic tourism" to describe projects that went in and came out without really doing something meaningful for the community. This is why I hope that any project that steps out into the community begins with a clear delineation of its community-specific goals that demonstrate in tangible ways how it would first and foremost meet the needs of community members. More so, I am encouraged by examples in communities that have developed specific guidelines and measurement criteria for evaluating the meaningfulness of proposed projects. When c

In this reflection, I argue that to achieve equitable health care, it is necessary to listen to all the agencies within a population. I use agency in this context to mean the different perspectives about a health issue within a population. Using Darby & Svoboda’s (2007) argument about the framing of male and female circumcision as a basis for my argument, I argue that presenting only a particular line of argument may inhibit equitable health care services in that it may lead to the formulation of policies that may not be representative. In addition, I argue that the presentation of a particular agency as seen in the Nigerian context with respect to circumcision symbolizes the role of structure in shaping policy decisions. By structure, I mean the social system that allocates resources within the society. I begin by looking at circumcision in the Nigerian context. Following this, I invoke the author’s findings to show how the framing of female circumcision symbolizes a hegemonic str

As the Instructor of the “Sexuality and Health” class in our school, this paper by Robert Darby and J.steven Svoboda (2007) strongly triggered my attention. Following most of the other sex educators, I will definitely introduce the circumcision surgery to my students from both the culture and medical perspective. Very seldom, I talked about the female genital mutilation and explain it as very negative tradition in some isolated tribes. And as a medical person, my opinion used to be very straight forward that the circumcision already been taken as a normal medical procedure because it has obvious benefits: especially for the patients who have long foreskin and defect their sex behavior. This paper triggered some other thinking of me under culture: (1) Human rights under tradition: People claim that genital mutilation to the infants before they can make consent decision defects their right, so their parents should not have this right. But how about the baby shower and oth

After reading the work of Darby and Svoboda (2007) on genital mutilation and Hahn and Kleinman (1983) on the connectedness between belief and body, as well as in evaluating the ways in which I’ ve been witness to the impact of culture on medical reality, it seems evermore evident to me now the ways in which one’s wider culture can come to profoundly affect what one knows and thinks about health. What does "sickness" mean? How are the mind and body connected in a way that can promote or deter healing? Consequentially, how might my answers to these questions fit into the larger order of power, agency, and resistance present within my cultural environment? It is in the negotiation of a space and appreciation for multiple answers to these questions that a critical-cultural approach to health values. My personal background as a white female from rural Indiana situates me within a realm of conservative Western medical perspectives. Here, the normality of medicine is often determ

When we begin with the fundamental CCA question in our journeys of co-construction, we seek to understand the meanings of health among communities that have historically been erased from spaces of discourse. The dramatic difference that emerges throughout my CCA fieldwork is the gap between the meanings of health in the subaltern sectors of the globe and in the spaces of privilege inhabited by those of us who are counted among the haves. The politics of health as desire lies precisely in this gap, in this basic difference in our understanding about what health is, that is shaped by our material access to structures and the inequities that are written into the ways in which these structures are organized. The politics of desire then is precisely mapped into the politics of inequality, in the basic assumptions about what is "enough" or "sufficient" to have a healthy life. The challenge to the dominant structures in the mainstream that perpetuate these inequities can c

Sen's conviction a ridiculous use of laws: Amartya - Hindustan Times In thinking about the systematic and more recent attacks of the state apparatus on voices that seek to critique the structure, one thing becomes apparent: there is very little space for critique and debate in a national public sphere that is dedicated to serving the corporate interests and the interests of the power structures. The arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen is not only a smack in the face of the rhetoric of Indian democracy, but it also is a powerful demonstration of the role of the state in subverting voices of dissent. The framing of an individual or a group as threat to the State operates as a justifier for the enactment of violence and for the use of violence to minimize alternative narratives. Policies and laws take on the languages of "terrorism," "crime," and "national security threat" to minimize the spaces for debate and to erase the opportunities for critique. The message o

Professor Devika Chawla from Ohio University graciously sent me an email after having read my blog on "Eurocentric Disciplining," citing the piece that she and Professor Amardo Rodriguez co-authored, titled "Locating Diversity in Communication Studies" (Amardo was an assistant professor at Purdue and had left the department right before I joined the department here). Chawla & Rodriguez put forth the notion that the lack of diversity in Communication is fundamentally epistemological and ontological, privileging certain ways of knowing the world, and simultaneously foreclosing alternative visions of Communication that begin with worldviews that seek to de-center the status quo. They take to task what they identify as the paradigm of "inclusion, toleration, and accomodation, " and istead propose a new paradigm of "evolution, innovation, and confrontation." I found this piece both thought provoking and inspiring...something I would like to use