By: L. Jonah Khongsai
Introduction:
Among the most powerful paradigms to originate after World War II, with enormous social, cultural and economic consequences, was that of modernization. Modernization is based on liberal political theory and is therefore grounded in the grand project of “Enlightenment,” namely reasoning, rationality, objectivity and other philosophical principles of western science. Modernization approaches, including more recent neo-classical economic theories, extol scientific rationality and individualism. Economic system, building up formal infrastructure, and acquiring technologies is prioritized. Thus, a dominant paradigm of development guided intellectual thinking and practice from the 1940s through the 1960s, and was influential in development communication theory and practice as well.[1] What follows is a composite picture, woven from different voices at different times and expressing objections to the dominant paradigm of development called ‘The Alternative Paradigm’. Here, focus will be made on this Alternative Paradigm, also called ‘Reactions to the Dominant Paradigm of Development’.
(1)The Cultural Model
The cultural facet of development can be sized up in terms of involvement of people in aesthetic, artistic, intellectual and spiritual pursuits. The involvement of people in cultural pursuits can be gauged at the level of creation as well as appreciation. It is not just the increase in the number of visitors to art galleries/exhibitions, or musical concerts, or stage theatres, or seminars and conferences which is a sufficient indicator of cultural development. The intellectual component of cultural development can be measured in terms of its usual literacy indicators, i.e., the state of literacy, number of educational institutions of various levels, enrolments at various levels of education and levels of educational attainment.[2]
Culture, Development and National Integration: Great importance must be given to preserving and sustaining traditional cultures, as these constitute the media through which people at the grassroots structure their reality. Local cultures in developing nations and elsewhere are not static. The fact that they have survived centuries of hostile alien rule speaks volumes of their dynamic nature. Local cultures also may harbor solutions to many of the problems at the grassroots. [3] To talk, therefore, of uprooting local cultures is not only naïve but also ethically indefensible.
Cultural perspective visualizes a two-way process – one of absorption of the cultural forms and content of the modern age by the members of the folk and peasant societies without losing their rootedness in the enduring and life-enriching elements of their own cultural heritage; and second, of absorption of the vital elements of folk and peasant cultural heritage by the enlightened sections of the elite classes. Thus, through such a dual process the elite/intelligentsia ends its own alienation from the common people, becomes culturally integrated with them and also contributes to the transformation of folk and peasant cultures. Further, the new cultural model is based not on the dichotomy but on the harmony of science and culture. Drawing upon historical experience, it must not be overlooked that if culture without science manifests itself in magic and superstition-ridden forms of religion, science without culture results in dehumanization, in regression into animal behavior and in sophistication of means unrelated to ends. Science and technology without culture open the door for entry into a dehumanized, meaningless, universe commanded by robots.[4]
The integrative as well as transforming role of culture is specially significant in the context of the problems arising today as a sequel to erosion of India’s cultural identity at one end and the sharpening of socio-economic dualism at the other. Though induced by processes of “cumulative causation”, both these have been accentuated by India’s exposure to high technology and specially by the international demonstration effect vastly accelerated in recent years by the Communication Revolution. During the last four decades since independence, forces of modern science and technology have entered even the remotest village and are drastically altering the economic and technological basis of the social existence of Indian people.[5]
If it is imaginatively utilized, communication technology has the enormous potential of promoting national integration based on flowering of cultural diversity and inter-regional cooperation. If it is introduced in a mechanical and unplanned manner, it can also trigger off regional, ethnic and communal tensions and conflicts. The cultural perspective for India can neither be based on over-asserting diversity nor on imposing a rigid concept of unity. Unity has to evolve in the new era of development and social change through conscious promotion of multi-regional, multi-class, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic interdependence and cooperation. A unified national culture, however, cannot grow in the context of an economic milieu which is characterized by structural dualism. The cultural perspective must be integrated with the vision of a new society. Cultural unity in diversity presupposes the willingness on the part of stronger groups and developed regions to share their gains with the weaker groups and backward regions.[6]
