Malmö University Journals
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PARTICIPATORY COMMUNICATION. When the beginning defines the ending
Get PDFAssessing the value of participatory communication is a complex and difficult task. This, however, cannot become an excuse for giving up the search for appropriate methods, nor become a discriminating factor for negating the evidence of its value
POLICY-MAKERS PERCEPTIONS’ OF COMMUNICATION FOR DEVELOPMENT: TWO SURVEYS TWELVE YEARS APART. Personal reflections on what changed between 1994 and 2006 and its implications for advocacy
Get PDFColin Fraser and Sonia Restrepo Estrada were closely involved in two surveys of policy-makers’ perceptions of communication for development undertaken in 1994 and 2006. They drew up the methodology for the qualitative survey of 1994, personally conducted 30 of the 40 interviews, and wrote the report. For the 2006 survey, they drafted the methodology, worked with the World Bank in refining it, conducted 15 of the 43 interviews, and wrote the sections of the report that cover the qualitative aspects. In this article they share the insights they gained along these processes, especially with regard to advocacy for Communication for Development
PATERNALISM: THE ‘OUTSIDE’ OR ‘REJECTED INSIDE’ OF PARTNERSHIP?
Get PDFMaria Eriksson Baaz revisits here the concluding chapter of her book The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid, published by Zed Books (London & New York) in 2005. The book explored ‘donor’ and expatriate development worker identities as one important dimension that informs and shapes development practice. While the articulation of ‘donor’ and European development worker identities are explored in a more general way, the identities are read in relation to the partnership discourse. The Paternalism of Partnership provides an overview of existing research on discourses of development but also examples from a research project conducted in Tanzania in 1998 and 1999, based on interviews with development workers and other representatives of two Nordic NGOs
IMAGINING THE MODERN PAST
Get PDFRemembering modernity may seem like a paradox. Modern amnesia is perhaps an adequate description of our contemporary predicament. How can we remember something we are still immersed in? Why is it important to try?The Memories of Modernity project started in 2005 as an experimental, collaborative venture between academic and artistic institutions in Durban, South Africa and Malmö, Sweden. Its fundamental assumption has been that looking back and reviewing our recent modern pasts may enable us to imagine and shape a different future. And moreover, that by doing so, we might discover unexpected similarities between two apparently completely different societies like South Africa and Sweden – or, more specifically, the cities of Durban and Malmö. The most important and most difficult premise for the project is its very idea of combining artistic and academic approaches. Of exploring ways of exchanging academic and artistic experience, making the different practices shed light on each other – and perhaps even rethinking methodologies altogether. An experiment.Four Swedish and four South African artists on the one hand, and a group of Communication for Development Master students, from Sweden and South Africa but also from many other parts of the world, have been engaged in the process. The project’s activities included two workshop seminars, held in Malmö (June 2006) and Durban (November 2006), with the participation of scholars such as Sarat Maharaj, Kevin Robins, Ruth Teer-Tomaselli, Bheki Peterson, Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Maurice Vambe, among others. One tangible result of the process is the art exhibition Houses of Modernity, which had its premiere at Durban Art Gallery in April 2007 and will re-open at Malmö Museumin November 2007. This issue of Glocal Times introduces four articles based on some of the presentations from the Durban workshop held in November 2006. Written by Michael Chapman, Franco Frescura, Ingrid Elam and myself, they focus on literature as reflection and testimony, in Sweden and South Africa, and on the architecture of apartheid in a both literal and symbolic sense. But what do memories of modernity have to do with communication for development? Memory does not only invoke the modern past, in Sweden closely linked to rapid industrialization and the social democratic model, in South Africa to the dark era of apartheid and its equally rational but racist welfare society. It also invokes the pending present; books and albums made for the children of parents dying of AIDS; preservation and recovery of cultural heritage. Whose heritage is being preserved? Which values will prevail? How can media and art contribute to processes of transcultural communication and reconciliation?These questions have informed the Memories of Modernity project, and I believe that they are of crucial concern for ComDev theory and practice.
