Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation
Our work at CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation is held up by the support of an entire collective. We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the outgoing Pro-Vice Chancellor of Massey Business School, Professor Stephen Kelly. Professor Kelly’s leadership and strong support for our impact-based research have been integral to sustaining our journey.
CARE ACTIVIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAMME 21st – 24th August 2023 | Islamophobia and Digital Regulation: Responding to the Christchurch Call with Anjum Rahman (MNZM), Founder and Project Co-Lead- Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono. Presented by Center for Culture Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation & Palmerston North City Library
Hosted by Prof. Mohan Dutta & CARE, Manawatu campus Massey University & Palmerston North City Library
Tue, 21st Aug – 12 PM | CARE Lab BSC 1.06
CARE AIRP Workshop
Tue, 22nd Aug – 7 PM | Facebook PREMIERE
CARE In Conversation with Anjum Rahman & Prof. Mohan Dutta
Wed, 23rd Aug – 12 PM | Mezzanine Floor, Central Library
CARE AIRP- Public Talk
Thurs, 24th Aug – 12 PM | BSCB1.08 COMMS Lab
CARE AIRP White Paper Launch – LIVE ON Facebook and YouTube
RSVP on Facebook @CAREMasseyNZ https://www.facebook.com/events/241515122078310
*More details to follow.
Bio: Anjum Rahman is the founder of the Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono. She is a chartered accountant with over 25 years’ experience, working with a range of entities in the commercial, farming and not-for-profit sectors.
She also commits to various volunteer roles in the community. She was a founding member of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand, an organisation formed in 1990 to bring Muslim women together and represent their concerns, and is currently the media spokesperson. She has also been a founding member and trustee of Shama, Ethnic Women’s Trust, which supports ethnic minority women through its social work service, life-skills classes and community development. She has worked in the area of sexual violence prevention both as a volunteer and as part of Government working groups. Anjum is a Trustee of Trust Waikato, a major funder in the Waikato Region.
Anjum has been an active member of the Waikato Interfaith Council for over a decade, a trustee of the Trust that governs Hamilton’s community access broadcaster, Free FM. She is a member of international committees dealing with violent extremist content online, being the co-chair of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network and a member of the Independent Advisory Committee of the Global Internet Forum for Countering Terrorism. She is also a member of the Charities and Not for Profit Commitee of Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand.
#CAREMasseyNZ #CAREAIRP #MasseyUni #CARECCA #Christchurch #Islamophobia #Aotearoa #NewZealand
CARE proudly welcomes Prof. Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Head Department of Linguistics, University of Delhi, as CARE ‘s visiting academic for the month of June 2023.
CARE extends a warm invite to all to join Prof. Tanmoy Bhattacharya’s lecture on Traditional Children’s Games in India: Reviving and Renewing Precolonial Inclusive Practices scheduled on 20th June 2023 in Manawatu in collaboration with Palmerston North City Library & Manawatu Multicultural Council (MMC)
See event details below:
CARE VISITING LECTURE SERIES: Traditional Children’s Games in India: Reviving and Renewing Precolonial Inclusive Practices with Prof. Tanmoy Bhattacharya, University of Delhi
Talk Abstract
Traditional Children’s Games in India: Reviving and Renewing Precolonial Inclusive Practices
In this talk I question the western disability studies theories of inclusion and show they can be unpacked and informed through simple notions of innovations through informality. Various traditional Indian children’s games are analysed to show how they teach us ways of including the disabled child in innovative ways. The talk addresses both the theory and politics of the condition of postcoloniality through an “attribute of subordination” reflected in the changing character of traditional children’s games in India.
DATE: 20th JUNE 2023 | TIME: 12:00 PM NZST
Venue: Second Floor, Palmerston North City Library-Central Library
LIVE STREAMING ONLINE
Facebook LIVE page: @CAREMassey
Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/225044887004995
YouTube: @CAREMassey
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-U4ec_tpxw
RSVP ON CARE Facebook page : @CARE Massey/events
Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/225044887004995
#Aotearoa, #CareCCA, #CareMassey, #CareMasseyNZ, #CAREVisitingLectureSeries, #MasseyUni, #NewZealand
It is our pleasure to congratulate Christine Ngā Hau Elers for successfully defending her powerfully transformative dissertation, “Theorising Māori health and wellbeing in a whakapapa paradigm: Voices from the margins” with flying colours, passing without amendments. The dissertation was co-supervised by Professors Mohan Dutta and Helen Moewaka-Barnes.