Use of Language in Development: A major issue in cultural development and nation-building is the question of development as well as choice and use of languages especially by state and public agencies. A country having a colonial past and having history of the imposition of a foreign language and the creation of an English-knowing middle class as an agent of colonial model of modernization has to take decisive but imaginative steps towards the shift from a foreign to a national language as a national link language. There is also the question of promoting an inner revolution within the indigenous language structures. In a sub-continental country, regional cultural diversity has been reflected and expressed in and through regional languages and local dialects.[7]
In this background the cultural imperative requires working in two directions:
(1) Recognizing the importance of regional languages and dialects as the expression of people’s cultural creativity at regional and local levels and of assimilating them within the national mainstream; and
(2) Recognizing the importance of taking the national language to the masses for lifting them up from the stage of local and regional isolation which is utilized and perpetuated by the power-elites at the top so that the political activity of the masses remains region- and locality-bound, does not transcend these constraints and hence does not become a major force in national culture and politics.[8]
Role of Folk Media in Development: For a long time, traditional or folk media were ignored in development literature. In the modernization paradigm, anything that was even remotely connected with the local culture was to be eschewed. Since the traditional media are extensions of the local culture, they were regarded as vehicles that would discourage modern attitudes and behavioral patterns and instead reinforce cultural values of the community. The period from the 1950s to 1970s, therefore, was characterized by a benign neglect of the traditional media.[9]
Among other things, culture is re-emerged as a facilitator of development and the integration of traditional and modern systems. This shift in focus put the spotlight on indigenous channels of communication or the folk media that were relegated to relative oblivion in the modernization paradigm. Folk media are products of the local culture, rich in cultural symbols, and highly participatory. In addition, they have great potential for integration with the modern mass media.[10]
In the early 1970s, several international conferences addressed the idea of using folk media to promote development: the Expert Group Meeting sponsored by the International Planned Parenthood Federation and UNESCO in London; the New Delhi Seminar and Workshop on Folk Media sponsored by the UNESCO and the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; and the East-West Communication Institute Seminar on Traditional Media.
The traditional uses of the folk media were primarily entertainment, social communion, and religious activity. However, folk forms also became vehicles for persuasive communication wherein modern messages exhorted the audience members to limit the size of their families, live in harmony with their neighbors, or lead more healthy lives. Newer concepts of development such as self-help, grassroots participation and two-way communication led to a re-examination of the advantages of traditional media as vehicles for these purposes. [11]
Critical Issues in Using Traditional Media for Development: Ethical questions may be raised about inserting development content in folk media, as it is possible these media may be fundamentally changed or even destroyed in the process. Appropriating folk media for development is a delicate task requiring an intimate knowledge of the nature of traditional communication channels. Ranganath suggests that folk form should be recorded under the following categories:
(a) Form (audio, visual and audio-visual)
(b) Thematic content
(c) Flexibility in accommodating development message (rigid, semi-flexible and flexible)
(d) Cultural context
While folk media have great potential in communicating development-oriented messages to rural audiences, they should be employed judiciously and interact with mass media.[12]
(2)Participatory Model
The euphoric word ‘participation’ has become a part of development jargon. This word ‘participation’ is kaleidoscopic; it changes its color and shape at the will of the hands in which it is held. The kaleidoscope analogy fits because participation is a complex and dynamic phenomenon, seen from the ‘eye of the beholder,’ and shaped by the ‘hand of the power-holder.’[13]
In normal communication parlance, participation means people’s involvement in all stages of a communication project, be it interpersonal, mass media based, or traditional media based. It stands in direct contrast to the philosophy and practice of the dominant paradigm with its emphasis on communication which is planned, developed, organized, and implemented with outside help and in which the beneficiaries are merely passive receivers of a finished reality. This thrust is based largely on the communication ideology of the triumvirate: Schramm, Lerner and Rogers.[14]
