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The Role of Indigenous Rights In Rainforest Preservation, Two Perspectives: Presented by Joe Lamb and Dr Jose Fragoso

WHY YOU NEED TO ATTEND: Indigenous groups in Sarawak, Malaysia, when faced with a large-scale development project that would displace thousands of people, and destroy large swathes of rainforest, launched a successful campaign to stop the construction of the Baram Dam. Learn how the land’s natives worked together with researchers from the University of California to propose alternative sources of energy that would be less costly, less fragile, and more efficient. The collaboration remains an example of how research can not only redefine the foundations of development that respects both human rights and the environment, but also amplify the voices of communities.

Date: 6 November 2017
Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Venue: Research Division Seminar Room, Block AS7, #06-42, Shaw Foundation Building

Register Online

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Call For Papers: Theorizing Communication from the South

Call for Papers: Communication Theory Special Issue

Theorizing Communication from the South

Guest Editors:
Mohan J. Dutta, National University of Singapore
Mahuya Pal, University of South Florida

In this special issue, we take forward emerging calls for decolonizing communication to explore communication theories anchored in the cartographies of the Global South. We encourage submissions that question assumptions regarding internationalization, de-Westernization, and globalization, along with other key concepts, and that consider new directions for approaches to theorizing communication. Submissions should engage with questions concerning the production of knowledge, the role of communication in global relations, and the potential for communication to contribute to advancing imaginaries of the Global South.

More information at: NUS Communications and New Media’s Official Blog

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Malay Heart Health

A Straits Times article highlighted that Singaporean Malays faced a higher risk of heart conditions. The Malay Heart Health project was thus established to develop a community-centric heart health intervention. Solidly grounded in Culture-Centred Approach’s (CCA) communicative principles of participation and dialogue, the initiative was funded by the Singapore Heart Foundation. Proceeding from the central CCA tenet that communities are in the best position to identify their problems and the concomitant solutions rooted in cultural meanings of health, the team conducted:

  • The first phase of the intervention was  a collaboration with Jurong Green MAEC, a branch within Jurong Green Community Centre. The second phase, demonstrative of the CCA’s ability to utilise alternative community infrastructures,  comprised of collaboration with community members from Chai Chee rental blocks.60 in-depth interviews with community members
  • 50 hours of participant observations
  • 12 advisory board meetings
  • 6 focus group sessions.

The team sought to co-create entry points for understanding the meanings of heart health and co-develop community-grounded heart health interventions built on local cultural logics of daily life.

The findings pointed to a few key factors that made it ripe for a culture-centric intervention. One key finding revealed that taste was a significant anchor to social interactions and food practices in Malay life in Singapore. Many participants were not receptive to healthier Malay cuisine because it lacked strong flavours, which enhanced the joys of everyday social interaction. Healthy eating therefore carries culturally-specific meanings in this context, which provided the basis for working with them, rather than stigmatising them.

 

Another important finding was that social events such as wedding receptions, gatherings, baby showers and of course, Hari Raya festivities, have significant bearing on the participants’ ability to control what they ate. Owing to a culture of eating together, participants reported hesitation in declining to eat more when asked to join by others, despite being full themselves . The sociality of food highlighted the importance of developing culturally-centered interventions that draw on food practices as relational practices embedded in community life.

Participants’ voices pointed to a large information gap about chronic diseases, resources of prevention, and strategies for coping with cardiovascular disease. Particularly salient was the absence of culturally rooted and culturally meaningful health information that addressed the heart health needs of the Malay community.

The Intervention:

The collaboration with Jurong Green MAEC saw 12 advisory board meetings with 14 members who linked diet and stress as contributors of cardiovascular diseases. The strategies of prevention include introducing healthier Malay cuisines without altering the taste that they were used to, community-driven group activities of learning about food and Malay culture, financial management seminars to help the lower income community members manage their budget better, outings for families to relieve stress, health screening, and exercise activities.

These were manifested in the campaign Gaya Hidup Sihat Sepanjang Hayat or “Healthy Lifestyle for Life” which was carried out over a span  of 2 months and was launched through  a community event with  celebrities like Sufi Rashid, Khairudin Samsudin and Suria Mohd who shared  tips on preparing easy healthy recipes.  To encourage bonding with their family, the advisory board members visited Bollywood Veggies where 120 of them got a personalised tour around the farm and shared insights about the vegetables they could use in their daily cooking. Again, to reduce stress and encourage families to come together, they organised an outdoor Zumba activity in the void deck of a nearby HDB block.

