Communicating for Change: Concepts to Think With [1st ed.] 9783030425128, 9783030425135

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Communicating for Change Concepts to Think With

Edited by Jo Tacchi · Thomas Tufte

Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change Series Editors Pradip Thomas University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia Elske van de Fliert University of Queensland Australia

Communication for Social Change (CSC) is a defined field of academic enquiry that is explicitly transdisciplinary and that has been shaped by a variety of theoretical inputs from a variety of traditions, from sociology and development to social movement studies. The leveraging of communication, information and the media in social change is the basis for a global industry that is supported by governments, development aid agencies, foundations, and international and local NGOs. It is also the basis for multiple interventions at grassroots levels, with participatory communication processes and community media making a difference through raising awareness, mobilising communities, strengthening empowerment and contributing to local change. This series on Communication for Social Change intentionally provides the space for critical writings in CSC theory, practice, policy, strategy and methods. It fills a gap in the field by exploring new thinking, institutional critiques and innovative methods. It offers the opportunity for scholars and practitioners to engage with CSC as both an industry and as a local practice, shaped by political economy as much as by local cultural needs. The series explicitly intends to highlight, critique and explore the gaps between ideological promise, institutional performance and realities of practice. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14642

Jo Tacchi  •  Thomas Tufte Editors

Communicating for Change Concepts to Think With

Editors Jo Tacchi Loughborough University London, UK

Thomas Tufte Loughborough University London, UK University of Johannesburg Johannesburg, South Africa

Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change ISBN 978-3-030-42512-8    ISBN 978-3-030-42513-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Gary Waters / Alamy Stock Photo Cover design: eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of an event held at Loughborough University’s London Campus in September 2017. That was made possible by funding from a range of sources: the Institute for Advanced Studies at Loughborough University; the School of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester; and, an Australian Research Council project grant, Evaluating Communication for Development (LP130100176). This generous funding made it possible for the contributors to gather for three days, first for a public symposium kicked off by a keynote from John Downey, followed by a two-day conceptual hackathon. We are grateful to the funders, to John for setting the scene, and to all the participants in the hackathon who generously gave their time and engaged intellectually both during and following our time together in London. We thank the anonymous reviewers of the book for their thoughtful comments and suggestions, and the book series editors, Elske van de Fliert and Pradip Thomas, for seeing value in this enterprise. We thank Bryony Burns, Lucy Batrouney and Mala Sanghere-Warren from Palgrave for their patience, persistence and assistance. Finally, we thank Mabel Machado-Lopez, who provided excellent assistance to us in the final stages of pulling the collection together.

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Praise for Communicating for Change “This is a much-needed, state-of-the-art book about key concepts in communication for social change. With contributions from a diverse, global group of scholars, the book makes a compelling case for why matters of voice and social justice need to be central to the way we approach the intersection between communication and social change.” —Silvio Waisbord, Professor of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University “This book is precisely what the field of C4D needs. A wide-ranging set of novel ‘concepts to think with’ to enable students, practitioners and scholars to better understand the rapidly changing role of communication within social change.” —Martin Scott, Senior Lecturer in Media and International Development, University of East Anglia, UK

Contents

Communicating for Change  1 Thomas Tufte and Jo Tacchi Outrage(ous) Citizenship 17 Teke Ngomba  Institutional Listening: An Essential Principle for Democracy in Digital Times 29 Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami Communicative Development 39 Jessica Noske-Turner  Advocating with Accountability for Social Justice 53 Karin Gwinn Wilkins  Intangible Outcomes (of Communication for Social Change) 63 Vinod Pavarala  The Power of Weak Communication 75 Maria Touri

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Context-Responsiveness 85 Amalia G. Sabiescu Meaningful Mobilities 99 Jo Tacchi  Dramaturgy of Social Change109 Thomas Tufte  Communicating Cosmopolitanism, Conviviality and Creolisation123 Oscar Hemer Artistic Conviviality135 Maria Rovisco Dissonance145 Ana Cristina Suzina  Pain in Communication for Social Change155 Colin Chasi Disappearance167 Florencia Enghel Index181

Notes on Contributors

Nandini Chami  is deputy director at IT for Change (ITfC). She explores the intersections of digital policy, development justice and gender equality in her research, and contributes to the organisation’s policy advocacy efforts on digital rights and governance of the data economy. Colin Chasi  is Professor and Academic Head of Communication Science at the University of the Free State. He writes on the decolonisation of the discipline. With grounding in quintessential African thought, he is pursuing what he terms Participation Studies. Florencia Enghel  is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at Jönköping University and Malmö University in Sweden. Her academic work has been published in Communication Theory, Global Media Journal, Nordicom Review and Media, Culture & Society. She is the co-editor (with Jessica Noske-Turner) of the anthology Communication in International Development: Doing Good, or Looking Good? published by Routledge in 2018. Since 2015, she is a member of the Clearinghouse on Public Statements of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Anita Gurumurthy  is a founding member and executive director of IT for Change. She leads research on emerging issues in the digital context, with a focus on themes such as political economy, data governance, democracy and gender justice. She also directs IT for Change’s field resource centre that works with grassroots rural communities on ‘technology for social change’ models. She actively engages in national and xi

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i­nternational advocacy on digital rights, representing southern perspectives, and contributes regularly to academic and media spaces. Oscar Hemer  is Professor of Journalistic and Literary Creation at Malmö University. He was the coordinator of the MA programme in Communication for Development, 2000–2015, and co-director (with Thomas Tufte) of the binational Ørecomm Centre for Communication and Glocal Change, 2008–2016. His current research is in the crossroads of Literature and Anthropology. Among his recent publications are In the Aftermath of Gezi (ed. with Hans-Åke Persson, 2017) and the monograph Contaminations & Ethnographic Fictions: Southern Crossings (forthcoming). Teke Ngomba  is an associate professor at the Department of Media and Journalism Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research in the fields of political communication, communication for/and social change and journalism and media studies has been published in several peer-­ reviewed journals. Jessica Noske-Turner  is a lecturer in the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London, with research expertise in media and communication for development and social change. She is the author of Rethinking Media Development through Evaluation: Beyond Freedom, published by Palgrave Macmillan. She has conducted research across Asia, Africa and the Pacific. She has worked on large research partnerships including with UNICEF Communication for Development and ABC International Development. Vinod  Pavarala  is Senior Professor of Communication and UNESCO Chair on Community Media at University of Hyderabad, India. Through research, policy advocacy, and capacity-building, his team at UoH has been in the forefront of enabling marginalised voices in South Asia and elsewhere to be heard on the airwaves and be recognised by those in authority. He has been a part of international collaborative projects on communication for development in the Global South and has to his name a number of notable academic publications on the subject. Maria  Rovisco is Associate Professor of Sociology at the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, UK.  She has research interests in cosmopolitanism, new activisms, citizenship, migrant and refugee arts, and visual culture. Among her recent publications are the

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co-edited books Cosmopolitanism, Religion and the Public Sphere (2014) and Taking the Square: Mediated Dissent and Occupations of Public Space (2016). Amalia G. Sabiescu  is a media and communications scholar specialising in the study of information technology adoption and influences in cultural and creative practice, international and community development. A lecturer in Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London, her research examines the adoption, use and impacts of information and communication technology in society, with applications in the areas of cultural and museum studies, community and international development. In the field of communication for development, she researches the intersections between communication, global inequalities, and information access, focusing on low-income and minority communities and young people at risk of social exclusion. Ana Cristina Suzina  is a Doctoral Prize Fellow in the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London. Her research focuses on the relationship between communication, social movements and democracy, with special interest on Latin American societies. She got her degree in Journalism at Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa (Brazil), a Master in Political Sciences and a PhD in Political and Social Sciences at Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). For around 15  years, she has worked in projects related to communication for social change in the fields of children rights and nature conservation in Latin America. Jo Tacchi  is a professor in the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University in London, and Associate Dean Research for the multidisciplinary Loughborough London School. She is a media anthropologist researching media, communication, development and social change, with an interest in the senses and emotions, and everyday digital life. Her research is underpinned by ethnographic principles and sensibilities. She is an author of Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices (2016) and developed a framework for understanding communication and social change, Evaluating Communication for Development: A Framework for Social Change (2013). Maria Touri  is a lecturer in the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester. Her research has focused on alternative media and participatory communication practices. Her more recent work

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concerns the impact of online tools on journalism practices and the bottom-up development of news frames, in ways that challenge dominant paradigms. Her research is focusing on sustainable development and social change, where she is exploring the power of communication in the human development of farming communities in the Global South, in the context of Alternative Food Networks. Thomas Tufte  is Professor at and Director of the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London. He is a Member of Academia Europaea and Senior Research Associate to University of Johannesburg, South Africa (2013–). For the past 25  years he has worked extensively on the role of communication in articulating citizen engagement and social change, mainly as a researcher, but also as a consultant to international development agencies such as UNICEF, World Bank, USAID and Danida. He has previously worked full time as a development practitioner, for Danchurchaid (Denmark), and for UNDP in Paraguay. His most recent books are Comunicacion para el cambio social. La participacion y el empoderamiento como base para el Desarrollo mundial (Icaria, 2015), Voice & Matter  – Communication, Development and The Cultural Return, co-edited with Oscar Hemer (2016), and Communication and Social Change  – a Citizen Perspective (2017). Karin Gwinn Wilkins  serves as Dean of the School of Communication with the University of Miami. Previously she was Associate Dean for Faculty Advancement and Strategic Initiatives with the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also held the John T. Jones Jr. Centenniel Professorship in Communication. Wilkins is also the Editor-in-Chief of Communication Theory. Wilkins has won numerous awards for her research, service and teaching, and chaired the Intercultural/Development Division of the International Communication Association. Her work addresses scholarship in the fields of development communication, global communication and political engagement.

Communicating for Change Thomas Tufte and Jo Tacchi

Communicative practices are at the centre of all processes of social change. We see it today in the proliferation of citizen engagements and social movements, demanding voice, participation, inclusion and influence in all aspects of life. This book explores the dynamics of communication in processes of change, providing a set of ideas to help us conceptualise what is happening. Perhaps because of the proliferation of social media, and the rise of social movements, the study of communication and social change is increasingly taking place outside of what we might earlier have called a reasonably defined field: ‘communication for development’ or ‘communication for social change’. This book draws upon the legacy of this field, confronting contemporary realities of continued and growing

T. Tufte (*) Loughborough University, London, UK University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] J. Tacchi Loughborough University, London, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_1

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socio-economic injustice. It also seeks to transcend efforts to redefine the field, seeking rather to open it up to wider concerns and approaches. Understanding the role of communication in processes of development and social change is a complex undertaking. Communication for development and social change has always been multidisciplinary in its scholarly endeavours, drawing as it does on a range of approaches and theories from the social sciences and humanities including media and communication studies, information sciences, cultural geography, development and area studies, political science, anthropology and sociology. In this introduction we tend to refer to ‘communication, development and social change’ in an attempt to be inclusive, but the names used elsewhere, and also in this volume, vary and include, for example, ‘communication for development’, ‘communication for/and social change’ and ‘development communication’. All carry intellectual and/or institutional baggage; different names can indicate differences in ontologies and epistemologies. Here we embrace the amorphousness of the field to focus rather on identifying underlying priorities and concerns that run through work concerned with communication and social change today. The authors in this volume variously focus on communication, international development and social change. Unsurprisingly, development is a persistent object of study given how studies of communication and social change have evolved over the past five decades, initially in parallel with international development cooperation (Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte, 2006). In the past 10–15 years it has developed some areas of focus that analyse the relations between communication and media structures and practices, community development and participation, human- and rights-­ based development, and processes of social change (Wilkins and Mody 2001; Hemer and Tufte 2005; Dutta 2011; Lennie and Tacchi 2013; Wilkins et al. 2014; Thomas and Fliert 2015; Manyozo 2017; Tufte 2017). A series of distinct lines of thinking can be identified as of relevance to communication and social change. They include one line of thinking solidly embedded in the institutional discourse which understands communication as a key tool for enhancing international development cooperation. This line of thinking needs critical attention and scholarly reflection. Another line of thinking in the field is closely associated with community development and to participatory and bottom-up approaches to development and social change. This line has evolved substantially in recent years. A third line of thinking is embedded in social movements and their communicative practice to enhance citizen engagement and political and social

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change. This is a new line of research not traditionally associated with communication for development and social change, but important now to consider, as the empirical reality demands (see Tufte 2017). With regard to this last line of thinking, we have seen many examples. In December 2010, Mohamed Boazizi set fire to himself in protest over impossible living conditions in Tunisia. This was the beginning of a vast uprising  which spread across Arab countries. Many followed across the world—Indignados, Occupy and FeesMustFall to mention just a few. By late 2019 yet another wave of uproar sees vast mobilisations and protest, against systems that make living decent lives impossible for so many people. We hear repeated and severe critiques of decision-makers, democratic and authoritarian alike, accused of not tackling fundamental social or political inequalities, be it in Chile, Lebanon, Ecuador, Colombia, Hong Kong, the UK and, less visible to the West, for example, in Zimbabwe. Although we cannot generalise, at the core of these recurrent uprisings is a common denominator in the critique of power, with those holding power not acting to improve livelihoods and not tackling vast social inequalities, despite having the resources to do so. Add to that the global movement and its demands around addressing climate change, and the migration crisis triggered both by conflict and austerity. It is in the context of such realities that we explore research and practice into communication for development and social change. It requires paying attention not only to outcries for justice but also to the yet unheard demands of those who do not have a voice. The current seemingly fast pace of socio-economic, political and technological change gives another strong impetus to revisit research on the role of communication, not in order to contain it as a field but to allow entry points that help us to critically think about communication, development and social change in ways that expand our thinking and enrich scholarly and practical work in and beyond such a field. This book developed out of this impetus. This book is the result of bringing together fourteen scholars in London in September 2017 for what we called a conceptual hackathon. Calling the event a conceptual hackathon indicated our goal to create a space for collaborative and intensive conceptual work. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week. They have a specific focus, which in our case was the need for useful and useable concepts to think with and through in relation to communication for development and social change. All invited participants were asked to write and share short concept notes in advance of the event, which formed the basis for further expansion and discussion

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during the hackathon. The structure of the hackathon provided us with the luxury of spending extended time (two whole days and an evening) talking, discussing, playing with and debating our concepts with likeminded and respected peers. Designing this event as a conceptual hackathon—understanding this to mean an extended and intensive session (marathon) where we play with and (re)create (hack) concepts—also meant a focus on producing concrete conceptual outcomes. The conceptual hackathon provided rare space and time to intensively introduce, think about and debate original and critical concepts in communication, development and social change, from across disciplinary boundaries and from research in diverse geographical, social and cultural settings. While discussion of where the concepts came from were important (their theoretical and empirical foundations), their description (their form and substance) and other potential applications emerged as important. It was exciting to be able to focus on concepts, play with them, challenge them and respond to critique by strengthening and clarifying them. For the participants, it exposed a gap in opportunities to exchange conceptual thinking and pointed to an opportunity to publish and share these concepts more widely with a view to provoking discussion beyond the fourteen conceptual hackathon participants.1 This collection of concepts gives us an insight into some of the concerns of scholars studying communication, development and social change—as well as demonstrating how broad the area of study is and how hard to capture with an agreed or preferred name. We call this book Communicating for Change as a way of recognising the breadth of the research, keeping it open, not wishing to stifle that breadth and diversity of approaches by naming it more specifically or prescriptively. What we find through this exercise is a rich, diverse and rewarding exploration. We notice a strong focus on issues of justice (social and cognitive) and citizenship, strong critiques of development and its processes/project, and appreciation of the need to rethink our work, through and for the margins. The subtitle of this book, Concepts to Think With, indicates the intention to present thought-provoking concepts, stripped of much of the justifications and qualifications required in other academic publishing formats, to get straight to the nub of the ideas. The ambition is that these concepts will serve to overcome silo-thinking, allowing us to think across approaches and contexts, offering a set of interdisciplinary conceptual reflections that scholars and students from across the humanities and social sciences can pick up and explore, be inspired by or adapt, discuss and learn

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from, in a way that suits the shifting dynamics and often hard to grasp complexities of communicating for change. It was never our intention to be exhaustive in our conceptual coverage. This collection of concepts is not intended to be an end in itself, but rather to present just some of the most exciting conceptual work in the field in order to expand and enrich it, and to provoke further thinking.

Concepts to Think With Claude Lévi-Strauss used the term ‘good to think with’ to describe the role of animals in totemism (1964). He saw these animals not merely as symbolic but as part of a complex conceptual structure of thinking. Sherry Turkle (2011) draws on this idea in relation to evocative objects as things we think with. She was also inspired by Lévi-Strauss’ idea of bricolage— making something new out of whatever is available, involving the creation of something new and meaningful, sometimes subverting otherwise established thinking. Turkle sees objects as things to think with, as a companion to emotion, as evocative and passionate, and as a provocation to thought. Here, we present a set of concepts as a provocation to thought and, as Oscar Hemer in this volume says, to renew thought. As with Turkle’s objects, these concepts are passionate provocations and they capture renewal of thought as it is happening. The resulting volume contributes to developing a new conceptual repertoire and focus which not only articulates a timely critique of, for example, dominant development paradigms but also offers critical and conceptual ways of thinking that respect the dynamic relation between communication and social change today. This exercise was not intended to deliver an exhaustive or fixed set of concepts. The concepts presented are intended to be taken, critiqued, challenged, applied and adapted. Each is presented in less than 3500 words, to provide a concentrated and at the same time accessible set of topical and important thinking in the broad field that can be picked up and played with, added to and discarded. In the spirit of bricolage, we encourage readers to reuse and reconceive, to mix and match as desired, to make something new and meaningful—make something good to think with. To this end, and with reapplication in mind, the focus in the chapters of this book is on the essence of the concepts themselves rather than the wider research projects and layers of justifications they emerged from, or research findings and conclusions they helped to produce.

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While we group them below, and in the ordering of the chapters, under the three broad headings of citizenship and justice, critiquing development and renewing thought, they could easily have been presented in alternative groupings, and indeed, each concept has something to say in relation to each heading. There are similarities and differences, connections and contestations that could be highlighted across the concepts. It was never the intention to develop a consensus of thought, rather to represent some of the most interesting insights to aid thinking—to present, as it were, a toolbox of concepts—and to then stand back and see what it looks like. The thematic red thread lies, it turns out, in identifying and analysing the most recent disruptions and innovations in communication and social change thinking. The conceptual tools and analytical perspectives are an invitation to engage in empirical inquiry through novel, critical and interdisciplinary perspectives. Citizenship and Justice The first two concepts offer us critical reflections about the condition of citizenship and knowledge production in our contemporary societies. Teke Ngomba’s concept of outrage(ous) citizenship (chapter “Outrage(ous) Citizenship”) draws attention to the ways in which digital social media has led to outrage becoming a central factor in media coverage. While examples of public outrage are not new, social media have increased the speed and ability of outrage as a reactive form of citizenship to become widespread. Outrage(ous) citizenship can be both progressive and regressive, and Ngomba’s concept aims to expand and enrich communication for social change research by drawing direct attention on its less progressive forms. If communication for social change as a field intends to shift our attention towards dialogue and collective action, as an approach that considers people to be at the centre of communication processes, outrage(ous) citizenship as spontaneous and reactive forms of citizenship enactments needs to be encompassed within its remit. Digital disruption can be seen, as in this concept, through new digital media, to have expanded opportunities for the ‘outraged’ engagement of citizens. In other ways, however, digitisation has resulted in the entrenching of power and control and a ‘crisis’ of citizenship. Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami’s concept of institutional listening (chapter “Institutional Listening: An Essential Principle for Democracy in Digital Times”) is a call to restore citizenship rights, recognising that a

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democratic deficit has emerged through neoliberal globalisation and the digital revolution—it is presented as an essential principle for democracy in digital times. Gurumurthy and Chami make powerful arguments for institutional listening as a mechanism to restrain state overreach and intrusion, to strengthen people’s civic right to contest epistemic validity and hidden assumptions contained within the datafication of democracy. They chart the rise of what they call citizenship-as-ordering, replacing citizenship-as-­ performance, and reassert the need for listening institutions as a precondition of democracy and path to cognitive justice. This concept, along with others in this book, points to a tension between state and citizens, between cognitive ordering by powerful agencies and cognitive justice (including advocating with accountability, intangible outcomes, weak communication, meaningful mobilities, dissonance and disappearance). Indeed, Gurumurthy and Chami emphasise the dissonance between, on the one hand, the epistemic control of discourse, supported through datafication and immutable algorithmic knowledge creating official registers, and on the other hand, ontological and embodied experience. Because of the co-option of communication for neoliberal ends, including digital governmentality or digital authoritarianism, the ability to challenge dominant ways of thinking is removed. In a different but related way, Jessica Noske-Turner’s concept communicative development (chapter “Communicative Development”) signals an ‘optimistic ambition’ to reposition the development sector to one that truly serves citizens in the Global South. Here the targets for rethinking change are  development agencies and the development sector. Noske-­ Turner recognises and revisits some of the debates around the naming of the field and uses the concept of communicative development to rethink it in four ways. First, this form of naming emphasises the importance of development that is open and centred on dialogue, mainstreaming communication in all aspects of development. Second, following Freire, communication is a social process and not a product. Third, echoing Amartya Sen’s emphasis on the ends of development rather than the means, Noske-­ Turner draws on the foundational work of Nora Quebral to focus on development as the goal, with the adjective ‘communicative’ describing the type of development required to achieve it. Finally, this is a concept that sits firmly within development as a directed and planned set of activities undertaken by development agencies. Here we can return to the purpose of the concept: its ambition to improve development by rethinking

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the role of communication as process, essential to its success, rather than as a discrete set of bespoke activities. Also pursuing an ambition to reposition the directed and planned activities of development agencies, actors and departments, Karin Wilkins presents her concept of advocating with accountability for social justice (chapter “Advocating with Accountability for Social Justice”). Accountability appears in many of the concepts (including communicative development, intangible outcomes and meaningful mobilities), in all cases challenging who is accountable to whom and within what frames of reference and modes of representation. Here social justice is provided as a framework for promoting accountability that advocates for public benefit, and as such is another concept that is promoting social and political change for the benefit of citizens. There is a strong emphasis in this concept on the importance of political economy. Wilkins imagines a type of development that privileges social justice, which serves to highlight the currently dominant neoliberal framing of development interventions that privilege individual consumption. This foregrounds the political contexts that structure resources, access and allocation. The concept, like many others in this book, stresses listening and learning. Wilkins proposes an institute for critical engagement, a network of independent agencies committed to social justice, as the mechanism to promote the politics of advocacy through strategic communication, to strengthen the value of accountability for more equal societies. Critiquing Development Continuing the already apparent critique of the dominant discourses within development and institutionalised communication for social change, the chapters “Intangible Outcomes (of Communication for Social Change)”, “The Power of Weak Communication”, “ContextResponsiveness”, “Meaningful Mobilities” and “Dramaturgy of Social Change” offer further reflections on some epistemological, theoretical and methodological dimensions of this critique. From these chapters emerges a critique and at the same time a proposition to recognise broader aspects of social change processes, calling for a change in perspective, recognising complex and bottom-up approaches to development. By proposing intangible outcomes, Vinod Pavarala (chapter “Intangible Outcomes (of Communication for Social Change)”) discusses the methodological shortcomings in the hegemonic evaluation matrix that has emerged over

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the years from the institutionalised field of communication for development where focus has been upon observable, concrete, simple and hence measurable outcomes. He then makes a strong argument for the necessity to capture the more complex, emergent, processual and thus intangible outcomes in social change processes. At the heart of Pavarala’s argument lies a fundamental questioning of the hegemonic epistemologies that have dominated the field for so long. With her concept the power of weak communication, Maria Touri (chapter “The Power of Weak Communication”) follows a similar line of critical thinking, although she is not, like Pavarala, enquiring into the nuts and bolts of how to evaluate communication for social change processes. Rather, from a critique of the dominant paradigm, she unveils the often silent and less visible relations and communicative practices that support larger-scale aspects of social structure and social change. Like Noske-­ Turner in her chapter “Communicative Development”, Touri argues for the need to move beyond the institutionalised, scalable and quantifiable approaches to the role of communication in articulating social change. Weak communication, she argues, encapsulates the need to uplift the significance of organic and sometimes marginal communicative practices. Unlike most scholars in this field, Touri draws on economic geographers in her re-reading of communication in development and social change. She also argues for a performative approach amongst scholars in resisting and responding to the dominance of strong theoretical approaches, and in experimenting with assembling communication for development in new ways. In her  chapter “Context-Responsiveness” Amalia Sabiescu delivers a grounded argument for why context-responsiveness is important when analysing social change. By theorising about both context and responsiveness she integrates them into one concept and brings forward a series of vignettes that help open up a perspective whereby looking at change necessarily will require a grounding in the locale and employing an ecological framing. Two key lines of inquiry emerge from this chapter. The first refers to the intellectual challenge of defining context in a way whereby it can help us shed light on processes of social change in relation to evolving contexts where they are not seen as objective landscapes but are subjectively perceived and enacted. As such, it weaves together with Pavarala’s call for the complex, processual, emergent and intangible dimensions of social change. Sabiescu’s second line of inquiry is about using

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concept-responsiveness to open up perspectives for looking at change that are considerate of people’s agency, power and choice. Jo Tacchi’s concept of meaningful mobilities (chapter “Meaningful Mobilities”) also points to the central importance of context, to the need for understanding what kind of social change is meaningful in specific places, for specific people. Context and meanings, however, are regularly obliterated in development planning and implementation because, Tacchi argues, technocrats determine what is important and how it is measured. The concept speaks, primarily, to international development which she considers as an exercise of power. She discusses three ways in which the concept can help understand important aspects of communication for development. Firstly, how meaningful mobilities can help us think through the conundrum communication scholars working with development organisations face in relation to having to continuously point to the difference between communication and information delivery. Secondly, how it can help us to think about why arguing for contextualised meaningfulness is a worthwhile argument to pursue. Thirdly, how it can be used as a lens for critically examining the dominant logics and rationalities that frame development. People’s agency, power and ability to articulate and influence processes of change is a cross-cutting line of inquiry in this book. Hence, Thomas Tufte’s focus on the dramaturgy of social change (chapter “Dramaturgy of Social Change”) places people’s agency in the intersection between the short-lived uprising or protest and the long-term and ongoing (hi)stories of contestation and protest. He unpacks how narratives of social change constitute a dynamic relation between, on one side, the long durée of social movements where legacies and struggles for human rights are historical and never-ending, while on the other side, outpourings of anger, protest and social mobilisation emerge as peak moments where struggles become visible. The analytical framework of a dramaturgy of social change allows us to disentangle the long-term and short-term processes of social change. By analysing the distribution and enactment of roles, the power plays, the socio-emotional dynamics and the communicative practices of the various stakeholders involved, the dramaturgy of social change enables a better understanding of the dynamics of change. Thereby we can better understand how the long-lasting narratives of development are challenged through contemporary acts of citizenship.