THE ROME CONSENSUS Communication for Development: A Major Pillar for Development and Change
Get PDFCommunication is essential to human, social and economic development. At the heart of communication for development is participation and ownership by communities and individuals most affected by poverty and other development issues. There is a large and growing body of evidence demonstrating the value of communication for development
MEMORIES OF A MODERNITY-TO-BE. On truth and reconciliation in transitional South Africa
Get PDFAccording to Jan Nederveen Pieterse, the definition of globalization as a form of hyper-modernity is purely Eurocentric. Globalization goes much further back than the 16th century\u27s Discovery of the New World or the 18th century\u27s Enlightenment. Whichever symbolic beginning you choose, Modernity, as an historic era, happens to coincide with that of Western expansion and world domination
In this issue (November 2007)
No full textParticipation is not what it used to be, and the problem is not merely one of vocabulary.While Paulo Freire’s discussion of the relationship between the world and the word remains crucial, the context in which such relationship exists has changed dramatically. Freire referred mostly, if not solely, to the written word. But what about the influence of the media on our understanding of the world? Take “Big brother”, for example. Termed as a “reality show”, the TV program was created in The Netherlands in 1997 and to date it has been broadcasted in more than 70 countries.You might be familiar with its format.A group of strangers agrees to live together in a specially designed house – mind you, also the set- fully wired with cameras and microphones that register everybody’s moves 24 hours a day for a period of no less than three months. During their time in the house, members of the group are cut from all forms of communication with the external world. Every week, each member of the group ‘votes’ for the roommate that they would want to see expelled from the house, giving way to a list of “nominees” - candidates for expulsion. The audience, in turn, is “invited” to ‘vote’ a candidate from the list, and the subsequent losers in the ‘election’ process are thrown out of the house one by one. Viewers must pay to emit their vote via a phone call or sms. That’s how they ‘participate’. As I write this, the website of Argentina’s fifth edition of the “reality show”, now in progress, indicates that 25.000 people ‘voted’ online for the expulsion the three nominees in the past week. My point is: What kind of critical literacy capabilities are necessary today in order to be prepared to participate in the struggle for a better life?What understanding of participation is at work when audiences worldwide find entertainment in having the chance to expel somebody from a situation for more or less arbitrary reasons?What is the effect of exclusion being rendered banal by the media? … This ninth issue of Glocal Times looks into participatory communication research, presenting highlights of the last gathering of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)’s Participatory Communication Research (PCR) Section, which took place in Paris in July 2007. Karin Wilkins and Young-Gil Chae make a case for considering participation as structural within the production of media strategies, presenting their ongoing research on social marketing projects, which assesses the structural conditions of campaigns in relation to their projected constructions of participation as well as identified themes and goals. Tom Jacobson makes a case for the quantitative assessment of participatory communications programs through focusing on communication in the form of dialogue as conceptualized by Jurgen Habermas in this theory of communicative action.Rico Lie discusses the role of the scientist in participatory communication research processes vis-à-vis the fact that somehow the concept of participation has been rendered void of meaning in its transition from alternative to mainstream. Paolo Mefalopulos discusses the difference between a communicationbased assessment and a communication needs assessment.Jan Servaes, Tom Jacobson and Ullamaija Kivikuru, all of them former Heads of IAMCR’s PCR Section, share their views on the Section’s history and future in the broader context of the field of communication for development and social change. … In reliving his pedagogy of the oppressed under the title of Pedagogy of hope (2003), Paulo Freire stated that “The reading and writing of the word would always imply a more critical rereading of the world as a ‘route” to the “rewriting” –the transformation- of that world”.A critical rereading of how we understand participation in/through communication and how we assess it are ever more necessary.
UNMASKING THE VOICE OF YOUNG SHOE SHINERS IN LA PAZ*
Get PDFIn La Paz, Bolivia, youth turn to show shining in the streets as a way to try to support themselves and help their families. Since shoe shiners have a reputation as thieves and drug addicts, youngsters hide under balaclava masks to do their jobs. How is their voice as a social group affected by these conditions
COMMUNICATION FOR DEVELOPMENT: MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Get PDFHow far has humankind come in the last 50, 20 or even 10 years in achieving the goal of freeing people from what Mandela called “the prison of poverty”? In the year 2006, it is estimated that 1.3 billion people world-wide still live in absolute poverty. Most are in developing countries, but poverty also reaches into industrialized regions, such as North America and Europe. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the Member States of the United Nations strive to address critical poverty issues and solve some of the most pressing problems within the next decade. But will they be successful? Are citizens in donor countries fatigued by endless calls to arms? Is there really light at the end of the long, dark tunnel of inequality? Why have we not yet resolved the key problems? And have any poverty alleviation solutions of the past really worked
A COMPENDIUM OF REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES IN COMMUNICATION FOR DEVELOPMENT
Get PDFThe compendium integrates the findings of seven regional initiatives coordinated by FAO in preparation for the World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD). These initiatives (involving regional meetings, e-forums and research papers) sought to bring together people, ideas and practices from the seven regions to provide a reality check – voices from the field - on actual experience on how Communication for Development (ComDev) is being applied at this point in time.