Malmö University Journals
Not a member yet
374 research outputs found
Sort by
Beyond Buzzwords!
Get PDF‘Mainstreaming’ is one of these new expressions that have quickly become buzzwords in business, management and international development jargon. In my mind, its connotations are mostly negative: I think of complying with and adjusting to a public opinion or dominant market forces. In the arts, the mainstream has always represented that which we as artists question and rebel against -yet we are of course also well aware that it constitutes the very condition of our economic existence. I am still not sure about the exact meaning of mainstreaming in development cooperation, but I understand that it has to do with coherence –another buzzword! And it is certainly of great value to have for example gender perspectives “mainstreamed” into all development partnerships –or, for that matter, to see media and communication as integral parts of the redefined mainstream of Global Development. However, I cannot help but keeping an ambivalent feeling about the very notion. The World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD) [1], organized by The Communication Initiative, FAO and The World Bank’s Development Communication division, is coming up in Rome in October. It will gather researchers, practitioners, politicians and policy-makers from all over the globe in the first reunion of its kind. The congress may rightly be regarded as a major break-through for a ComDev perspective at the level of international and transnational decision-making, and the active participation of the World Bank seems to imply that substantial financial resources will accompany the new political priority. This momentum has built up over some years, but still comes as a welcome surprise to a field that only a decade ago suffered from crisis and stagnation. After a period of marginalization, communication has once again come to the forefront of the development agenda, and some enthusiasts already speak in terms of “before and after Rome”. True enough, it will most probably become difficult –perhaps even impossible– for donor agencies and other major players in the field not to formulate communication policies or include media and communication components as integral parts of their sector programs at all levels. Yet, the mainstreaming may possibly also have the undesired and perhaps inevitable consequence that communication loses its edge. The concept of development communication has gradually moved from one that mainly sees communication as a means to achieve a general goal of economic growth and modernization, to one that rather regards communication as a process and a goal in itself. This change of perspective was the prerequisite for a participatory approach to development, defined as social change at community and grassroots level. And ComDev practitioners like to think of themselves as the avant-garde in this respect, facilitating empowerment and enhancing democracy. By putting a renewed emphasis on economic growth and the necessity of linking up with the global networks, to a certain extent economic globalization has fostered a revival of the old modernization paradigm and its top-down diffusionist perspective. The neoliberal recipe for development spells adjustment to the logic of global capitalism, and from a liberal point of view, communication policies are often equal to enhancing the free flow of information. That is, in reality, the unrestrained diffusion of (commercial) media messages in formerly closed and harshly regulated societies, opening new markets and giving the new consumers access to the opportunities of the global economy. But globalization is more than the global penetration and consolidation of corporate capitalism. At the political level, it means for example the proliferation of non-governmental and civil society organizations, NGOs and CSOs. Transnational agency networks (TANs) and other embryonic forms of global polity are quickly reshaping the landscape of international development cooperation. Moreover, neoliberalism has been but one of several competing paradigms in the re-examined development discourse and hardly even the dominant one. The early 21st century’s mainstream development is characterized by eclecticism and pragmatism, incorporating much of what was once defined as ‘alternative development’. According to Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “the divide now runs between human and alternative development, on the one hand, and the number-crunching approach to development, the positivism of growth, on the other. Institutionally the rift runs between the UN agencies and the IMF, with the World Bank increasingly – and precariously – straddled somewhere in the middle.” [2] The World Bank’s increasing interest in communication for development and social change should perhaps be seen in the light of this “precarious” middle position. What is communication if not a mediator? Some hardened ComDev activists may feel like they are being embraced by the enemy, but old antagonisms sometimes turn into fruitful partnerships, and the World Bank is of course more than welcome as one important player in this field. Mainstreaming ComDev is fine, as long as we retain our ambiguity and bear in mind that the mainstream is just as dependent on the avant-garde as vice versa. In order to keep the mainstream moving in the direction of