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Renewing Thought (From and For the Margins) The next two concepts (chapters “Communicating Cosmopolitanism, Conviviality and Creolisation” and “Artistic Conviviality”) propose forms of conviviality and sociability that each, in their own way, inspire new ways of reflection and action involving and including otherwise marginal groups in society. One argues for creolisation as transversal conviviality and the other focuses on the performative aspects of artistic conviviality. In his  chapter “Communicating Cosmopolitanism, Conviviality and Creolisation” Oscar Hemer unpacks the relations between the three concepts of cosmopolitanism, conviviality and creolisation, explaining some of their intellectual trajectories, and connecting these with questions of development, post-development, globalisation, modernity and slavery. As Hemer rightly points out, the impulses of global self-reflection and radical rethinking of the world have mainly, although not exclusively, been provided by scholars and writers in or from the Global South. Informed by Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2000) seminal book Provincializing Europe, Hemer draws our attention to how Western (European) thought may now be renewed from and for the margins. Hemer and Tufte (2016) drew attention to this process, indicating how ‘the margins’ is not only a symbol of the grassroots but, more fundamentally, also speaks to the symbolic and physical distance to power. They further argued that when (if) participatory communication, empowerment and social justice become buzzwords in hegemonic development speak, there is reason for caution (ibid, p. 18). In Hemer’s concept, he connects cosmopolitanism, conviviality and creolisation with discussions about communication for development flagging how conviviality can, and should, be based on a conception of society based on human cooperation and mutual respect for maximum diversity. In her chapter “Artistic Conviviality”, Maria Rovisco explores the concept of artistic conviviality as an analytical lens to explore and create modes of togetherness, but also as a mode of intervention with and around marginalised groups in society. The aim is to heal, create empathy and articulate reflexivity, but also to open up to the possibilities for social and political change in moments of crisis. While conviviality has often been critiqued for being depoliticised and doing little to challenge the structural power relations that for example sustain experiences of racism and segregation, Rovisco proposes artistic conviviality as a concept that can foster processes of empowerment and agency. It can potentially enable participants to gain a sense of themselves as acting subjects in the world. Such actions have the

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capacity to challenge the unequal distribution of social power that silences the voices of marginalised people. Art becomes a tool for challenging power relations and social conflict. As such, this aligns well with a critical and bottom-up approach to communication for social change. It focuses on the inclusion of groups who suffer from marginality and misrecognition. An illustrative example in Rovisco’s chapter is that of Augusto Boal’s theatre of the oppressed which over the years has been used to build bridges between polarised groups, for example, for peace-building initiatives. Artistic conviviality becomes a way not only to reflect reality but also to shift focus away from what art represents to what art does. The final three concepts are provocatively named and assertively presented as dissonance, pain and disappearance. Ana Cristina Suzina’s concept of dissonance (chapter “Dissonance”) explores how Brazilian popular media can create new ways of thinking about the world. She presents two types of dissonance: critical dissonance creates ruptures in rational thinking, with controversy contributing to struggles around meanings, interfering and upsetting shared interpretations of the world and of society; solidarity dissonance builds coexistence through communication, demanding equality and the ability for all to ‘see themselves’ in popular media while highlighting the diversity of experiences. It is the disturbing nature of dissonance that differentiates it from alternative media and links it directly to change, inserting disturbance into the media landscape. Dissonance through communicative action is presented as having a clear purpose, to disturb consistency, and thereby make way for change. It is about pushing for justice and equality expressed as dissonance in the way that Brazilian popular communicators argue for a statutory symmetry for all citizens. Recognising and registering difference is important for this concept, promoting solidarity and coexistence over consensus. Diversity is seen as a source of wisdom and a route to cognitive justice. Colin Chasi’s concept of pain (chapter “Pain in Communication for Social Change”) draws our attention to how communication for social change is about the prevention and amelioration of pain. Pain should be, according to Chasi, a serious scholarly concern and the central concern of development. However, work has been focused on its determinants and symptoms, such as poverty and inequality, rather than on how pain directs and misdirects communication efforts. Pain is under-theorised in communication for social change, yet key to motivating humanitarian concern. Critical of the dominant modernisation paradigm of development, Chasi connects its ineffective approaches to pain to colonisation and

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bureaucratic apparatus. He sees ironic and paradoxical interconnections between communication and pain, including how pain is difficult to share, and resistant to language. Nevertheless, given its remit to prevent pain, communication for social change must research and acknowledge underlying issues of pain that both shape and shroud it. Not all cultures understand and experience pain in the same way. We need to improve our conceptualisations of pain in different contexts, to avoid inadvertently doing harm through well-meaning initiatives. The final concept from Florencia Enghel is, perhaps fittingly, named disappearance (chapter “Disappearance”). This concept alerts us to the need, as scholars, to consciously redefine and reposition communication for development/social change to democratise its future. It is about the disappearance of communication for development/social change as a practice and institutional project, a disappearance that scholars have failed to engage with. While it once existed as a clear institutional approach, or project, it no longer does. Enghel explores disappearance as observable fact, conceptual lens and path dependence. It was an observable fact when organisational spaces and supportive infrastructures for communication for development/social change suddenly and/or quietly disappeared with repercussions for a host of communication organisations. It is a conceptual lens on the shrinking institutional spaces and resources and the resulting invisibility of communication for development, that so far has lacked adequate scholarly attention. Disappearance as path dependence points to the possibility that justice-driven and ethical communication for development/social change as an institutionalised project and approach may have been disappearing for years.

In Conclusion The contributors to this collection of concepts cross many boundaries both in disciplinary and in socio-cultural background. The discussions and debates held during the conceptual hackathon and thereafter have helped us to recognise our differences and, we hope, to overcome potential pitfalls of ethnocentrism and Anglo-Saxon dominance in our scientific discourse. Many of the concepts challenge dominant epistemologies and Northern perspectives. Our contributors come from Cameroon, South Africa, India (3), Argentina, Brazil, the USA, Australia, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Sweden, Denmark and the UK. In disciplinary terms, they span the social sciences, from anthropologists to philosophers, from

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sociologists to media and communication researchers, from cultural sociology and literature studies to community and social movement studies. The relative shortness of the chapters forces the contributors to be sharp and synthesis oriented. This volume is not intended to provide lengthy literature reviews which exist elsewhere, but to prioritise powerful arguments around the relevance and novelty of each concept and to transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries. We acknowledge its breadth and multidisciplinary, without trying to constrain its diversity of thought by prescriptively charting the broad field’s shape or future path. Nevertheless, this collection of concepts does tell us something very clearly about the shape and the future of this amorphous field. It tells us that at the centre of our concern sits issues of equity and justice, the need to allow for and insist upon recognition of different ways of being and knowing, the need to challenge dominant paradigms at every chance we get. Therefore, we believe the concepts and perspectives here presented, from emerging and experienced researchers, will help carve out key questions to pose for next-generation research into what we have chosen to call communicating for change. The goal of the conceptual hackathon was to create, share, test, hack and extend useable concepts around communicating for change. This edited collection is the vehicle for sharing them more widely, with a view to generating discussion about and within research on communication, development and social change, and potentially their adaptation and (re)use. This is the intention behind this collection.

Note 1. The fourteen original conceptual hackathon participants are joined in the book by a fifteenth author, Nandini Chami, who coauthored Anita Gurumurthy’s chapter.

References Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dutta, M. (2011). Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency, Routledge Communication Series. New York/London: Routledge.

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Gumucio-Dagron, A., & Tufte, T. (Eds.). (2006). Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings. South Orange: Communication for Social Change Consortium. Hemer, O., & Tufte, T. (Eds.). (2005). Media and Glocal Change – Rethinking Communication for Development. Nordicom: University of Gothenburg. Hemer, O., & Tufte, T. (2016). Introduction. Why Voice and Matter Matter. In O.  Hemer & T.  Tufte (Eds.), Voice & Matter. Communication, Development and the Cultural Return (pp. 11–21). Nordicom: University of Gothenburg. Lennie, J., & Tacchi, J. (2013). Evaluating Communication for Development: A Framework for Social Change. Abingdon: Routledge. Levi-Strauss, C. (1964). Totemism. London: The Merlin Press Ltd. Manyozo, L. (2017). Communicating Development with Communities. Abingdon: Routledge. Thomas, P., & van de Fliert, E. (2015). Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change: The Basis for a Renewal. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Turkle, S. (Ed.). (2011). Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge: MIT Press. Wilkins, K., & Mody, B. (2001). Reshaping Development Communication: Developing Communication and Communicating Development. Communication Theory, 11(4), 385–396. Wilkins, K., Tufte, T., & Obregon, R. (Eds.). (2014). The Handbook of Development Communication and Social Change (Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research). Chichester, West Sussex/Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

Outrage(ous) Citizenship Teke Ngomba

Introduction Locally, nationally and transnationally, we are currently witnessing a significant turning point in the manner in which public articulations of societal concerns and reactions to particular events are anchored on outrage from different sectors of the society. Three cases, unpacked briefly below, encapsulate these dynamics. Firstly, in July 2015, as President Barack Obama prepared to visit Kenya, CNN’s Barbara Starr, in a report headlined ‘Obama’s trip raises security concerns’, indicated that President Obama ‘is not just heading to his father’s homeland, but to a region that’s a hotbed of terror’ (Starr 2015). As The Guardian reported, ‘many Kenyans were outraged by the report’, and they subsequently posted on Twitter to make this outrage known, using the hashtag #SomeoneTellCNN (“CNN Executive Flies to Kenya” 2015). Faced with this outrage, Tony Maddox, CNN’s Executive Vice-President and Managing Director, flew to Kenya and apologised to Kenyans for the problematic report, stating among other things that ‘we acknowledge there is a widespread feeling that the report annoyed many which is why we pulled down the report as soon as we noticed it. It wasn’t T. Ngomba (*) Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_2

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a deliberate attempt to portray Kenya negatively, it is regrettable and we shouldn’t have done it’ (“CNN Executive Flies to Kenya” 2015). Secondly, in April 2017, David Dao, a 69-year-old Vietnamese American doctor, became well known after aviation police officials forcefully removed him from a United Airlines plane in Chicago. Seated in an overbooked flight, David Dao had refused to voluntarily give up his seat to a member of the crew despite requests from the airline. He was subsequently forcibly removed from the plane and in the process, Dr. Dao ‘lost two front teeth, suffered a broken nose and a “significant” concussion’ (“Officer who dragged man from plane” 2018). Videos of the incident ‘taken by other passengers and showing Dao being dragged up the plane aisle and with a bloodied mouth circulated rapidly, causing public outrage’ (“United Airlines Passenger Dragged Off Plane” 2017). Several protests—both online and offline—followed this outrage leading United Airlines to apologise to Dr. Dao as well as change its ‘policy on giving staff last-minute seats on full flights’ adding that henceforth, ‘crew members would be allocated seats at least an hour before departure’ (“United Airlines Passenger Dragged Off Plane” 2017). Thirdly, on 16 April 2018, the BBC published a story with the headline: ‘China’s Sina Weibo backtracks from gay content ban after outrage’. In its report, the BBC noted that on Friday, 13 April 2018, Sina Weibo, ‘often described as China’s answer to Twitter’, announced that ‘posts related to homosexuality would be taken down’. This ‘prompted a deluge of posts from outraged netizens protesting against the decision’. A few days after this deluge of outrage, Sina Weibo announced that it would reverse the ban, thanking ‘everyone for their discussion and suggestions’ (“China’s Sina Weibo backtracks from gay content” 2018). These three different incidents have some interesting commonalities. For instance, they concern, in varying degrees, issues of individual and group rights (e.g. of flight passengers; sexual minorities in China) and the dignity of peoples and countries. They also demonstrate the central role of digital media technologies, in particular social media, in articulating individual and collective outrage. Connected to the role of social media in these, they also show, especially in the case of the CNN report on Kenya and the Dr. Dao incident, how expressions of outrage can easily take significant transnational proportions beyond the ‘immediate locales’ of concern. These three examples also show how the different media reporting of these incidents highlighted people’s ‘outrage’ as a central factor in the stories.

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These three incidents are piecemeal vignettes of a rising, more visible trend of public manifestations of outrage within and across countries. Zachary Rothschild and Lucas Keefer (2017) have noted that ‘displays of public anger or moral outrage are more visible than ever’ and in an apt encapsulation of the spirit of the times, the British political and cultural magazine The New Statesman declared in a front page in December 2016 that we are now in the ‘Age of Outrage’. What is the meaning or implication of all these manifestations of outrage, their interconnections with media and communication technologies and their representation in the news media, for communication for/and social change (CFSC) research? Through the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship, I argue that CFSC research needs to pay more attention to these sorts of incidents. Approaching them through the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship provides a useful entry point for CFSC research to make sense of incidents like the ones highlighted above. In the next sections of this chapter, I will unpack this argument beginning with a conceptual definition of ‘Outrage(ous) Citizenship’. Thereafter, I will highlight the fit and potential of this notion within CFSC research and end by outlining some of the central academic discussions upon which research on Outrage(ous) Citizenship practices within CFSC can be anchored.

Outrage(ous) Citizenship: Definition and Variants In definitional terms, the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship refers to a principally reactive form of citizenship manifested both online and/or offline in reaction to perceived norms-breaking or injurious discourses, acts or events within and at times beyond a specific polity. Often but not always digitally enabled/facilitated, this form of citizenship, with varying degrees, can be both progressive and regressive on matters pertaining to human rights, social justice and democracy. While its heuristic echoes are aligned with discussions on multidimensional citizenship (see Cogan et al. 2000), with respect to its immediate terminological point of reference, the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship derives from the noun ‘outrage’. Thesaurus defines ‘outrage’ as ‘a powerful feeling of resentment or anger aroused by something perceived as an injury, insult, or injustice’,1 and the adjective, outrageous, is defined as ‘grossly offensive to the sense of right or decency; passing reasonable bounds; intolerable or shocking’.2

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In terms of variants of the concept, the following three orthographically different and normatively informed variations of the concept can be outlined: 1) Outrage(ous) Citizenship: Differentiated orthographically by the bracketed and italicised ‘ous’, this is the specific term designating explicitly progressive versions of this form of citizenship but recognising that some anti-progressive elements (e.g. violence, intimidations, harassments etc.) can be within and manifested in this. Such anti-progressive elements are recognised as being present but not very central in the articulations/manifestations of this form of citizenship. An example of this is some of the outrage and protests that have characterised killings of African-Americans by the police in the US. The Black Lives Matter movement—itself born out of the outrage that followed the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012—has championed these protests. Following the killing of Philando Castile, an African-American, by the police in July 2016 in St Paul, Minnesota, there was further outrage and protests both online and offline and as CNN reported: Protesters marched again Saturday in cities nationwide to decry police brutality after the killing of two African-American men by police this week. While many were peaceful, events turned ugly in St. Paul, Minnesota, where protesters clashed with police on Interstate 94. At least two officers were injured by protesters – one hit with a glass bottle and the other by fireworks, according to St. Paul police. (“Black Lives Matter Protesters” 2016, emphases added)

In this example, while the outrage and protests centred on advocating for justice for the deceased and the end of racism within the police force in the US (all progressive issues, normatively speaking), in the process of advocating for these progressive issues, less progressive acts (violence, threats etc.) also featured. Nevertheless, these less progressive acts did not prevail to such an extent that they could ‘douse’ the overall progressive tenor of the initial outrage and protests. In this respect, we can conceptually approach the outrage and protests in St Paul, Minnesota as manifestations of Outrage(ous) Citizenship.

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2) Outraged Citizenship: This is the specific term designating explicitly progressive online and/or offline forms of citizenship enacted with no recourse to violence, intimidation, and so on. An example of this variant can be for instance the CNN report on Kenya and the Dr. Dao incidents and their fallouts indicated in the beginning of this chapter. 3) Outrageous Citizenship: The specific term designating explicitly anti-progressive versions of this form of citizenship. An example of these can be for instance the outrage and protests in Germany championed by the anti-immigrant movement Pegida, following Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement of an ‘open door policy’ regarding refugees (see Schulze 2015). Another example is the outrage and protests from white supremacist groups in the US.  The announced removal of the statue of Confederate General Robert Lee from Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park in the US in August 2017 for instance left white supremacists outraged. Led by Jason Kessler, a ‘prominent voice in the white nationalist movement’, the white nationalists organised a rally to protest the removal of the statue during which, in addition to physical violence, there were ‘unabashed expressions of racism and anti-LGBTQ hate speech from a range of white nationalist, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups’ (Variety 2017). In epochal terms, it is important to acknowledge that the dynamics of the different variants of the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship discussed above are not quintessentially new. Historically pertinent international examples will be for instance the protests against the Vietnam war and the transnational anti-apartheid protests prior to the official end of the apartheid regime in 1994 in South Africa. This historical fact notwithstanding, the point worth emphasising remains that currently the manifestations and mediated representations of popular reactions to perceived norms-­ breaking or injurious discourses, acts or events within or beyond a specific polity are, in many respects, vastly different from earlier epochs. One of the decisive factors differentiating this current era from historical precedents is the decisive role that social media in particular plays in the fomenting, shaping and enactment of variants of Outrage(ous) Citizenship. As Zorbach and Carley (2014, p. 117) aptly noted, currently, ‘in reaction to any questionable statement or activity, social media users can create huge waves of outrage within just a few hours’. Aspects related to social media’s

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role will be unpacked further below, but for now, in the next section, I will highlight some of the central ways in which a more focussed examination of Outrage(ous) Citizenship can relate to and/or challenge some of the central dynamics of CFSC research.

Outrage(ous) Citizenship and the Dynamics of CFSC Research What will the application of the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship mean for CFSC research? There are potential implications regarding the definition and scope of research within CFSC following an application of the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship. These issues are unpacked below in four key points. Firstly, definitional issues. In their 2006 anthology, Gumucio-Dragon and Tufte (2006, p. xix) define CFSC as follows: A way of thinking and practice that puts people in control of the means and content of communication processes. Based on dialogue and collective action, CFSC is a process of public and private dialogue through which people determine who they are, what they need and what they want in order to improve their lives.

While the views regarding collective action and people being at the centre of the communication process in this definition speak to the dynamics of Outrage(ous) Citizenship discussed above, it is clear that the definition offered by Gumucio-Dragon and Tufte, one of the most popular and comprehensive in the field, does not fully capture the dynamics of Outrage(ous) Citizenship. In many instances, as seen, for example, with the Kenya and China examples given in the introduction of this chapter, people did not engage in procedural dialogue to determine what they need or want from CNN and Weibo respectively. The spontaneity that tends to characterise reactive forms of citizenship enactments, especially in their initial stages as discussed above, constitute key characteristic of these forms of citizenships that ought to be reflected in definitions of what CFSC is, if this notion of Outrage(ous) Citizenship is to be useable in CFSC scholarship. Secondly, and connected to the first point above, the conceptualisation of CFSC has an impact on and is reflected in the types of research that tend to characterise the field. In a recent overview of the status of the field,

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Tufte (2017, p. 14–15) noted that CFSC ‘emphasises using communication strategically to address and often challenge the structural conditions that inform social change processes’. A lot of recent CFSC scholarship has tended to focus on examining major social movements or processes such as the Occupy Wall Street Movements, the ‘Arab Spring’ or other related movements in Southern Europe and Latin America, and the ways in which these movements have strategically appropriated media and communication to challenge structural conditions of social injustice. Often sidelined are ‘little ripples’ such as pushbacks from netizens in China regarding Weibo’s decision on homosexuality as seen in the introduction (for a related discussion on disparity in scholarly focus in CFSC research between what he calls the ‘noisy’ activist social movements and the ‘silent’ community work of civil society organisations, see Tufte 2017, p.  10–11). As a result, several ‘minor’ social change-relevant initiatives, processes or actions anchored on outrage and triggered by reactions to particular events, policies or discourses are not currently encompassed in conventional, mainstream CFSC research. In fact even Manuel Castell’s (2015) Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, which comes very close to clearly articulating the notion of outrage in the context of recent socio-political events worldwide, focusses analytically on the ‘big movements’ mentioned earlier. An adoption of Outrage(ous) Citizenship in the context of CFSC scholarship will therefore hopefully diversify the analytical and empirical scope of research in the field. Thirdly, and connected to the issue of analytical scope discussed above, normatively speaking, CFSC as a field and in research orientation is decidedly progressive. As Gumucio-Dragon and Tufte (2006, p. xx) noted in relation to this point, the ‘principles underlying’ CFSC’s ‘ways of working include voice and participation, unleashing unheard or marginalised voices, equity and justice’. Given this progressive orientation, a lot of research in the field has ‘naturally’ focussed on progressive movements/ initiatives. Less progressive forces are sidelined, notwithstanding the fact that like their progressive counterparts, less progressive forces have also creatively utilised media and communication technologies to react to particular events (as we saw in the Pegida and Charlottesville examples above) or to strategically and more procedurally engage in long-term social change ‘combats’ (for instance far right political parties or movements). The concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship recognises the progressive and less progressive elements in reactionary forms of citizenship enactments

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and the specific variant: outrageous citizenship puts direct attention on these less progressive manifestations of this form of citizenship. Fourthly, a re-confirmation and deepening of the multidisciplinary characteristic of CFSC research. As a field of research, CFSC is significantly multidisciplinary. While in and of itself a virtue, this multidisciplinarity has at times cast a shadow over the disciplinary identity and boundaries of the field (see Ngomba 2013). As a conceptual lens, a proper unpacking of the notion of Outrage(ous) Citizenship in an analytical sense within CFSC-inspired research is hinged on a sensible, systematic coalescing of a range of related disciplinary discussions. Already above, reference was made to one such field: citizenship studies, with an acknowledgment of the heuristic value of multidimensional citizenship in furthering the understanding of Outrage(ous) Citizenship practices. Beyond citizenship studies, these key perspectives from the following fields of research can be relevant in analytical attempts to unpack the dynamics of Outrage(ous) Citizenship: a. social psychological discussions on moral outrage and its manifestations in the context of digital media (e.g. Rothschild and Keefer 2017; Crockett 2017); b. the political economy of mainstream and digital media in particular discussions on the ways and extent to which the financial sustainability of these media now tend to depend on the scale of referrals/ sharing of their content (e.g. Nechushtai 2017) and the role of emotions, especially anger, as it relates to the patterns of these referrals/sharing (e.g. Berger and Milkman 2012) and the overall audience share of mainstream media (e.g. Sobieraj and Berry 2011); c. the sociology and politics of emotions as it relates to the role of emotions especially anger in political mobilisation and in social movements in particular (Jasper 2014) and d. the mobilisational and political capacities of digital media (Bennett and Segerberg 2012).

Conclusion During the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville a car drove into a group of anti-fascist protesters who were also at the scene, killing 32-year-­ old Heather Heyer. After her death, several media picked on her last

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Facebook message, which was a re-telling of the old quote stating that: ‘If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention’ (“If you are not outraged” 2017). That quote and the events that led to Heyer’s premature death underscore both the enormity of outrage currently being expressed offline and online and the ways in which policies, events or discourses can easily spark expressions of outrage across and beyond a polity. A search for the word ‘outrage’ in some mainstream news media goes a long way to confirm the ubiquity of expressions of and media reports about outrage contemporarily. A search for ‘outrage’ in the website of The Washington Post for instance on 15 April 2018 yielded 24,353 results with headlines such as ‘Public outrage forces Interior to scrap massive increase in park entry fees’; ‘Mother arrested after viral video of her baby smoking sparks outrage on social media’ and ‘Food association gives top cookbook award to its CEO, prompting outrage—and a new policy’. The central focus of this chapter has been to suggest that CFSC as a field of research should not let all these manifestations of outrage and their mediation pass it by. At its core, this chapter has suggested that the concept of Outrage(ous) Citizenship and its variants have potential to encapsulate the different dynamics regarding these manifestations and mediations of outrage in ways that can expand and enrich CFSC research.

Notes 1. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/outrage 2. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/outrageous?s=t

References Bennett, L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. Berger, J., & Milkman, K. (2012). What Makes Online Content Viral? Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), 192–205. Black Lives Matter Protesters Return to the Streets. (2016, July 9). CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/09/us/black-lives-matter-protests/index.html. Accessed 20 Mar 2018. Castells, M. (2015). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd ed.). Polity: Cambridge.

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China’s Sina Weibo Backtracks From Gay Content Ban After Outrage. (2018, April 16). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asiachina-43779650. Accessed 16 Apr 2018. CNN Executive Flies to Kenya to Apologise for ‘Hotbed of Terror’ Claim. (2015, August 14). The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2015/aug/14/cnn-kenya-apologise-obama. Accessed 10 Mar 2018. Cogan, J., Grossman, D., & Liu, M. (2000). Citizenship: The Democratic Imagination in a Global/Local Context. Social Education, 64(1), 48–52. Crockett, M. (2017). Moral Outrage in the Digital Age. Nature Human Behavior, 1, 769–771. Gumucio-Dragon, A., & Tufte, T. (2006). Roots and Relevance: Introduction to the CFSC Anthology. In A. Gumucio-Dragon & T. Tufte (Eds.), Communication for Social Change: Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (pp. xiv– xxxvi). New Jersey: The Communication for Social Change Consortium. ‘If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention’: Virginia Murder Victim’s Last Facebook Post. (2017, August 13). Independent. Retrieved from https:// www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/virginia-charlottesvillewhite-supremacist-heather-heyer-a7891531.html. Accessed 10 Apr 2018. Jasper, J. (2014). Constructing Indignation: Anger Dynamics in Protest Movements. Emotion Review, 6(3), 208–213. Nechushtai, E. (2017). Could Digital Platforms Capture the Media Through Infrastructure? Journalism, 19, 1043. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1464884917725163. Ngomba, T. (2013). Comprehending Social Change in an Era of Austerity: Reflection from a Communication Perspective. Glocal Times, 19, 1–17. Officer Who Dragged Man From Plane Sues United Airlines. (2018, April 12). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43734466. Accessed 16 Apr 2018. Rothschild, Z., & Keefer, L. (2017). A Cleansing Fire: Moral Outrage Alleviates Guilt and Buffers Threats to One’s Moral Identity. Motivation and Emotion, 41, 209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-017-9601-2. Schulze, I. (2015, February 1). Pegida: Germany’s Useful Idiots. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/01/pegidagermanys-useful-idiots. Accessed 23 Mar 2018. Sobieraj, S., & Berry, J. (2011). From Incivility to Outrage: Political Discourse in Blogs, Talk Radio, and Cable News. Political Communication, 28(1), 19–41. Starr, B. (2015, July 23). Obama’s Trip Raises Security Concerns. CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/22/politics/obama-kenya-visit-alshabaab-threat/index.html. Accessed 12 Mar 2018. Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge: Polity.

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United Airlines Passenger Dragged Off Plane Likely to Sue Airline, Attorney Says. (2017, April 11). The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian. com/world/2017/apr/13/united-airlines-passenger-lawsuit-david-dao. Accessed 20 Mar 2018. Variety (2017). Lady Gaga, Ava DuVernay, More in Hollywood React to Charlottesville: ‘There Is Only One Side’. Available online at: http://variety. com/2017/biz/news/charlottesville-virginia-unite-the-right-protest-violence-1202525726/ Accessed 10 April 2018. Zorbach, P., & Carley, K. (2014). Understanding Online Firestorms: Negative Word-of-Mouth Dynamics in Social Media Networks. Journal of Marketing Communications, 20(1–2), 117–128.

Institutional Listening: An Essential Principle for Democracy in Digital Times Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami

The Citizenship Crisis In post-colonial contexts, a wide gulf has always existed between Westphalian ideals of formal citizenship and the ontologies of citizen identity—the terrain that marginal subjects of the state navigate to realise their political claims. An authoritative body of work bears testimony to the fact that the ability to assert the array of civic-political, socio-economic and cultural rights emanating from one’s citizenship status is not equally distributed (Samaddar 2009; Chatterjee 2004; Jayal 2013; Roy 2005). The marginal subject must constantly seek legitimacy for her ways of being and knowing, drawing attention to the damning disjuncture between the de jure form of institutional guarantees and the de facto substance of her lived experience (Holston and Appadurai 2019). Struggles to get the nation-state to acknowledge and recognise claims not yet legitimated by formal repertoires of social, political and cultural belonging have held deep significance to the very project of democracy.

A. Gurumurthy (*) • N. Chami IT for Change, Bengaluru, India e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_3

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The communicative dimension thus performs a key role in expanding the given boundaries of citizenship, whereby political voice involves not just “the right to freedom of opinion and speech”, but equally, “the right to be heard” (Livio 2017). A corollary of this is that ‘listening institutions’ become the necessary complement to citizenship rights and a precondition for democracy to make way for what may be described as cognitive justice,1 where the plurality and diversity of life-worlds and world-views that marginal citizen-subjects bring to public-political engagement is nurtured and valued, rather than just being tolerated or accommodated through half-measures for inclusion. The digital moment we inhabit presents a huge challenge to cognitive justice. As neo-liberal globalisation and the digital revolution feed off each other, opportunities for connecting across space and time accompany the worst possible crises affecting the sustainability of the planet and well-­ being of its peoples. With elite capture of policies and the whittling away of public institutions, the social contract is under strain. In this emerging context, Fraser argues how Keynesian-Westphalian approaches to justice “gerrymanders political space at the expense of the poor and despised” (Fraser 2013). In a seamless world that is technologically connected, the shifting axes of power render those in the periphery even more vulnerable. The elite not only control the material means of power but also the discursive realms in which narratives are framed and legitimated. Despite all the talk about the digital public sphere and its democratising potential, contemporary public discourse, as a construct of the virality and velocity of digital communications, does little to privilege marginal voices. On the one hand, political routes to claims-making are caught in the winds of hyper-politicisation of identity, virulent propaganda and right-wing populism, a recipe that subverts completely the essence of democratic politics. On the other hand, the substance of citizenship, as the outcome of institutional guarantees to equality, is hugely vitiated. As the technique par excellence of today’s institutional knowledge, the data and digital revolution seems to be at a crossroads. Rather than eliminate the vectors of historical inequality, it presents a troubling challenge to global democracy—obscuring voice, undermining democratic institutions and annihilating aspirational citizenship. How can democracies be rebuilt in this state of democratic flux? How can citizenship rights, as work-in-­ progress for those at the peripheries of the social order, be secured?

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This chapter explores a rebooted idea of ‘institutional listening’—one that can respond to the challenges confronting political voice in digital age publics—as a vehicle towards cognitive justice.