For the participatory paradigm, there was no self-evident category of modernity, whether embodied in a western society or elsewhere, and therefore no single goal towards which every nation should aspire: ‘Development is not a series of known steps through which each country passes towards pre-defined goals’. The new paradigm recognized societies to have different trajectories and ‘their own normative goals and standards, which may or may not coincide with those of the post-industrial West’. To the extent that these trajectories could be considered as ‘development’, it was as processes that had no necessary unity or singular direction: ‘the central idea is that there is no universal development model, that development is an integral, multi-dimensional, and dialectic process that can differ from society to society. Because of these differences between the social meanings of development, each of which was local and specific to different societies, the needs that any development project might seek to meet must be defined by the people involved in the situation, rather than being identified by distant, expert elites. These needs and desires could be discovered in the local community. It was from the community that communication projects should therefore emanate. Imposed, top-down development projects are likely to fail precisely because they do not command the enthusiastic support of the population, and indeed might well meet determined popular resistance.[15]
In the dominant paradigm, communication was from the knowledgeable, westernized elites to the peasantry: ‘In the use of media for development, emphasis has been on telling and teaching, rather than an exchange of requests and ideas between the centre and outlying areas’. The aim of communication in the new paradigm was to allow the members of a community to exchange ideas, beliefs and proposals, and to facilitate the emergence of agreed objectives and methods. The new methods were based on the principle of dialogue, and media became ‘the means of expression of the community, rather than for the community. The primary aim was no longer the dissemination of information but to ‘encourage exchange among the various parties concerned with any given development problem’. In short, vertical communication was replaced by horizontal communication, monologic communication by dialogic communication.[16]
The appeal of the participatory paradigm was certainly sufficiently great that it replaced the dominant paradigm in scholarly studies, so that in the period between 1987 and 1996 ‘the most frequently-used theoretical framework is participatory development. Despite the extensive lip service paid to the idea of participation by international organizations, national government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and development theorists and practitioners, the number of development programmes that demonstrated a manifest commitment to participation was very small. This apparent disjuncture between theoretical exploration and the practice of development is remarkable, and it leads to a paradox that requires detailed examination: the dominant paradigm passed in theory, but retained a very extensive appeal in practice; the participatory paradigm, on the other hand, triumphed in development theory, but has failed to command any substantial support in practice.[17] Communication constitutes an indispensable part of participatory approaches. If development is to have any relevance to the people who need it most, it must start where the real needs and problems exist, i.e., in the rural areas, urban slums, and other depressed sectors. People living in such peripheries must perceive their real needs and identify their real problems. Hence, in this approach communication is thus a vehicle for liberation from mental and psychological shackles that bind the people to structures and processes of oppression.[18]
Levels and Kinds of Participation: According to Shirley A. White, the useful delineation of two levels of participation are:
(1) Pseudo- Participation
a. Domestication- This involves informing, therapy and manipulation
b. Assistencialism- This includes placation and consultation
(2) Genuine Participation
a. Cooperation- This refers to partnership and delegation of power
b. Citizen Control- which means empowerment[19]
Post-structuralism, postmodernism and communitarian theory together provide an assumptive basis for participatory strategies. Attempts at operationalization of the term “participation” range from those that reflect the dominant paradigm— the participation-as-a-means approach—to those that genuinely represent the case for a context-based paradigm—the participation-as-an-end approach. The “participation-as-a-means to an end” approach could be visualized along a continuum: ranging from attempts at mobilization of the populace to co-operation in development activities, to empowering people so that they may not be expected to participate in identifying the problem or designing a development program. Participation as a process of empowerment, though politically quite risky, is our favored approach. Here, individuals are active in development programs and processes; they contribute ideas, take initiative, articulate their needs and problems and assert their autonomy. Diaz-Bordenave (1980) noted that in these new approaches, the participation that as expected as often directly by the sources and change agents. In these so-called bottom-up approaches to development, people were induced to participate in self-help activities, but the basic solutions to local problems were already selected by the external development agencies. Thus, people at the grassroots are co-opted in activities that, in the end, would make consumers of them for industrial goods and services. Participation, therefore, was a means to an end: the end being greater dependence of the people on a market controlled by the elites, both national and international.[20] People’s participation in development in which the control of the project and decision-making power rests with planners, administrators, and the community’s elite is pseudo-participation. Here, the level of participation of the people is that of being present to listen to what is being planned for them and what would be done unto them- this is definitely non-participatory![21]