The external reviewers, Distinguished Professor Graham Hingagaroa Smith, Professor Debashish Munshi, and Professor Shaunak Sastry commented about the brilliance of the work and the intervention it creates in the world at the intersections of Kaupapa Māori and the CCA. They noted the depth of the generative narratives emergent from her engaged scholarship, the rigour of her research design, and the theoretical robustness of the conceptual framework emergent from the scholarship. Distinguished Professor Graham Hingagaroa Smith pointed to the pathbreaking nature of the dissertation in opening up pathways for addressing health disparities and addressing upstream structural determinants of health.
Christine is the first Māori wāhine and Indigenous scholar-activist to have led and completed a dissertation that brings the decolonising register of the CCA in dialogue with Kaupapa Māori.
Writing from within an Indigenous land struggle that she participated in with her body, she demonstrates with her dissertation what it means to theorize with her body on the line. All three reviewers commented on the concept of authenticity as a theoretical contribution that grows out of her work, and that is depicted powerfully in the methods through which she engages the dissertation.
Celebrating the dissertation, noted Professor Dutta, “Personally, I learned over the last four years from Christine what it means to struggle with integrity against a settler colonial structure that shapes the vastly unequal health outcomes. She undertook multiple layers of challenges and faced them with courage as she undertook the journey of listening to Māori voices that are systematically erased by the settler colonial structure.”
We at CARE are proud of you Christine and proud of your work that demonstrates the organising role of Indigenous communication in building infrastructures for social justice and resisting climate colonialism.
ICA 23 Toronto Preconference: Ethics of Critically Interrogating and Reconceptualizing Culture Ethics of Critically Interrogating and Reconceptualizing Culture
Organized by: Sudeshna Roy, Stephen F. Austin State University, US
Mohan Dutta, Massey University, New Zealand
We at CARE are delighted to support this keynote by Leena Manimekalai, Director of KAALI Filmmaker, poet, actor, and activist
The keynote “I make art to upwrite my cultural body” by Leena Manimekalai, Director of KAALI Filmmaker, poet, actor, and activist took place at the ICA pre conference on Thursday, 25 May 2023 after the screening of KAALI Film at Charbonnel Lounge in Elmsley Hall of University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto
This preconference is affiliated and sponsored by the following wonderful ICA Divisions and a fantastic research facility.
ICA: Intercultural Communication; Ethnicity and Race in Communication; Feminist Studies; Philosophy, Theory, and Critique
Research facilities: CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, Massey University, New Zealand
#ICA23 #ICAToronto #ICAPreConference #LeenaManimekalai #KAALI #CCA #CAREMassey #CARECCA #MasseyUni
CARE REPORT LAUNCH : EXPERIENCES WITH PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY FOR HOME SUPPORT WORKERS – THE NEED FOR A HUMAN CENTRED APPROACH
with panelists: JAN LOGIE, GREEN PARTY MP, and ANDREA FROMM, ADVISOR POLICY & STRATEGY | PSA
Presented by Dr. Leon Salter and Lia Vonk
Wednesday 10th May 2023 | 7.00 PM – 8.30 PM NZST
LIVE ON : Facebook @CAREMassey & on CARE YouTube channel
LIVE ON : Facebook @CAREMassey:https://www.facebook.com/events/936443157592800 & on CARE YouTube channel
YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zbDe2s4YQE
Project Synopsis:
Platform technologies are being introduced by health providers in Aotearoa New Zealand to mediate relationships between care recipients and Home Support Workers (HSWs). They have been publicized by those providers as a potential solution to these challenges of health sector strain and ageing population. Much like in other sectors, platform technology is represented as offering autonomy for clients and empowerment for workers. This report critically investigates these claims and the broader impact of the introduction of platform technologies on the working lives of HSWs and their ability to provide dignified care for their clients. Drawing on 16 in-depth Zoom interviews and 1 focus group with Aotearoa-based support workers, we argue that technologies as currently used are exasperating pre-existing systemic failures, which have also been severely exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Synopsis:
Platform technologies are being introduced by health providers in Aotearoa New Zealand to mediate relationships between care recipients and Home Support Workers (HSWs). They have been publicised by those providers as a potential solution to these challenges of health sector strain and ageing population. Much like in other sectors, platform technology is represented as offering autonomy for clients and empowerment for workers. This report critically investigates these claims and the broader impact of the introduction of platform technologies on the working lives of HSWs and their ability to provide dignified care for their clients. Drawing on 16 in-depth Zoom interviews and 1 focus group with Aotearoa-based support workers, we argue that technologies as currently used are exasperating pre-existing systemic failures, which have also been severely exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
About the Panelists:
Jan Logie is a Green Party MP based in the Mana Electorate. Jan worked for Women’s Refuge, the New Zealand University Students’ Association, the YWCA and numerous other social causes before entering Parliament in 2011. She served as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Justice from 2017-2020 with a focus on sexual and domestic violence issues, and is Green Party spokesperson for Disability, ACC, Women, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Public Services, Children, and Workplace Relations.