Misframings in Digitally Mediated Democracy The datafication of nature, human activity and physical artefacts for creating interconnected intelligence on a planetary scale has given rise to an “algorithmic culture” that is fast replacing political deliberation as the ordering principle of democratic sociality (Striphas 2015). Inscrutable, privately owned algorithms have become the “de-facto principle of authority”, where social relationships are “the positive remainder resulting from specific information processing tasks”. The social consequences of this are evident in a data fetishism that has overtaken governance processes in state institutions. While big data and AI-based technologies are the newest tools in the arsenal of the modern state, a long series of informational technologies have always been deployed to enumerate, classify, sort and categorise citizens (Monish 2018). Across time, these practices have had deleterious outcomes for the poor and marginalised, with representational biases inherent to databases resulting in discrimination and exclusion (Eubanks 2018). The current wave of technologies is however extremely pernicious. A digital rewiring of decision-making in government undermines the very “right to have rights”,2 taking away citizen claims to contest and challenge unfair and unjust denial of rights. An ever-expanding integration of citizen data across public-political and private-commercial realms has meant an insidious and pervasive depoliticisation of the performative aspects of citizenship (Barassi 2019). Personal data trails abstracted into databases replace embodiment as the key to authenticity, and as data stand-ins for the citizen, become the sole determinant of the public self. The citizen is now the public subject who can have no invulnerable, private interiority. ‘Consent’ becomes the device of choice for state legitimacy to seek more data to create new meanings about citizenship. The enactment of citizenship struggles is rendered meaningless and citizenship-as-performance is replaced with citizenship-as-ordering. Assumptions about algorithmic infallibility and the absence of policies for public scrutiny and audit of AI programmes leave citizens without any recourse in the event of false/misleading assessments. In 2016, Australia’s

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welfare agency, Centrelink, introduced an algorithmic system to mine the financial records of citizens to detect fraudulent welfare claims and recover welfare debt from defrauding citizens. Thousands of debt notices were sent erroneously to parents, people with disabilities, carers, students and employment seekers, directing them to return within 21 days the funds that they had purportedly illegally claimed. Citizens found themselves in a Kafkaesque predicament, confronted by an inscrutable algorithm and no avenue to seek explanations or frame an appeal. Though this programme is being challenged now in the courts in the wake of a huge public outcry, the damage it has done seems irrevocable (Henriques-Gomes 2019). Media outlets have reported that between July 2016 and October 2018, over 2000 vulnerable individuals may have died from stress, anxiety and depression-related medical conditions after being served with erroneous welfare debt notices (Medorah 2019) that, as opined by the members of a senate inquiry into the programme, were “frankly incomprehensible” (Hutchens 2017). Considering that in many instances, states have outsourced the development of such data and AI systems to private firms, the lack of public oversight and accountability mechanisms becomes even more worrisome (Lappin 2019). Also, in datafied welfare systems, government representatives/last-mile service providers tend to displace accountability onto the technological black box. Take the case of India’s Aadhaar project, the national digital identification architecture through which every resident has been assigned a 12-digit unique identification number linked to his/her basic biometric and demographic information (Unique Identification Authority of India 2019). One of the main objectives of this initiative is to provide a scaffolding for fool-proof identity authentication and digitalised payments to beneficiaries in welfare systems, minimising the scope for human discretion at the last mile that so often leads to unaccountable allocations of benefits. Ironically, Aadhaar has ended up exacerbating the very problems that it sought to correct. Millions of vulnerable Indians have been denied their rightful entitlements (including food rations, social pensions, maternal health entitlements and wages earned through the employment guarantee programme) because of errors in seeding the unique identification number into databases held by government departments, misspelling of names in linking legacy databases with the unique identification database and failure of biometric authentication at the last mile (Khera 2019). Some of the most impoverished individuals have died after such denial of food grains and health care services (The Wire 2018). The centralised

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architecture of Aadhaar has emboldened intervening administrative links (such as district officials and last-mile service providers) to shirk responsibility to address complaints about non-delivery of services by claiming ignorance about the workings of the new digital system. Grassroots movements such as the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan have highlighted how in the wake of these developments, the traditional grammar of claims-­ making—where citizens collectively demand accountability for faulty last-­ mile service delivery in the local public sphere—starts losing efficacy. As granular profiling through algorithmic technologies becomes the primary tool for governance decisions, claims-making is displaced from the realm of institutional politics and recast as individualised encounters. An emerging ‘governance by scoring’ culture misrecognises systemic social issues such as homelessness and child abuse by treating them as individual-specific problems of a few deviant, at-risk subjects (Peters 2018; Dencik et al. 2018). Further, the tendency of big data and AI-based models to bring ‘precision’ to planning exercises through an analysis of past trends obfuscates the importance of normative decision-making, undermining individual and collective rights. Sorting of students in the public education system using AI tools, for instance, can reinforce the status quo. An AI system for new academic opportunities, based on trends analysis alone, will end up eliminating students from poor and marginal social groups who have lower educational attainments (Kasinathan 2020). Equality of opportunity depends on what a society believes is politically necessary for justice, a point that is often lost in the hyper-enthusiasm for the precision in decision-making sought to be achieved through data-­ based tools. The disciplining state is also able to extend its authoritarian control today in unprecedented ways through a capture of the means of public propaganda. Gaming social media spaces with half-truths and even disinformation, right-wing establishments the world over are destabilising democracy (Waterson 2018). Unqualified data power implies the power to control both the means of governance and the means of discourse. Under the circumstances, citizen engagement is reduced to a strategy for legitimating data-based disciplining (Kitchin et al. 2019). It ceases to be the political exercise it needs to be for a healthy democracy. Instantiations from across the world show how public engagement in ‘smart city’ projects is but a smokescreen to bring on board a class of elite, ‘smart’ citizens who can legitimise digitally enabled, privately managed, mass-scale urban

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surveillance systems to police low-income neighbourhoods and the informal workforce (Datta 2018). Democracy in the digital order exemplifies the essential dissonances between a nationally bounded political community and the supranational class of persons expunged by techno-political decisions made under conditions of neo-liberal authoritarianism—typically, a state apparatus captured by the class of global capitalist elite. What results is “misframing” (Fraser 2009)—whereby the frame for the most consequential of political decisions effects an absolute fracture in the political community, separating members and non-members and excluding the latter from being in the reckoning for entitlements in matters of distribution, recognition and representation. With the hollowing out of the lived reality of embodied citizenship, the ‘knowing’ citizen and her truth claims are displaced and eventually, delegitimised and derecognised. The violence of digital governmentality and its definitive rendering of datafied identities can push those at the political margins into an otherness that totally alienates them from democracy’s body politic. As non-persons undeserving of justice, the othered face an ontological struggle. The consequence of this is a kind of “meta-­injustice”: an obliteration of access to some or all aspects of justice—most significantly, the possibility of pressing first-order claims (Connolly et al. 2007).

Countering Datafied Governmentality Under a surveillance apparatus tied to the technical reification of membership, we noted how the basis for recognition of claims becomes technicalised and decoupled from ‘voicing’, pivoted instead on algorithmic truths. As the data proposes and the algorithm disposes, performative and concrete aspects of citizenship are enfeebled. Data-based strategies deployed for rhetorical control polarise democratic discourse, reconstructing public narratives. In the reshaping of common sense ideas about insiders and outsiders, members and non-members, good and bad citizens, cognitive justice is effaced. The tyranny of data governmentality can be countered only through a political praxis that reclaims citizenship as a communicative endeavour. This calls for dismantling the data discourse of the powerful while retaining the positive and beneficial semantics and aesthetics of data for epistemological and ontological diversity in the public sphere. The task here is daunting given that today’s digitally mediated publics are built on the

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edifice of a Wild West data extractivism that consolidates and perpetuates state and market control. The way forward therefore is a new social contract for data that can deepen democratic sociality through a reclaiming and restoration of ‘institutional listening’, the sensibilities of state institutions to discern and recognise diverse modalities of claims-making. In the age of data, the following conditions are essential for the culture of ‘institutional listening’ to flourish. The deployment of data tools for public decision-making must be based on a democratically managed data commons that involves citizen oversight. Articulated through a legal framework, such an approach must be based on the ‘necessity and proportionality’ principle to data gathering and use while enabling open access for citizens to contribute to public interest AI solutions. To restrain state overreach and intrusion, the governance framework for the democratic data commons needs to spell out the kinds of data that can be collected and the nature of profiling permissible for various state functions, with clear identification of no-go areas. While data-essentialism in public decision-making itself needs to be countered with institutional mechanisms that offer room for different ways of making substantive claims, public systems that do use AI-based decision-making tools need to proactively disclose the specific applications of such tools. The infallibility and absolutism associated with data technologies cannot be challenged unless the civic right to contest the epistemic validity and destabilise the often hidden assumptions behind algorithmic assemblages is fully recognised. From the right to explanation (including the right of citizens to scrutinise and audit personal data held by public sector agencies and the algorithms that are used for arriving at decisions) to the right to appeal against data-based decisions, seek redress and make first-order claims, these rights are crucial for cognitive justice. Also, input parameters for algorithmic systems need to be defined, scrutinised and refined continuously to support positive discrimination for vulnerable social groups and promote constitutionally mandated guarantees for equality and non-discrimination. The cognitive misdirection arising out of the cacophony of viral propaganda crowds out voice. It blunts the sensibilities for institutional listening. The rhetorical takeover by troll wars of the spaces of democracy is not benign propaganda. They are political devices that derecognise belonging and quell participation. Social media companies have proposed techno-­ architectural fixes—like content labels to flag problems with authenticity

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and source verification—as a measure to tackle uncivility. But far more remains to be done in this area, and private governance does not go far enough (Schulze 2019). At the level of deep culture, cognitive justice demands bold measures in the realms of social and legal change to address disinformation. This must include media literacy measures for citizens, content governance policies, extreme speech laws and more (European Commission 2019; Council of Europe 2019). A horizontal application of rights to speech has so far proven to be ineffective in the online context as it fails to address the imbalance of power between majority and minority communities (Datta 2016). There is also a larger question that the international community has to address: reining in the runaway impunity of surveillance capitalism and digital authoritarianism. The Internet has steadily lost its potential to be a global knowledge and communication commons, degenerating into a commodified circuit of pathological social interactions that “degrade the process of democratic will formation” (Pasquale 2017). Even as political communities continue to take refuge in the Internet’s immense potential for connection and emancipation, the realpolitik of state stranglehold poses a real threat for human rights in digitally mediated interactions. Addressing these contradictions at the global level through a human rights framework for the age of data and AI is non-negotiable for global democracy to deliver cognitive justice.

Notes 1. A concept first proposed by the Indian sociologist Shiv Visvanathan. In his words, “Cognitive justice recognises the right of different forms of knowledge to co-exist, but adds that this plurality needs to go beyond tolerance or liberalism to an active recognition of the need for diversity. It demands recognition of knowledges, not only as methods but as ways of life”. See Visvanathan, S. “The search for cognitive justice”, Accessed 26 July 2019, https://www.india-seminar.com/2009/597/597_shiv_visvanathan.htm 2. A concept first proposed by Hannah Arendt.

References Barassi, V. (2019). Datafied Citizens in the Age of Coerced Digital Participation. Sociological Research Online, 24, 414. Chatterjee, P. (2004). The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Connolly, J., Michael, L., & Lucas, W. (2007). Recognition in Politics: Theory, Policy and Practice. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Council of Europe. (2019). Protecting Human Rights Online: New Guidelines on Internet Intermediaries. Retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/freedom-expression/adopted-texts/-/asset_publisher/m4TQxjmx4mYl/content/recommendation-on-the-roles-and-responsibilities-of-internetintermediaries-adopted-by-the-council-of-europe-committee-of-ministers?inh eritRedirect=false Datta, B. (2016). Belling the Trolls: Free Expression, Online Abuse and Gender. Open Democracy. Retrieved from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ belling-trolls-free-expression-online-abuse-and-gender/ Datta, A. (2018). The Digital Turn in Postcolonial Urbanism: Smart Citizenship in the Making of India’s 100 Smart Cities. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43(3), 405–419. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12225. Dencik, L., Hintz, A., Redden, J., & Warne, H. (2018). Data Scores as Governance: Investigating Uses of Citizen Scoring in Public Services Project Report. Retrieved from https://datajustice.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/data-scores-as-governance-project-report2.pdf Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin’s Press. European Commission. (2019). Policy: Media Literacy. Retrieved from https:// ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/media-literacy Fraser, N. (2009). Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World. Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política, 77, 11–39. Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of Feminism: From State-managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. Brooklyn: Verso Books. Henriques-Gomes, L. (2019, June). Centrelink Robodebt Faces Second Legal Challenge. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-news/2019/jun/12/centr elink-r obodebt-scheme-facessecond-legal-challenge Holston, J., & Appadurai, A. (2019). Cities and Citizenship. Public Culture, 8(2), 187–204. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-8-2-187. Hutchens, G. (2017, May 16). Centrelink Robo-debt Correspondence ‘Incomprehensible’, Senate Inquiry Told. The Guardian. Retrieved from h t t p s : / / w w w. t h e g u a r d i a n . c o m / a u s t r a l i a - n e w s / 2 0 1 7 / m a y / 1 6 / centrelink-robo-debt-correspondence-incomprehensible-senate-inquiry-told Jayal, N. G. (2013). Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kasinathan, G. (2020). Making AI work in Indian education. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Khera, R. (2019). Aadhaar Failures: A Tragedy of Errors. Economic & Political Weekly. Retrieved from https://www.epw.in/engage/article/aadhaar-failuresfood-services-welfare

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Kitchin, R., Cardullo, P., & Di Feliciantonio, C. (2019). Citizenship, Justice, and the Right to the Smart City. In R. Kitchin, P. Cardullo, & C. Di Feliciantonio (Eds.), The Right to the Smart City (pp. 1–24). Emerald Publishing Limited. Lappin, K. (2019). Digital Public Services. ALAI. Retrieved from https://www. alainet.org/en/articulo/201000 Livio, O. (2017). Citizenship as a Communicative Construct. International Journal of Communication, 11. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/78c 6/8848958886c74e28bfe7e062a66e46c98ab3.pdf Medorah, S. (2019). More than 77,500 Centrelink Robo-debts have been Reduced or Waived. ABCNet. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/more-than-77500-centrelink-robodebts-waivedor-reduced/10948942 Monish Singh, K. (2018, March 28). Information Infrastructures, State and Citizens: An Initial Literature Survey. The Centre for Internet and Society. Retrieved from https://cis-india.org/raw/information-infrastructuresstate-citizens-initial-literature-survey Pasquale, F. (2017). The Automated Public Sphere. U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2017–31. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3067552 Peters, A. (2018). Algorithms are Creating a “Digital Poorhouse” that Makes Inequality Worse. Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany. com/40534131/algorithms-are-creating-a-digital-poorhouse-that-makesinequality-worse Roy, A. (2005). Gendered Citizenship: Historical and Conceptual Explorations. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Samaddar, R. (2009). Emergence of the Political Subject. New Delhi: SAGE Publications India. Schulze, E. (2019). Facebook, Google and Twitter need to do more to Tackle Fake News, EU Says. CNBC. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc. com/2019/06/14/facebook-google-twitter-need-to-do Striphas, T. (2015). Algorithmic Culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(4–5), 395–412. The Wire Staff. (2018). Of 42 ‘Hunger-related’ Deaths Since 2017, 25 ‘Linked to Aadhaar Issues’. The Wire. Retrieved from https://thewire.in/rights/ of-42-hunger-related-deaths-since-2017-25-linked-to-aadhaar-issues UIDAI. (2019). What is Aadhaar. Retrieved from https://uidai.gov.in/my-aadhaar/about-your-aadhaar.html Waterson, J. (2018). Democracy at Risk Due to Fake News and Data Misuse, MPs Conclude. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2018/jul/27/fake-news-inquiry-data-misuse-deomcracy-at-riskmps-conclude

Communicative Development Jessica Noske-Turner

Introduction The naming of concepts is fraught and hotly contested in the communication and development space. There has been and still remains a profusion of competing terms and definitions, which sometimes overlap and sometimes contradict. Quarry and Ramirez (2009) described it as a “field known by many names” and communication as a “chameleon” that changes colour to reflect the development thinking of the day (p.  6). While sometimes frustrating for scholars and practitioners alike, the names indicate changes in trends and actors over time. From ‘programme communication’, ‘development communication’ and ‘development support communication’, all of which circulated among the major development agencies during the 1970s and 1980s (Gumucio-Dagron and Rodríguez 2006; Noske-Turner et al. 2018) to ‘Communication for Development’ at the Rome World Congress on Communication for Development in 2006, and ‘Communication for Social Change’ (CfSC or CSC), at first ‘owned’ by a Rockefeller-supported consortium of the same name, and later the term of choice to signal particular critiques regarding the perpetuation of ‘development’ frames (Thomas and van de Fliert 2014) and to J. Noske-Turner (*) Loughborough University, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_4

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incorporate social movements within the field of study (Tufte 2017). Some names are reflections of distinctive institutional preferences: the World Bank uses ‘DevCom’, UNICEF uses ‘C4D’, FAO prefers ‘ComDev’. Universities are no different. Malmo joins FAO in using ‘ComDev’, Temple University uses ‘development communication’ and University of Queensland favours ‘CSC’. Furthermore, both development communication (Waisbord 2001) and communication for development (GumucioDagron and Tufte 2006) have been labelled as the ‘umbrella terms’ for the field. Such has been the rate of seemingly continuous reinvention of terms that some demand we ‘call things by their name’ (Gumucio-Dagron and Rodríguez 2006), a reflection on the misuse of the term ‘communication’ when actually referring to information, and a call to support and defend training for ‘communicators’ as having distinct expertise from journalists. Fickle and chameleonic as it may seem, the variations have meaning: whether signalling a particular philosophy or paradigm, a stake in the ground, or an effort to reposition to maintain relevance in the face of shifting development priorities and discourses. While some actors may have an interest in working towards uniformity, I am inspired in this chapter to play with heterogeneity. In doing so, I take humble inspiration from Nora Quebral’s (2006) reflections on her explication of the concept of development communication as a product of its time, and that “more appropriate terms had yet to be crafted” (2006, p. 100), ending with an invitation to scholars and societies to continue prodding and pushing knowledge forward. The continual iteration suggests that playing with terms and concepts is an opportunity to reposition, to rethink and sometimes to provoke critique. In this chapter, my conceptual play centres on asking, what does a tiny syntactical intervention offer to thinking about the field? By making the familiar a little unfamiliar and strange, I seek to offer a re-encounter with the histories of the field, to re-engage with the debates. It is, quite simply, as suggested by the book’s subtitle, a concept to think with.

Communicative Development Communicative development describes one ambition of communication in development, one which is implied but very often side-lined or lost. In contrast to terms such as C4D, ComDev, CSC and others, which tend to be used to describe an approach or a sub-field (and when I use C4D in this chapter, I am referring to this ‘sub-field’), ‘communicative development’

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describes an intended type of ‘development’ (which, as I will elaborate, is in keeping with participatory development). It is my suggestion that one purpose (among a number of possible aims) of communication in development is to achieve the integration of voice, advocacy, listening, empathy, dialogue, conflict and consensus as core processes underpinning development. Put another way, ‘communicative development’ explicitly turns the focus on the practices of development institutions, rather than, as is typical, on communication as a way to bring about changes in the practices of the poor. The syntactical intervention is to use an adjective to describe the type of development intended (communicative), to more clearly propose an integration of voice, advocacy, listening, empathy, dialogue and consensus as core qualities of the kind of development that communication processes can contribute to. This pushes rethinking of communication in development in four ways: (1) it promotes a genuine mainstreaming of communication across development practice, (2) it reiterates the call to view communication as a process between people and groups (not as messages or information), (3) it redirects the primary focus to development (the noun), rather than on communication and (4) it acknowledges that communication here is occurring in the context of planned social change directed by development agencies. This is distinct from ‘C4D’, which in this chapter is used to refer to a sub-sector of professionals (and scholars) designated or identifying as having expertise in the sub-field known as ‘communication for development’. 1. Mainstreaming communication across development As a concept ‘communicative development’ supports calls for mainstreaming C4D principles throughout organisations (Thomas and van de Fliert 2014 p.  129–130). Communicative development emphasises the ways development agencies need to operate—being listening organisations, enabling and facilitating dialogue—rather than solely to create communication materials, as is often assumed (Noske-Turner et  al. 2018; Quarry and Ramirez 2009). Importantly, since communicative development is not a person or a field, but rather the ambition for the type of development sector that will serve citizens in the global South (i.e. a kind of development that is participatory, dialogical and locally driven as discussed further below), being communicative becomes a responsibility of every sub-sector of development (health, environment, education etc.),

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where the role of communication specialists may be to advise and prompt. Communicative development conceptually pushes for more interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary (Thomas and van de Fliert 2014) ways of seeing, doing and researching communication embedded and connecting across all sectors of development, as opposed to viewing communication as being implemented as a bounded sub-field. 2. Strengthening the view of communication as a process and a practice Contemporary views of C4D often draw on participatory communication approaches strongly informed by theoretical advances by Latin American scholars (Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte 2006; Huesca 2008), in particular Freire (1970 [2017]), emphasising communication as a social process of meaning-making and dialogical reflection, rejecting the sender-­ receiver models that once dominated Western-led development communication approaches. This emphasis on process can also be seen in more recent and widely cited definitions. The Rome Congress defined communication for development as a “social process…” (The Communication Initiative, FAO & The World Bank 2007). Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada (1998, p. 63), the preferred definition for Lennie and Tacchi (2013) and Quarry and Ramirez, also highlight “the use of communication processes” in their definition (2009, p. 63). Some authors have made similar grammatical changes to bring attention to different types of processes. Wilkins (2014) uses ‘communicating development’ in the verb to bring critical attention to the hegemonic construction of discourses about development, while conversely Manyozo (2017) used the same verb form in his book title, Communicating Development with Communities, to convey deep levels of “speaking development with local communities” (p. 5). Both of these suggest some desire to distinguish and push beyond the settled meanings and assumptions within the community of practice known as communication for development. With the same ambition to push reflection by changing the syntax, communicative development can be useful for the way it removes communication as a product (as a noun), and is distinct from Wilkin’s emphasis on the discursive construction of development (using a verb). The adjective form (communicative) works to distance thinking away from communication texts and objects, and towards actions, processes and practices.

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3. Acknowledging the primacy of ‘development’ In exploring this emphasis in the concept of communicative development, it is useful to return to Nora Quebral’s foundational work to define the field. In her reflections on ‘development communication’, she too sought to use a particular phrasing that “indicates its orientation to goals [development], not to means [communication materials], which is implicit in the terms ‘mass communication’ or ‘interpersonal communication’” (1976, p. 5). In the realm of practice, ‘communication for development’ (and other derivations) seems to suffer the same emphasis on means (see Noske-Turner et al. 2018), rather than on goals. ‘Communicative development’ precisely sets about emphasising the goal (development), using an adjective to indicate the vision “inherent in the meaning given to development” (Quebral 1976, p. 5). 4. Communicative development as part of ‘directed’ or ‘planned’ social change One important aspect of communicative development as a concept is that it is explicit about the presence and role of development agencies in this particular branch of the communication and development tree. A number of existing definitions of development communication or communication for development and/or social change do this too. Dutta (2015) distinguishes between planned social change (by development agencies) and a culture-centred approach (from and within marginalised groups). Similarly, Wilkins and Mody (2001) define DevCom as a process of strategic intervention initiated by institutions and communities. This transparency lends itself to constructive engagement with subaltern and postcolonial critiques (Dutta 2015, 2011; Manyozo 2017). One existing concept that is similar to what I am proposing is Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada’s (1998) description of ‘institutional communication’. They include this as one of the functions or components of communication for development, here referring to “the flows of information inside and between all parts involved in a development action, including government departments, parastatal organisations, NGOs, and the communities” (1998, p. 63). This definition is transparent in the centrality of development agencies’ communication practices in ‘directed social change’ contexts. Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada point to institutional communication as functioning to enable good “team work” and “coordination”, but

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in communicative development, with ‘communicative’ used to give profound meaning to the type of development sought (Quebral 2006), the function of enabling a form of development that is directed by citizens through engaging with, and listening and providing feedback to communities by the development sector is added. It’s not just “listening before telling” (Quarry and Ramirez 2009), but also engaging in dialogue during and after. In Sum Communicative development is therefore a small but potentially useful conceptual intervention to highlight a distinctive sub-component under the umbrella of development communication or communication for development/social change, a component that is often implied but unnamed. It brings the focus inwards to development agencies and the possibility of practising development in a way that is centred on dialogue, trust and openness. Interestingly, Manyozo (2017) uses a similar phrasing, frequently invoking the concept ‘deliberative development’ to, in ways similar to the arguments laid out above, critique what C4D (as a sector/ sub-field) has become and to instead describe a kind of development that “is cooperative, participatory, horizontal but also conflictual, yet one that emphasises the collaboration of various stakeholders” (p. 5). For Manyozo, deliberative development is inextricable from processes of communication “that has listening and experimentation at the centre of its praxis” (p. 6). One issue with ‘deliberative development’ used in this way is that this concept has been proposed and used in parallel in development studies literature from broadly economic and governance perspectives. In this context, deliberative development is an effort to create political institutions that enable citizen deliberation and participation at a municipal or provincial level (rather than at project or community level) (Evans 2004; Gibson and Woolcock 2008). So, while Manyozo’s use of deliberative development complements this discussion about ‘communicative development’, I continue with the latter to refer specifically to communication and deliberation involving citizens and development agencies, as distinct from governance institutions. Significantly, Manyozo does not indicate confidence that development agencies can be sites of the ‘liminal spaces’ that may foster these kinds of engagements. Communicative development, as outlined in this chapter, similarly recognises that as a concept it is an inherently optimistic ambition about what development ought to be.

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Participatory Versus Communicative Development Considering communication in these terms not only blurs the boundaries around responsibilities for communication within agencies but also brings it much closer to notions of participation. Indeed, ‘participatory development’ already syntactically aligns with ‘communicative development’— both operative words describing the type of development being sought. This debate is not new, and Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada talk about communication and participation being two sides of the same coin. In practice, this can cause problems where there can be tensions between C4D teams and programme teams within organisations (Noske-Turner et al. 2018). This question of the difference between communication (for development) and participation also arose in a research collaboration with evaluation scholars, who were not quite satisfied with the broad types of definitions, and at one point protested, but isn’t that just normal participatory development? Indeed, communication and development/social change scholars (e.g. Lennie and Tacchi 2013; Manyozo 2017; Tufte 2017) are often strongly informed by approaches originating outside of communication disciplines, including Robert Chambers who champions participatory development in a broad sense, and from Paulo Freire, located in the discipline of education. Quarry and Ramirez made the following useful clarification on this issue in their book: The emphasis on learning what people already know is common to both. In communication we go a step further to investigate existing ways in which people already exchange information, and we are on the lookout for methods and media that can be improved or introduced. (2009 p. 10)

Communicative development therefore continues a tradition of recognising the complementarity of the terms communication and participation, where communication (or in keeping with arguments here, ‘communicative’ and ‘participatory’) accents the processes and methods (mediated and interpersonal) of dialogue.