The participation-as-an-end approach has received support from many scholars and administrators (Alamgir 1988; Bamberger 1988; Diaz-Bordenave 1989; Kothari 1984; Tehranian 1985). They argue that participation must be recognized as a basic human right. It should be accepted and supported as an end in itself and not for its results. The need to think, express oneself, belong to a group, be recognized as a person, be appreciated and respected, and have some say in crucial decisions affecting one’s life, are as essential to the development of an individual as eating, drinking and sleeping. And participation in meaningful activities is the vehicle through which the needs described above are fulfilled. Diaz-Bordenave states it cogently: “Participation is not a fringe benefit that authorities may grant as a concession but every human being’s birthright that no authority may deny or prevent.” True participation, however, should go beyond such pragmatic goals as higher productivity, higher formal education, or high consumption patterns to social and political action by the people at all levels. The goal of participation efforts should be to facilitate conscientization of marginalized people globally of unequal social, political and spatial structures in their societies. It is through conscientization and collective action that they perceive their needs, identify constraints to addressing these needs and plan to overcome problems. Paulo Freire (1970) first introduced the concept of conscientization. [22] When the development bureaucracy, the local elite, and the people are working cooperatively throughout the decision-making process and when the people are empowered to control the action to be taken, only then can there be genuine participation.[23]
Peruzzo has attempted to systematize the different senses of the term ‘participation’ and are illuminating. She distinguishes it into three kinds:
(1) The first kind of popular participation is non-participation -- The non-participation is also a form of participating where one participates passively. Insofar as power is considered in this first type of participation, the exercise of power is authoritarian. We delegate power to others so they can legislate, decide and administer in everyone’s name.
(2) The second kind of popular participation is controlled participation -- This is easily detectable in the relationship between population segments in general and public administration institutions. Here, participation can be initiated as a consequence of pressure from the bottom forces themselves, which is in this case won or conceded, if offered from the top. Therefore, the controlled participation is classified into two types: limited participation and manipulated participation.
(3) The third kind of popular participation is power-participation -- This is the one based on ways that promote democratic, authentic, autonomous participation that best facilitates people’s growth as individuals. Here the exercise of power is shared. Power-participation may also be of two types: co-management and self-management. [24]
The central point is that while participatory communication is essential for building a community, such communication needs to be based on a realistic and pragmatic understanding of the potentials and limitations of participation. Participation is an ideal and a goal toward which we need to continue working. It calls for a fuller involvement of people in their own development, but not the total involvement of all people in every aspect of human development.[25]
It should be kept in mind that participatory communication is a two-way, interactive, dynamic process. Participation should start from the planning stage of development efforts and continue through all stages of implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The elements of power should be shared instead of bestowing it in the hands of one section of people. Communication can become truly participatory if it builds upon the confidence and trust that the government and media system have in people.[26]
Participative Society: From Anomy (normlessness) to Heteronomy (norms are imposed by superior physical force or economic power, or by invoking divine right, race privileges, etc.) to Autonomy (norms are established through negotiation and consensus, through democratic and participatory procedures) seems to be the path we are following in the evolution of norm-setting mechanisms. Another avenue of thinking passes through the realm of human needs. The significant fact is that all these needs can be satisfied through participation.[27]
The indicators of the ‘participative society’ are:
(1) It must be a society that, in addition to satisfying man’s obvious needs, should also satisfy the non-obvious requirements of love, expression, sharing, participation and freedom. This calls for human sensitivity and a respect for self and others.
