Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Assignment List, H400, Religion in America Transcript #4 LR: Let’s start with, what does hunger mean to you? BS: for me it’s when my blood sugar drops, I start shaking and sweating, that’s when I know I’m hungry LR: do you have diabetes? BS: yeah. Before I was on the glucal pills, and I think they gave me the wrong ones or something, but now I’m off them and that’s been helping. LR: okay, how often do you go hungry? BS: I only eat about once a day, in the evening. LR: what do you have? BS: I have mac ‘n’ cheese or a bologna sandwich and a coke; I only get 36$ for the month. LR: tell me what it’s like to get food. You said you get 36$ but… BS: I ride the bus. LR: you ride the bus? Okay, how long does that take you? BS: about an hour and a half, two hours. LR: okay, and how, is it cost-effective to ride the bus to get to the food pantry? BS: yeah, it’s worth it. LR: what food pantry do you go to? BS: St. John’s , uh, I go

Assignment List, H400, Religion in America Transcript #3 LR: okay, so let’s start with, what does it mean to you to be hungry? R: uh, usually to go a meal or two, and then not have any way to get food, just to be sitting there and uh not have anywhere to go really. I mean, maybe the drop or you might get kicked outta there so, if you live there you’re not supposed to eat there, so basically you’re home and wondering, where am I going to eat? LR: so if you’re, at the Drop, you said it was? R: yeah, it’s over on 9 th , and its like a homeless shelter, like a kind of a day shelter, to go to eat during the day, but you’re not supposed to go there if you’re housed. LR: so it’s one or the other? R: right. LR: um, so, if you’re housed there, what kind of options do you have? R: well you can go to the local food pantries, um, LR: is it hard to get there? To the food panties? R:   uh, walking’s kinda hard, I mean you would need to have something to uh

1) Among the various kinds of resistive performances that Dutta discusses in Chapter 7, which one is most often the most effective? Also, in case of street performances, how does one make sure that the performance really catches people's attention and makes them think, as opposed to making them watch it for a while and then dismissing it? 2) In resistive performances, what matters more -- the number of people one involves in the performances, or the intensity of the act per se? How does one take a resistive performance beyond art for art's sake and elevate it to the level of a transformative act?

As Dutta (2011) note, TNCs and dominant structures argue that streets are public spaces that are solely for merchandize, as such acts of performance that seek to use such places for performance activities that disrupt dominant structures are silenced through the use force and the law. My question is: 1. How can performing artists overcome such hurdle particularly in underserved contexts where dominant structures wield enormous powers over the population, and any attempt to challenge their agency is interpreted as breach of the law 2. Also in the book, Communicating Social Change, Dutta (2011) elegantly traced the history of performance, and various performance strategies used by groups to challenge dominant structures while pushing for social change. Some of the strategies include dance, strikes, poems, speeches, suicide, Theatre, Barricades, songs, and visual arts. While I agree with the change potentials of these strategies, I am wondering where to draw the line between abuse of

Over the last few months, as I have been reviewing articles and paying attention to the posturing of scholars of a particular breed who are clamoring for legitimacy (most of this is related to resources), I have become particularly aware of the mediocrity of intellectual participation that is ironically shrouded in arrogance that gains legitimacy by putting down others, other ways of doing scholarship, other ways of thinking, and other worldviews. Sometimes, I am taken aback by claims such as "autoethnography is not scholarship." Where does such arrogance and intellectual pettiness come from? I am especially taken aback when I hear a graduate student, or a junior faculty member, or for that matter a senior faculty member make such claims. In most instances, I am confident that the person in question has probably never touched an autoethnography. Even more so, when you press the person to give you a reason, you hear them spelling out some heuristic such as "Oh, that&#

1) What role does the audience play in transformative performance pieces? How can we become more aware audience members? 2) What distinguishes open and closed performances? In what ways can we perform challenging pieces?

1.) How do Dutta’s overview of performing for social change and Drake’s in-depth discussion of her involvement in the sustainable food movement allow us to understand the significance of the symbolic and aesthetic dimensions of resistance, mobilization, and social change? How are the contours of agency (for all persons and parties involved) defined through such symbolic and aesthetic practices? What are the dialectical tensions and dialogical possibilities between aesthetic/symbolic practices and political-economic structures? 2.)   Considerable attention in these chapters is paid to the role of the scholar in communicating for (and against) social change. What are the potential pitfalls of academic intervention in movements for change? How do the authors reconcile these potential dangers and justify spaces for the expert scholar? What do these points tell us about reflexivity or the position of the scholar either in research and/or activism roles?