Applications of Communicative Development To elaborate further on the meaningfulness and potential of recognising and pursuing communicative development I outline two examples. The first example highlights how the concept of communicative development

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can enable us to recognise and celebrate communication as a transdisciplinary practice, reflecting on overlaps with public health. Second, I discuss the ‘social accountability’ agenda as an example of formal efforts to achieve communicative development. Community Diagnosis and Action from Public Health Dominant health communication approaches have been critiqued as focusing too heavily on individual behavioural factors, using information, transmission and receiver models and predominantly message-focused approaches, drawing from psychology and media effects traditions (Dutta 2011; Tufte 2012; Waisbord and Obregón 2012). Just as alternative, more community-driven approaches to health communication have emerged in the field of communication for social change, similar types of rethinking have been emerging in public health, often with communication processes at the centre of their frameworks. For example, Hinchliffe et al. (2018) intervene in this field by inverting the term ‘public health’ to propose a framework around ‘healthy publics’, arguing that this shifts the focus away from deficit-led, top-down and informational-centred views of the ‘public’ as the aggregation of individuals to be targeted with health education and messages, and towards fostering “dynamic collectives of people, ideas and environments that can enable health and well-being”. Hinchliffe et al. advocate for diversifying expertise and including multiple voices in debates and controversies with a culture-centred understanding of health, referring to, among other scholars, Dutta (2010). Communication is not directly mentioned by the authors, but it is clear that a focus on dialogue and engagement processes is core to the vision for a healthy publics framework. The concept of communicative development can be useful here, since it locates communicative practices as core to this approach: as being inherent to and not as constituent parts (health and communication, or communication and development). A similar example emerged in a workshop with UNICEF C4D in Malawi in 2017. The workshop format included an invitation to Malawian practitioners to prepare and present a response to key workshop themes and questions. One of the presenters, Dr. John Phuka, of the College of Medicine, University of Malawi, shared his experience of leading Public Health students to undertake a ‘Learning by Living’ project in communities using the PRECEDE-PROCEED model. The PRECEDE framework (an acronym for Predisposing, Reinforcing, and Enabling Constructs in

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Educational/Environmental Diagnosis and Evaluation) was developed by Green Kreuter, Deeds, Partridge and Bartlett (1980), who argued that a process of diagnosing needs within the informational and environmental context is vital to developing an informed intervention (akin to medical diagnosis processes). In 1991, the concept of PROCEED (Policy, Regulatory, and Organizational Constructs in Educational and Environmental Development) was added to bring an even greater emphasis on the environmental contexts and factors associated with health (Gielen et al. 2008). The PRECEDE-PROCEED model has been characterised as an individual level, behaviourist, send-receiver model, typical of the dominant approach to health communication (Waisbord and Obregón 2012). However, there have been moves to make the PRECEDE-­ PROCEED processes more participatory, engaging with communities and stakeholders in the processes of defining priority problems and implementation (see Gielen et  al. 2008). This emphasis on engagement and community-­ driven solutions has clearly influenced the College of Medicine’s teaching. Students are directed to make multiple visits to communities, including one week of living with a household. They are also advised that health solutions must be co-developed with communities, and that unsustainable, top-down solutions are unacceptable. While this approach clearly has dynamic communicative processes at its core (where communication is understood as a process of two-way dialogue using a range of methods and tools), there were some who asked at the end of the presentation whether the College of Medicine teaches any health communication. This inability (or possibly reluctance given an interest in maintaining bounded expertise, see Noske-Turner 2018) to identify communicative practices of other kinds of development professionals in part motivates the concept of communicative development. Communicative development, it is hoped, can be used to recognise communicative practices of dialogue and listening not just as something that C4D professionals do but as the nature and quality of development processes, with relevance for professionals across all sub-sectors of development. Downward Accountability The second example will illustrate that communicative development is core to the growing emphasis on ‘downward accountability’ of development agencies, which has been gaining attention in academic literature as both important and difficult to implement in practice. Downward

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accountability refers to the answerability of government organisations, and in particular, NGOs and INGOs to beneficiaries, and is closely related to concepts of participation and empowerment (Bawole and Langnel 2016; Jacobs and Wilford 2010). At its heart, it “describes the relationship between NGOs and their beneficiaries where NGOs interact and learn mutually with beneficiaries [where] these interactions influence how funds are used and what NGOs actually do” (Bawole and Langnel 2016, p. 922). In a recent research collaboration aiming to operationalise Lennie and Tacchi’s (2013) framework for evaluating C4D our research team adapted the framework to include accountability as one of the components or principles (Noske-Turner 2020). For some of the research team this was an uneasy move, and there were ongoing debates about whether we should have made this change. However, I supported the change and saw it as an opportunity to directly consider communication in relation to different forms of accountability as aspects of evaluation, including understanding ‘multiple’ accountabilities. ActionAid is identified in the literature as a leading INGO when it comes to efforts to implement (not always successfully) downward accountability (David et al. 2012; Walsh 2016), with their Accountability, Learning and Planning System (ALPS) attracting particular attention. ALPS includes three components: at the centre of which is ‘attitudes and behaviours’ of staff, volunteers, activists trustees and partners; operationalised by a series of organisational policies and processes (cycles of appraisal, strategy formulation, planning and reviews); and underpinned by a set of principles (rights, inclusion, constant attention to power, transparency and critical reflection) (ActionAid 2006). Walsh’s (2016) ethnographic case study of the implementation of ActionAid’s ALPS system provides fertile ground for recognising communicative dispositions as crucial for successful implementation. In particular, Walsh highlights the problems associated with the ‘classroom’ set-up, which immediately positioned the staff and partners as ‘teachers’, and the community members as ‘students’. This hierarchical configuration impacted the nature of the communication. In addition, Walsh noted problems with the communication style of ActionAid staff, who in this case used “harsh and commanding” approaches (p. 711), creating distance and lacking empathy. In proposing lessons, one of the key points Walsh makes relates to how hiring practices have developed over time to select staff with upward communication (policy and reporting) skills, rather than, to use the words of one respondent, “for

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values and learning spirit - staff have lost the skills for participatory processes” (p. 714). There are clear parallels between these skills identified as required to practise downward accountability, and Manyozo’s description of what communication means in development: as the “employment of media and communications to interrupt and transform the political economy of development in ways that enable individuals, communities and societies to determine their own history” (2017, p. 81). In short, downward accountability requires communicative practices by all involved in development; the achievement of genuine downward accountability would be an achievement of ‘communicative development’.

Conclusion There are those who will reject this conceptual play on words simply because of the baggage this field has with the preponderance of rival terms to name the field. But communicative development is not a replacement for anything, it is simply a concept to think with. ‘Communicative development’ is not exclusively the domain of ‘communication for development people’; rather, the intervention of this concept is to argue that approaching development communicatively is the responsibility of everyone in development. It is a reminder for both those who do identify as ‘communication for development people’, and those who do not, of the foundational importance of empathetic, critical and ongoing dialogue for meaningful development. Although it is important to also insist on recognising expert communicators, those who are trained in approaches to enable speaking and listening (Gumucio-Dagron and Rodríguez 2006), in issuing this reminder, I hope to deeply embed communicative sensibilities into development work. It nurtures a type of development that is “cooperative, participatory, horizontal but also conflictual” (Manyozo 2017, p. 5). Finally but crucially, communicative development practices already exist. It may only be in small pockets at the margins of organisations, and they are generally not well-recognised or rewarded by management and bureaucracies. This then defines the role for ‘expert’ communicators in this context: as interrupters and transformers of the dominant political economy of development (Manyozo 2017, p. 81) and as champions for spreading communicative development practices within, across and throughout development organisations.

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References ActionAid. (2006). ALPS, Accountability Learning and Planning System. Johannesburg: Action Aid. Retrieved from http://www.actionaid.org/sites/ files/actionaid/actionaids_accountability_learning_and_planning_system.pdf Bawole, J.  N., & Langnel, Z. (2016). Downward Accountability of NGOs in Community Project Planning in Ghana. Development in Practice, 26(7), 920–932. David, R., Mancini, A., & Guijt, I. (2012). Bringing Systems into Line with Values: The Practice of the Accountability. In R. Eyben (Ed.), Relationships for Aid (pp. 133–153). London: Routledge. Dutta, M.  J. (2010). The Critical Cultural Turn in Health Communication: Reflexivity, Solidarity, and Praxis. Health Communication, 25(6–7), 534–539. Dutta, M.  J. (2011). Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency. New York: Routledge. Dutta, M. (2015). Decolonizing Communication for Social Change. Communication Theory, 25(2), 123–143. Evans, P. (2004). Development as Institutional Change: The Pitfalls of Monocropping and the Potentials of Deliberation. Studies in Comparative International Development, 38(4), 30–52. Fraser, C., & Restrepo-Estrada, S. (1998). Communicating for Development: Human Change for Survival. London/New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers. Freire, P. (1970 [2017]). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Random House. Gibson, C., & Woolcock, M. (2008). Empowerment, Deliberative Development, and Local-Level Politics in Indonesia: Participatory Projects as a Source of Countervailing Power. Studies in Comparative International Development, 43(2), 151. Gielen, A. C., McDonald, E. M., Gary, T. L., & Bone, L. R. (2008). Using the Precede-Proceed Model to Apply Health Behavior Theories. In K.  Glanz, B. K. Rimer, & K. Viswanath (Eds.), Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice (4th ed., pp. 407–429). San Francisco: Wiley. Green, L. W., Kreuter, M. W., Deeds, S. G., Partridge, K. B., & Bartlett, E. (1980). Health Education Planning: A Diagnostic Approach. Palo Alto: Mayfield Publishing. Gumucio-Dagron, A., & Rodríguez, C. (2006). Time to Call Things by Their Name. Media Development, 53(3), 9–16. Gumucio-Dagron, A., & Tufte, T. (2006). Roots and Relevance: Introduction to the CFSC Anthology. In A. Gumucio-Dagron & T. Tufte (Eds.), Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (pp. xiv– xxxvi). South Orange: Communication for Social Change Consortium.

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Hinchliffe, S., Jackson, M. A., Wyatt, K., Barlow, A. E., Barreto, M., Clare, L., Depledge, M.  H., Durie, R., Fleming, L.  E., Groom, N., Morrissey, K., Salisbury, L., & Thomas, F. (2018). Healthy Publics: Enabling Cultures and Environments for Health. Palgrave Communications, 4(1), 57. Huesca, R. (2008). Tracing the History of Participatory Communication Approaches to Development: A Critical Appraisal. In J.  Servaes (Ed.), Communication for Development and Social Change (pp.  180–198). New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London/Singapore: Sage. Jacobs, A., & Wilford, R. (2010). Listen First: A Pilot System for Managing Downward Accountability in NGOs. Development in Practice, 20(7), 797–811. Lennie, J., & Tacchi, J. (2013). Evaluating Communication for Development: A Framework for Social Change. Oxford: Earthscan, Routledge. Manyozo, L. (2017). Communicating Development with Communities. Abingdon: Routledge. Noske-Turner, J. (2018). Should the C4D Expert Survive? Rethinking Expertise in Communication and Innovation. Development in Practice, 28(3), 444–451. Noske-Turner, J. (2020). Operationizaing a Framework for C4D Evaluation. In Evaluating Communication for Development: An Evaluation Framework in Action. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing. Noske-Turner, J., Tacchi, J., & Pavarala, V. (2018). Becoming Visible: An Institutional Histories Approach to Understanding Practices and Tensions in Communication for Development. In F.  Enghel & J.  Noske-Turner (Eds.), Communication in International Development: Doing Good or Looking Good? London: Routledge. Quarry, W., & Ramirez, R. (2009). Communication for Another Development: Listening Before Telling. London: Zed Books. Quebral, N. (1976). Development Communication. Philippines: Southeast Asian Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture. Quebral, N. C. (2006). Development Communication in the Agricultural Context (1971, with a New Foreword). Asian Journal of Communication, 16(1), 100–107. The Communication Initiative, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) & The World Bank. (2007). World Congress on Communication for Development; Lessons, Challenges, and the Way Forward. Retrieved from ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/ai143e/ai143e00.pdf. Accessed July 2013. Thomas, P., & van de Fliert, E. (2014). Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change: The Basis for a Renewal. Hampshire/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tufte, T. (2012). Communication and Public Health in a Glocalized Context: Achievements and Challenges. In R.  Obregon & S.  Waisbord (Eds.), The Handbook of Global Health Communication (pp.  608–622). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Waisbord, S. (2001). Family Tree of Theories, Methodologies and Strategies in Development Communication. Retrieved from http://www.communicationforsocialchange.org/pdf/familytree.pdf. Accessed 20 Aug 2012. Waisbord, S., & Obregón, R. (2012). Theoretical Divides and Convergence in Global Health Communication. In R.  Obregon & S.  Waisbord (Eds.), The Handbook of Global Health Communication (pp.  7–33). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Walsh, S. (2016). Obstacles to NGOs’ Accountability to Intended Beneficiaries: The Case of ActionAid. Development in Practice, 26(6), 706–718. Wilkins, K. (2014). Emerging Issues in Communication for Development and Social Change. In T. Tufte & R. Obregon (Eds.), The Handbook of Development Communication and Social Change. Wiley. Wilkins, K., & Mody, B. (2001). Reshaping Development Communication: Developing Communication and Communicating Development. Communication Theory, 11(4), 385–396.

Advocating with Accountability for Social Justice Karin Gwinn Wilkins

Given our need to strengthen social justice, I propose an approach to accountability that advocates for public benefit. Social justice serves as a framework for a particular approach to strategic development and social change, more concerned with equity in society than empowerment in individuals. Accountability refers to the importance of informed and engaged decision-making, building on critical approaches to research and on dialogic approaches to listening and learning. Advocacy in this framework references a comprehensive and critical approach to inquiry, to promote social and political change that is inspired by and beneficial to citizens. Advocating with accountability for social justice is grounded in perspectives of development that privilege social justice, of accountability that focuses on critical inquiry, and of advocacy that highlights the politics of intervention. Development intervention begins with the premise that a problem is both serious and resolvable. The significance of the concern must be established to warrant an allocation of resources, not just of financial but also that of social, cultural, human, and political capital. But the K. G. Wilkins (*) University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_5

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social problem also needs to be one that an organisation, network, or community believes can be addressed through collective implementation of a strategic intervention. Engagement in strategic social change reflects our underlying understandings of why these social problems exist, and by extension, how best to address them. This chapter extends initial arguments summarising the potential as well as limitations of global development programmes concerning gender disparities (Wilkins 2015) towards a framework more inclusive of substantive domains that consider global inequities. Next, I elaborate on each of these three key concepts: social justice, advocacy, and accountability. After considering why each of these areas bears contemporary relevance, I propose a conceptual framework integrating these dimensions into an approach towards advocating with accountability for social justice.

The Significance of Social Justice Referencing a moral framework (Rawls 1971), social justice highlights concerns with inequity, distinct from development intervention targeting individual change (Jansen 2011; Melkote 2012; Willis et al. 2008). While social change may serve as a broad concept able to unite divergent approaches to strategic intervention, social justice references a more specific framework that foregrounds political contexts that structure resource access and allocation. These conditions guide and constrain human potential. This positions development away from a model that privileges individual consumption, which may legitimise neoliberal frameworks that challenge the possibilities for redistribution and for equity. Steeves (2015) and Cornwall (2007), for example, illustrate how gendered norms limit development discourse and practice. Focusing on social justice builds on growing critical scholarship concerning the project of development (Nederveen Pieterse 2001; Richey and Ponte 2011; Tufte 2017). Social justice positions our attention to the connection between local suffering and globally enacted conditions (Thomas and van de Fliert 2015). Instead of alleviating problems, the development project itself may be contributing to them, as a potentially problematic result of accentuated global capitalism, coupled with human rights violations and environmental devastation (Dutta 2011; Escobar 1995; Sparks 2007). Strategic development needs to recognise this broader context within which problems are witnessed and solutions are proposed.

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Advocacy as Strategy Advocacy recognises the politics engaged through intervention explicitly through projected strategies (Usdin et  al. 2000; Wilkins 2014). While political interests may be implicated in any strategic intervention, within this framework these assumptions and agendas perform on a manifest level of presentation. Attention to advocacy builds on growing integration of social movement and political protests into our study of development and social change, recognising the importance of community initiatives rather than retaining exclusive attention to bilateral, multilateral, and large nongovernmental agencies and foundations (Huesca 2001; Tufte 2017). Particularly given the growing privatisation and emerging regional actors in the global development industry (Wilkins and Lee 2016), understanding competing political agencies offers a justification for this particular positioning of advocacy. Increasingly powerful corporations, and wealthy individuals gaining financial wealth through their elite status of celebrated fame, are emerging as more serious and significant players in global development intervention. It is important to note though that privatisation is not monolithic, but encompasses divergent corporations, foundations, and community networks, as well as celebrity donors and philanthropists, with potentially competing agendas. Emerging regional development agencies also shift the balance from dominating bilateral and multilateral agencies towards a more diverse set of national and regional actors still connected to wealth and power within the global economy. While the movement from “development” to “social change” can be seen in part due to a variety of agencies engaged in strategic social change, moving further in the direction of “social justice” means that it is not just the nature of the landscape that has changed but also the politics of competing agencies and interests. Advocacy needs to be situated then within these broader contexts of competing political interests. Advocacy contributes to social justice through articulating goals that recognise and intend to resolve inequities in society. Building on critical theories to communication, this framework foregrounds political power that structures inequitable resources for voice, dialogue, and space (Couldry 2010; Freire 1983; Fuchs 2019; Waisbord 2019). The context in which advocacy works includes political capital as well as economic, with normative climates contributing to these hegemonic processes. Bridging advocacy as strategy towards social justice builds on a framework highlighting the importance of political economy in the work of development (Enghel 2015; Mosco 2009; Wilkins and Lee 2016).

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The Role of Accountability Accountability has a history in development work towards monitoring programmes to serve donor interests. Instead, here I intend to subvert this projected intention by positioning accountability as a strategic process of research and engagement that serves the interests of communities struggling against oppressive conditions. This approach to assessment is rooted in understanding the political conditions that contribute to global problems, as well as the political structures that must be negotiated in their resolution. If accountability is meant to make research more responsible to citizens than to wealthy donors, then the process must engage critical analysis. Recent attention to the significance of citizens in social change is critical in our contemporary understanding of the field, as well as in our orientation to the mission of the social project (Tufte 2017). Accountability guides a strategic and dialogic process devoted to understanding and resolving inequities in conditions and access to resources. Accountability for social justice begins with the premise that programmes and evaluations are not politically neutral. Recognising the inter-­ subjectivity of epistemology positions accountability as not just socially constructed but as politically motivated, engaged, and interpreted (Wilkins 2011). Foregrounding the politics of accountability is not meant to be pejorative, but rather to explicate the politics more readily recognised through advocacy for social justice. The proposed concept privileges the politics of advocacy in strategic communication in a way that is meant to strengthen the value of accountability. Advocacy and Accountability Through Dialogic and Critical Inquiry Accountability engages dialogic and critical inquiry in order to inform advocacy. Focusing on dialogic communication devoted to social justice, this approach to accountability moves beyond donor interests towards paramount concerns with resolving inequities by changing policies with resource relevance and by improving norms to support initiatives. Dialogic approaches to communication build on historical work in participatory approaches to intervention and research. Participatory development practices may be engaged given ethical principles towards inclusion, as well as interests in effectiveness for strategic intervention. Dialogic approaches assume these ethical approaches are necessary steps to ensure

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inclusive decision-making, with detailed attention to reflection-based action (Freire 1983). Critical inquiry serves a dialogic role best when connecting theory with practice, to enable reflection that leads to reasoned action. Recent communication scholarship has given needed and important attention to voice (Couldry 2010; Hemer and Tufte 2016). While an ability to have voice is critical to dialogue (Waisbord 2019), so is listening (Quarry and Ramirez 2009; Parks 2019). Listening is an important step in this process, given that voice is not just about ability to speak but pointless if there is no opportunity for hearing, reflecting, and engaging (Parks 2019). An “ethics of listening” (Parks 2019) engages an active process of communication that is inclusive of cultural diversity and intentional of learning. Learning requires a structure that enables this as a dialogic process, rather than privileging a broadcast without attention to its reception and contribution. Voice without listening becomes an empty act. Listening requires that voices be present. Learning then becomes grounded in dialogic communication given these preconditions of listening and voice. The process of critical inquiry builds on dialogic communication, diverging from project evaluation research in terms of the questions asked, how these questions are formulated and answered,  and  how learning is shared and debated. Initial consideration of social problems begins then with an inclusive dialogue, considering the comprehensive context that contributes to as well as constrains potential solutions. In order to resolve problems within their historical and situational contexts, research needs to assess a variety of strategies and contextual conditions over time, in order to consider long-term, sustainable solutions. Scepticism feeds critical inquiry, through constructively questioning articulated research and knowledge (Wilkins 2011). Preliminary, concurrent, and conclusive sources of evidence need to be explained in a transparent manner so that this potential for sceptical response may consider the research approach as well as decisions based on that research. Accountability for social justice requires structural independence of those engaged in this research. If those engaged in research need to demonstrate success in order to legitimate their own institutional survival, then the potential for learning and listening may be lost. This independence refers not only to the funding of the research group but also to researchers’ investments in particular strategies, methodologies, or theories.

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As a research approach, evaluations within this domain would not centre on the project, but on the problem, by considering broad contextual factors integral to the cultural and political conditions, as well as longitudinal trends in social and economic conditions. Moreover, this approach would need to consider the unanticipated consequences of intervention, not merely to assess in terms of narrowly defined objectives. Moving away from descriptive documentation and distant assessment, critical inquiry in evaluation foregrounds an interest in advocacy to resolve significant social problems (Lennie and Tacchi 2013; Wilkins 2014).

Advocating with Accountability for Social Justice The conceptual framework proposes a mission to advance social justice, through a process of critical engagement that contributes to advocacy given a mission of accountability. The goal of this effort is to change normative and structural conditions in a way that seriously and intentionally improves lives. The focus is on social justice, concerned with equity and inclusion in a way that understands diversity of perspective as not only an ethical imperative but also as a way of strengthening practice. Ethical practices are essential to this process, conserving the spirit of social justice initiatives. In order to advocate with moral sentiment, listening and learning about problems, considering a variety of solutions, implementing programmes, and assessing their contributions and challenges require ethical considerations. A dialogic process enables diversity of voice, though beyond individual empowerment towards a responsive and reflexive consideration of collective conditions and concerning experiences. Building advocacy then means understanding the global contexts in which social problems emerge, in order to position the potential for strategic intervention to be effective as well as ethical. This process involves explicating the politics of intervention of the agencies and communities directly affected, as well as those indirectly contributing and constraining this potential for resolution. Key here is foregrounding the politics of problems and proposed solutions in order to advocate for social justice. This political recognition contributes as well to an understanding of the role of accountability. Given this conceptual framework, next I consider a potential approach towards advocating for social justice with accountability. To do so, I propose a Social Justice Institute for Critical Engagement (Just-ICE). Critical engagement builds on constructive assessment that enables dialogic

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communication towards reflective action. The assessment requires a critical approach to inquiry that is structurally independent in order to lend credibility to findings and interpretation. Agencies and actors independent from the funding institution would collaborate through a sustainable network, enhanced by these connections. As a network of independent agencies committed to principles of ethical and engaged research, of transparency and sharing of data and findings, and of collaborative projects, this Institute would consider varied approaches to understanding problems rooted in global contexts. Participating agencies would need to collaborate, and not position their own agendas above those of other groups. This would allow groups to move beyond replication, with recognition of context to enable more responsible action. This initiative would require financial and human support that would enable critique with evidence. Critical research calls for sources of funding that are independent from potential evaluation outcomes. And those who engage in research need to be able to consider multiple sources of data and research approaches, and be open to a variety of results, not channelling academic and research interests in ways that inhibit potential learning and improvement. No one source or methodological approach should be privileged, but rather seen as collectively contributing towards knowledge. Quantification in research should not be avoided, but included as another way of knowing, relevant to communities interested in advancing their political position (Wilkins 2004, 2011). This Institute would privilege attention to an accountability towards understanding and resolving significant social problems, rather than evaluating individual projects. Projects would only be considered for assessment when combined with those from multiple donors and implementing communities, not in a strictly comparative way that would stimulate competition, but as interventions working within particular political, cultural, and historical contexts. More than one problem should be addressed, such that the Institute could learn from a variety of experiences how best to improve its own collaboration and contribution. A goal would be to create knowledge that is accessible and useful to communities and organisations contemplating their own interventions. Although one function of the Institute would be to distribute existing data, with free access and full disclosure of methodological approaches, including sampling strategies and ethical practices, there would be an

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additional role in creating new collaborative research programmes and convening dialogic reflections. Sharing of information should strengthen trust between contributing partners in this network, as well as with participants contributing to and using data. Building trust includes transparency in not only the methods and findings of relevant research but also in the amounts and sources of financial support and expenditures. Open data would include multiple sources, through open access sources and beyond the control of any one agency. This transparency would mean that communities would be able to analyse data themselves to articulate perspectives, critique these data, and offer commentary. This Institute would need to create a mechanism for citizens to contribute to discussions of areas of concern and potential resolution. There is no expectation that this would contribute a monolithic or static voice, but rather that a diversity of perspectives would need to be recognised within their positional circumstances and as shifting over time. In order to advocate with accountability for social justice, we need an understanding of development that privileges equity and inclusion, and an approach to strategic vision that explicates the politics of conditions and assessments as well as the role of critical inquiry. Repositioning accountability to consider citizens rather than donors, through ethical practices and dialogic processes, is necessary if we are to work towards social justice.

References Cornwall, A. (2007). Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development Discourse. Development in Practice, 17(4–5), 471–484. Couldry, N. (2010). Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. Los Angeles: Sage. Dutta, M. (2011). Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture and Agency. New York: Routledge. Enghel, F. (2015). Towards a Political Economy of Communication in Development? Nordicom Review, 36, 11–24. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Freire, P. (1983). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (M.  B. Ramos, Trans.). New  York: Continuum. Fuchs, C. (2019). Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space and the Critical Theory of Communication. Communication Theory, 29(2), 129–150.

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Hemer, O., & Tufte, T. (Eds.). (2016). Voice and Matter: Communication, Development and the Cultural Return. Gothenburg: Nordicom. Huesca, R. (2001). Conceptual Contributions of New Social Movements to Development Communication Research. Communication Theory, 11(4), 415–433. Jansen, S. (2011). Media, Democracy, Human Rights, and Social Justice. In S. C. Jansen, J. Pooley, & L. Taub-Pervizpour (Eds.), Media and Social Justice (pp. 1–23). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lennie, J., & Tacchi, J. (2013). Evaluating Communication for Development: A Framework for Social Change. Oxon: Routledge. Melkote, S. (2012). Development Support Communication for Social Justice: An Analysis of the Role of Media and Communication in Directed Social Change. In S. Melkote (Ed.), Development Communication in Directed Social Change: A Reappraisal of Theory and Practice (pp. 15–38). Singapore: AMIC. Mosco, V. (2009). The Political Economy of Communication (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2001). Development Theory: Deconstructions/ Reconstructions. London: Sage. Parks, E. S. (2019). The Ethics of Listening: Creating Space for Sustainable Dialogue. London: Lexington Books. Quarry, W., & Ramirez, R. (2009). Communication for Another Development: Listening Before Telling. London: Zed. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Richey, L., & Ponte, S. (2011). Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sparks, C. (2007). Globalization, Development and the Mass Media. London: Sage. Steeves, L. (2015). Give a Laptop, Change the World: The Story of the OLPC in Ghana. Retrieved April 10, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wfVrTSq_iKc Thomas, P., & van de Fliert, E. (2015). Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change: The Basis for a Renewal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change: A Critical Perspective. Cambridge: Polity Press. Usdin, S., Christofides, N., Malepe, L., & Maker, A. (2000). The Value of Advocacy in Promoting Social Change: Implementing the New Domestic Violence Act in South Africa. Reproductive Health Matters, 8(16), 55–65. Waisbord, S. (2019). Communication: A Post-Discipline. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wilkins, K. (2004). The Civil Intifada: Power and Politics of the Palestinian Census. Development & Change, 35(5), 891–908. Wilkins, K. (2011). Questioning Numbers: How to Read & Critique Research. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Wilkins, K. (2014). Advocacy Communication. In K.  Wilkins, T.  Tufte, & R.  Obregon (Eds.), Handbook of Development Communication and Social Change (IAMCR Series) (pp. 57–71). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Wilkins, K. (2015). Communicating Gender and Advocating Accountability in Global Development. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilkins, K., & Lee, K. S. (2016). Political Economy of Development. In O. Hemer (Ed.), Voice & Matter (pp. 71–86). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Willis, K., Smith, A., & Stenning, A. (2008). Introduction: Social Justice and Neoliberalism. In A. Smith, A. Stenning, & K. Willis (Eds.), Social Justice and Neoliberalism: Global Perspectives (pp. 1–15). London: Zed Books.