(2) It must be a dynamic society, not just a welfare state, in a sense that it is a communal society permanently built by all therefore belonging to all. This calls for each man to be a part, take part, and have a part.
(3) It must be a society in which people participate not only in the production of goods and services, but also in the planning and management of that process, above all, in the distribution and consumption of the goods.This calls for a self-management economy.
(4) It must be a society in which all participate directly in the political management of the society as a whole at all levels-local, regional, and national. This calls for a less formal and more organic democracy, in which citizens maintain decision-making responsibility.
The Three Tools for Participative Society:
(1) A Self-management Economy: In order to build a participative society political and economic power must be decentralized, taking it from the state and distributing among the population. But, how can economic power be decentralize in a capitalistic society? The alternative is to move towards self-management of enterprises- enterprises must be owned and managed not by the state or by a capitalist or a corporation, but by the people who work in them.
(2) Educating for a Participative Society: The hypothesis about the foundation of a participative society is that it will exist only when children are respected in the family and in the society. Beginning from the stages of childhood, education is essential to prepare children to be good decision makers in a democratic, participative society, and to develop values of co-responsibility and cooperation for a common goal.
(3) New Functions of Communication: Communication must undergo a radical change from the present pattern her media are commercially operated and their goal is profit, not service. [28]
The contributions of participatory media are: media can channels for self-expression, media can act as tools for diagnosis, media can bring groups information of social usefulness, media can reach out and bring distance education and training to marginal groups and communication can help participation in becoming a natural mode to solve problems.[29]
Participatory communication is not new. It has been practiced and promoted for many decades in a variety of fields. It has received considerable attention in industrialized countries in adult education, community development and development communication, and has achieved increasing visibility internationally in sociology. Scholarly institutions in Latin America, Asia and Africa have produced collections of theory, methodology and case studies.[30]
The Limits of Participatory Communication: That is not to say, however, that there are no problems with this paradigm. Firstly, there has always been a division between those who see participatory communication as a tactic appropriate only in special circumstances and those who see it as an overall strategy for social change. It is only one step from recognizing that participatory communication projects are marginal to the current situation to accepting that they are best considered as a niche activity within a field dominated by one or other descendent of the dominant paradigm funded through the World Bank and the major international development agencies. There is an increasing divergence between this view and the recognition that the condition for effective development communication is that it must ‘deal squarely with the problem of the unequal power of people at the grassroots and work to “empower” them’. Secondly, who, then, should ‘participate’? We saw above that the notion of community upon which these theories tend to rest is an extremely problematical one. All ‘communities’ have different interests within them, and that is particularly the case of those that have long struggled with the immediate problems of social existence. The condition for action, and it is very much to the credit of the participatory paradigm that it is a theory of action, is that one chooses between these different, potentially contradictory voices, and devotes ones efforts and resources to helping one group or another to give a public communicative expression to its concerns. The problem is: which group to choose? Here the participatory paradigm provides no guidance.
The third major problem with the participatory paradigm lies in its location of the poor. The original dominant paradigm was overwhelmingly concerned with rural poor. It identified both the productivity of peasant agricultural and the nature of peasant culture as being the major obstacles to development. While the participatory paradigm rejected the notion of the backward peasant trapped with an obsolete, pre-modern culture, it did inherit what we might term the “rural bias” of the dominant paradigm.
The fourth problem arises directly from the social changes. Poverty comes in different forms and in the great cities of the developing world it manifests itself in irregular and casual work or in unemployment, in grotesquely inadequate housing, in crime and drug addiction and in a brutal and repressive police force. There problems are such that they demand concerted political action – for employment and employment protection, for sanitation, for housing and for security. Political action, however, means argument and, more often than not, some form of conflict. Although it provides an indispensable starting point, the participatory paradigm is not really designed to address such questions.