participation and dialogue, we must stay firm in our commitment, yet ready to question and redefine all our presumptions. And we should always beware of buzzwords! … After Rome, we shall be heading for Durban and the continuation of the experimental project of artistic and academic collaboration Memories of Modernity [3], involving eight prominent artists from South Africa and Sweden and a number of ComDev master students who will develop their fieldwork in South Africa. As part of this project, in November a weeklong seminar and workshop will be hosted by the Centre for Culture, Communication and Media Studies (CCMS) at the University of KwaZulu- Natal. You will certainly find more about Rome\u27s WCCD and the Memories of Modernity project in coming issues of Glocal Times. [1] See www.devcomm-congress.org [2] Pieterse, Jan N. (2001) Development Theory. Deconstructions/Recons- tructions. London: Sage. [3] See http://webzone.k3.mah.se/projects/mom/cmt04/default.asp
COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND MEDIA NEWS
Get PDFThe international research project Global Media Generations (GMG) studied which media events were recalled by three different age cohorts in eight different countries. In this article, Ruth Teer- Tomaselli discusses what the various cohorts in different countries remembered, and why and how these events were remembered, emphasizing the relevance of collective memory
IN THIS ISSUE (MAY 2006)
No full textA few weeks ago, Argentina made the headlines worldwide due to an unexpected occurrence. During the fourth EU-Latin American and the Caribbean Countries Summit held in Vienna, Austria, on May 12 2006, when the presidents and prime ministers from fifty-eight countries were getting ready for a photo session open to the international press, Greenpeace broke through, generating a news peg of its own.Their said purpose was to expose their concerns regarding the pollution of the Uruguay river implied by the installation in progress of two paper mills in Uruguay –an issue that over the past months has led to an escalating, multi-dimensional dispute between the governments of Argentina and Uruguay because of its potential social, economic and political consequences for both parts. The dispute involves Finland and Spain as well, since the main private investments for the paper mills come from those countries. Greenpeace’s intervention consisted of a young woman, Evangelina Carrozzo, accredited to the summit as a journalist from a small local newspaper from Argentina, suddenly taking off her coat to unveil a typical, minuscule, two-pieces carnival costume –and a magnificent, quite naked body [1]- and disrupting the photo-op to display a poster. Evangelina, a dentistry student elected queen of Gualeguaychú’s carnival parade [2] in February 2006, had been contacted by Greenpeace only 15 days prior to the Vienna summit, and agreed to act out the organisation’s message. Operating within the confines and assumptions that drive the most chauvinist and misogynist of commercial advertising, Greenpeace’s assault on the summit, because of its characteristics, was rapidly trivialised by the international media. The BBC, for instance, referred to the fact that presidents were mostly amused by the gorgeous carnival queen. Subsequent treatment in the Argentine media focused almost exclusively on Evangelina’s physical graciousness. Her opinions, when requested, never went besides further reiterating Greenpeace’s slogans. Divorced from its socio-economical context, the resulting distorted coverage was far from nurturing a well-informed public debate on a delicate matter.Astonished by the overall event, I could not stop thinking about the importance and crucial value of every communicative endeavour we choose to support for the advancement –or not- of the societies we live in. The fact that an international NGO will address the public opinion as if it was the average (male) mass of consumers targeted by commercial advertising should serve as a wake-up call. If equitable, truly participatory societies are what we aim for, there must be more to “effective” communication than meets the eye. Which brings me to this new issue of Globala Tider, now renamed as Glocal Times [3]. In the spirit of informing and facilitating dialogue between academics, researchers and practitioners, bridging the distance between university and the field and bringing together experiences from several parts of the world, the webmagazine enters its second year with a special edition devoted to HIV/AIDS communication [4]. From South Africa, Warren Parker discusses the ideology underneath the dominant discourses in the loveLife HIV prevention programme, and proposes a methodology of critical analysis that will allow a rigorous assessment of the contradictions and setbacks of other initiatives in progress. From Jamaica, Marjan de Bruin analyses blind spots and wasted effort in the response to HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean and the importance of addressing strategic communication planning in light of a complex, multilevel and multi-faceted definition of the HIV/AIDS problem.From Sweden, Rodrigo Garay introduces us to the efforts under way to develop an HIV/AIDS rating instrument at the national level for governments and other actors in the HIV/AIDS field to be held accountable to the commitments they make, and discusses communication as a crucial element