When voices from the margins speak out/up, the dominant structures will respond by attempting to silence these voices. Whether you are co-creating a culture-centered intervention within a form of government that presents itself as a democracy or in a form of government that is more strictly authoritarian or a form of government that is somewhere in between, power is invested in protecting itself. To protect their interests, those in power will create as normative/cultural specific forms and strategies of silencing voices from the margins. Because culture-centered interventions, when they actually work, co-create infrastructures for the voices of the "margins of the margins" (see Dutta, 2020), the interventions themselves as well as the accompanying structures are often the targets of attacks. The attacks can take a wide range, from actual violence, to labeling the infrastructures as anti-national (against the national interest) to raising accusations of foreign interference
This blog offers Mohan Dutta's reflections on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach, examining the interplays among Structure, Culture, and Agency in shaping marginalisation and the ways in which communities at the margins challenge structures. Writings on the blog are continually being revised to reflect the organic analysis of structure and agency.