Intangible Outcomes (of Communication for Social Change) Vinod Pavarala

Short Definition  The somewhat impalpable, non-concrete, fluid consequences of directed social change brought about by certain conspicuous communication processes. The idea of ‘intangible outcomes’ first occurred to us during our fieldwork on the struggle for community radio in India in the early 2000s (Pavarala and Malik 2007). In some of the interior rural areas of eastern, western, and southern India, we repeatedly encountered the consequences of community radio in terms that defied easy measurement—that it helped ‘foster identity’, ‘nurtured local language and culture’, ‘built capacities for self-expression’, and ‘forged community solidarity’. During a recent field visit to rural West Bengal to study the role of theatre of the oppressed in addressing issues of gender discrimination, one woman told us, ‘We have now tasted freedom and we are not going to allow our men folk to lock us up in the house anymore.’ The gender empowerment implicit in the statement is clearly something that eludes easy measurement, although it may, in the long term, have some tangible effects. V. Pavarala (*) University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_6

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The enormous scholarly literature and tomes of strategic reports on communication for social change are replete with approaches to studying the effects or impact of communication interventions on individual behaviour and social change, all within a hegemonic evaluation matrix that emerged as an integral part of what Tufte (2017) refers to as ‘institutionalised C4D’ or what Pradip Thomas (2014) describes as ‘the corporatization of CfSC’. These approaches, as is well known, privilege the observable, concrete, simple, and, hence, measurable outcomes of directed social change to the neglect of more complex, emergent, processual, and, therefore, more intangible outcomes (see Lennie and Tacchi 2013). The evaluation then is based on a set of quantitative indicators and outcomes within a logical framework (logframe), which, in turn, is an integral part of the results-based management that is de rigueur among national and international development agencies. Philosophers and social scientists have historically not been blind to the possibilities of intangible outcomes. Robert K.  Merton’s (1936) classic essay on the ‘Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action’ is the earliest of such expositions. He suggested that the excessive focus on anticipated (and tangible) effects betrays an unshakeable belief in the rationality of purposive social action and a wilful ignorance caused by, what he called, ‘the imperious immediacy of interest’. Merton correctly identified some of the bias towards rational social action and its anticipated consequences to the methodological obsession with ‘causal imputation’ and the issue of ‘attribution’ in the understanding of goal-directed social action. A question along these lines may read: to what extent can we attribute an increase in the number of girl children attending school in a rural area to a particular message from a development agency and its mode of dissemination? The answer, as any self-respecting scholar of communication and social change would give, is: ‘it depends’. The French economic journalist Frederic Bastiat (1850) had famously written about ‘what is seen and what is not’, implying an over-emphasis on the visible consequences of goal-directed actions, to the neglect of the less conspicuous, unintended effects. Referring to the economic domain, Bastiat suggests that the bad economist confines himself to the ‘visible effect’, while the good economist considers both the visible effects and those that are yet to emerge and must be foreseen. Underlining the importance of the latter, Merton (1936) declared evocatively that ‘undesired effects are not always undesirable effects’. Everett Rogers, in his now largely criticised, but influential work on Diffusion of Innovations (1962;

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3d ed. 1983), identified the potential indirect and unanticipated (and even undesirable) consequences of innovations. Over the last two decades, as the Communication for Development (C4D) enterprise grew into a substantial presence in the global development scene, there has been some acknowledgement of intangible outcomes from strategic communication, but with inadequate and unsatisfactory solutions to accounting for them in evaluations. The World Bank’s Development Communication Sourcebook (Mefalopoulos 2008) states quite unambiguously that both tangible and intangible outcomes of C4D are ‘equally valid and relevant’. It goes on to mention ‘mutual understanding’, ‘empowerment’, and ‘conflict resolution’ as outcomes that are significant, yet, defy easy measurement. The document recommends adoption of qualitative research designs for understanding such issues. While quantification of intangible outcomes through, for example, proxy indicators is perceived as a viable solution (Walker and Arrighi 2015), it often results in what Alfred North Whitehead (1925) had called ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’. Multilateral institutions and INGOs are also somewhat ambiguous and ambivalent about it (see e.g. World Bank and DFID 2006), upholding, on the one hand, the relevance of intangible outcomes and struggling with ways of ‘tangibilising’ the intangible, on the other. Sally Engle Merry’s (2016) scathing critique of the imperative for quantitative data suggests that the epistemological bias towards more positivistic ‘evidence-based research’ as well as the global governance discourse, with its requirement for ‘accountability’,1 are factors responsible for, what she calls, the ‘seductions of quantification’. The demand for tangible and measurable outcomes seems to arise from within an institutional matrix (‘a regime of power’) that consists of governments, international donor agencies, multilateral organisations, policymakers, and NGOs, each feeding off a spiral of targets, benchmarks, and indicators. Merry argues that indicators have gained currency because of the perception that they are somehow value-neutral and politically unbiased. The task of indicators then is to tame the intangible and to produce a concrete measure of otherwise complex and, even, abstract concepts (the intangible). Take, for instance, Bhutan’s ‘gross national happiness’ (GNH), a concept that caught global imagination for the alternative worldview it represented; it invoked a Shangri-La in a permanent state of bliss. However, this apparently intangible idea of happiness has been successfully broken down into nine different domains—including psychological wellbeing, health,

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time use, education, culture, good governance, community vitality, ecology, and living standards—thirty-three indicators, and hundreds of variables. Data is then collected from about 8000 sample households in Bhutan. The process is so driven by standardisation that a Bhutanese radio show host has been quoted in a recent popular article as having lamented that the concept has been ‘quantified to a degree that makes it unrecognizable to ordinary Bhutanese’. Asserting that the concept is rooted in the Buddhist ethos, the citizen asserted simply, ‘You don’t quantify Buddhism.’2 In the same article, a noted Bhutanese filmmaker insisted that happiness is an abstraction that defies quantification. Once happiness has moved from being an ‘earthly possibility’ to an ‘earthly entitlement’ (McMahon 2006), Bhutan’s government felt compelled to measure it in terms of tangible goals. Bates (2009) has pointed out that construction of such composite indices is problematic because of the subjective decision involved in according relative weight to various aspects of wellbeing. It is unclear whether the dimensions and weight given to aspects of Bhutan’s GNH reflect a consensus on the value system of the Bhutanese people. Of course, the search for a nation with a homogenous identity and a consensual value system also led to gross unhappiness for certain communities in Bhutan such as the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa people who were subjected to mass deportations in the 1990s, an action that was termed as ‘Bhutan’s dark secret’ (see e.g. Bhutan Country Report 1995). The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) documented one case of ‘measuring the immeasurable’, with the concept of ‘empowerment’ in the context of Bangladesh (Jupp and Ali 2010). Even as the organisation acknowledges the argument that often ‘outcomes are intangible, contextual, individual, behavioural, relational and fundamentally un-quantifiable,’ it goes on to offer what it calls a ‘quantitative analyses of qualitative assessment of outcomes and impacts’ (p.  11). Robert Chambers, in his preface, described the approach as a ‘methodological breakthrough’ (p.  10). The project came up with indicators, through a participatory process, which the participants could use to assess themselves, eventually leading to quantification. While suggesting the empowering potential of participatory assessments, Chambers asserts, one can convert qualitative dimensions into ‘reliable and valid statistics. Locating the work within the framework of results-based management, the authors of the report offer what they call “robust evidence” that goes beyond case studies and anecdotes. Calling the compulsion to produce quantitative indicators as a function of both a “technology of knowledge

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production and of governance”’, Merry (2009, pp. 4–5) argues that this leads to the submergence of ‘local particularities and idiosyncrasies into universal categories’ and generation of ‘knowledge that is standardised and comparable across nations and regions’. The search then is for ways to capture ‘intangible outcomes’ of communication for social change without robbing it of its conceptual richness, perhaps, through methods that are more firmly entrenched in the interpretivist paradigm of social sciences. Interpretivists emphasise how actors construct meaning intersubjectively and make sense of the world in which they live. In the development and social change sector, this need for capturing intangible outcomes becomes manifest in the context of the human rights-based approaches that have become more conspicuous since the 1990s. The results-based management approach with its emphasis on upward accountability is more based on tangible and measurable outcomes. Lennie and Tacchi (2013) have, instead, underlined the importance of participatory, learning, and complexity-based approaches in evaluating communication for development. Giving a concrete example of understanding power relations and political dynamics in a project related to developing community capacity for food production, Law et al. (2012) suggest processes such as social audits and transparency or integrity evaluation, which, they argue, would help build solidarity and reveal structural inequalities among communities. The impact of human rights interventions, the authors point out, are often indirect and long term, rendering conventional impact evaluation approaches grossly inadequate. Citing a Carr Centre for Human Rights (Harvard University) report, they argue, ‘Many of the impacts that would be considered most important from a human rights perspective and critical objectives of a human rights based project, such as changes in perceptions, attitudes and value systems are intangible and intangibles present particular challenges to those seeking to evaluate impact’ (p. 12; emphasis added). How then do we account for intangible outcomes in directed social change without offering what is usually dismissed as anecdotal evidence or undertaking in-depth qualitative research that is seen as being time- and cost-inefficient? Law et al. (2012) discuss various responses to the search for intangible outcomes, each of which ends up being less than satisfactory. Detailed case studies, while yielding rich data, lack controls or comparators, not giving us the confidence to pronounce on the value of an intervention. Using proxy indicators or variables has been another way out, but such ‘attempts

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to measure intangibles may distort our understanding of these rights-­ based objectives or lead to a false estimation of how well they have been achieved’ (p. 12). What they say about human rights being embedded in a complex environment that defies easy measurement applies also to the field of communication for development. Besides, lack of baseline data and the challenge of isolating the role of communication in bringing about the desired change make it difficult to establish causality. If we want to understand the outcomes of communication for social change, there is little doubt that the process must include ways of grasping both the tangible and the intangible. While the former somehow muddles through seemingly objective indicators and seeks to ‘measure’ results, it is the realm of the intangible that stymies researchers and evaluators. From an interpretivist lens, reality is socially constructed, and one’s social location, relationship to power, and hierarchy shape subjective experiences. Programmes and policies for development must necessarily bring about change in the lives of marginalised groups in society; so, it is imperative that evaluations that seek to gain a more fine-grained understanding of the entire gamut of processes of change must incorporate ways of listening to the voices of those excluded on the basis of class, race, caste, gender, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Going beyond the discourse of ‘voice’ in participatory communication literature, Tanja Dreher (2012; 2017) draws analytical attention to the importance of ‘institutional listening,’ to concepts of ‘receptivity, recognition, and response’. If methodologically all that one is interested in is to recognise and measure predetermined (i.e. tangible) results of social change communication, then there is no methodological (leave alone political) imperative to listen to other voices that could potentially offer insights to intangible transformations.3 I would like to argue, extending Dreher’s focus on listening, that failure to account for intangible outcomes arises out of not only political indifference to democratic participation and social justice but also epistemological disregard for marginalised knowledges. The Portuguese sociologist, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, in a brilliant critique of knowledge ‘validated by modern science and rational social engineering’, pointed out: As a result, all that was arbitrarily conceived of as being outside this highly intellectualized and rationalized field was ignored or stigmatized. Outside was the dark world of passions, intuitions, feelings, emotions, affections, beliefs, faiths, values, myths, and the world of the unsayable, which cannot

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be communicated save indirectly … Various kinds of positivism managed to demonstrate that what was left out either did not exist (was an illusion) or was unimportant or dangerous. (Sousa Santos 2014, p. 5)

Santos argues against ‘hegemonic epistemologies’ and in favour of a plurality of knowledges, suggesting that social justice cannot be delivered without ‘cognitive justice’. ‘Social emancipation’, in his words, lies in according adequate value to these multiple knowledges.4 Although Santos’s call for a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ is addressed at a much broader, global politics of epistemology, his point about the need for interrogating ‘foundational truths’ by ‘uncovering what lies below their face value’ (p. 44) can be drawn out to make my case for recognising the intangible outcomes of directed social change communication. The very notion of directed communication for social change in the contexts of postcolonial national development programmes presumes ‘predefined goals’ and ‘tangible targets’ (Tufte 2017) as epitomised by centralised planning and rational-bureaucratic interventions in the lives of individuals and communities. Institutional imperatives of standardisation, comparative (and competitive) ranking, and the economic growth-­ oriented models have all tended, historically, to align policymakers, scholars, and change agents to tangible outcomes. Some of this thinking has indeed been challenged in recent decades, as international development agencies and countries grappled with more complex concepts such as ‘human development’ and Amartya Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’ (Sen 1999). Sen’s approach has sparked off a shift towards conceptualising development as a process rather than an outcome, in many ways a return to Paulo Freire’s (2001) formulation of development as liberation and freedom from material injustice as well as from ways of oppressive thinking. However, the obsession with tangible results of social change communication, arising from functionalist and instrumentalist assumptions, remains robust (Thomas 2014). Multilateral agencies such as UNICEF have invested heavily in communication for social change through the institutional apparatus of C4D.5 When it comes to evaluating C4D, UNICEF persists with the measurable indicators of change as insisted by donors, even as they acknowledge the complexities of social change and the challenges of isolating the impact of its communication interventions (Tufte 2017, pp.  150–154). According to UN documents on C4D, UNICEF ‘emphasizes the development of toolkits and indicators for measuring how behaviour and social change is being achieved in equitable and

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sustainable ways’ (McCall 2011, p.  11). The positivistic inclination towards tangible outcomes is evident in its definition of C4D as ‘a systematic, planned and evidence-based process to promote positive and measurable behaviour and social change’ (p. 40). Recent work we did on C4D evaluation strategies among international agencies revealed that while the institutional shift to the participatory paradigm, at least in its rhetoric, if not always in practice, is apparent, it co-­ exists with a rather resilient methodological conservatism. It is clear that they need to eschew a narrow conception of communication and social change and embrace the process with all its complex, flexible, and emergent characteristics (Lennie and Tacchi 2013). However, large global institutions have begun to acknowledge the value of this thinking as can be gauged by the following observation made in a report by the World Bank and DFID: There is a school of thought among communication specialists that does not believe communication practitioners should bow to the demands of the economists and administrators who demand details of impact and cost/benefit ratios before they decide to provide funding for communication. (World Bank and DFID 2006, p. 22)

The development of participatory indicators described by Lennie et al. (2011) in their toolkit for participatory monitoring and evaluation is one creative way of capturing the intangible results of a communication for social change project, those that tend to elude evaluators armed with predetermined measurement objectives and indicators. Through an empowering research approach and facilitated by inclusive dialogue with various stakeholders, the community-based evaluators arrive at a set of indicators that are more realistic and incorporate ideas of change of a range of actors. Similarly, the SIDA initiative in Bangladesh, discussed earlier in this article, collected thousands of qualitative statements from people and converted them into more than 100 indicators, making monitoring and tracking change over time more tangible. The innovative approach, it was noted, did not, however, immediately earn appreciation from donors who were sceptical of the participatory process and remained committed to conventional evaluation based on pre-defined outcomes. This shows the organisational and political challenges that would have to be overcome if one were to attempt to go beyond the positivistic approaches to evaluating communication for social change.

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In the final analysis, I am suggesting that recognising the intangible outcomes of communication for social change and accounting for them in institutional practices of impact evaluation are not only ethically warranted but also methodologically prudent. The recognition of such outcomes, which may even be unanticipated (in Mertonian terms), and their integration into our evaluation matrix is essential if the process of social change is to be underwritten by principles of human rights, social justice, equity, and listening to people’s voices.

Notes 1. This refers to upward accountability to donors and governments rather than the more preferred idea of downward accountability to the intended beneficiaries of development interventions or, in the human rights language, the rights-holders. 2. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/12/584481047/thebirthplace-of-gross-national-happiness-is-growing-a-bit-cynical. Retrieved on April 25, 2018. 3. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/12/584481047/thebirthplace-of-gross-national-happiness-is-growing-a-bit-cynical. Retrieved on April 25, 2018. 4. Here, Santos is making the distinction between ‘knowledge-as-regulation’ and ‘knowledge-as-emancipation’, with the former gaining primacy historically. 5. An inter-agency UN publication on C4D, authored by Elizabeth McCall (2011), identifies four strands within the C4D landscape: behaviour change communication, communication for social change, advocacy communication, and strengthening an enabling media and communication environment. While the last theme is largely within the mandate of UNESCO, it is agencies like UNICEF that have been driving the other models of C4D.

References Bastiat, F. (1850). That Which Is Seen, and that which Is Not Seen. Retrieved from http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html. Accessed 10 Sept 2017. Bates, W. (2009). Gross National Happiness, Asian Pacific Economic Literature. Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University, Canberra. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ pdf/10.1111/j.1467-8411.2009.01235.x. Accessed 12 May 2018.

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Bhutan Country Report. (1995). The Exodus of Ethnic Nepalis from Southern Bhutan. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 14 (3), 52–78. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.1093/rsq/14.3.52. Accessed 9 Apr 2019. Dreher, T. (2012). A Partial Promise of Voice: Digital Storytelling and the Limit of Listening. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: quarterly journal of media research and resources, 142, 157–166. Dreher, T. (2017). Social/Participation/Listening: Keywords for the Social Impact of Community Media. Communication Research and Practice, 3(1), 14–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2016.1273737. Freire, P. (2001). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London/New York: Penguin. Jupp, D., & Ali, S. I. (2010). Measuring Empowerment? Ask Them: Quantifying Qualitative Outcomes from People’s Own Analysis  – Insights for results-based management from the experience of a social movement in Bangladesh. Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). Retrieved from http://www. oecd.org/countries/bangladesh/46146440.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2018 Law, A., Valiente-Riedl, E., & Celermajer, D. (2012). Measuring Social Change: Principles to Guide the Assessment of Human Rights  – Best Approaches to Development. Australian Council for International Development: ACFID Research in Development Series Report No. 5. https://acfid.asn.au/sites/site. acfid/files/resource_document/Measuring-Social-Change.pdf. Accessed 14 May 2018. Lennie, J., & Tacchi, J. (2013). Evaluating Communication for Development: A Framework for Social Change. New York: Routledge. Lennie, J., Tacchi, J., Koirala, B., Wilmore, M., & Skuse, A. (2011). Equal Access Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit: Helping Communication for Development Organisations to Demonstrate Impact, Listen and Learn, and Improve Their Practices. Retrieved from https://www.betterevaluation.org/ sites/default/files/EA_PM%26E_toolkit_front_pages%26introduction_for_ publication.pdf. Accessed 2 May 2018. McCall, E. (2011). Communication for Development: Strengthening the Effectiveness of the United Nations, New York: UN Agencies. Retrieved from https://www. unicef.org/cbsc/files/Inter-agency_C4D_Book_2011.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2018. McMahon, D. (2006). Happiness: A History. New York: Grove Press. Mefalopoulos, P. (2008). Development Communication Sourcebook: Broadening the Boundaries of Communication. Washington, DC: World Bank. Merry, S. E. (2009). Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance. Paper Presented at the American Society of International Law, Panel on Indicators. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.524.4421&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Accessed 9 Apr 2019. Merry, S. E. (2016). The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Merton, R.  K. (1936). The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action. American Sociological Review, 1(6), 894–904. Pavarala, V., & Kanchan, K. M. (2007). Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. New Delhi: Sage. Rogers, E.  M. (1983) (1962). Diffusion of Innovations (3rd ed.). New  York/ London: Free Press. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press. Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge. Thomas, P.  N. (2014). Development Communication and Social Change in Historical Context. In K.  G. Wilkins, T.  Tufte, & R.  Obregon (Eds.), The Handbook of Development Communication and Social Change (pp.  7–19). Chichester/Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge, UK/Malden: Polity Press. Walker, G., & Arrighi, J. (2015). The CSC Dilemma in Development: A Possible Solution. Retrieved from http://www.waccglobal.org/articles/the-cscdilemma-in-development-a-possible-solution. Accessed 10 Sept 2017. Whitehead, A. N. (1925). Science and the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. World Bank & DFID (Department for International Development). (2006). Listening and Learning: Measuring the Impact of Communication for Development. London: DFID.

The Power of Weak Communication Maria Touri

Introduction Several of the contributors in this volume grapple with the institutional logic that has characterised development communication programmes so far, pointing to the need for a shift away from replicability, scale and quantitative methods of measurement, and to an appreciation of different ways of knowing. Jo Tacchi stresses the importance of assigning more power to contextualised understandings, while Vinod Pavarala refers to the precious intangible outcomes, such as identity building or capacity for self-­ expression, which might defy measurement but are equally valid and relevant. Along similar lines, Jessica Noske-Turner calls for a removal of artificial boundaries of communication for development (C4D) and recognition of the way it is now becoming integrated in the lives of communities in more organic and unforced ways. It is this need to move beyond the institutionalised, scalable and quantifiable approaches to the role of communication in development and social change that the concept of weak communication encapsulates. The concept emphasises the need to uplift the significance of organic and, sometimes, marginal, communicative practices that might be less measurable through quantitative indices M. Touri (*) University of Leicester, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_7

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but have the power to lead to more permanent change. By encouraging a reparative reading of communication in development and social change, the concept of weak communication also delineates and reinforces the multidimensional nature of development that can and should be recognised in various forms of well-being and capability building. Inspiration for the concept of weak communication came from a dialogue between fieldwork that I conducted in South India in the last four years and queer theory and feminism scholarship. It was particularly the work of American scholar Eve Sedgwick on the theory of affect and weak theory that has encouraged and provided the theoretical grounding for a reparative reading position of dominant theories, or ‘paranoia’ as she usefully called these prevailing theoretical positions. The reworking of Sedgwick’s concepts by economic geographers has created additional evidence and fertile ground for a re-reading of communication in development and social change. In essence, the concept of weak communication offers a reparative reading position, based on which more legitimacy and value is accorded to marginal communication practices, and the sustenance that communities can extract from these practices. By extension, and drawing on the performativity of knowledge, the concept of weak communication is also an attempt to accord more power and value to our capacity, as communication scholars, to influence reality through our work.

Legitimising the Informal: The Power of Weak Theorising Amongst the most inspirational ideas in Eve Sedgwick’s work is her association of dominant influential theory with ‘paranoia’, a term that she borrowed from psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. In her theorising of affect, Sedgwick (2003, pp. 128–130) explained how the way critics and scholars approached their objects of study was driven by continuous suspicion and fear of surprise. In her seminal work Touching Feeling, she paints an interesting image of the critical thinker, researcher and investigator who strives to develop her theoretical and discursive framework in order to expand its reach and reductiveness. For Sedgwick, the paranoia with wide generality is what leads to the emergence of ‘strong’ theory. Inspired by Silvan Tomkins’ more psychoanalytical approach, Sedgwick talks about the paranoia of social theorising to minimise surprise that yields a particular kind of strong theory where everything comes under a usually large concept

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such as neoliberalism, or globalisation. In Tomkins’ words, strong theory always has something to say about everything; it accounts for a broad range of very remote phenomena, based on which its explanatory power is also evaluated. For Sedgwick, strong theory is another expression of paranoid reading that doesn’t allow for anything new to be experienced. The main problem with this kind of thinking and knowledge production lies in reinforcing the status quo and the already ‘known’ while shutting down avenues to surprise and to alternative theoretical investigations. The opposite of strong theory is ‘weak’ theory, which—according to Silvan Tomkins, who coined the term—might be ‘little better than a description of the phenomena which it purports to explain’ (Sedgwick 2003, p. 134). Yet, this descriptive nature makes it no less powerful than strong theory. If there is one key difference, this is in its ability to offer richer, more focused and localised descriptions and explanations. The merit of weak theory lies in exactly not trying to be inclusive and all-­ encompassing in its explanatory premises, and not trying to confirm what we already know. Instead, its purpose is to open up new spaces of freedom and possibility for understanding and knowing the world. For Sedgwick, weak theory represents a ‘reparative’ model of reading that asks the reader, critic and researcher to let go of the paranoid position and instead be open to experience surprise (Sedgwick 1997, 2003). Sedgwick’s criticism to strong theory and her call for more attention to the rich description of a moment resonates with several of the critiques towards dominant and institutional approaches to the role that communication plays in development and social change, which tend to neglect the legitimacy of more marginal communication practices and the different types of well-being and development that these can enable. Easterly’s (2006) division of the development industry into ‘planners’ and ‘searchers’—where the former set big goals and adopt a top-down ‘transformational’ approach to development, but neglect the complexity of ground reality, while the latter are process-oriented who pay attention and listen to the people on the ground—reflects a similar logic and division between strong theory and its opposite, weak theory. In this case, while strong theory would approach development and poverty eradication as reconcilable with top-down communication and profit-maximising solutions, a weak theoretical approach would be more attentive and adaptive to local conditions and demands. There is indeed significant work in the field of communication for development and social change that exemplifies the value of home-grown development activities that are based on the simple,

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face-to-face communication (Quarry and Ramírez 2009). But how might we begin to rethink those informal communication practices in ways that open up new possibilities for both theory and practice? In fact, Sedgwick’s work has had a significant impact on recent geographical investigations (Brown and Browne 2011) that paved the way for further innovative applications of weak theorising. From those, it is particularly her influence on diverse economies scholars and the generation of different economic representations that offer a useful departure point for theorising weak communication.

Weak Theorising in Economic Transactions: Lessons from Economic Geography The idea of weak theorising has inspired several lines of inquiry in the field of social and economic geography (Browne 2009; Gibson-Graham 2006; Lim 2007) that have elevated the strength and applicability of Sedgwick’s approach. In fact, the work of geographers brings to light the common ground between economic geography and communication for development and social change, as it reveals the more nuanced and tangible effects of local and unmediated communication practices on individuals and communities. In this way, this work offers empirical legitimacy to the concept of weak theorising more broadly, while creating fertile ground for theorising weak communication more specifically. As Roelvink and Carnegie (2011) attest, diverse economies scholars have been inspired to understand their bodily dispositions—what Sedgwick describes as the paranoid ‘anxiety-mitigating’ stance—that constrain strong theoretical work, and thus to explore ways for generating different economic representations. Gibson-Graham’s (2006, 2008) theorisation of the weak economy is a case in point as it draws an explicit connection between Sedgwick’s theoretical ideas and questions of how to rethink the economy and reconstitute capitalism as a multidimensional and diverse process. Their theory of a ‘weak economy’ champions a view of global capitalism not as all-encompassing but as the outcome of many types of economic activities that are often less visible to researchers. For them, the economy is similar to an iceberg, where the tip constitutes formal market transactions, wage labour and capitalist enterprises. These are underpinned by submerged non-market transactions and social relations. Although the activities and relations below the waterline are generally hidden from view,

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the capitalist economy depends on these to function (Gibson-Graham 2006, p. 71). Gibson-Graham’s work informs a weak theorising of communication in at least two ways. First, drawing on the principles of weak theory, Gibson-­ Graham encourage the possibility of ‘not knowing’. By urging us to follow queer theory’s tools and read ‘for difference rather than dominance’, they aim to bring into visibility the great heterogeneity that characterises non-­ capitalist practices and all of the non-capitalist activity that sustains the global economy. Second, by putting forward the idea of an economy that rests on the sociability of market relations, the theory prompts an exploration of those relations that remain hidden when one looks at the economy only through the prism of capitalism. Although Gibson-Graham do not refer explicitly to communication practices that mediate economic relations, they describe alternative, non-monetised practices that could not be possible without communication. In this case, a weak theorising of the economy paves the way for a re-reading of communication particularly in relation to economic development. By revealing the significance of informal and less visible social relations that sustain economic transactions, this ‘decomposition’ of the economy by Gibson-Graham facilitates a better understanding of why economic growth and development of communities does not have to be steered by institutionally designed communication programmes and practices. Instead, it can emerge from the actual everyday relations, the dialogue and interpersonal communication that underpin any economic activity. In the field of communication for development and social change, Emile McAnany is one of the few scholars that have drawn attention to the role of communication in development through business practices and models that resemble theories of diverse economies. Drawing on specific cases of social entrepreneurship,1 McAnany (2012) attempts to delineate the common ground that connects this more hands-on economic practice with participatory approaches implemented in the context of communication for development and social change. Social entrepreneurship has been broadly defined based on its goal to create social value and impact through innovative and creative solutions. Although the role of communication is rarely discussed, McAnany highlights the integral role of personal and technology-based communication in the productivity of these business models, and more importantly in their social change strategies. However, it is McAnany’s emphasis on the local character of these business strategies and the change that they produce that also upholds the need for practicing

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a weak form of theory and refusing to succumb to explanations that are too wide (Sedgwick 2003). In this case, the term ‘local’ refers to the small-­ scale interactions that sustain economic transactions and where the empowering nature of weak ties and interpersonal communication also resides. In McAnany’s discussion, these ties and communication practices are a critical aspect of the ‘social’ character of entrepreneurship and the social value and social change it creates for communities. The cases of social entrepreneurship and diverse economies both point towards the closeness and trust that can be found in business relations and relations with co-workers, and which have also been recognised as integral to the relational social capital that sustains economic transactions and contributes to community development (Bolino et  al. 2002; Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998). Recent calls for more context-driven understandings of context-dependent social capital processes also reiterate the need to move from universal and abstract theories to more grounded approaches to relations and everyday practices played out in real-world (Naughton 2014). The lesson from economic geography and diverse economies is that weak theorising can prove instrumental for rethinking relations and communication in a development context characterised by the scarcity of concepts that can capture the numerous possibilities for communication practices and development, and which do not have to fit neatly into the embracing reach of strong theory. Social relations and communication practices can become visible through explanations and theorisations that do not aim to confirm what we already know. Instead, they can create new openings and spaces of freedom and possibility. The concept of weak communication is nothing more and nothing less than an attempt to offer a new theorisation for all those less visible practices and their role in enacting equally less visible forms of development.

Weak Communication The concept of weak communication captures the power of the ‘silent’ and less visible relations and communicative practices that support larger-­ scale aspects of social structure and social change. These practices are weak in the sense that they are less ‘noisy’ (Tufte 2017) than the more mainstream types of communication that sustains social movements and social change campaigns. They are also weak in terms of lacking the institutionalised, scalable and quantifiable character of communication practices that are meant to enable development. Yet, they remain powerful in their

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capacity to support and enable social change in subtle but significant ways. A typical example of weak communication is the interpersonal and dialogic communication through which people can give and receive information. Interpersonal communication enables meaningful knowledge generation and exchange, skill development and establishment of a platform for collective decision-making and action (Rodriguez 2011; Thomas and van de Fliert 2014). Yet, it remains neglected and undertheorised. Paulo Freire’s (2005) revolutionary pedagogy has paved the way for an understanding of dialogue as an empowering process of liberation from the unjust structures of society. Freire saw interpersonal communication between teacher and student as a process of exchange that empowers people to become aware of their own oppression, elevating the role of interpersonal communication in social change more broadly. The power of direct and interpersonal communication has, of course, been recognised in the context of communication for development programmes where community members have the opportunity to identify problems and suggest their own action strategies. Moreover, the role of interpersonal communication has been underlined by studies dating back to Lazarsfeld’s two-step flow process (1944), particularly with regard to the ways in which mass media interventions could stimulate interpersonal communication processes that would lead to further behavioural change (Morris 2003). What have received less recognition are the dialogic processes that are embedded in people’s daily activities and can facilitate development and empowerment in less visible and unforced ways. Informal communication channels such as through friends, family, peers, markets and festival gatherings provide spaces where people not only give and receive information but can also inform their decision-making and action in ways that can lead to more permanent change (McAnany 1980). The power of this informal and weak communication became evident in my study of the business relations between a community of fair trade, organic farmers in South India and their foreign buyers, a group of small private enterprises. The market exchanges between the two parties are characterised by a mutual effort to establish close relationships, and to listen and learn from each other. A process of mutual knowledge sharing has become embedded in and inseparable from their efforts to grow their incomes respectively. Not only has it encouraged a sense of growth and equality for the farmers, but has also led to decision-making and action taking with the potential for further transformations at individual and community levels (Touri 2016, 2018). Here, it was particularly the ‘listening’ side of the communication—from

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the buyers’ part—that proved critical, bringing into visibility the heterogeneity of actors and practices that can contribute to development. Listening embodies recognition of indigenous knowledge in development, even though the empowering aspect of knowledge sharing has traditionally been the property of the expert and the scientist (White 1994). Yet, listening has lost ground and credibility, and despite being ‘the function of communication that nurtures our self-awareness and sense of confidence, the one that helps us change our situation in our own terms’ (Quarry and Ramírez 2009, p. 20), it falls through the cracks of strong theoretical readings of communication in development and social change. The business relations that the farmers in South India share with their foreign buyers are testament of the relevance and legitimacy of practices such as the simple act of listening for development, and specifically for development that happens outside the formal boundaries of institutionally driven programmes. Such practices are weak because they open new avenues to surprise and understanding the world. They also encourage a different approach to development, one that is not tied to economic growth and income generation for marginalised communities but recognises the multiple dimensions of well-being and capability building. These include less measurable and quantifiable aspects of development and growth including communities’ self-awareness, confidence and motivation to work towards achieving social change in their own communities. In this sense, weak communication may be difficult to replicate or make scalable, but it does not need to expand its reach and reductiveness. It is a call for scholars to pay more attention and listen to the people on the ground without being driven by continuous suspicion and fear of surprise.