for such an instrument to make an impact. From Denmark, Helle Samuelsen delves into the discrepancy between the outspoken HIV/AIDS rhetoric at a global level and the corresponding silence among young men and women. Looking into the situation in Burkina Faso, West Africa, she calls for a refined analysis of the silence of young people in countries highly affected by the pandemic and of the way in which prevention messages are communicated.Thomas Tufte, in line with Samuelsen’s concerns, discusses stigma as the core challenge facing HIV/AIDS communication. Drawing on his research work in Grahamstown, South Africa, he pleads for joint efforts aimed at coordinating media-borne and community-based initiatives as a way to deal with the consequences of stigma. We also welcome Malmö University’s graduates from the 2003 Master course in Communication for Development Claudia Blume and Jackie Davis. Claudia introduces us to a case study of the production of radio soap operas for HIV/AIDS prevention in Yunnan, China. Jackie, based on research in Uganda and Serbia developed jointly with Naomi Delap (who will be a contributor to our next issue), discusses the value of eresources for effective HIV/AIDS communication. Once again, we hope that this issue of Glocal Times will promote dialogue, foster joint reflection, and inform your work in the field of communication for development and social change. You are welcome to contact us with your comments, questions and suggestions while we prepare the fifth issue of the webmagazine, which will be online in September 2006. [1] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/photosvideos/photos/thecarnival- queen-of-argentin [2] Gualeguaychú is an Argentine city by the Uruguay river where several protests against the Uruguayan paper mills have been taking place. [3] See Oscar Hemer’s Editorial for the rationale behind the decision to change the webmagazine’s name. [4] This special issue of Glocal Times would not have been possible without Thomas Tufte’s participation as guest editor.
HIV/AIDS COMMUNICATION AND PREVENTION: AN INTRODUCTION
Get PDFWelcome to a special issue of Glocal Times originated in a seminar organized by HIV/AIDS Communication and Prevention , a health communication research program hosted by the University of Copenhagen, coordinated by myself at Roskilde University, and funded by DANIDA. The seminar was held in Copenhagen in November 2005 and webcasted through Malmö University’s Master in Communication for Development webzone, and this issue of Glocal Times has expanded its original reach to include yet another contribution by Dutch-Jamaican expert Marjan De Bruin
RECLAIMING THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Get PDFThe Fear Industry is certainly one of today’s most lucrative businesses, providing secure jobs, turning private homes into little fortresses and enforcing the ongoing transformation of our cityscapes: Public life moves from street cafés, parks and other open spaces to supervised shopping malls. This trend can be detected all over the world, but nowhere as clearly as in South Africa, where fear and suspicion of the other has been state ideology until little more than a decade ago. Apartheid was one of the most elaborate projects of social engineering –in its repressive brutality comparable only to the grand modern projects of fascism and communism, and one of its most devastating features was the deliberate destruction of all public spaces where interracial encounters might occur. The white South Africans’ paranoia is notorious –and of course not without reason: Afrikaans and English speakers alike, they have enjoyed the privileges of racial segregation all their lives, and the brutal violence of crime in South Africa today bears the accumulated anger of the humiliated and oppressed. During apartheid, the black majority was excluded from the city centres and locked up in peripheral townships and illusionary “homelands”. Now, the white minority and the new affluent black middle class live locked up in their fortified homesteads, terrified of being robbed or murdered. Mauritian-born artist and architect Doung Jahangleer came to Durban in the mid ‘90s and was immediately caught by the atmosphere of fear – which is not an exclusive phenomenon of the white community. Durban is the city with the largest Indian population outside India, and in the South African racial hierarchy, “Indians” and “Coloureds” were the middle categories. Durban, and all of KwaZulu-Natal, were also the epicentre of the deadly antagonism between Inkatha and ANC, which in the early transition process escalated close to civil war. In order to overcome his own fear, Doung went walking into the no-go areas of Durban, exposing himself to the violence, literally asking to get hurt. What he experienced was, however, rather the opposite: The same people that he had learned to dread welcomed and even embraced him. Thus, he started to explore the forgotten urban non-spaces systematically and invited others to share his experience. He initiated City Walks as a form of combined artistic exploration and political intervention, trying (in vain) to convince the municipal authorities to direct attention to what he calls the in-between zones. He takes us –a group of fifteen participants in the Memories of Modernity project– on the 5-hour tour. It starts in Musgrave shopping centre in a predominantly white