Dr. Andrea Fromm is a policy advisor with the NZ Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi (PSA). After receiving a PhD in political studies from the University of Otago, Andrea continued to focus on issues related to the decent work agenda. Her work has concentrated on labour markets and employment, working conditions and industrial relations and public and community services. Andrea worked with international organisations such as the ILO and Eurofound, as well as with Statistics NZ. Andrea started her career as a social worker.
Links:
Facebook @CAREMassey:https://www.facebook.com/events/936443157592800 & on CARE YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zbDe2s4YQE
CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation’s Activist In Residence Programme (AIRP) with Tina Ngata , #Aotearoa #NewZealand #Activist | 15th – 18th May 2023 | CARE, Manawatu campus, Massey University
Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation is proud to host and welcome our next Activist in Residence- Tina Ngata, an Aotearoa New Zealand activist, who will be conducting Activist in Residence public events focused around Anti-racism and will collaborate with Prof. Mohan Dutta on a CARE White Paper at CARE, Manawatū campus, Massey University.
On 4th August 32023, CARE Will be launching the White Paper Issue #18: Māori-Migrant solidarities in resisting white supremacy with Tina Ngata & Prof. Mohan Dutta.
Scroll to the CARE White Paper Section below for more details.
Activist in Residence Events:
15th May – 4 PM – CARE AIRP Public Talk – LIVE
Link To Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/216364447813892/
Link to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-xze8QNBJU
16th May – 3 PM – CARE AIRP Workshop
17th May – 1 PM – CARE AIRP White Paper Launch – LIVE
Link To Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1359073274950730/
Link to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkZenUk5Z00
18th May – 5 PM – CARE in Conversation with Tina Ngata & Prof. Mohan Dutta –Facebook PREMIERE
Link To Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/904398527526123/
Link to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lJAGawtumM
Bio: Tina Ngata is a Ngati Porou mother of two from the East Coast of Te Ika a Maui. Tina’s work involves advocacy for environmental, Indigenous, and human rights. This includes local, national, and international initiatives that highlight the role of settler colonialism in issues such as climate change and waste pollution and promote Indigenous conservation as best practice for a globally sustainable future.
Visit the CARE social media links below for updates :
CARE Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey
CARE Facebook events: https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey/events
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF760E7rBst3U5GmJ5FhDDw
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CAREMasseyNZ
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caremasseynz/
CARE website: https://carecca.nz/
Activist In Residence page: https://carecca.nz/activist-in-residence/
#CAREMasseyNZ #CARECCA #CAREAIRP #AIRP #MasseyUniversity
on April 11, 2023 by Prof. Mohan Dutta
The figure of the “Miya” forms the infrastructure of the anti-Muslim hate in Assam, the Northeast frontier of India.
In this essay, I will argue that the genocidal hate reflected in anti-Muslim violence and anti-Muslim public policies in Assam is mirrored in the ongoing production of the “Muslim other” in the infrastructure of the fascist National Register for Citizens (NRC) carried out by the Hindutva regime.
The rhetorical trope of the “Miya” depicts the power of cultural discourse in organizing violence through the turn to a monolithic cultural essence based on exclusion.