Performativity of Knowledge: From Theory to Practice Ultimately, the concept of weak communication offers a different choice in the kind of knowledge that we produce encouraging a performative orientation to knowledge. This is the knowledge that stems from a thick description of communication practices that directs attention to the nuances, affects and multiple codes of meaning in communication and development. Developing a weak theory of communication is a decision that influences the kind of worlds that we can create and in which we resist the pull towards strong theories of behaviour and dominant topics of

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research. Sedgwick (2003) reminds us that knowledge is performative and we actively participate in constituting our object of study. Along similar lines, Law and Urry (2004) draw our attention to the responsibility of social science to accept its performativity. By enacting methods that assume certain structural stabilities, social scientists enact those stabilities. Our performative approach to research needs to resist and respond to the dominance of strong theoretical approaches to communication, and to experiment with assembling communication for development in new ways. A concept of weak communication is an invitation to do just that.

Note 1. McAnany refers to two early proponents of this approach: Muhammad Yunus, an economist in Bangladesh; and Bill Drayton, a consultant for global firm McKinsey and official in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

References Bolino, M., Turnley, W., & Bloodgood, J. (2002). Citizenship Behavior and the Creation of Social Capital in Organizations. Academy of Management Review, 27(4), 505–522. Brown, G., & Browne, K. (2011). Introduction: Sedgwick’s Geographies: Touching Space. Progress in Human Geography, 35(1), 121–131. Browne, K. (2009). Women’s Separatist Spaces: Rethinking Spaces of Difference and Exclusion. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34(4), 541–556. Easterly, W. (2006). The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Freire, P. (2005). Education for Critical Consciousness. London: Continuum. Gibson-Graham, J.  K. (2006). A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.  K. (2008). Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for ‘Other Worlds’. Progress in Human Geography, 32(5), 613–632. Law, J., & Urry, J. (2004). Enacting the Social. Economy and Society, 33(3), 390–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/0308514042000225716. Lim, J. (2007). Queer critique and the politics of affect. In K. Browne, J. Lim, & G.  Brown (Eds.), Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics (pp. 53–68). Aldershot: Ashgate. McAnany, E.  G. (1980). The Role of Information in Communicating with the Rural Poor: Some Reflections. In A.  Gumucio-Dragon, & T.  Tufte (Eds.).

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(2006). Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (pp.  200–210). South Orange: Communication for Social Change Consortium. McAnany, E. G. (2012). Saving the World: A Brief History of Communication for Development and Social Change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Morris, N. (2003). A Comparative Analysis of the Diffusion and Participatory Models in Development Communication. Communication Theory, 13(2), 225–248. Nahapiet, J., & Ghoshal, S. (1998). Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23(2), 242–266. Naughton, L. (2014). Geographical Narratives of Social Capital. Telling Different Stories about the Socio-Economy with Context, Space, Place, Power and Agency. Progress in Human Geography, 38(1), 3–21. https://doi. org/10.1177/030913251348873. Quarry, W., & Ramírez, R. (2009). Communication for Another Development: Listening Before Telling. New York: Zed Books. Rodriguez, C. (2011). Citizen’s Media against Armed Conflict: Disrupting Violence in Columbia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Roelvink, M., & Carnegie, G. (2011). Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and the Imagining of Diverse Economic Possibilities’ in ‘Sedgwick’s Geographies: Touching Space. Progress in Human Geography, 35(1), 121–131. Sedgwick, E. K. (1997). Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is About You. In E.  K. Sedgwick (Ed.), Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction (pp.  1–37). Durham: Duke University Press. Sedgwick, E.  K. (2003). Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham/London: Duke University Press.. Thomas, P. N., & van de Fliert, E. (2014). Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change: The Basis for a Renewal. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Touri, M. (2016). Development Communication in Alternative Food Networks: Empowering Indian Farmers through Market Relations. Journal of International Communication, 22(2), 209–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/1321659 7.2016.1175366. Touri, M. (2018). Development and Communication in Trade Relations: New Synergies in Theory and Practice. Development in Practice, 28(3), 388–399. Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge: Polity Press.. White, S. (1994). The Concept of Participation: Transforming Rhetoric Reality’. In A. Gumucio-Dragon, & T. Tufte (Eds.). (2006). Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (pp.  125–137). South Orange: Communication for Social Change Consortium.

Context-Responsiveness Amalia G. Sabiescu

Context-Responsiveness Concept

as a Cross-Disciplinary

Notions of context coupled with notions of awareness, sensitivity, responsiveness and adaptiveness are being used in diverse disciplinary fields with theoretical, design and practical implications. These come by different namesakes, including context-sensitivity, context-awareness and environmental awareness. In principle these constructs all capture dialogic processes between agents and environments, often through technological mediation. For instance, responsive, context-aware and context-sensitive technologies are designed to respond to the environment or user’s actions and evolving preferences. Context-aware computing places significance on optimising technology design to rapidly adapt to multiple potential contexts of use (Dey et al. 2001). In the field of architecture, responsive architectures use sensors to capture information about environmental conditions and adapt their form, colour and characteristics in response. In my appropriation of this notion, I have initially defined and positioned the concept of context-responsiveness in the field of Information

A. G. Sabiescu (*) Loughborough University, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_8

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and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), through work on participatory technology and voice in minority communities (Sabiescu 2011, 2013). Conceptually, context-responsiveness is aligned to the social embeddedness discourse, denoting a preoccupation with locality, citizen initiative and the socio-cultural embeddedness of technology and innovation in developing nations (Avgerou 2008). Its definition builds on the concern with sensitivity to local contexts in designing socially embedded development interventions (Avgerou 2001) and adds a dynamic dimension, captured in the notion of responsiveness. A series of features delineate the use of the concept across disciplines: • It places the analytical focus on the relationship between an agent and the environment, emphasising a dialogic dimension which can take many forms—from behaviourist (stimulus-response) to agent-­ driven, conscious action. • It is a time-bound and action-oriented concept, which points to a process, a sequencing, evolution or passage of time that involves agentic action—sometimes mediated by technological artefacts. • It can be used to shed light on the mediating role of technology in technology-enhanced activities and programmes. Context-responsiveness is, importantly, a concept with a rich semantic charge, that can vary depending on what is meant by context, and how response and responsiveness are defined. To shed light on its potential use in communication for social change, I further unpack these terms, raising attention to the implications that go with adopting a certain theoretical frame. After a theoretical grounding, this chapter proceeds with outlining potential uses of the concept in communication for social change theory and practice.

Intellectual Dilemmas in Defining Context A positivistic definition will highlight ‘context’ as a hard-bound reality surrounding living entities. Scientific descriptions of context in a positivistic frame seek to isolate discrete properties of context, which can be perceived and measured in objective ways and further used as information and the basis of analytical models. These definitions are often used in context-aware computing, assuming that context can be broken down to processable information, is stable and separate from activity (Dourish 2004).

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Dourish contests such positivistic notions and instead proposes a view of context as ‘emergent property of occasions of interaction’ (p. 26). Context, in this view, is configured by agent interaction and activity. It is inclusive of people and processes, and is evolving dynamically with each new situation of interaction. Dourish draws on phenomenological theory; however, his view of context resonates as well with constructivist and participatory inquiry paradigms in social science research. In my own work, I have built upon Dourish’s view and re-framed it in a participatory inquiry paradigm, which emphasises the subjective-­ objective nature of reality (Heron and Reason 1997). Defining context as a subjective-objective construct (Sabiescu 2011, 2013), I emphasise the fact that, as well as objects, context includes people and perceptions, activities and understandings that are inherently human. As it is generated with each new interactional situation, the context is dynamic and cannot be demarcated by firm boundaries. This stance resonates as well with culturally framed understandings of context, such as the Japanese concept of ba (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Nonaka et al. 2000) and the Samoan term va (Wendt 1996), which denote shared spaces for meaning-creation and emerging relationships.

Response—Responsive—Responsiveness In a communication frame, response denotes a reaction or reply in a dialogic situation of communication. In biology, this can be extended to the reaction to any stimulus, which can be analysed in terms of time of reaction (immediate, delayed), awareness (involuntary vs. aware), agency (unwilling/unintended vs. purposeful) and the factors that drive the response. The terms responsiveness and responsivity have been appropriated as well in computer science, electrical engineering and neuroscience. In summary, they characterise the capacity of an artefact or system of generating an output in a dialogical or input-output relationship. To ready the concept for being useful in communication for social change, there are a series of aspects to draw attention to: • The question of agency: Based on this, we may distinguish among reaction and response—the former can be involuntary, whereas the latter implies awareness, purpose and agency. • Responsiveness versus adaptiveness: Responsiveness can refer to the capacity of providing a response or a reaction. It is part of a commu-

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nicative act. It can also be interpreted as adaptiveness, which implies that the agent/artefact modifies its state in response to context/ contextual conditions. • Constant versus strategic response: Systems can be thought of, that are in constant dialogic relationships with surrounding environments. Alternatively, systems or agents can devise strategic responses, based on thresholds for information quanta received or pre-­ defined goals.

Applications in Communication for Social Change The notion of context-responsiveness has implications with respect to the discourse that frames development practice and research, and by analogy the interdisciplinary field of research and practice of communication for development and social change. The preoccupation with context in international development is closely related to ways of interpreting and theorising culture. In the Post-War Modernisation paradigm and the reaction to it which found expression in the Dependency paradigm, culture was taken to be an obstacle to development, something to be overcome for embracing the promises of technological innovation and development (Hemer and Tufte 2016). The cultural turn in development practice and research recognised, on the contrary, the essential role of culture for sustainable development, which builds upon local resources and engages local communities (Avgerou 2008; Hemer and Tufte 2016). Context came to embody the wholeness of local conditions—including social, cultural, economic—which could no longer be ignored or dismissed for promised innovation breakthroughs to occur. However, context can be used as more than a container, umbrella concept for encompassing conditions in a locality. Coupled with the processual dimension provided by the notion of responsiveness, it can be used as a conceptual lens, a tool for informing research and intervention design methodology, and a device for researchers and practitioners to stay aware and reflexive while engaging in communication for social change research and initiatives. I will expound these ideas below, while engaging with a series of topics that I deem vital for the field of communication for social change, such as agency, responsibility, and cultural framing. I use vignettes that draw on present-day and historical realities and my own research, but are generalised in order to offer broader interpretation. While I would like to leave the framing of the context construct open, I use the examples below to show how some

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interpretations of context—particularly those that emphasise interactional and relational qualities—are more generative and can inform and sustain richer conceptual and methodological advances.

Context, Culture and Change Vignette 1: Long-term and short-term (cultural) change for two cultural minorities Resistance to change: Roma travelling groups settle for a while in the same country, then raise their tents and move further. They exchange goods and communicate with the locals, but are neither keen to open up nor change their ways to emulate the local culture. They maintain rather closed boundaries to keep the purity of their cultural traditions. In some of the regions they pass through, they are met with reluctance blended with fear and resistance. A new law is passed which forbids the Roma to leave the country and roam around. They are provided with places to build homes and settle in villages and cities. A couple of centuries later, some of the Roma groups assimilate, but others hold strong to their traditions and teach Romani as first language to their kids. Blending in: Groups of immigrants sharing the same language and culture gradually arrive and settle in a new country. The newly arrived tend to stay near their fellow community members. In time, a cultural minority is formed, in closely knit regional hubs. Most members are keen to learn from the local culture, adapt their ways and blend in. In time, their language borrows words from the local one; cultural traditions are renewed with every generation. This vignette lends itself to looking at culture and change in terms of context and responsiveness, particularly when defining context akin to phenomenological thinking (Dourish 2004) and participatory inquiry (Sabiescu 2013). The context is generated by an interactional situation: it is inclusive of people, activities, psychological processes of perception, meaning-making and communication. It is volatile, dynamic, and its boundaries are difficult to pinpoint. In this sense groups of people sharing a way of life, history and cultural traditions constantly enact interactional situations where culture frames perception and expression, and is also manifested in these.

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(C)ulture as contexts that travel: we carry with us our distinct way of segmenting and structuring the flow of experience in contexts and meta-­ contexts so as to orient ourselves through them and interact appropriately, since it is the context that makes the content of an interaction meaningful. (Brunello 2015; Watzlawick et al. 1967)

Cultural encounters happen in webs of shifting, overlapping and intersecting contexts, which are both constrained by and constraining for the agents and how they engage with an environment. The examples illustrate two types of responses embedded in patterns of interaction: response as input in a dialogic setting and response as adaptation. The Roma who aspire to preserve their culture and minimise influence tend to maintain transactional types of exchanges, carefully avoiding influence on their lifestyle and culture—they may meet and greet non-Roma, exchange goods, but will minimise other interactions such as participation in socio-cultural rituals and events, learning and sharing experience, intermarriage, and so on. Holding on to their unique culture, the Roma are an example of cultural continuity and resilience seen as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks. (Walker et al. 2004)

Minorities who desire to blend in, on the other hand, are open to adapt their ways to the local ones. They tend to generate interactional situations or contexts that are more conducive to cross-cultural exchange and may in time bear fruit in processes of enculturation, assimilation or cultural hybridity. At the same time, a parallel and often invisible process of cultural influence and change does happen even for groups that preserve their language and culture, such as the Roma (or others, including Catalans, Basques and indigenous nations). This process builds up in time through various interactional situations, coming to affect the group and its culture slowly and gradually, as water moulds rocks. For example, even in the Roma groups that maintain a strong cultural tradition, their ways of life and language changed considerably with borrowing local vocabulary and grammatical structures. This example points to the importance of looking at context-­ responsiveness not only as it happens over short periods of time, but also over the  long term, to offer insights into historical processes of change which are complex and multi-layered.

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Human and Technical Agency and the Question of Responsibility Vignette 2: Context-responsive technology for citizen consultation and crime prevention A local government installs an information and communication network with several broadcast and input devices throughout a city that has many conflicted and underprivileged areas. Services are designed to respond in real-time to contextual conditions and inputs—from weather conditions to the interests of passers-by. People can input in devices to ask for information and give voice to their opinions, but most often the device uses object and face recognition technology to tailor information transmission for users and passers-by, such as for families with kids and couples. Some devices are designed to ensure safety and document the conditions of life of the underprivileged, to inform the policies of the local government. In time, after critical conflicts are experienced in the city, artefacts are optimised to racially profile passers-by, track them and predict the likelihood of new conflicts happening, sending immediate notifications to the nearby police station. Machine learning algorithms are introduced to enhance performance. This leads to a series of incidents where the interpretations were erroneous and innocent people have been questioned, even held by law enforcement officers before being able to prove their innocence. The hypothetical scenario illustrated in this vignette is that of people becoming information-rich contexts for machines so that the latter can utilise the information to offer meaningful responses and solve situations of crisis. The process of formulating and delivering the response deserves attention here: the machine is designed to treat the surrounding environment as a source of information, from where it selects the meaningful bits (whether they come from buildings, weather conditions, people and movement) to provide on-demand responses. This can be complicated in the case of machine learning technology. The machine can learn based on past interactions, and improve its algorithm and the likelihood of giving desirable responses. It is at this point that the hypothetical scenario calls for a critical question: Who has the agency in these situations: The machine? The designers? The developers? The local government who ordered it? These questions become fundamental when incidents call for assigning responsibility.

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Read through a context-responsiveness lens, the vignette also calls attention to the importance of reflecting on unintended consequences when planning, commissioning and designing new, potentially intrusive and disruptive technology. Flattening human beings into information bits for machines that learn to prevent crime can initially be considered a very good purpose for a government-backed communication initiative. However, as the example above shows, this can easily spiral out of control. Remaking the chain of human and technical agency to understand who should assume responsibility is a daunting and impossible task. Rather, this scenario calls for reflexivity in communication for social change, to sustain more aware and sensitive processes of technology design (on reflexivity, see also Vignette 4, below).

A Tool for Research, Intervention and Evaluation Design Vignette 3: Designing a context-responsive sociotechnical environment for minority voice A communication for development intervention in a disadvantaged rural area is designed to be context-responsive—in the sense of meeting the needs and interests of local people and offering a meaningful technology-­ mediated communication solution. The local community is a cultural minority, and the intervention seeks to co-design a sociotechnical environment for collective communication and cultural expression. The researcher concludes that a mix of ethnography and participatory research are best fit to ensure alignment to local needs. In time, the communication solution settles upon open content creation for publishing a community website. Context-responsiveness considerations continue to drive the design of the initiative as it develops. The researcher notices from iterative rounds of data generation and analysis that local needs change, and what she thought of and conceptualised as the local context changed constantly throughout the intervention. This gave the impetus to design and test a methodology for content creation that ensured constant alignment to a changing context, using evaluation for harvesting data and informing constant re-design of the driving mechanism for community engagement.

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This vignette sums up a project on minority voice and participatory media which I conducted with two minority communities in rural Romania (Sabiescu 2013). This had as one of the results a methodological framework for community-based content creation called CoRA (context-­ responsive action). The perspective that led to CoRA was opened up by a set of simple observations: • That what we call ‘local context’ in a development intervention never stops changing; • That the boundaries between the intervention and ‘the local context’ are elusive, drawn artificially and • No matter how minimally intrusive research seeks to be, it cannot avoid creating ripples of change. One key element of CoRA was the new understanding of context expounded in this chapter. This conceptual appropriation of context enabled me to grasp dynamism and evolution happening before and during the intervention, and look differently at the relations between the locale and the initiative designed and deployed on-site. It informed the choice of methodology, seeking on the one hand to generate holistic understandings of the local setting through an insider’s perspective (through ethnography), and on the other hand to generate local participation, engagement and bi-directional flows of knowledge and information that could respond to the shifting, dynamic and constantly changing context (through participatory action research). CoRA included an evaluation model used as a tool for context-responsiveness, seeking to align the intervention design to the evolution of goals and underlying engagement drivers, akin to action evaluation (Dick 1998). The evaluation approach in CoRA is also an example of how responsiveness can be conceived strategically, to align to previously defined visions and associated goals.

A Tool for Reflexivity Vignette 4: Becoming aware of research as fluid context generating change An incentive-based system by which participants are offered vouchers to be used in local stores is used in research with members of a disadvantaged community, with different protocols:

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Participatory action research: A research intervention is designed to produce positive social change, aligned to local needs and agendas. The researchers are aware that the intervention will have intended but also unintended consequences. The vouchers are used strictly for the large-­ scale data collection part and are considered a fair reward for time invested. Great care is taken to devise an ethics framework that meets midway local expectations and university and research committee requirements. The impacts associated with researchers’ presence in the community and the research process are carefully discussed in community meetings. A board is devised to oversee the evolution of the project and how it impacts the community, committed to take corrective action as necessary. Longitudinal qualitative study: A 5-year study is designed to collect data every six months from a number of families in the same neighbourhood, local organisations and opinion leaders. The research is purely concerned with data collection; however, researchers are aware that their presence in the community and the rewards may be of consequence. Thus, they seek participants’ opinion with respect to the way the project and the rewards system are perceived in the community. One-off qualitative research: A series of interviews are scheduled in a community over three days. The researchers are introduced through a community centre; interviewees are called for interviews on its premises, sign a consent form, get their reward and leave in maximum one hour. Researchers do not expect any unintended consequences as they followed all the rules of informed consent ethics, and they will not return to the community once data is collected. Implications: In each of the situations above, the selection of the people who participated in the research and received vouchers started to be questioned, especially by people with scarce resources, who would have liked to receive them as well. This vignette brings attention to the subtle dialogic nature of the research situation: every research encounter can be seen to generate its own context—inclusive of people and their interactions, perceptions and reactions. These contexts engender change, though often this is subtle and can go unnoticed, like when an interview is conducted, and the researcher and interviewee will not be in contact again. However, subtle exchanges do take place and at times they can become significant. The incentive example is used above as an artifice to show visible traces that can

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be left by research in people’s reactions to compensations and rewards. However, every exchange—from filling out a questionnaire to an interview—is an interactional situation that may generate a response and leave a trace. To be reflexive in a research situation is to be aware of how these contexts are configured, and how the perspective of each agent involved in the interaction adds new layers of meaning to the entire situation. Agent responses or inputs in these contexts can have immediate effect, but they can also stay unnoticed until they build up in time and generate a new, this time visible response. For instance, a visible response may be represented by the moment when community members learn about the benefits some families have been having from a research project, and as word gets out, reactions start to accumulate. Three research approaches have been sketched in the vignette to evidence the gradation and intensity of the effect that the research situation is likely to cause—from highly engaging participatory research to minimally intrusive short-term one-off research. It is likely that in participatory and long-term research the potential effects are acknowledged, even anticipated, discussed and reflected upon; the less intrusive the research is perceived to be, the less influence and impact it is considered to generate. However, as suggested above, each and every research situation sparks a ripple of change—whether subtle or highly consequential. It is awareness to these ripples that a context-responsiveness frame calls attention to, for the researcher and practitioner involved in communication for social change.

Conclusion I have argued in this chapter that the notion of context-responsiveness can be used to bring fresh perspectives to critical questions and choices that we face in communication for social change research and practice. I illustrated how the concept can be used: • As a conceptual lens, to look at critical issues in communication for social change—such as social and cultural change, human and technical agency—in terms of interconnected, dynamic contexts bred by interactional situations. The responses generated in these contexts can be immediate or delayed, voluntary or involuntary, they can be mere reactions or complex, articulated responses. Complex processes of social and cultural change can be seen in terms of layered, multi-­ faceted, context-embedded responses with their consequences building up in time.

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• As a methodological tool, influencing the choice of approach and methods in research, or driving monitoring and evaluation models. Designing for context-responsiveness incurs attention to these dynamically configured interactional situations, and deciding on tools, artefacts, processes and activities that can intervene meaningfully in order to spur the creation of new contexts and engender different patterns of response. • As a tool for reflexivity for the researcher and practitioner, and by extension for every stakeholder who is involved in communication for development and social change initiatives. Reflexivity is necessary in the understanding that just like any interactional situation, research generates its own context and is a generative space for change. The consequences of research and practice interventions can be designed into projects intentionally (as in participatory action research) but can also be unexpected. Reflexivity is necessary to cover the space of possibility for both intended and unintended consequences. The question of reflexivity deserves further attention, particularly when the consequences of communication for social change research and interventions can be amplified by technology, as I illustrated in Vignette 2. Reflexive attitudes are needed to map the spectrum of possible outcomes that can stem from technological design choices. As historian Yuval Noah Harari recently argued in an interview with reference to the increasingly complex world in which we now live, ‘To act well, it’s not enough to have good values. You have to understand the chains of causes and effects.’1 Context-responsiveness has been proposed in this chapter as a lens that can shed light on these complex cause and effect chains. Through examples informed by real-life situations from research and practice in communication for social change, I showed how such chains are woven in intricate webs of interaction, making it more difficult, but nevertheless important to disentangle the pathways of change leading to present conditions and potential future ones.

Note 1. Reported in Freytas-Tamura, K. (2018) What’s Next for Humanity: Automation, New Morality and a ‘Global Useless Class’. New Work Times, March 19, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/world/ europe/yuval-noah-harari-future-tech.html

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References Avgerou, C. (2001). The Significance of Context in Information Systems and Organizational Change. Information Systems Journal, 11(1), 43–63. Avgerou, C. (2008). Information Systems in Developing Countries: A Critical Research Review. Journal of Information Technology, 23(3), 133–146. Brunello, P. (2015). Broken Premises: Towards an Intercultural Understanding of Bilateral Co-operation in ICT for Education in Burundi. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London. Dey, A., Abowd, G., & Salber, D. (2001). A Conceptual Framework and a Toolkit for Supporting the Rapid Prototyping of Context-Aware Applications. Human-­ Computer Interaction, 16(2–4), 97. Dick, B. (1998). Action Research and Evaluation. Innovations in Evaluation and Program Development. The Action Evaluation Research Institute, Antioch University. Dourish, P. (2004). What We Talk About When We Talk About Context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(1), 19–30. Hemer, O., & Tufte, T. (2016). Introduction: Why Voice and Matter Matter. In O. Hemer & T. Tufte (Eds.), Voice & Matter: Communication, Development and the Cultural Return (pp. 11–24). Nordicom: University of Gothenburg. Heron, J., & Reason, P. (1997). A Participatory Inquiry Paradigm. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 274–294. Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New  York: Oxford University Press. Nonaka, I., Toyama, R., & Konno, N. (2000). SECI, Ba and Leadership: A Unified Model of Dynamic Knowledge Creation. Long Range Planning, 33(2000), 5–34. Sabiescu, A. G. (2011, November 9–11). Context-Responsiveness in Community-­ Based Open Content Creation Initiatives. Implications for Evaluation. Proceedings of CIRN 2011 Community Informatics Conference. Prato, Italy. Sabiescu, A. G. (2013). Empowering Minority Voices. PhD dissertation, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland. Retrieved from http://doc.rero.ch/record/32702 Walker, B., Holling, C.  S., Carpenter, S.  R., & Kinzig, A. (2004). Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–Ecological Systems. Ecology and Society, 9(2), no Pagination (Online). Retrieved from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/ Watzlawick, P., Bavelas, J.  B., & Jackson, D.  D. (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. New York: W. W. Norton. Wendt, A. (1996). Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body. Span, 42–43(April-­ October), 15–29.

Meaningful Mobilities Jo Tacchi

Meaningful mobilities refers to locally meaningful social, economic or other change. The concept was first introduced in relation to gender and mobile phones in 2012 as a way of arguing that while mobile phones can be seen as active agents towards social change, they are only ever one part of change and must be understood as embedded within overarching structural arrangements as well as specific uses and settings in order to understand the part they play (Tacchi et  al. 2012). It was a way of drawing attention to the problems associated with allocating transformational properties to mobile phones which were, as they still are, held up as a panacea for ‘underdevelopment’. It was a way of trying to redirect attention to local experiences, contexts and meanings. The naming of the concept references the importance of recognising and acknowledging what kinds of change (mobilities) are meaningful to people themselves, based on their ways of experiencing and understanding the world. The play on the words ‘meaning’ and ‘mobile’ was both to indicate that mobile phones might not be understood in the same way by everyone, may have different meanings in different setting, and to reference the kinds of changes that

J. Tacchi (*) Loughborough University, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_9

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might be examined as mobilities, including social and economic mobility. Within development rhetoric, mobile phones were being implicated in social and economic mobility without actual evidence that this was being meaningfully achieved; uptake of the technology was equated with development. The widespread uptake of mobile phones is seen as a remarkable example of a leapfrogging technology, reaching the most remote, the most excluded. They are largely conceived, in development terms, as providing a platform for the delivery of information that can change lives. This conception exists within a broader understanding dating back to post World War II that sees technology transfer as central to international development, from industrial production technologies, agricultural and medical technologies, to media and communication. The digital age, including access to information and communication technologies and connectivity, is the latest example of this—an example of technologies being seen as information delivery platforms that can affect broad and powerful change. And yet, if international development is designed to address the relative differences between people and between communities, information and communication technologies have increased inequalities resulting in an overwhelmingly negative impact on the development agenda (Unwin 2017). Meaningful mobilities was a call to pay more attention to contextual factors, and less to the fetishisation of a single technology. It was useful at the time because of the ways in which mobile phones were talked about as somehow transcending other technologies, within the persistent development belief that technology transfer will modernise and transform developing countries and shape and change socioeconomic situations. This dominant narrative is very much located within a market-based logic and is a reminder of the pernicious and persistent modernisation paradigm of international development that survives all attempts to challenge or subvert it and firmly underpins development frames (Tacchi 2014). But the concept, when untied from a narrow focus on mobile phones, has more to say in relation to communication and development. Here, I expand on the concept of meaningful mobilities further, focusing on what it is, what it means and why it matters. I do this primarily in relation to international development, here conceived as an exercise of power. First, I discuss how meaningful mobilities helps us think through the conundrum we regularly face as communication scholars working with development organisations in relation to having always to emphasise the difference

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between communication and information. Second, it helps us to think about why arguing for the prominence of contextualised meanings is a worthwhile argument to pursue, despite how hard it is to win because technocrats determine what is important and how it is measured. Third, it can be used as a lens for examining the cognitive determinism of development frames which impose dominant logics and rationalities. I go through each of these aspects of the concept below in an effort to explicate its potential relevance to our field.