suburb built on the ruins of former Cato Manor – Durban’s equivalent to the romanticized multicultural townships Sophiatown (Johannesburg) and District Six (Cape Town)– and ends at the BAT Centre in the harbour. Doung leads us along the heavily trafficked N3 freeway, on a parallel pedestrian highway with scattered sweets and cigarette vendors. We make a short cut through an area of deserted apartment blocks, where some time ago the homeless managed to chase away the drug lords, only to be brutally evicted back into the street by the police. We arrive at the Warwick Triangle, the true heart of Durban: a conjunction of crossing freeways, railway terminal and microbus station where, according to Doung, some 600,000 people pass by every day. I have passed it a hundred times in car or taxi on my three visits to Durban, but never on foot –and it is truly a completely different experience. The passage has become a bustling marketplace. The air is thick with petrol and diesel fumes, scents of herbs and dried animals in the medicine stands, and nauseating odours from the food-tents where cow-heads are being axed and boiled. There is also an almost palpable tension in the air. We are obviously out of place. This is a non-place, invisible from a car’s window, and consequentially these are non-people. Even South African tourist guides warn visitors to the nearby Victoria Street Market never to go beyond the limits of the market building. Walking the streets of Durban becomes a revelation. It changes my entire perception of the city and of South Africa as a whole. I discover things I never saw before, and I move with a new kind of casualness. Even in Johannesburg –one of the few places in the world where I have really felt afraid. What does this tell us about communication and social change? Well, maybe it points to the limits of mediated communication. Public spheres are the prerequisites for any kind of democracy, but they require physical public spaces where people actually meet and confront each other. Information alone cannot combat fear. It is necessary to cross the invisible lines and walk out in the urban wilderness, even at the risk of “getting hurt”. There is no other way to reclaim the public sphere
LIBRARIES AS A TOOL FOR EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE. Exploring the situation of school libraries in post-apartheid South Africa
Get PDFThe role of school libraries in enhancing education and promoting reading, different kinds of literacies and democracy can be essential in the development of a new society. In 1994, South Africa held its first democratic election ever. In 1997, in line with the newly adopted constitution, a national policy for school libraries was proposed. This article explores the situation of school libraries in the country based on research developed in two schools in Gauteng and Western Cape
SELLING THE BACKSTAGE. Heritage and enterprise in community-based tourism: the case of Kyrgyzstan
Get PDFKyrgyzstan is a small mountainous country in Central Asia, it is undergoing a political and economic transitional phase. Since independence 1991, Kyrgyzstan has been struggling with economic difficulties, political instability and internal ethnic conflicts. How to unite its people around a national identity constitutes another great challenge
From Los Baños to Istanbul
Get PDFNetworks and networking are challenging and replacing former hierarchical power structures and modes of organization on a worldwide scale. This fundamental aspect of the sometimes celebrated but more often demonized global transformational processes does of course have implications in the area of research and practice known as communication for development, development communication or communication for social change. In September 2005, in Los Baños, the Philippines, two new global networks were formally established under the aegis of the Communication for Social Change Consortium: one for practitioners, one for faculty and graduate students. It may sound solemn, but I am confident that I speak on behalf of all participants when I say that we felt that we were making history. The Los BaĖos University Network Statement drafted at the closure of one of the two meetings held, to be ratified by the twelve participating universities, surely marks a crucial moment in the development of this still young and emerging discipline -or, as I prefer to regard it, this by definition interdisciplinary field of study and practice. The field has undergone many changes through its short history and is now at a crossroads. After a period of threatening stagnation, we now experience a dynamic phase of renewal, both in terms of theoretical approaches and means of communication. Poverty persists, and some of the global divides of different kinds even tend to widen. But there is undoubtedly a growing awareness among development cooperation agencies -multilateral and bilateral– and the multitude of nongovernmental and civil society organizations and initiatives, that media and communication are indispensable for all development policies that aim at democratic participation, inclusion and lasting social change. Yet, as James Deane notes in his analysis of the present predicament of communication for social change, “the increasingly strong rhetoric and strategic dialogue on concepts of participation, voice and inclusion… is rarely matched with the application of those