The fifth problem is one of agency. To its credit, the participatory paradigm, at least at the local level, rejects the state as an agent of liberation, but it is less clear that some of its preferred allies form an adequate alternative. Many contemporary versions of the participatory paradigm identify non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or more generally civil society organizations as the key allies. The fact is that in many cases the work of NGOs is necessarily restricted by their donors i.e. the governments.[31]
Conclusion
Despite several limitations and shortcomings in the cultural and participatory models of development, this paradigm of development can be rightly considered as the best paradigm for bringing about indiscriminate development by and for the people. Moreover, in this paradigm there is hardly any room for the social hierarchical differences, which is the kind of governance dreamt about by all sections of people in the world at large and particularly in India.
[1] Srinivas R. Melkote and H. Leslie Steeves. Communication for Development in the Third World: Theory and Practice for Empowerment. 2nd Edition (New Delhi: SAGE Publication, 2001), 71-72.
[2] S. L. Sharma, “Social Development in Communication Perspective,” in Communication and Development: Issues and Perspectives, edited by S. R. Mehta (New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 1992), 58.
[3] Melkote and Steeves, op. cit., 332-333.
[4] P. C. Joshi, Culture, Communication and Social Change (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 1989), 67.
[5] Ibid., 60-61.
[6] Ibid., 100.
[7] Ibid., 101.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Melkote, and Steeves, Communication for Development in the Third World: Theory and Practice for Empowerment, 252.
[10] Ibid., 252.
[11] Ibid., 252-253.
[12] Ibid., 254-255.
[13] Shirley A. White, “The Concept of Participation: Transforming Rhetoric to Reality” in Participatory Communication: Working for Change and Development edited by Shirley A. White, K. Sadananda Nair and Joseph Ascroft, (New Delhi: SAGE Publications,1994), 16..
[14] Ibid., 54.
[15] Colin Sparks, Globalization, Development and the Mass Media (New Delhi: SAGE Publications,), 57-58.
[16] Ibid., 58.
[17] Ibid., 59.
[18] Melkote and Steeves, op. cit., 338-339.
[19] White, Shirley A., Nair K. Sadananda and Ascroft Joseph. Participatory Communication: Working for Change and Development. New Delhi: SAGE Publications,1994.
[20] Melkote and Steeves, op cit., 336-339.
[21] Shirley A. White, op cit., 17.
[22] Melkote and Steeves, op cit., 337-339.
[23] Shirley A. White, op cit., 17.
[24] Jan Servaes, Thomas L. Jacobson and Shirley A. White, eds., Participatory Communication for Social Change. (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1996), 169-171.
[25] Pradip Thomas, “Participatory Development Communication: Philosophical Premises,” in Participatory Communication: Working for Change and Development, edited by Shirley A. White, K. Sadananda Nair and Joseph Ascroft (New Delhi: SAGE Publications,1994), 49.
[26] K. Sadanandan Nair and Shirley A. White, eds., Perspectives on Development Communication (New Delhi: SAGE Publications,1993), 160.
[27] Juan Diaz Bordenave “Participative Communication as a Part of Building the Participative Society” in Participatory Communication: Working for Change and Development, edited by Shirley A. White, K. Sadananda Nair and Joseph Ascroft (New Delhi: SAGE Publications,1994), 35-36.
[28] Shirley A. White, K. Sadananda Nair and, Joseph Ascroft, op cit., 37-43.
[29] Ibid., 44.
[30] Jan Servaes, “Introduction: Participatory Communication and Research in Development Settings,” in Participatory Communication for Social Change edited by Jan Servaes, Thomas L. Jacobson and Shirley A. White (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1996), 13.
[31] Colin Sparks, Globalization, Development and the Mass Media (New Delhi: SAGE Publications,), 216-218.
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