Lecture Title: Lecture Series: Critically interrogating the Hinduphobia narrative with Prof. Mohan Dutta
Lecture Abstract: In this lecture, Professor Mohan Dutta will draw on his work on anti-racist interventions to critically interrogate the language of Hinduphobia and the ways in which it is deployed in liberal democracies to silence critiques of the infrastructures of hate being deployed in India and globally.We look forward to seeing our colleagues and collaborators, at this #CARETalk as part of our “End the hate” series.
We begin this response by noting that laws against incitement of hate are necessary in extreme situations. However, a culture-centered analysis suggests that laws against incitement are not effective in transforming cultures of intolerance and hate that are held up by powerful political and economic interests[1]. Those in places of power deploy hate to serve their political and economic gains. Simultaneously, we note that powerful political and economic interests use hate speech laws to silence dissent and erase articulations from the margins. As anti-racist academics and activists, collaborating with social justice activists, we have experienced and witnessed the silencing processes through manipulation of legal frameworks around hate speech. Our activist collaborators have been harassed and persecuted by authoritarian states under the guise of promoting racial and/or religious harmony[2]. It is vital to critically interrogate the individualization of hate in laws against incitement. Instead, structural transformations are needed in the form of policies that are explicitly anti-discriminatory, guarantee and support equality of vulnerable communities, and protect the fundamental human rights of vulnerable groups[3]. We propose a culture-centered policy framework to addressing hate speech that tackles the political economy of hate and builds communicative infrastructures for the voices of communities at the “margins of the margins.”[4]
[1] Saylor, C. (2014). The US Islamophobia network: Its funding and impact. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 2(1), 99-118; Bukar, A. A. (2020). The Political Economy of Hate Industry: Islamophobia in the Western Public Sphere. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 5(2), 152-174; Campbell, K. G. (2004). Freedom of speech, imagination, and political dissent: Culturally centering the free speech principle. University of Denver.
[2] Thanapal, S., & Dutta, M. J., (2019). Dismantling racism in Singapore: Resisting authoritarian repression. Interview. Palmerston North: Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE); Thanapal, S. (2020). The neo-colonized entity: Examining the ongoing significance of colonialism on free speech in Singapore. First Amendment Studies, 54(2), 225-235.
[3] George, C. (2016). Hate spin: The manufacture of religious offense and its threat to democracy. MIT Press.
[4] Dutta, M. J., Elers, C., & Jayan, P. (2020). Culture-centered processes of community organizing in COVID19 response: Notes from Kerala and Aotearoa New Zealand. Frontiers in Communication, 5, 62.
CARE Talk on ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM’ with Prof Mohan Dutta & Dr. Leon Salter, Massey University Tuesday 27th July 2021 @ 10 AM Venue: CARE Lab BSC 1.06, Manawatu campus, Massey University.
Tuesday 27th July 2021 @ 10 AM
Venue: CARE Lab BSC 1.06, Manawatu campus, Massey University.
The Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) has been conducting a global study on social justice and academic freedom. In its second year, the study foregrounds voices of academics doing social justice work and negotiating the threats to academic freedom. In this talk, Professor Mohan Dutta will outline the key structural threats to academic freedom in the context of social justice scholarship. The talk will draw upon case studies emergent from the work of CARE.
We are excited to welcome back Dr. Asha Rathina Pandi as a Research Fellow at the Center. At CARE, she will lead the Labour and Race in Asia Project, with her research focusing on the health of Plantation and Migrant workers in Malaysia.
Previously, she held teaching and research positions at the Department of Communications and New Media, Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), and Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Asha received her PhD (2011) and M.A. in Sociology (2005) from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), USA. She also holds a M.Sc. (2000) and Bachelor’s degrees in Urban Planning (1996) from University Technology of Malaysia, and a Graduate Certificate in Global Health and Population Studies from UHM (2012).An academic-activist, Asha has 18 years of experience in higher education. Her teaching and research interests are in social change and justice, health communication, community engagement, mixed methods and marginalized populations. She has published in journals of International Development Planning, Journalism, Development Studies, Frontiers in Communication, among others. At the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, she led and taught the Communication for Social Change course that created a register for pedagogy of structural transformation for students.
We look forward to the transformative openings that Dr. Pandi will build in her work at CARE!
The outcome of this collective work/report is titled, “Beyond bias: exploring the cultural contexts of health and well-being measurement”.
Abstract: This first expert group meeting on the cultural contexts of health and well-being was convened by the WHO Regional Office for Europe on 15–16 January 2015. As part of the adoption of Health 2020, the European policy for health and well-being, WHO Member States agreed to a measurement framework, which would measure and report on objective and subjective well-being. However, practical challenges remain, particularly with respect to the influence of cultural factors on well-being and well-being measurement. The aim of this meeting was to provide advice on how to consider the impact of culture on health and well-being, and how to communicate findings from well-being data across such a culturally diverse region as Europe. This report outlines the detailed recommendations made by the expert group in relation to each of these objectives.