principles in practical development programming”. Deane even suggests that “the institutional impediments to concerted implementation of good communication for development programming are becoming more, not less severe”. This third issue of Globala Tider –soon to be reborn as Glocal Times– aims at inventorying the field at the present crossroads, with a focus on teaching and learning communication for development. In that spirit, we look into Canada and the Philippines, two countries with rich but quite diverse yet corresponding experiences in this area. We are especially happy and honored to present a contribution by Nora Cruz Quebral, one of the founding mothers of devcom –as it is called in the Philippines. Nora Quebral started her career in the mid 1950s at the Office of Extension and Publications at the then University of the Philippines College of Agriculture, which under her direction would evolve into an academic department and eventually today’s full-fledged College of Development Communication. In her reexamining of development communication both as a concept and as a curriculum, developed shortly after September 11, 2001, she lucidly describes the communication challenges of the vulnerable, borderless world of globalization. “The irony of September 11”, she says, “is that it succeeded in shoving in our face the harsh proof of our interconnectedness as no treatise or street protest ever could”. Interconnectedness does not necessarily enhance understanding. On the contrary, it seems that the closer we get, the more important it becomes to manifest differing identities. This apparently paradoxical logic of simultaneous globalization and localization –glocalization, as Roland Robertson coined it– certainly implies a key role for intercultural and transcultural communication in the urgent call for global change and development. Yet, as James Deane notes, the value and importance of communication remain largely unrecognized, and its status is consequently marginal within most development agencies. The inspiring challenge for teachers, researchers and practitioners in this dynamic field is to move communication for development and social change to the centre of development thinking and practice. And I would add, to the centre of the contemporary cultural debate. One of the significant recent tendencies in the field is the interest in art and artistic means of communication, an area where theory and practice enter in dialogue and where potentially innovative research is only beginning to take place. In October 2005, in Istanbul, Turkey, another memorable event illustrated a fruitful convergence of art and academic research: the combined workshop and seminar “Towards a New Balkan Cultural Studies”, which formed part of Malmö University’s Master program in Communication for Development. Andrew Finkel, a British journalist based in Istanbul, gives us a report of the event –where truth and remembrance were key concepts. In the spirit of networking for the advancement of communication for development and social change, this issue of Globala Tider makes the symbolic journey from Los Baños, the Philippines, to Istanbul, Turkey. In our September 2006 issue, we shall extend the journey to Durban, South Africa, in accordance with the aims of the newly born Communication for Social Change and Development University Network to “support the strengthening of this interdisciplinary field throughout the world”. There, between November 16 and 20, a combined seminar and workshop will take place as part of the on-going project “Memories of Modernity”, in collaboration between Malmö University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. This project, involving ComDev students and artists from Sweden and South Africa, will also result in art exhibitions in Durban and Malmö in 2007. But for now, enjoy the outcomes of Los Baños and Istanbul
MURALS AS A POPULAR MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
Get PDFThe flourishing of community mural art in South Africa at the beginning of the 1990s was prompted directly by the demise of the apartheid regime. It was associated with -and spurred on- by the transformation of the socio-political landscape, the liberalization of race relations, the relaxation of city by-laws, and a widely-shared spirit of enthusiasm for the new ‘rainbow nation’. Today, roughly a decade later, the mural movement has virtually ceased to exist. It appears that many city officials and sponsors no longer think of murals as creative, vibrant expressions of a new African spirit, but rather as embarrassing, technically and stylistically primitive, low budget manifestations of an unwanted ‘Third World’ identity. Given the past enthusiasm with which artists, community activists, government departments and non-governmental organizations used to employ the mural medium for a variety of educational purposes and public awareness campaigns, one wonders why the phenomenon has proven to be so shortlived
A SPIDER IN A DEVELOPMENT NET: Community radio in participatory development
Get PDFIt took five hours to drive from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, heading west on bumpy, partly tarred roads, through a hilly and lush landscape, before I finally reached Kagadi. From a distance, I could see the high, 80-meter FM mast on a neighbouring hill: a rather startling sight in this rural, marginalized and poorly equipped region