Information, Communication, Participation As communication for development scholars, we have been arguing for decades against the idea that media can aid development through one-way message delivery, against simplistic ideas that exposure to information in the form of media content will lead to the behaviour change of people living in poverty or experiencing other forms of exclusion and disadvantage. Communication is much more than the circulation or delivery of information; it is about relationships and dialogue and is essential to participatory development. The rearticulating of communication and development into communication for social change marked the widespread recognition of a need to focus on changes to social and governance structures rather than individuals and behaviours. Yet the focus, in communication for development practice, on behaviour change as an approach, is still prevalent. Development funding to address complex social issues still builds media and communication components around the delivery of information for that purpose. In my experience, as an academic undertaking research in communication and development for almost two decades, regularly in collaboration with development agencies and/or practitioners, there is a contradiction between what people say about communication and what they do. Many of the collaborative research projects I have led or engaged with were developed with the agreement that participatory approaches that recognise the importance of grounded realities and complex problems need to include a strong communication element and move beyond a focus on information delivery. Those working on the ground, in NGOs or community media organisations, who are embedded within and/or engage closely with communities who have needs, know most about what those needs are, but are constrained by funding flows, programmatic priorities, and the planning and reporting requirements of development agency

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funders. They struggle to find ways to fulfil funder requirements while delivering activities that are locally meaningful, that have to be reframed to fit funding calls and made measurable according to predetermined indicators distant from locally determined notions of what would constitute meaningful change. I have also worked with bureaucrats from large development agencies who seemed to be facing two directions at once—recognising that communication, engagement and participation is what will deliver something meaningful in the complex and messy realities of the communities they seek to intervene in, or problems they seek to address, but needing to fit into and report to established and measurable criteria of a dominant logic of development. A shared joke amongst one set of communication for development bureaucrats I worked with was around the KAP surveys they regularly used to monitor their programmes. KAP stands for knowledge, attitudes and practices, and is an illustration of the focus on information and individual behaviour change over communication and social change. The joke was to refer to these surveys as KRAP (i.e. not very effective), because it was widely appreciated that they really do not do much at all to increase meaningful knowledge. While I have observed a desire to, and collaborated to develop ways to, increase participation in the design, delivery and reporting of communication-based development interventions, I have also seen how development implementation reinforces established conceptions and definitions despite an expressed desire to do more to collaboratively create meaningful development with communities (Manyozo 2017). Efforts to meaningfully engage, it seems to me, ultimately become efforts of subversion of high-level institutional requirements and thus doomed to failure given the weight and power of the system, and investments in reinforcing it. The easiest route to delivering communication for development projects is to simplify complexity, plan activities that are measurable and that conform to established registers of monitoring and meaning. This leads to an abundance of behaviour change projects, with information packaged and delivered at scale, and serves only to place the emphasis for change on decontextualised and abstracted individuals rather than on suboptimal or oppressive social, economic and political systems and structures. In an effort to demonstrate the possibility of using alternative yet rigorous participatory approaches to developing and evaluating communication for development that recognise complexity, we developed a framework for evaluating communication for development and social change (Lennie

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and Tacchi 2013). Development agencies, organisations and practitioners have engaged with it and some have used it in their practice. There is an appetite for addressing critical and complex aspects of communication for development, and for approaching it in participatory and learning-based ways. However, this turns out in many cases to take place at rhetorical and theoretical levels, since in practice, for those bound up by, or working within, global development agencies and structures, and subject to or players in their exercise of power, there is little room for manoeuvre. Addressing complexity without simplifying it seems impossible. The biggest challenges are the power of the structures of meaning making and measurement, and, the technocratic processes for determining dominant logics, both of which I explore further below.

Contextualised Meanings and Measurements Meaningful means ‘making sense’ in contexts. It is important to resist the urges of development agencies that strive for replicability and scale. Diversity and respect for diversity require an appreciation of different ways of experiencing, meaning, knowing and valuing. The ‘seductions of quantification’ (Merry 2016) mean that measurement is a requirement of development policy making, spending and planning, and thus a form of power. This power subverts knowledge about development and social change and militates against development that is meaningful, except in the terms of the agreed measures. Those measures are generally determined a long way from the site of development interventions. Thus, the concept of meaningful mobilities intends to draw attention to the need to resist the power of quantification and assign more power to contextualised and qualitative understandings of what is meaningful. A regular issue related to working with organisations in the communication and development space was the requirement to report against indicators. Indicators that are established and accepted by development agencies become a way of describing the world and measuring programme performance. In fact, indicators ‘reflect the social and cultural worlds of the actors and organisations that create them and the regimes of power within which they are formed’ (Merry 2016:5). Political and ideological decisions are both hidden and legitimated through statistical evidence and experts. Technocratic knowledge feeds into and underpins forms of governance such as results-based management, now prominent in major

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development agencies. How statistics are created and used makes a difference to the way the world is understood and how it is governed. Merry traced the processes of global indicator construction, often developed over two or three decades, for human rights, gender violence and sex trafficking. She showed how they are gradually developed from fragments of earlier ones, that cultural assumptions and specific theories of social change are embedded in them, that global experts (predominantly from the global North) hold specialist knowledge and authority, and that ‘categories and models based on local knowledge are difficult to incorporate’ (ibid.:6). Indicator culture is a technology for ordering knowledge. They categorise and count things regardless of how they are experienced: de-stressing experience, simplifying complex relationships and decontextualising meanings. In the mid-2000s I worked with a communication for development NGO in Nepal to develop a participatory monitoring and evaluation methodology. Over four years we collaboratively developed a methodology that still influences the work they do today. One of the issues the NGO faced was that they always had indicators imposed upon them or were asked to set indicators conforming to funder requirements at the application stage, and invariably they felt these indicators did not really help them learn anything new or useful. They considered them to be a tick-box exercise, part of reporting that satisfied funder requirements but did nothing to advance funder’s knowledge, their own knowledge or their work on the ground. Because of this, we once spent a whole day workshopping how to go about developing ‘participatory’ indicators. That is, what questions would we ask community members to establish indicators that had meaning for them? This exercise failed, mainly because the layers of complexity we kept thinking about made it really hard to come up with clearly defined, simple and measurable indicators. Our lists of questions grew extensive, and each question prompted discussions about others. The kinds of issues the NGO was dealing with were not easily quantifiable, and whilst qualitative indicators can be used in evaluation and monitoring, they proved difficult to construct since they invited appreciation of less tangible, more fluid and complex aspects of life that could not be easily or satisfactorily categorised and simplified. We found other ways to think about and explore and evaluate change that did not rely on pre-set indicators—including ways of using theory of change approaches that engaged a range of stakeholders, and participatory techniques. The NGO still needed to complete its reporting

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against pre-set indicators, and dutifully did so, but also found additional, extracurricular ways of learning from their research and evaluation. They recognised that the local knowledge they sought was part of complex cultural constructions, with a range of modes of operation and relations to social and cultural fields (Escobar 1995). Robert Chambers (2017:92) defines a paradigm as ‘a coherent and mutually supporting pattern of concepts and ontological assumptions; values and principles; methods, procedures and processes; roles and behaviours; relationships; and mindsets, orientations and predispositions’. He contrasts Newtonian and Complexity paradigms, where the Newtonian paradigm suits physical things that are controllable, measurable and predictable, and the Complexity paradigm suits people and uncontrollable, unpredictable processes. The former follows a linear, while the later a non-­ linear, logic. He observes a problematic shift towards the Newtonian paradigm in development policy and practice. This can be seen in the indicator culture that radiates out from development’s core and demands a particular type of knowledge order. The concept of meaningful mobilities challenges development’s categories but also recognises their power in shoring up development frames.

Development Frames, Cognitive Determinism Experts and professionals in international development construct and transmit knowledge about poverty and how to reduce it (Green 2011). Anthropologists have critiqued development for decades, first by contrasting the world views and knowledge of development programmers with indigenous knowledge and then approaching knowledge as contested dynamic interfaces, but less attention has been paid to ‘the knowledge practices at the top’ of development and the internal dynamics of its ‘regimes of truth’ (Mosse 2011:2). Mosse describes an ‘expert consensus’ that underpins ‘neoliberal institutions’ reworking state governance to emphasise the role of markets in reducing poverty. Universal logic and rules built upon market-driven incentives and law create ‘travelling rationalities’ whereby places and relations are subsumed by formulaic processes and categories (ibid.:4). As in Merry’s critique of quantification and indicators, we see the technicalisation of policy and centralisation of expertise. In this framework of expertise and control where communities and citizens are conceived through this neoliberal rationality, citizens themselves

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become experts at that rationality, and communities and society are rendered technical (Li 2011). It takes a lot of work to continuously reinforce dominant logics and travelling rationalities, since they regularly come face to face with realities that defy them. The persistent notion of technological panacea should not be sustainable if development is really about addressing inequalities, but its persistence may be understood if international development is, rather, a ‘machine for reinforcing and expanding the exercise of bureaucratic state power’ (Ferguson 1994:255), and if the realities that defy them are unseen and unheard. From that perspective, development is a political project that all the while claims to be non-political, using sleight of hand to draw our attention away from its project of serving state needs by focusing on problems like poverty which becomes a technical project, addressed with technical solutions. Technical experts with specialist knowledge guide and administer the development project, framing our thinking about the world, forming an interpretive grid and providing sets of meanings (Ferguson 1994). It reinforces bureaucratic assemblages of knowledge. This has been regularly illustrated to me over the years, although I haven’t always recognised it at the time. I have been invited to ‘help’ organisations and agencies rethink their approaches to the evaluation of communication for development based on work I have done to develop approaches that recognise complexity, prioritise local knowledge and experience, and follow participatory and learning-based approaches. It has been very interesting to collaborate in this way, but increasingly disappointing to be faced with situations where I am asked to provide answers, positioned as an expert with technical knowledge that can be applied anywhere in the world. The whole approach I have been working with is about altering such ideas about expertise and knowledge. When working with development practitioners, specifically in order to bring an approach that recognises complexity, it has often been apparent that what would be really valuable to them would be to help them find a way of fitting unwieldy complexity into simple and measurable evidence. This is a reflection of the oppressive weight and power of dominant logics, travelling rationalities and indicator culture that determine ways of understanding and measuring the world. The role of technical experts is to apply this logic to messy realities and make it fit. Travelling rationalities, as Mosse (2011) points out, get translated into social and political arrangements, but organisations and practitioners need help with the translation practices on the ground.

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Because of communication’s necessary focus on people, relations and meanings, as communication for development scholars we should be playing a greater role in revealing and challenging this situation. In its original formulation, meaningful mobilities was developed to encourage us to challenge our analytical frameworks in relation to mobile phones and their affordances. ‘Mobilities’ was used both to reference mobile phones and to place them into broader notions of mobility including social and economic—the ‘ends’ rather than the ‘means’ of development (Sen 1999). As such, it could be seen to have reinforced a narrow focus on poor people and communities, rather than turn our gaze to development institutions and their exercise of power. Don Slater (2013) tells us that we need to observe and contest the seemingly unchallengeable and universal categories of media, development and globalisation, because it is through them that we covertly organise the world and people within it. To examine and explore experiences and situated knowledge about media, development and globalisation, he uses the deliberately ‘empty’ notions of communicative ecologies and communicative assemblages. Meaningful mobilities is likewise intended to be a deliberately empty concept, to be observed and contested. This requires an open engagement. Meaningful mobilities opens up categories and calls for a more self-­ reflexive and self-questioning approach to communication for development, that recognises the complexities involved in development and research processes. It urges us to avoid settling on universalising categories that prioritise development’s dominant perspectives and cosmologies, to value local meanings and follow a more questioning and learning-based approach. Development’s recurrent refocus on technology as a platform for information delivery, through mobile phones for example, means that the arguments of communication for development and social change scholars that draw attention to systemic inequalities have failed, and we must reshape and rehearse them once again, for newer media and communication technologies, in an ever more neoliberal and econometric-­ influenced development arena. This is one reason why I wanted to further develop and re-present the concept of meaningful mobilities here.

References Chambers, R. (2017). Can We Know Better? Reflections for Development. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing.

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Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ferguson, J. (1994). The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Green, M. (2011). Calculating Compassion: Accounting for Some Categorical Practices in International Development. In D.  Mosse (Ed.), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development (pp. 33–56). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Lennie, J., & Tacchi, J. (2013). Evaluating Communication for Development: A Framework for Social Change. Oxford: Earthscan, Routledge. Li, T. M. (2011). Rendering Society Technical: Government Through Community and the Ethnographic Turn at the World Bank in Indonesia. In D. Mosse (Ed.), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development (pp. 57–79). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Manyozo, L. (2017). Communicating Development with Communities. Abingdon: Routledge. Merry, S. E. (2016). The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence and Sex Trafficking. London: University of Chicago Press. Mosse, D. (2011). Introduction: The Anthropology of Expertise and Professionals in International Development. In D. Mosse (Ed.), Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development (pp. 1–31). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press. Slater, D. (2013). New Media, Development and Globalisation. Making Connections in the Global South. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Tacchi, J. (2014). Being Meaningfully Mobile: Mobile Phones and Development. In J.  Servaes (Ed.), Technological determinism and Communication for Sustainable Social Change. Lanham: Lexington Books. Tacchi, J., Kitner, K., & Crawford, K. (2012). Meaningful Mobility: Gender, Development and Mobile Phones. Feminist Media Studies, 12(4), 528–537. Unwin, T. (2017). Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dramaturgy of Social Change Thomas Tufte

Social uprisings have in recent years significantly come to shake and shock political systems. We saw it in the Arab Springs, in the Indignados Movement in Spain and in the Occupy movement, all 2011; we saw it in the Gezi uprising in Turkey in 2013, in the Brazilian uprisings in 2013–2014, in the FeesMustFall movement in South Africa in 2015; and we have seen it many times since, in Hong Kong, Chile, Catalonia and Lebanon as well as in the global climate change protests, to name but a few. These uprisings are acts of citizenship facilitated by digital opportunities in the Global Now (Hemer and Tufte 2016). But they are most often also connected to profound, long-lasting and often historical struggles for social justice. These integral processes can be understood from the

An earlier version of this chapter was published in: Hemer, O. & H-A. Persson (Eds). 2017. In the Aftermath of Gezi. From Social Movements to Social Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan. T. Tufte (*) Loughborough University, London, UK University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_10

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analytical lens I propose, ‘the dramaturgy of social change’ a lens which I will unpack in this chapter. First, in analysing the nature of social change these social uprisings address, I draw on Engin Isin’s notion of ‘activist citizenship’ to argue that a new vocabulary is needed in order to theorise citizenship within the social and political struggles that we are experiencing today. Such an understanding of citizenship opens up to a more dynamic understanding of social change where emphasis is on the creative, proactive enactment of citizen engagement, articulating condensed moments of community, sense of inclusion and belonging in times of fake news, austerity and loss of trust in governing institutions. Second, I explore the connection between short-term mobilisation and long-term social change. The actual social uprising, protest or performance is rarely a stand-alone occurrence. By drawing on social movement theory and by recognising and incorporating reflections about the role of social media in social movement I propose the notion of ‘dramaturgy of social change’ as an analytical lens that can helps us identify the dynamics of an activist citizenship. It will help us understand how processes of rupture and of social change emerge from activist citizenship, unveiling both the urgency and immediacy of current political matters, but also how they connect with deeper challenges of development and social change.

Acts of Citizenship How should we conceptualise acts of citizenship? Professor of politics, Engin Isin argues that throughout the twentieth century an unnamed figure has been making its appearance on the stage of history. This figure is the activist citizen, a figure implicated in the emergence of a web of features connected in a dynamic and interactive change process where new sites, scales and acts have emerged. It is in this web of sites, of scales and of acts through which ‘actors claim to transform themselves (and others) from subjects into citizens as claimants of rights’ (Isin 2009, p. 368). But how and when do such processes occur, these processes of transformation from subjects into citizens? The recent waves of social uprising and social movement in various ways illustrate a new, more fluid notion of citizenship which contests the dominant perception of citizenship in the twentieth century. While the predominant emphasis in perceptions of citizenship for long has been on ‘citizenship as status’—for example by inheritance, via birth a specific place

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or by naturalisation—what we are experiencing as a strong trend today is the emergence of citizenship as practice. Here citizenship is less about who we are but what we do. Acts of citizenship are linked to this emphasis upon the doings of people. They are acts whereby rights are claimed, and they are carried out in particular sites and scales. This changes our conception of the citizenship, but also of the political (Isin 2009, p. 370). Isin defines the ‘acts of citizenship’ as acts that are not defined by the status of the actors but by the demonstration that ‘these acts produce subjects as citizens’. They do so by constituting themselves as those with ‘the right to claim rights’, paraphrasing Arendt’s concept of ‘the right to have rights’ (Isin 2009, p. 371). These acts further ‘stretch across boundaries, frontiers and territories to involve (and create) multiple and overlapping scales of contestation, belonging, identification and struggle’. Through this analytical entry point, the dynamics of contemporary social movements can, despite often delivering very harsh critiques of government and institutions, be seen and understood as struggles for social and political inclusion. Glocal Movements Furthermore, many recent social uprisings and movements fit well with what I elsewhere have called glocal movements (Tufte 2017, pp. 128–130). The glocality signals the interconnection between local and global development challenges. It is seen for example in the way micro-narratives around specific development challenges and critical themes in cities across the globe speak to and connect with the more generic critiques of for example corrupt governments and lack of accountability. A case in point is Latin America in late 2019, where a rage over the increase in bus fares in Chile sparked not only the largest anti-government demonstrations since the fall of General Pinochet in 1989, but also connected and resonated with recent and subsequent uprisings in Ecuador, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia and to a lesser extent Brazil where the polemic President Bolsonaro experienced a record-low level of trust in record time after election, but yet with limited social mobilisation. Latin America was, and is, experiencing a profound regional crisis of trust and legitimacy in national governments. Many scholars have underscored the point that the self-identity of many of the local movements contains strong glocal elements. They are often part of something bigger, a regional—as in the case above—or even global

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movement striving for citizen inclusion. However, the confluence of movements is not a process that moves exclusively from the national to the transnational. A variety of sites and scales are seen connecting the local to the regional, the city to the nation, the neighbourhood to the city and beyond. For example, Diaz argues that the Indignados Movement in Spain in 2011 was ‘a movement of movements’ that came together around common causes in the experienced mobilisations, but at the same time contained a multiplicity of histories and trajectories of activism that stretched from the anti-globalisation movements to cyberactivism, anarchism, civil rights, environmentalism, neighbourhood movements and beyond (Diaz 2014). While Diaz illustrates glocality across time, linking a confluence of historical struggle in a momentous national ‘Now’, Ogan, Giglou and d’Haenens offer a case of a glocal movement across space, across Europe. Their study illustrated how the Gezi uprising in Turkey in 2013 was not only local. The uprisings in favour of preserving a park in Istanbul were not only followed by the Turkish diaspora in cities across Europe, but it also sparked demonstrations amongst them. However, just like in Turkey, similar divisions were also found across Europe between those strongly in favour of the uprisings and those contesting them (Ogan et al. 2016). Consequently, local movements like the Indignados Movement in Spain and the Gezi uprising in Turkey connect in time and space with many of the contemporary global development challenges. Furthermore, they actively networked with other movements that were pursuing similar agendas. The confluence of many movements was also seen, for example, in the many political parties and coalitions that emerged in 2013, 2014 and 2015 especially across Europe. While being extremely diverse in their thematic orientation, they were nonetheless uniform in their overall critique of authoritarianism, climate change policies and neoliberal development policies and practices. The Changing Citizenry The activist citizens seen in the above examples are at the core of what Isin seeks to identify with his notion of ‘a new figure of citizenship’. They illustrate acts, scales and sites of this new activist citizenship and thus what we may call a changing citizenry. The transformation through acts of citizenship to make claims for rights, rights to a park, to public transport, to

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health services and housing, to sustainable cities and to overall sustainable development have all been components in the uprisings. Isin’s framework helps us distinguish the political dimension of these acts. By distinguishing between acts and actions Isin emphasises the transformative aspect of acts. Acts are ruptures or beginnings that challenge the order of things, contrary to actions and to habitus. Acts make a difference, being it in breaking routines, understandings and practices. Isin defines acts of citizenship as ‘those acts that transform forms (orientations, strategies, technologies) and modes (citizens, strangers, outsiders, aliens) of being political by bringing into being new actors as activist citizens’. As claimants of rights they create or transform sites and they stretch scales. It is in these acts of citizenship and recognising their sites and scales, that we find an entry point to further unpacking the dramaturgy of these social change processes. By focusing on rupture rather than order, Isin focuses on the rupture that enables the actor to create a scene rather than follow a script (Isin 2009, p. 379). In this creative process lies the opening to understand the dramaturgy of social change. It is by relating and connecting the ruptures emerging from the immediate uprisings with the longer-term narratives of social change that we can begin to understand the deeper societal implications of contemporary uprisings.

The Dramaturgy of Social Change Many recent studies of social movements have analysed the performance, creativity or musicality of the social movements they are studying. Isin’s theory of activist citizenship also speaks to performance and creativity. To further expand on these ideas, I am introducing the notion of dramaturgy. By exploring the dramaturgical elements of a process of social change, we can capture the dynamics between the sites and scales in which actors create their scene and act out their citizenship. It serves as a useful way to explain the links between long-term social change agendas and strategies and short-term insurgencies with their here-and-now tactics. The notion of dramaturgy connects the small stories of particular events with the larger narratives of development and social change. As for the role of digital media, it becomes an integral element of the analysis.

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Integrating Topics and Tactics While many social movements are clear about both the tactics of the moment and their strategies over time, a dramaturgical approach to their communication practices helps us connect the peak moments of insurgencies with the longer-lasting struggles for social change. A dramaturgical approach enables us to integrate two analytical pathways: first, it allows us to unpack the topics or the storyline in question. In this case that means unpacking the contents of the claims that these ‘claimants of rights’ articulate in their narrative of change; secondly, it allows us to explore the tactics, including the strategies applied to articulate a process of social change. Unpacking the dramaturgy of social change becomes a process of analysis whereby we can explain how the topics and tactics of social movements are spun together in a web of socio-cultural and political-economic dynamics, communication strategies and narrative progression. How then is social change understood from this dramaturgical perspective? The dramaturgy of a story refers to the dramatic progression of a story being told. The drama curve of the unfolding narrative connects the peak moments of an insurgency with the long-term struggle for social change or social justice. For example, expressions of anger over the project of building a shopping centre at Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013 were not only a story of discontent about losing a rare green spot in the large city of Istanbul. It also expressed the deeper concern about urban development, housing at affordable prices and a decent quality of life in the ever-­ expanding metropole of Istanbul. The immediate narrative of protest connected to longer-term visions of improved livelihoods. Importantly, the vision of improved livelihoods is embedded in ongoing struggles that have histories and trajectories of contestation and protest and typically fluctuating experiences of progress and set-backs. Social movement theoretician Alberto Melucci speaks to this interrelation between short-term, urgent demands and longer-term development objectives when he states: ‘movements are not occasional emergencies in social life located on the margins on great institutions …. In complex societies, movements are a permanent reality’ (Melucci 1996, p.  116). The long durée of social movements and the sparks and outpourings of anger seen in the peak moments of mass social mobilisations are interconnected processes. Melucci distinguishes between the periods when social movements are active and visible in the public sphere and the latent periods

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when social movement activity declines and becomes less prominent (Melucci et al. 1989). The perspective of dramaturgy helps us capture the political tensions, the power play at stake, the social, temporal and spatial dynamics and the distribution of roles of this ‘permanent reality’. In other words, it helps us unpack the sites and scales of the acts of citizenship. Early and often premature explanations in the media often indicate that social uprisings ‘arise from nowhere’ and ‘take governments by surprise’. However, it is widely recognised today that each movement has its own particular history and trajectory and that they very often are rooted in long-term struggles. Through the ‘dramaturgy of social change’ lens, the analysis deepens, the ‘surprising’ uprising is viewed as more than an angry protest. Meanwhile, the connection between the peaks of social mobilisation and longer-term development objectives does not imply that social change must be a linear process. Rather, it signals that the struggles for social justice and human rights have their fluctuations. The emotional engagement of social movements is often seen as crucial to loosen up and provoke social dynamics in politically deadlocked situations. Intelligent tactics often help to articulate this (McDonald 2006). An interesting dimension of this question regards what sites of participation sparked most emotional engagement. This brings us to the role of the social media as a potential site of participation. Is there a difference in the form of engagement happening via social media vis-à-vis that happening through face-to-face interaction? According to a study of the Turkish diaspora in three European countries and their uprising in solidarity with the Gezi Park uprising, there was no difference in the emotional engagement online and offline. Those who participated offline in street demonstrations and alike did, surprisingly, not express a higher level of emotion than those who participated through online postings (Ogan et al. 2016, p. 134). Changing Opportunity Structures and the Growing Role of the Media To capture the bigger picture and the long-term dimension, Charles Tilly (2008, p.  95ff) provides a useful theorisation of social movements grounded in his in-depth studies of historical social movements in London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to Tilly, a new form

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of popular politics came into being in Europe and the United States in the period 1760–1839, and widespread use of the term ‘social movements’ emerged (Tilly 2008, p. 119). Tilly connects specific performances and their repertoires to overarching claims typically based on identity, standing or programmes (Tilly 2008). He identifies three core elements of social movements that demonstrate this deep interconnectivity: First, campaigns, which he understands as a ‘sustained, coordinated series of episodes involving similar collective claims on similar or identical targets’. Campaigns are often understood in the work of NGOs and international development organisations today as shorter interventions, but Tilly understands them as long-term efforts to achieve a specific development objective (Tilly 2008, p. 121). Repertoires are understood as the way participants in campaigns regularly use performance to make collective claims. These performances can range from associations and coalitions to public meetings, petition drives, street demonstrations and rallies to public statements and lobbying (Tilly 2008, p. 121). Many contemporary examples focus on developing such repertoires, typically by carrying out a number of performances to make their collective claims. The third element is the display and collective enactment of worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment (WUNCs). Tilly’s social movement analysis helps us connect the micro-narratives of change that many individuals and movements came to the public squares with to the more profound critique of development, which remains an underlying discourse in most of these uprisings. The narratives of individuals and sub-groups often sparked by frustrating personal experiences are almost always connected to more generalised aspirations, be they deeper struggles for better health, education and green growth, or the struggles against corruption, environmental degradation and global warming. Often, what appeared to be a collection of highly heterogeneous movements was in fact a movement of movements where common ground had been found around critiques of the neoliberal economic growth model that is supporting a modernisation process at the expense of marginalising groups in society. The lack of connection between governments’ policies and the reality of their citizens, the distance between the political class and the people and the lack of listening are the issues that unite. The proliferation and transformation of media and communication infrastructures and the transforming social practices aligned with this process are challenging the dominant way political science frames and analyses

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social movements. From being understood within the logic of maximising political opportunity structures, a new analytical framework is emerging that better captures the interplay between media, power and social change. This framework is carving out a conceptual space for media as everyday practices, as social and cultural processes and as actors influencing institutions in society. The Belgian media scholar Bart Cammaerts (2012) has offered an inspiring contribution to this field by proposing ‘mediation opportunity structures’ (MOS) as a conceptual approach to the necessary contemporary incorporation of media and communication studies into the analysis of social movements and social change. This approach aligns with a non-­ media-­centric and situational concept that captures the dynamic interplay between structure and agency. The concept opens up opportunities for studies of mediations as cultural processes where negotiations of power occur in asymmetrical but not totalising contexts and where the double articulation of mediation has both a symbolic and a material dimension. With the Chilean media scholar César Jiménez-Martínez, Cammaerts applies MOS as an analytical model for the study of the Brazilian Vinegar revolution and activists’ opportunities to engage in social mobilisation and social movements (Cammaerts and Jiménez-Martínez 2014). Also, the example of Gezi Park illustrates the current expansion from traditional political opportunity structures to include and even emphasise mediation opportunity structures that underscore the centrality of media practices, mediation and mediatisation to the opportunities for citizens to articulate their voice and have an influence through social mobilisation and collective action. We are now seeing social movement theory expand its focus to contemplate the significant role of media and communication in processes of social change. Similar communication challenges can be identified from the perspective of institutions such as NGOs, United Nations agencies and even governments communicating for social change. With the rise in populist governments and movements, and with growing authoritarianism and the challenge of trust in the social media, the way we conceptualise and strategise communication for social change is changing the way we integrate social movement theory with media and communication theory in our theories about social change.

