Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

COVID-19 pamphlet in Bangla targeting migrant workers in Qatar In a piece published in Communication Theory in 2007, titled " Communicating about culture and health: Theorizing culture-centered and cultural sensitivity approaches ," I had outlined the hegemonic forms of co-option of culture into health communication. The dominant approach to health communication, embedded in the individualizing logic of whiteness, turns to cultural essentialism to target diverse cultures with messages that are supposedly aligned with cultural values. In this essay, I argued that this form of incorporating cultural values props up and reproduces the hegemony of whiteness, keeping intact its individualizing logics.  The dominant approach to health communication  addressing health disparities falls within this cultural sensitivity framework. Cultural characteristics are extracted and then turned into the sites of targeting through communication messages that are designed to respond to the cultur

The deployment of communicative inversions, turning materiality on its head, is a necessary tool of white supremacist attacks on anti-racist pedagogy. These attacks, as we witnessed in the attacks of the Trump administration on the teaching of Critical Race Theory, play out through the portrayal of anti-racist interventions as racist.  For instance, critical analyses of white privilege are projected as racist toward white people. To perform this communicative inversion, the very nature of the critique is inverted, displaced from the analysis of structures of whiteness to individualized performance of hurt expressed by white individuals. For white supremacists, the denial of anti-racist critiques through their portrayals as racist, uncivil, terrorist, and even extremist, as not belonging in civilized society, serves as the basis for the ongoing politics of erasure of whiteness, a system that as upheld and reproduced as universal the value of Eurocentric white culture. This politics of

Rahul Banerjee is an Indian activist whose work on agrarian sustenance forms the frontiers of agrarian transformations in India, offering a register globally for re-imagining agriculture. His inspiring work offers new ways of conceptualizing agriculture, ecosystems, and Indigenous lifeworlds. He is alum of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where I received my pedagogy in agricultural engineering and came away disenchanted because of its anti-people forms of pedagogy. Rahul develops his work on agrarian transformation from amidst his journey among the Indigenous community of the Bhils in central India. He builds a way of thinking about agriculture that is the urgent need of our times amidst global climate change and large-scale commoditization of food systems. It was therefore an honor when he asked to read a copy of my book, "Communication, Culture, and Social Change" and offered his critique of it. Sharing here is critique that he generously shared on Facebook.

Facile engagement is the neoliberal state's response to hate that has been actively cultivated by decade-long white supremacy. The performance of engagement communicates the impression of a response while the lack of deep engagement fails to address the deeper underlying issues. As superficial performance, engagement keeps the infrastructure of whiteness intact, failing to address the underlying reasons that make up the infrastructures of white supremacy. The performance of engagement is meant to assure communities that the state is taking actions while being complicit in the reproduction and recirculation of white supremacy. In a recent example of this in Aotearoa New Zealand, in the backdrop of the Christchurch white supremacist terror attack, the Crown had organized a meeting on Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism, inviting experts to discuss the evolution of terrorism risk in New Zealand, online extremism, the role of media, and the consequences of hate.  The meeting, ca

This is one recognition that is the closest to my heart, and I cherish it dearly.  The award citation states: "We are pleased to present this year’s B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award to Dr. Mohan J. Dutta. The multitude of voices represented in his nomination praised his mentorship as characterized by a selfless spirit, a principle of committed care, a nurturing approach to working with his students, and a deep commitment to social justice. These voices conveyed genuine appreciation for helping them navigate the obstacles and hierarchies frequently encountered in the academy, and they expressed gratitude for his gentle guidance in helping them see the importance of their work in helping those in communities outside of academics. As his nomination states, “The discipline is more inclusive today, to a large part because of Mohan’s tireless advocacy. Mohan’s courage in questioning consistently disciplinary #Whiteness is one of most powerful testimonies to his mentorship. This mentor

  At the heart of organizing at the "margins of the margins" in the culture-centered approach (CCA) is the building and securing of spaces for participation of those who have been erased from discursive registers.  This process of building trust is both tenuous and fragmented, one which has to be held closely through communicative processes that create security. Security for the community, for the members at the "margins of the margins" who negotiate multiple layers of oppressions daily. Because of the historic uses of power that have erased and continue to erase community voices while simultaneously co-opting them to serve dominant agendas, community members at the "margins of the margins" are often skeptical of academics and non-governmental organizations coming into communities to extract stories and participatory articulations that fit their pre-configured agendas.  For community members at the "margins of the margins," professional and middl

In culture-centered processes of social change, communities at the "margins of the margins" narrate their stories as the anchors to organizing for structural transformation.  The power of the CCA lies in the centering of these stories as the sites of change, with the sovereignty over the stories held by communities at the "margins of the margins."  This process of sovereignty turns to the question, for what purposes are the stories being narrated. For advisory groups of community members at the "margins of the margins," the ownership of the stories is the basis for change.  These stories are mobilized to organize for structural transformation. When the problems identified by advisory groups of community members at the "margins of the margins" intersect with those occupying positions of power, they often unsettle these power structures. When the solutions created at the "margins of the margins" make their way into power structures, they