The construction of the “Miya” as the Muslim other lies at the core of the cultural chauvinism that has historically mobilized the middle-class, upper-caste cultural nationalist movement in Assam. Elsewhere, I have described the communicative tools that actively produce “the other” to organize cultural nationalism, constructing the nation on the basis of a monolithic cultural essence.
The term “Miya” is rife with the racist fear of the Muslim illegal immigrant taking over Assamese land and culture, mobilized to build a movement of cultural nationalism. It is often used to describe Muslim migrants from the Myemensingh region of neighboring Bangladesh (which was part of undivided Bengal) who migrated in the early twentieth century, encouraged and in many instances forcibly moved by the British imperialists, settling in the riverine islands of the Brahmaputra river.
The activist-scholar Sooraj Gogoi powerfully describes the ways in which the cultural revivalism that shaped the Assamese nationalism underlying the Assam movement in the 1980s created the discursive climate of fear and hate around the illegal Muslim immigrant, classified as the foreigner. He further describes the role of middle-class caste Assamese cultural workers, intellectuals including academics, poets, lyricists, performers etc. in constructing the discursive ecosystem of cultural nationalism.
The basis of the cultural turn underlying the Assam movement draws on an Assamese essence depicted in linguistic and cultural artifacts. Simultaneously, this cultural turn as cultural nationalism is deployed toward the production of hate through the circulation of the image of the foreigner. Through songs, poems, and graffiti, the foreigner is crafted as a perpetual threat to the cultural essence, as a danger to a monolithic Assamese cultural identity.
This discursive climate of hate is financialized by the political class, turning hate into the basis for mobilizing the movement and political participation. It is this ecosystem of hate seeded by caste Assamese political-cultural society that mobilized largely tribal and oppressed caste communities in participating in the violence at Nellie that resulted in the death of 3,300 Muslims. The Nellie massacre remains one of the most violent pogroms since World War 2.
The xenophobic anti-Muslim violence scripted into mainstream caste Assamese society as cultural nationalism flows seamlessly into the Islamophobic fascist laboratory of Hindutva.
The chauvinism of Assamese cultural nationalism feeds directly into the cultural nationalism of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The threat of the illegal foreigner in Assam is mobilized into the concept of the registry, crystallized in the National Register for Citizens (NRC), sending Muslims into detention centers, stripped of the “right to have rights.” The violence of the NRC process, marked by the haphazard implementation of documentation, the arbitrariness of the Assam foreigners tribunal, the disenfranchisement of Muslims who have lived in India across generations through incarceration in detention centers (locally referred to as concentration camps), and the absence of access to juridical processes, have resulted in plethora of health challenges, including challenges to mental health and suicides. In a period of five years between 2015 and 2020, between 38 and 42 individuals committed suicide in Assam in the context of the revocation of their own or a relative’s citizenship status.
The discursive construction of Muslims as foreign nationals is built on the ideology of border-making that catalyzes the material construction of the border as the basis for othering. This process of othering Muslims as the basis of cultural nationalism in Assam reflects the organizing role of cultural essence as the organizing ideology that drives hate, violence, and fascist politics.
Link to the blogpost on: https://culture-centered.blogspot.com/2023/04/cultural-essence-cultural-nationalism.html
Image source via google search: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-violence-idUSBRE86N1CE20120724
#CAREMasseyNZ #CAREDirectorsBlog #CulturalEssence #CulturalNationalism #Miya #AntiMuslim #Hate #India #NationalRegisterForCitizens #NRC #SoorajGogoi #MasseyUni #Aotearoa #NewZealand
Online platforms are at the core of manufacturing and disseminating Islamophobic hate globally, and in Aotearoa New Zealandi. The Islamophobic hate on these platforms is largely unregulated, with both platform-driven mechanisms and state/civil society led mechanisms largely absent in regulating this hate. The current digital environment in Aotearoa is largely unregulated when it comes to addressing hate targeting communities at the margins, and particularly so when it comes to regulating Islamophobic hate. The Human Rights Act does not offer protections to Muslims who are targets of religious hate. Moreover, hegemonic constructions of human rights within the structures of colonialism have produced and
disseminated Islamophobia to legitimize neocolonial interventions, including in the most recent instances of imperial intervention as evidenced in Operation Iraqi Freedomii, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestineiii.