Dr. Leon Salter @ Massey University’s Graduation Ceremony
Dr. Leon’s project is titled. “Examining the effects of the expansion of gig work on health and wellbeing in a post-pandemic economy.”It uses the culture-centered approach (CCA) to create a framework for worker organizing in the gig economy. Dr. Leon will be housed at CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation in doing this work.
The social impact of this work is in creating a framework for safeguarding worker rights through collaborations with unions and advocates, and is at the frontiers of the kinds of questions we ought to be grappling with in the context of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) economy.Congratulations again on this amazing acheivement.
Professor Mohan J Dutta, from the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, has been named as the 2021 Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award winner.
The award, presented by the International Communications Association, was first initiated in 1988 and honors outstanding scholars, teachers and advisors who have had a major impact in the field of communication.
The Aubrey Fisher Award is the highest recognition for mentorship in the discipline of communication and most importantly, recipients of this award are recognised to have influenced their former students, who themselves are important figures working in the field of communication.
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 mentorship role extends much beyond us, his advisees, as he inspires students of colour across the discipline and works to make space for them.”
Professor Dutta says he is honoured to be recognised with the award. “This award for me is one of the most powerful recognitions of my lifetime of mentoring students, community organisers and activists”.
Professor Dutta is Dean’s Chair Professor of Communication. He is the Director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), developing culturally-centred, community-based projects of social change, advocacy, and activism that articulate health as a human right.
CARE has been awarded a grant from the International Communication Association (ICA) to host a regional hub for the 2021 ICA Conference. CARE is especially delighted as Theme Co-Chair of the 2021 ICA that we are able to host this hub in Aotearoa with the theme of “Engaging the Essential Work of Care: Communication,Connectedness, and Social Justice.”
The hub will be hosted as a face-to-face conference that complements the virtual conference, with spotlight sessions that are focused on work in Aotearoa. The conference will be hosted from May 27 to May 31, 2021.
The Hub will operate in a hybrid model, with face-to-face participation complementing virtual participation. It will feature two spotlight sessions per day for the five days of the conference that bring together participants around themes, and host face-to-face conversations around the virtual sessions. Participants will indicate their preferences for the sessions around which they would like to have face-to-face conversations. They will watch the virtual session together, followed by a discussion of the themes emergent from the session.
In addition, each spotlight session will be complemented with a complementary workshop held on May 26 and May 27, where participants will bring in their manuscripts accepted at ICA and rework them for publication. These workshops will be led by journal editors and editorial board members of leading journals of the discipline.
The ICA Regional Hub at CARE will complement a one-day hybrid workshop on “Centering Care: Methodologies of the Global South.” The workshop will bring in scholars from across the global south in virtual sessions, working alongside face-to-face interactions, focusing on key methodological questions in scholarship of/from the Global South. Aligned with the conference theme, the workshop will center the essential work of care in organizing research and practice in universities. Sessions will connect with local organizers and activists in generating conversations on key questions of care work in the generation of decolonizing knowledge. Centering the principles of Kaupapa Māori, the workshop will explore the decolonizing work of care in culture-centered methods.
As a theme co-chair, Prof. Mohan Dutta will be hosting a closing plenary with academics and activists on the theme, “Empire and the global politics of care: Academic-activism, social justice, and Southern imaginaries.”
To be a part of the #ICA21 Regional Hub RSVP below or email your contact details to Breeze Mehta: b.s.mehta@massey.ac.nz
To be a part of the complementary Hybrid workshop : Centering Care:Methodologies of the Global South, RSVP below or email your contact details to Breeze Mehta: b.s.mehta@massey.ac.nz and we will be in touch with you.
Health communication research has experienced a rapid grown in recent years in Asia. The diverse and rich Asian cultures, socio-economic modes, policy regulations, and familial factors contribute to a wide range of exciting research agendas and provide enormous opportunities to advance knowledge about the meanings and practices of health as well as the explanation, prediction, intervention, and control of disease and illness. This symposium invites researchers to share their observations of challenges of and opportunities for conducting health communication research in the Asia contexts or from the Asian perspectives. Key issues to be interrogated in this symposium include, but are not limited to, theorization, technology, culture, risk and crisis, and provider-patient relations in health communication with an Asian focus.
Organizer: Centre for Media & Communication Research, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
Day 1: March 4 Panel 1. 8:30-10:00 am
Information and Intervention in the Digital Era
Panel 2. 10:20-11:50 am Key Theoretical, Methodological, and Ethical Issues in Health Communication
Day 2: March 5 Panel 3. 8:30-10:00 am Culture and Health
Panel 4. 10:20-11:50 am Risk and Crisis in Health Communication
Panel 5. 1:30-3:00 pm Emerging Agendas in Health Communication
