A Meta-Theoretical Systematic Review of the Culture-Centered Approach to Health Communication: Toward a Refined, “Nested” Model

Drawing upon an ongoing ethnography with low-wage migrant workers in Singapore, this article builds on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach (CCA) to explore the experiences of the workers amid COVID-19 outbreaks in dormitories housing them. The CCA foregrounds the interplays of communicative and material inequalities, suggesting that the erasure of infrastructures of voices among the margins reproduces and circulates unhealthy structures that threaten the health and well-being of the working classes. The voices of the low-wage migrant workers who participated in this study document the challenges with poor housing, poor sanitation, and food insecurity that are compounded with the absence of information and voice infrastructures. Amid the everyday threats to health and well-being that are generated by neoliberal reforms across the globe, the hyper-precarious conditions of migrant work rendered visible by the trajectories of COVID-19 call for structurally transformative futures that are anchored in the voices of workers at the margins of neoliberal economies.

Section: Culture-centered Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, and Precarious Migrant Work in Singapore: Structural Violence and Communicative Inequality

Dutta

2020

“…For this study, the CCA provides theoretical input on the way communicative inequalities play out in the media's talk about the health of a subaltern group. With the CCA's roots deeply etched in the critical project of health in the margins (Sastry et al, 2019), the CCA is expressly concerned with identifying and mitigating asymmetries of power and control within spaces of knowledge production that are related to "health inequalities, the loss of health status, and the concomitant erasure of the voices and agendas of marginalized communities across the globe" (p. 2). The ontological commitments of the CCA theory are in unpacking how health is spoken about and defined, how health is discussed, and expressed by structural actors that limit the input of subaltern voices (Dutta, 2008).…”

Section: Culture-centered Media Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Outbreak Inequality: Mainstream Reporting of Singapore's Migrant Workers in the Margins

Kaur‐Gill

2020

Singapore saw a majority of COVID-19 infections plaguing low-skilled migrant construction workers by late April 2020. In the initial phases of the outbreak, mainstream frames were quick to highlight the gathering of low-skilled workers in open areas as sites to be surveilled, shaping the divisive practices of othering in early frames on migrant worker behaviors. These reports were manufactured as Singaporeans continued to gather in public spaces in large groups during the outbreak. Mainstream reports were quick to inform audiences of the surveillance and control on display for disciplining migrant workers. As the crisis developed to impact migrant workers predominantly, the erasures are recovered with mainstream press reporting worker vulnerabilities and discussing the structural implications of managing migrant labor as neoliberal subjects. The structural conditions of migrant labor were, in fact, centered in mainstream narratives, and dormitories as public health threats were extensively discussed, shedding light on discourses relating to outbreak inequality. The rights framework, however, remained largely absent in mainstream news frames about migrant workers.

“…The culture-centered approach to health communication, as represented by the writings of (Airhihenbuwa, 1995;Dutta-Bergman, 2005;Dutta, 2008;Basu and Dutta, 2009;Sastry et al, 2019), theorizes linkages between culture, health, and marginalization. Originating with the critique of the Eurocentric (e.g., Basu, 2011), individual behavior-change focused (Dutta, 2007), and status-quo (Sastry and Dutta, 2011) traditions of health communication theorizing, the CCA has developed a robust theoretical framework dedicated to a social-change focused vision for health communication theorizing that is developed in co-construction with marginalized communities across the globe (Dutta, 2008).…”

Section: Culture-centered Approach To Health Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Human agency emerges in response to the characteristics of one's structural environment, and structures themselves respond to human agents. Work in the CCA tradition highlights this constant interplay-or dialectic-between structure and agency in the context of marginalized communities' struggles for health (Sastry et al, 2019). For instance, the nature of structural configurations (trade policies, land ownership patterns, generational poverty, development projects) can affect the livelihoods, safety, well-being and economic prospects of marginalized communities, whose actions to counter and negotiate these structures (migration, high-risk work, contingent employment, leaning on social/cultural others) reveal agency in the face of such structural constraints (Zoller and Sastry, 2016).…”

Section: Culture-centered Approach To Health Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As one of us has recently argued, the culture-structureagency tripartite represents a fundamental ontological premise of the CCA (Sastry et al, 2019), ontology being the branch of metatheory concerned with problem definition. As a theory of (health) communication, CCA looks at the dynamic interactions between culture, structure, and agency as the very site of meaning-making around health.…”

Section: Culture-centered Approach To Health Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

How to Have (Critical) Method in a Pandemic: Outlining a Culture-Centered Approach to Health Discourse Analysis

Sastry

Basu

2020

Self Cite

In this elucidative essay, we offer a broad outline of the culture-centered approach to health discourse analysis as a warrant for the relevance of critical health communication amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. While there is a proliferation of methods and approaches to health discourse analysis, we outline one broad approach, based on the theoretical tenets and political commitments of CCA. In particular, we emphasize (a) the heuristic value of the CCA's primary and theoretical components-the matrix of culture, structure, and agency, and (b) the importance of exploring discursive erasure as two central principles that guide analysis within this framework. Given the range and scale of existing and likely future transformations in social, political, and cultural understandings of health in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we offer, through this "how to" essay, a rationale for the continued relevance of critical health communication.