The constructions of free speech in policy conversations on regulation have catalysed the proliferation of digital hate while simultaneously silencing the voices of communities at the margins experiencing the hateiv. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the discursive constructions of freedom as an instrument for spreading colonial violence are embedded in the white supremacy of the settler colonial state that has systematically worked to erase the voices of Māori while simultaneously protecting and feeding racist speech targeting Māoriv. The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 and the mechanisms of Netsafe are not built to address the hate targeting marginalized communities. The underlying whiteness that shapes the digital environment individualizes the sources of hate, simultaneously individualizing the responses to hate, and is not built to address pile-on, networked forms of hate, and hate that originates from the structures of white supremacy. This individualizing ideology leaves the underlying infrastructure of white supremacy intact, replete with rhetorical devices that claim kindness and altruism. This lack of an adequate regulatory framework is normalized through the Islamophobic infrastructure of the Crown, reflected in its security intelligence infrastructure that has mainstreamed Islamophobia through the marking of the Muslim as the “other” in the 9/11 climate and the neocolonial war on terrorvi.
Read the White Paper below:
CARE White Paper – Issue #17 – Drivers of Online Islamophobic hate in Aotearoa New Zealand
#OnlineHate #IslamophobicHate #Islamophobia #islamophobiainnewzealand #CAREMasseyNZ #CAREWhitePaper #MasseyUni #Aotearoa #NewZealand
by Prof. Mohan Dutta | on March 18, 2023
The Christchurch terrorist attack is often individualized in mainstream public discourse as the act of an individual extremist.
This individualization of white supremacist violence is an essential feature of the whiteness of the settler colonial state.
In this individualizing ideology, violence is attributed to a lone extremist who has been radicalized.
The response then is an individualizing response, directed at the individual extremist with the justice system of the settler colonial state organized to respond to the extremist.
The intelligence-security apparatus of the settler colonial state is organized around techniques of surveillance and monitoring directed at identifying and containing individuals likely to be radicalized and turned into extremists.
The individualizing ideology on one hand places the cause of the violence in the actions of an individual who is portrayed to have been radicalized by an ideology. On the other hand, the individualization of the violence keeps intact the very structure of white supremacy that underpins the violence.
Moreover, the individualizing ideology conveniently erases the white supremacy that makes up the institutional structure of the intelligence-military-police infrastructure of the settler colonial state.
The Australian extremist who carried out the violence in Christchurch is an extension of the white supremacy that forms the settler colonial infrastructure of Australia. This settler colonial structure in Australia is scripted into its political, juridical, military, security, and intelligence institutions.
White supremacy is built into the structure of the Australian state that has historically been organized around violence directed toward aboriginal communities.On March 18, 2023, a few days after the four-year anniversary of the Christchurch terrorist attack, at an anti-transgender event hosted by the British anti-trans rights figure Kellie-Jay Keen who is currently touring Australia, Nazis dressed in black are seen taking the Nazi salute on the steps of the Victoria parliament.
As the Nazis march through the streets onto the steps of the parliament, the Australian police are seen protecting them. In powerful images that depict the interplays of white supremacy of the police and the Nazis, the police are shown lining up to safeguard the Nazis as they take the salute.
Anti-fascist activists challenging the Nazis document the violence carried out by the police directed at the anti-fascist activists protesting the Nazis.
Moreover, anti-fascist activists document an Australian police member who flashed a white power sign at an earlier protest. In another report, Australian activists document the presence of Nazis in the Australian military.
The institutionalization of white supremacist hate within the infrastructures of the police and military exists in continuity with the racist colonial structure of Australia.
Four years since the Christchurch terrorist attack and the Australian state has continued to let the white supremacy within its structures go unchallenged.
To address the white supremacist hate that led to the Christchurch terrorist attack is to first recognize the white supremacy that is embedded within the organizing logics of the state.
This recognition then can offer the starting point for undoing the racism and hate percolating through the cellular structures of Australian police, military, and related institutions.
#CAREOpEd #ChristchurchTerroristAttack #WhiteSupremacist #Nazis #Aotearoa #NewZealand #CARECCA #CAREMassey #MasseyUni