In the second phase, 12 advisory board members from Chai Chee rental blocks began a focus group, after which they collaborated with Sunlove Senior Citizen Centre (SCC) to ensure that the activities they came up with reached a wider audience. Once again, the advisory board members identified several issues they thought should be addressed in their community, including an emphasis on a healthier diet, education on cardiovascular diseases and smoking, and community-grounded group activities centered on heart health.

With many low-income families in the community, the group wanted recipes that they could easily and affordably make and adapt to their needs. Using healthy Malay cuisine recipes, Healthy Cooking Wednesday at the SCC was launched. These recipes were compiled with the assistance of Khoo Teck Phuat Hospital, tested  by the community members and later distributed to the senior citizens through recipe cards in Malay featuring recipes from community members and tips on keeping the food healthy.

Community members also designed culturally relevant posters and brochures to create awareness about signs of heart attack and stroke, and the dangers of smoking, especially while pregnant. These posters were put up at lifts, at the SCC and Residents’ Committees centres; while the brochures and recipe cards were distributed by the advisory group members at the launch of the campaign. The campaign launch witnessed the members cooking for the guests followed by a short explanation of the brochures with a dance-off to wind down the event.

The CCA principle of placing the community as the locus of decision making resulted in the community members taking ownership of this project with a deep interest in sustaining it. Consequently, Healthy Cooking Wednesday continues to this day.

As Professor Dutta shares:

The voices of community members form the soul and spirit of this campaign, generating a positive dialogic space for celebrating heart healthy behaviors and beliefs in the community. What is powerful about this advisory board and the work of community members is their ability to identify cultural resources of healing from within the community, connecting back to cultural traditions, and cultural meanings, and demonstrating the importance of community participation in dialogues for health and well-being.

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ICA Bluesky Workshop: Discussion Group on Culture-Centred Collaborations With Disenfranchised Communities

Many communicative interventions are exceedingly top-down wherein organisations already have a standard formula of intervention to achieve desired outcomes. Often, these interventions are intrusive to a community’s culture and does nothing more than provide temporary solace, if at all.

The ICA Bluesky Workshop is all about community-driven interventions that put community members and their needs front and centre. The workshop attempts to answer two important questions:

  • What does it mean when a community and their culture is in direct dialogue with the intervention that is supposed to transform their lives?
  • What does a culture-centred intervention look like?

We invite scholars, activists and practitioners who are involved in similar projects to have a fruitful and learning workshop with us on 26 May, 15:30 – 16:45, at Hilton San Diego Bayfront.

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Prof. Mohan J. Dutta presents at the National Communication Association 102nd Annual Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

NCA Opening Session: Putting Bodies on the Line and Words into Action – Celebrating the Joys of, Challenges in, and Opportunities for Civic Engagement

Sponsor: NCA First Vice President
Thu, 11/10: 5:00 PM  – 6:30 PM
Marriott Downtown
Room: Grand Salon E – Level 5
Dr. Bryant Keith Alexander has built a career thinking about and embracing queer black bodies moving through the vectors of racism and homophobia; Dr. Mohan Jyoti Dutta has spent the past decade advocating for health care justice in developing nations; Dr. Billie Murray has chronicled her participation in movements for social justice in the wake of Confederate memorializing and in the face of hate speech. A Dean, a Chair, and an Assistant Professor; a colleague from LA, another from Singapore, a third from Philadelphia. While our speakers embody diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and methodology and area expertise, they are united in their commitment to using communication activism for the common good. Come hear their stories from the front lines of change; listen as they engage in spirited dialogue about why communication matters, and how, and to whom; and please lend your voice to our collective celebration of those who put their bodies on the line and words into action. The NCA Opening Session is sponsored by Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

Chair

Lisa A. Flores, University of Colorado, Boulder  – Contact Me

Presenter(s)

Bryant Keith Alexander, Loyola Marymount University  – Contact Me Mohan Dutta, National University of Singapore  – Contact Me Billie Murray, Villanova University  – Contact Me

Sponsor/Co-Sponsors

Activism and Social Justice Division
La Raza Caucus
NCA First Vice President
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“Food Insecurity in Singapore: The Communicative (Dis)Value of the Lived Experiences of the Poor”

“Food Insecurity in Singapore: The Communicative (Dis)Value of the Lived Experiences of the Poor” – This journal article co-authored with Naomi Tan, Satveer Kaur, Prof Mohan Dutta, and Nina Venkataraman just got published in the Health Communication! Here is a link for 50 free downloads. Link:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2016.1196416 Abstract: “Food insecurity is a form of health disparity that results in adverse health outcomes, particularly among disenfranchised and vulnerable populations. Using the culture-centered approach, this article engages with issues of food insecurity, health, and poverty among the low-income community in Singapore. Through 30 in-depth interviews, the narratives of the food insecure are privileged in articulating their lived experiences of food insecurity and in co-constructing meanings of health informed by their sociocultural context, in a space that typically renders them invisible. Arguing that poverty is communicatively sustained through the erasure of subaltern voices from mainstream discourses and policy platforms, we ask the research question: What are the meanings of food insecurity in the everyday experiences of health among the poor in Singapore? Our findings demonstrate that the meanings of health among the food insecure are constituted in culture and materiality, structurally constrained, and ultimately complexify their negotiations of health and health decision making.”

NUS CARE researchers assisting Willing Hearts charity to prepare and distribute food to recipients in Singapore
NUS CARE researchers assisting Willing Hearts charity to prepare and distribute food to recipients in Singapore
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The Voice of Hope – Remembering the past and Recrafting the future

The Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), a research center under the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, is launching an online campaign on the 4th July to co-create stories of resilience, hope, and healing with the survivors of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965/1966. Based on scripts created by community members, the campaign seeks to create a narrative entry point for articulating the lived of experiences of sufferings and the pathways of hope. This online campaign titled “Learning65” celebrates the possibilities of hope amid suffering. Voices of hope come in various forms of stories and articulate the human rights, health and wellbeing issues faced by the survivors of the mass killings. After more than 50 years, the community members struggle to fight for justice amid the human rights violations under the New Order regime, which included mass killings, forced disappearances, sexual harassment, forced labor, imprisonment without trial, and many others. Community members share experiences of trauma, recounting physical torture, sexual harassment, and ongoing stigma. Voices of the victims have been systematically erased from the discursive space.

This online campaign was conceptualized by an advisory committee comprising 10 men and women from the community of 1965 survivors. Guided by the tenets of the culture-centered approach (CCA) pioneered by Center Director, Professor Mohan J. Dutta, this research study began with the understanding that community members are their own best problem configurations and solution providers. Therefore, when spaces for listening are created and communities are invited as co-participants, solutions to their health and well-being emerge from their lived contexts offering entry points for addressing trauma and suffering.

 

Over the 8 month-period, the advisory board identified key issues faced by the community of survivors and developed communicative solutions to tackle these problems. Stigma, restrictions to gather and to express thoughts, inequality, and communicative inaccess, are some of the problems that the community members face in their everyday lives. In collaboration with the NUS research team, the advisory board designed the campaign and the key messages in the collaterals. The media campaign developed by the community will include a dedicated digital story telling website, social media outreach, and a documentary research film.

Besides the media campaign, the advisory committee also highlighted that a key element in building collective consciousness about the history and the 1965 tragedy, and enacting positive changes in their lives was to engage with the key stakeholders in solution-making. In line with this, two focus group discussions and peer leader meetings were organized, bringing together the younger generations, volunteers, artists, scholars, and activists. The community highlights the importance to engage with the younger generations through arts and performance to battle the stigma, and to address the erasures experienced by the victims and their family members for more than 50 years. The outcomes of the discussion and the solutions proposed will be summarized in two White Papers. The culture-centered campaign foregrounds voices of the the marginalized community of 1965 in creating a narrative entry point for health and wellbeing. The full White Paper will be available online at: http://www/care-cca.com/. To find out more about culture-centered approach, please visit http://www/care-cca.com/ CONTACT INFORMATION: Prof Mohan J. Dutta (cnmhead@nus.edu.sg) Dr. Dyah Pitaloka (cnmpd@nus.edu.sg)/ (itareksodirdjo@gmail.com)

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Prof. Mohan J. Dutta receives the 2015 ICA Applied/Public Policy Research Award

Professor Mohan J Dutta has received the 2015 International Communication Association (ICA) Applied/Public Policy Research Award. This award honors a scholar or group of researchers who have produced a systematic body of research in communication studying a particular applied or policy problem for the betterment of society. The award is a recognition of Prof. Dutta’s decade-long collaborations with marginalized communities in developing the culture-centered approach as a framework for addressing needs voiced by members of marginalized communities, for developing participatory processes for structural transformation through grassroots-driven advocacy, for fostering communication infrastructures for listening to community voices, and for co-constructing knowledge claims from the global margins. Under the umbrella of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) that he directs at NUS, Dutta has developed partnerships with communities that work toward addressing locally articulated and contextually constituted solutions such as building cultural resources of health and wellbeing, building healthcare services, building locally-based agricultural systems rooted in indigenous knowledge, developing culturally-centered communication campaigns, and creating policy advocacy tools that center the voices of marginalized community members in policy spaces.