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Experience Movements and Their Storytelling One of the most significant aspects of the social uprisings of recent years has been the emotional outpouring, seen in the condensed moments where multitudes have assembled physically, expressing discontent, claiming rights and formulating new visions of development and social change. Many words have been used to characterise the intensity of these moments: rage, outrage, desperation, insurgency, deception, but also feelings of optimism, community, hope and belief in an alternative vision for society. An interesting point has been how these experience movements have dramatised their cause in pursuit of their vision. Performances have often played a role as acts of citizenship in contemporary social movements. This resonates with Kevin McDonald’s emphasis on the bodily experience in his definition of social movements as experience movements (2006). Storytelling, and the crafting, performance and representation of these stories have also been central on many levels. In some cases, individualised stories became iconic and visible narratives in specific social movements. Examples range from Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself alight in Tunisia on 17 December 2010 to the woman with the blue bra succumbing to police brutality in Cairo on 17 December 2011 or the ‘lady in Red’ with a white bag, the colours of the Turkish flag, sprayed with tear-gas during the Gezi uprising in an unprovoked attack. They were all tied to the more collective elements of crowds mobilising around common causes. These narratives of uprising were also closely tied to the narratives of public protest, most notably the coming together of dissatisfied citizens in squares in Istanbul, Madrid and Cairo or in front of buildings such as the huge sports arenas in Brazil or the Wall Street of Hong Kong. Furthermore, the articulation of these narratives combined the massive social mobilisation in the streets with the integral use of social media, producing opportunities to remediate particular experiences into the infinite space of social media networks. The interrelation between sites, scales and acts of citizenship became evident, serving to maximise the force of the movement. In summary, performance, creative storytelling and the active use of all forms of media helped narratives of change quickly spread far and wide. While there were a variety of reasons across the globe for social uprisings to occur, a common element was their struggle for visibility, communicating their feelings and telling their story, often making private experiences of austerity a public concern. These processes of social change resonate strongly with the centrality Hannah Arendt gives to storytelling and

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artistic expression in her reflections on how to make the private a public concern. According to Arendt: Compared with the reality which comes from being seen and heard, even the greatest forces of intimate life, the passions of the heart, the thoughts of the mind, the delights of the senses, lead to an uncertain, shadowy kind of existence unless and until they are transformed, deprivatized and deindividualized, as it were, into a shape to fit them for public appearance. The most current of such transformations occurs in storytelling and generally in artistic transposition of individual experiences. (Arendt 1958, p. 50)

Times of Shrinking Space for Civil Society Informed by the notion of activist citizenship this chapter has offered brief examples of how eventful social uprisings and long-term social movements together have configured the space and opportunity for citizen engagement in our time. I have analysed some of the acts of citizenship that characterise the ‘new figure of citizenship’. Mediation opportunity structures have emerged through the developments of digital media and in the transnational networking and interaction seen amongst the social movements across the globe. However, what requires more attention are the political contexts these social dynamics occur in. The fact is that many of the opportunities for bottom-up social change to unfold do not occur in a vacuum but rather in contested spaces of political struggle in which the role of the state is often central. While many countries are experiencing increasing citizen engagement around social, economic and political issues, they are simultaneously experiencing a shrinking of the space for civil society to articulate demands and media to communicate freely. This was the case in Turkey, where the space for activist citizenship was significantly reduced following the attempted coup against the government in July 2016. While this space was already challenged and difficult for activist citizens to navigate in, it has been severely hampered following the events of July 2016. Similarly, the shrinking space for civil society in Brazil during President Bolsonaro’s government is an equally clear example. Unfortunately, this is part of a global trend. A report already in 2014 documented shrinking spaces for civil society being the case in no less than 94 countries worldwide (Wagner and Dankova 2016).

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Through the lens of dramaturgy, this chapter has identified how social uprisings and long-term struggles for social change are connected. The ‘dramaturgy of social change’ lens allows us to analyse how fluctuations of the political opportunity structures and the mediation opportunity structures together inform the processes of social change that cut across time and space, integrating the local and the global, the immediate protest with the visionary longer-term struggle. Unpacking the dramaturgy of social change serves to inform and better understand the possible pathways for new acts of citizenship.

References Arendt, H. (2009) (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cammaerts, B. (2012). Protest Logics and the Mediation Opportunity Structure. European Journal of Communication, 27 (2), 117–134. Cammaerts, B., & Jiménez-Martínez, C. (2014). The mediation of the Brazilian V-for-Vinegar protests: from vilification to legitimization and back? [A mediação dos protestos brasileiros ‘V-de-Vinagre’: da vilificação à legitimação e de volta?]. Liinc em Revista, 10(1), 44–68. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.18617/liinc.v10i1.697. Diaz, R. (2014). From the North to the South, from the East to the West, the Struggle Continues Whatever It Takes: Democracy and Transnational Networks of ‘Indignados’. Global Dynamics Seminar “Structural Adjustment Comes to Europe”, University of Roskilde. Hemer, O., & Tufte, T. (2016). Introduction. Why Voice and Matter Matter. In O.  Hemer & T.  Tufte (Eds.), Voice & Matter. Communication, Development and the Cultural Return (pp. 11–21). Nordicom: University of Gothenburg. Isin, E.  F. (2009). Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen. Subjectivity, 29, 367–388. McDonald, K. (2006). Global Movements: Action and Culture. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell. Melucci, A. (1996). Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melucci, A., Keane, J., & Mier, P. (1989). Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ogan, C., Giglou, R.  I., & d’Haenens, L. (2016). The Relationship Between Online and Offline Participation in a Social Movement. In M.  Rovisco & J.  C. Ong (Eds.), Taking the Square. Mediated Dissent and Occupations of Public Space. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

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Tilly, C. (2008). Contentious Performances (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics). New York: Cambridge University Press. Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wagner, R., & Dankova. J. (2016, April). The CSO’s Shrinking and Closing Space Tendency, How EU Institutions Can Support CSOs Worldwide. Heinrich Boll Stiftung.

Communicating Cosmopolitanism, Conviviality and Creolisation Oscar Hemer

As the other contributors to this anthology I was asked to present a concept ‘to think with’ in the ever-emerging field of communication for (social) change. I came up with three. Each one of them—cosmopolitanism, conviviality and creolisation—would deserve their own chapter; they are distinctly different, emanating from diverse historical and academic contexts, yet clearly interrelated and, arguably, interdependent. Bringing them in dialogue hence seems somewhat congenial with the urgent global societal challenges that they all address and analyse and the processes of change they induce and advocate. In the case of the first two, the close connection is obvious. When Paul Gilroy re-launched conviviality in the context of social, racial and religious tensions in post-imperial Britain, “at the point where ‘multiculturalism’ broke down” (Gilroy 2004, p. xi), it was precisely as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, which in his view had been hijacked as a pretext for Western ‘supposedly benign imperialism’ in the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror (Gilroy 2004, p. 66). What he rejected was hence not the cosmopolitan ideal as such, but its current interpretations, which allegedly did O. Hemer (*) Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_11

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not see a contradiction between this ideal and the categories that confine people to particular, hierarchically located groups. In contrast, the less ideologically burdened conviviality denoted an ability to be at ease in contexts of diversity without restaging communitarian conceptions of ethnic and racial difference. The term ‘conviviality’ was originally launched, if not coined, by Ivan Illich (1973), for whom the convivial society envisioned a post-industrial, localised society of ‘autonomous individuals and primary groups’ (Illich 1973, p. 10). Tools for conviviality was an important reference for the post-­ development school in the 1980s and 1990s, which perhaps, ironically, had its most tangible influence in the field of communication for development.1 The current debate on conviviality has however almost entirely emanated from Gilroy’s refashioning of the concept. In later years it has proliferated into several different debates, to the extent that one may even speak of a ‘convivial turn’ within certain fields of the social sciences (Valluvan 2016). Leading scholars in this debate, most notably Magdalena Nowicka (2020), with Steve Vertovec (Nowicka and Vertovec 2014) and Tillman Heil (Nowicka and Heil 2015), follow and elaborate on the suggestion that conviviality be the more productive analytical tool. Yet, cosmopolitanism, with its roots in ancient Greece and prominent presence in the European history of ideas, has of course not succumbed to this newcomer. The literature on cosmopolitanism veritably exploded in the 1990s, as a key element in the globalisation debate worldwide, and has had a new momentum in the last decade, parallel to the one for conviviality (Appiah 2006; Beck 2006; Beck and Grande 2007; Held 2010; Beck and Sznaider 2016; Glick Schiller and Irving 2015, just to name a few). Creolisation may at a first glance appear to be of a different order. Its articulation was locally—or regionally—grounded in the New World, and especially the Caribbean, as a means of analysing and expressing the processes of cultural intermingling and cross-fertilisation that were the offspring of the interactions between the different groups that cohabited the colonies; indigenous populations, settlers, imported slaves. The Caribbean was a particularly fertile ground for cross-cultural connections, due to its central role in the triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas, for which slave traffic was a main component. Needless to say that these encounters were fundamentally violent and unequal, based on mastery and servitude, control and resistance.

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As a general concept, creolisation had its grand moment of fame in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when anthropologist Ulf Hannerz and poet-­ philosopher Édouard Glissant independent of each other proposed it as a universal denominator for the globalisation of culture—“a world in creolisation” (Hannerz 1986; Glissant 1990). After having seemingly been out of fashion, or returned to its origin in linguistics and local history, the globalised use of the concept has experienced a revival in the last decade. Robin Cohen (2007) makes the following comprehensive definition of what he claims to be a key aspect of cultural globalisation: When creolisation occurs, participants select particular elements from incoming or inherited cultures, endow these with meanings different from those they possessed in the original cultures and then creatively merge these to create new varieties that supersede the prior forms.

Although the term ‘creolisation’ has so-far seldom been referred to in the conviviality/cosmopolitanism debate, it does appear under the guise of other related terms—hybridisation, cultural mélange—as an implicit supplement to the other two. For example, Nowicka and Heil (2015) talk of two parallel processes that frame contemporary cosmopolitanism: “border-crossing and hybridization on a world scale, and bordering and consolidation of national, or ethnic, groups”.2 This corresponds well to Glissant’s key notions of Relation vs. Essence. But let us take it from the known beginning, in ancient Greece. As Nowicka and Heil point out, cosmopolitanism was on the outset constructed around the antinomy between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, between the normative and the practical, around the question how to empirically realise the normative ideal.3 To the Cynics and the Stoics, it was a moral commitment to helping other humans, regardless of whether they were part of the polis or not. The cosmopolitan principle could be formulated such: one is a citizen of the world before being a citizen of a state. This moral commitment did however not comply with the political culture of the Greek city-­ state, which was not cosmopolitan, as it excluded a large proportion of its inhabitants—resident aliens, slaves, ordinary workers—from any ethical consideration of the community. Medieval cosmopolitanism added the notion of a common set of beliefs—a unified Christian community, which in principle could encompass all human beings and hence was more inclusive than the ancient understanding. But the real renaissance comes with the Enlightenment

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and the republican ideals, when Kant eventually develops cosmopolitanism into a theory of international relations, based on the idea that peace depends on the creation of a union of states. Today’s cosmopolitanism departs from a critique of the existing fully developed world political system of sovereign states and its limitation of citizenship to nationality. We are in other words still struggling with the apparently perpetual and inherent conflict between the cosmos and the polis. Leaving aside the resurfacing vile anti-Semitic connotations, a popular perception of cosmopolitanism persists to be that it is an ideal for an elite of globetrotting academics and executives, far removed from the reality of ordinary people. The tinge of elitism that undoubtedly adheres to the concept is however countered by notions of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’, or ‘cosmopolitanism from below’, as Arjun Appadurai (2002, 2013) describes the situation among the urban poor in Mumbai, India, where he has been carrying out participatory research with Shack/Slumdwellers International, a transnational agency network that started through the joint mobilisation of diverse grass-roots organisations in Mumbai in the late 1990s and now has spread over three continents, with branches in Africa and Latin America. Connectivity has undoubtedly attained a new quality with globalisation and the digital revolution and adds a new dimension to the contemporary debate, by involving actors who were previously not in a position to become ‘world citizens’.4 The main critique against cosmopolitanism as a concept remains however the one articulated by Gilroy and many post-colonial theorists before and after him, that it is rooted in a Eurocentric worldview. To be truly cosmopolitan it would need to be self-reflexive and critically analyse its own roots—thereby also questioning its own analytical sense and value. This argument resembles the radical position in the Postmodernity debate of the 1980s, for which the postmodern represented modernity’s coming of age and becoming aware of its own historicity. Just as the notion of modernities in the plural, or a wide spectre of regional variations and adaptations of some common denominators, is now commonly accepted, we need to perhaps think of plural cosmopolitanisms—provided, though, that the different planetary projects share the idea of one world.5 So far, the impulses of global self-reflection and radical rethinking of the world have mainly, although not exclusively, been provided by scholars and writers in or from the Global South. In his pivotal book Provincializing Europe, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty attempted precisely “the task of exploring how [European] thought—which is now everybody’s heritage

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and which affects us all—may be renewed from and for the margins” (Chakrabarty 2000, p. 16). In his case, it was a matter of translating the categories of modern European science to a South Asian context, but the reverse could equally be applied to, for example, an analysis of the crises in present day Europe—the refugee migration, which is not a crisis in Europe but on its borders, and the crises of the EU and of liberal democracy, which are indisputably real. The late Ulrich Beck’s theory of the global risk society (1998, 2009) is an important contribution to the contemporary debate. To Beck, cosmopolitanism is an inescapable feature of globalisation.6 Hence it is not a (utopian) vision for the future, but the global reality here and now. The challenge is to acknowledge this cosmopolitan reality—to step out of the still prevailing nation-state perspective and take a cosmopolitan perspective. The global risk is an anticipation of catastrophe, but may therefore also be the antidote to disaster, by presenting an opportunity for metamorphosis (verwandlung), that is, new ways of generating and implementing norms. Hiroshima and the Holocaust are examples of watershed events with a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, and climate change may provide a similar moment of metamorphosis (Beck 2014). The urgent global challenges not only require a global (cosmopolitan) perspective; to research contemporary society we moreover need a cosmopolitan method, what Beck defines as analytical cosmopolitanism. Nowicka and Heil are basically sympathetic to Beck’s approach, which privileges the empirical before the normative. But instead of analytical cosmopolitanism, they propose the more humble analytical conviviality, which focuses on “the everyday processes of how people live together in mundane encounters, of how they (re)translate between their sustained differences and how they (re)negotiate minimal consensuses” (2015, p. 1). Their key question could be formulated such: How is the minimal sociality possible? By this we mean that even within the framework of conflict, there are plenty of situations in which people live and/or work together peacefully, obviously beyond their identities, attitudes, solidarities, belongings to different communities and despite their differential positions in social structures. […] Peaceful togetherness means finding ad hoc and temporary commonalities and similarities and consensus over issues of interest or concern in this particular moment of time. (Nowicka and Heil 2015, p. 12)

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Again, an illustration of hidden or unrealised convergences. This ‘non-­ normative’ notion of conviviality clearly speaks to Glissant’s concept of Relation, as a non-hierarchical and non-reductive system of interconnectedness. * * * What, then, can these three theoretical concepts contribute to the practice of communication for development and social change? Paraphrasing Nowicka and Heil, the conventional way of putting this question would be if and how communication can empirically realise the normative ideal(s) of cosmopolitanism/conviviality/creolisation. But if cosmopolitanism and creolisation are the empirical reality, what does that imply for communication for development? That conundrum requires some thorough thinking. Given the discussion above, which considers ‘the three C’s’ to be distinct yet intrinsically connected approaches to a common complex of societal challenges, I propose that the most interesting inter-relation from a ComDev perspective be the least explored axis—the one between conviviality and creolisation. They have as yet rarely and only recently been put in scholarly dialogue (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2011, 2015, 2020). Encaración Gutiérrez Rodríguez even proposes the definition of creolisation as ‘transversal conviviality’. Conviviality’s immediate relevance to the field is the most obvious. In 2014 a group of francophone intellectuals, led by sociologist Alain Caillé and including Chantal Mouffe, signed The Convivialist Manifesto: A Declaration of Interdependence.7 It was a plea for a new ‘art of cohabitation’ in the face of the urgent threats to humankind in the early twenty-­ first century. The manifesto coins the term convivialism as a normative-ism; a conception of society based on “human cooperation and mutual respect for maximum diversity”. Convivialism does not rule out conflict. On the contrary—and this is where Chantal Mouffe’s influence may be detected—it accepts and affirms conflict as a necessary and productive feature of life, provided that it is based on the agreement of a shared world. The basic convivialist principle is mutual aid, characteristic of voluntary organisations, families and friendship networks—which interestingly resembles Illich’s convivial order of “autonomous individuals and primary groups”.

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It does not speak explicitly about communication, but about ‘the internet’ and ‘the new technologies’ when referring to the convivial society that is already emerging, “via the many different facets of the social and solidarity economy, via all the different permutations of participative democracy, and as a result of our experiences in global social forums”. Like all manifestos it tends to be pretentious and somewhat abstract, and its radical activist agenda has in the German debate been criticised for neglecting the solidarity and voluntarism “within the neo-liberal regimes” that became manifest in the responses to the refugee migration in 2015, not least in Germany and Sweden, the two countries that stood out as exceptions to the European rule. The ‘Refugees Welcome’ and other spontaneous organisations appear as examples of a more pragmatic form of conviviality—without the -ism—that would be in accordance with Nowicka and Heil’s conception. But what about creolisation? Why is it a necessary complement to conviviality? I’ll suggest three interrelated reasons. For one, it constitutes a valid alternative to conventional interpretations of cross-cultural contact as a linear process and allows some agency and influence to hitherto marginal and subordinate cultures and peoples. (Cohen and Toninato 2010, p. 12)

Liberals are reluctant to admit that Colonialism is “the underside of Modernity” (Mignolo 2012). Their militant opponents to the left, in their turn, fail to acknowledge that the decolonisation they propose de facto also implies de-modernisation. But the colonial encounter cannot be undone. This is the crucial point. The historical connotation to the global slave trade is most probably the reason why creolisation evokes an indefinite uneasiness among (white) Europeans, as opposed to the amiable conviviality (and ‘elitist’ cosmopolitanism). Slavery, the fundament of the colonial world system, remains a blind spot to the modern European mind. Blind, or, perhaps rather, black. The suppressed organising category of modernity is making race, says South African scholar Zimitri Erasmus in her thought-provoking Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa (2017, p. 25). She provides the second argument: [C]reolisation is a beginning in the process of addressing and challenging the normative practice of race classification and the normative ideal presented by a politics of cultivating purity. (Erasmus 2017, p. 97)

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Whereas conviviality may be interpreted as a formula for ‘living with difference’ but ‘side-by-side’ and not intermingling—as in common notions of multiculturalism—creolisation is inevitably ‘messy’ and impure. Thirdly—and this is perhaps its most striking advantage from a ComDev perspective—creolisation will always have its raison d’être in the area of its strength, that is, in cultural (and artistic) practice. The creolising art form and cultural practice above all is music. And let me finish this tentative overview with an example from where I am currently doing research, South Africa. During the second part of the twentieth century South Africa represented the epitome of creolisation’s negation—apartheid. The apartheid policy (1948–94) was one of the foremost large-scale applications of a politics of purity, but it could in fact also be read as a prime example of suppressed creolisation. Like the Caribbean, the Western Cape has literally been a cultural crossroad for centuries. Its on-going process of cultural cross-fertilisation, which was for sure hampered by apartheid’s edict on ‘separate development’, comes to its fullest expression in music. In an exemplary application of what we may call ‘analytical creolisation’, mainly leaning on Glissant, French musicologist Dénis-Constant Martin (2013) makes an inventory of the relation between music, identity and politics in South Africa and demonstrates how music has always subverted racialist agendas and other forms of imposed identity politics, because the mixed origins of all musics ensures that music preserves traces of encounters and sharing that may remain forgotten for long periods of time, that may be obliterated by exclusivist ideologies, but can be retrieved from oblivion. (Martin 2013, p. 49)

Notes 1. The articulation of bottom-up, participatory, locally sensitive approaches, as opposed to the mainstream top-down modernisation (diffusion of innovation) paradigm, was largely inspired by post-development scholars like Arturo Escobar, Gustavo Esteva, Majid Rahnema and James Ferguson. For a comprehensive overview, see The Post Development reader (Rahnema and Bawtree 1997).

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2. Hybridisation is here arguably synonymous with creolisation. The main argument against the terms ‘hybridity’ and ‘hybridisation’ is their biological connotations and the underlying assumption that the hybrid is a crossing of two entities that are defined as essential, as opposed to their hybrid offspring. Creolisation presupposes a process of inter-mingling without beginning or end, whose outcome—and this is a crucial point for Glissant—is as per definition unpredictable (Glissant 1997a, pp. 18–19). 3. I am in the following historical overview largely citing Nowicka and Heil’s comprehensive recapitulation. 4. Whether the explosion of social media in the last decade has actually enhanced the idea of a shared world, a global public sphere, or whether it has rather contributed to further fragmentation, through the dismantling of existing public spheres, is another discussion that I leave aside here. Let us just notice that, as with globalisation at large, it is a dual and ambiguous process. 5. The term afropolitanism was introduced by Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall in their exploration of Johannesburg—the elusive metropolis (2004). It has caught as a label for a new generation of intellectuals with African origin, but it has also attained different and contested meanings. In a recent article, Lisa Ann Richey and Lene Bull Christiansen argue that there is an essential connection between “the rise of Afropolitanism and the celebratization of North-South relations” (Richey and Bull Christiansen 2018). 6. Although it may never have occurred to Beck, his depiction of cosmopolitanism as an unpredictable and unmanageable feature of an increasingly complex and interconnected world bears striking resemblance to Glissant’s conception of creolisation and what he in more poetical words describes as the emergence of the Tout-Monde (1997b). 7. Available in full and abridged version in French and English at the website of ‘the convivialists’, http://www.lesconvivialistes.org

References Appadurai, A. (2002). Deep Democracy, Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics. Public Culture, 14(1), 21. Appadurai, A. (2013). The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso Books. Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York/ London: W.W. Norton & Co.. Beck, U. (1998). World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U. (2006). The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U. (2009). World at Risk. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Beck, U. (2014). How Climate Change Might Save the World. Harvard Design Magazine, 39. Beck, U., & Grande, E. (2007). Cosmopolitan Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., & Sznaider, N. (2016). New Cosmopolitanism in the Social Sciences. In B. S. Turner & R. J. Holton (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Globalisation Studies (pp. 572–588). London: Routledge. Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cohen, R. (2007). Creolisation and Cultural Globalisation: The Soft Sounds of Fugitive Power. Globalisations, 4(3), 369. https://doi. org/10.1080/14747730701532492. Cohen, R., & Toninato, P. (2010). The Creolisation Debate: Analysing Mixed Identities and Cultures. In R. Cohen & P. Toninato (Eds.), The Creolisation Reader (pp. 1–21). London: Routledge. Erasmus, Z. (2017). Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Gilroy, P. (2004). After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? London: Routledge. Glick Schiller, N., & Irving, A. (Eds.). (2015). Whose Cosmopolitanism? Critical Perspectives, Relationalities and Discontents. New York: Berghahn Books. Glissant, É. (1990). Poétique de la Relation. Poétique III. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Glissant, É. (1997a [1990]). Poetics of Relation (trans: Wing, B.). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Glissant, É. (1997b). Traité du Tout-Monde. Poétique IV. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E. (2011). Politics of Affects: Transversal Conviviality. Transversal – Eipcp Multilingual Ebjournal, 01. Retrieved from: http://eipcp. net/transversal/0811/gutierrezrodriguez/en Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E. (2015). Archipelago Europe: On Creolizing Conviviality. In E. Gutiérrez Rodríguez & S. A. Tate (Eds.), Creolizing Europe: Legacies and Transformations (pp. 80–99). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E. (2020). Creolizing Conviviality: Thinking Through Andalusian Presence with Ivan Illich and Édouard Glissant. In O.  Hemer, M.  Povrzanović Frykman, & P.-M.  Ristilammi (Eds.), Conviviality at the Crossroads: The Poetics and Politics of Everyday Encounters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hannerz, U. (2010 [1986]). The World in Creolisation. In R.  Cohen & P. Toninato (Eds.), The Creolisation Reader (pp. 376–388). London: Routledge. Held, D. (2010). Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Illich, I. (1973). Tools for Conviviality. New York: Perennial Library. Martin, D.-C. (2013). Sounding the Cape. In Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa. Somerset West: African Minds.

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Mignolo, W. (2012). Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nowicka, M. (2020). Fantasy of Conviviality: Banalities of Multicultural Settings and What we Do (Not) Notice When We Look at Them. In O.  Hemer, M.  Povrzanović Frykman, & P.  M. Ristilammi (Eds.), Conviviality at the Crossroads: The Poetics and Politics of Everyday Encounters (pp.  15–42). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nowicka, M., & Heil, T. (2015, June 25). On the Analytical and Normative Dimensions of Conviviality and Cosmopolitanism. Lecture held at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany. Nowicka, M., & Vertovec, S. (2014). Introduction. Comparing Convivialities: Dreams and Realities of Living-with-Difference. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(4), 341–356. Nuttall, S., & Mbembe, J.-A. (Eds.). (2004). Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis. Durham: Duke University Press. Rahnema, M., & Bawtree, V. (Eds.). (1997). The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books. Richey, L. A., & Bull Christiansen, L. (2018). Afropolitanism, Celebrity Politics, and Iconic Imaginations of North–South Relations. African Affairs, 117, 238. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ady004. Valluvan, S. (2016). Conviviality and Multiculture: A Post-Integration Sociology of Multi-Ethnic Interaction. Young, 24(3), 204–221.

Artistic Conviviality Maria Rovisco

In the social sciences, particularly in sociology and geography, scholarship has used conviviality as a conceptual lens for understanding certain kinds of social interactions and negotiations of difference that occur in multicultural urban environments. In its most basic conceptualisation conviviality is a mode of togetherness, which takes place in conditions of intense social interaction. It is what Massey (2005) calls the ‘thrown togetherness of place’ generated by everyday experiences and urban encounters. Overing and Passes (2000) note, for example, how the notion connects to the Latin origins of the Spanish word ‘convivir’, which means to live together. It is against this backdrop that Nowicka and Vertovek (2014, p.  342) argue that ‘conviviality can be used as an analytical tool to ask and explore the ways, and under what conditions, people constructively create modes of togetherness’. Building upon the literature on conviviality, I propose in this chapter the notion of ‘artistic conviviality’ as an analytical tool and a distinctive mode of togetherness that characterises particular forms of artistic collaboration and production in the empirical world. One of the most influential formulations of conviviality is Gilroy’s understanding of the concept as a mode of interaction in which racial or

M. Rovisco (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_12

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ethnic differences are rendered mundane and negotiated in real time. By illuminating how conviviality is an ordinary feature of urban life, Gilroy’s approach (2006) invites scholarship to both acknowledge and investigate the conditions in which convivial culture equips people with the means of managing interaction and cohabitation with proximate others. An underlying assumption here is that scholars need to zoom in on the everyday life settings where racial, ethnic or religious differences are rendered unremarkable. In this regard, it is interesting to note Jackson’s (2019) recent study of a London bowling alley used by a diverse group of people (in terms of dis/ability, ethnicity, gender, class and age). Jackson builds upon Gilroy’s original formulation of conviviality to argue the social value of the bowling alley as diverse, multicultural and inclusive owes much to a particular local version of conviviality and to the alley turning to be a place for a marginalised group to hang out with relative ease (see also Valluvan 2016, p. 205) (italics added for emphasis). While Nowicka and Vertovec (2014) emphasise that the concept has a conceptual family resemblance with cognate notions such as cosmopolitanism, civility, multiculture and diversity, one should not lose sight of what is distinctive about conviviality as a mode of interaction. As a phenomenon in the empirical world, convivial culture can occur and be thrown up together in a vast range of settings where different ethnic groups mix with each other and manage cultural difference and ethnic identity via contingent, fleeting, affective and ‘at ease’ forms of encounter (see Neal et al. 2013, p. 315). Convivial relations can constitute a powerful antidote to segregation, racism and attacks to multiculturalism in the city (Amin 2002; Gilroy 2006; Georgiou 2016; Neal et al. 2013). Yet, conviviality, is also a useful conceptual tool to analyse and study racial and ethnic differences in the micro-scale of everyday interactions in a variety of settings. Whereas the concept can encompass tension, separation and conflict, most formulations of the term suggest that the concept is not purely descriptive, but also a normative concept for describing a particular form of sociality that keeps urban spaces thriving and safe (Shaftoe 2008, p. 5). All in all, the notion offers a better analytical framework to understand forms of sociality and interaction that are not adequately captured by the more formal, institutional and sustained social relations that underpin the concept of community (see Bennet 2009 cited in Neal et al. 2013, p. 316). Scholarship should, nonetheless, be cautious about embarking on celebratory and romanticised accounts of conviviality. As noted by Ong and

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Rovisco (2019, p. 142), ‘one of the problems with this vision of “convivial multiculture” is that convivial relations might appear naïve, routinised and banal in the face of global inequalities’. For all its emphasis on the virtues of everyday encounters and thrown togetherness, one important caveat of convivial culture is how such ways of living with difference in the multicultural city do little to challenge the structural power relations that sustain experiences of racism and segregation in urban life. It is possible, in fact, to peacefully co-exist with proximate others through convivial relations that lack a genuine civic engagement and solidarity (Georgiou 2016). Despite these caveats, these approaches offer a useful springboard for conceptualising and empirically analysing ‘artistic conviviality’. This body of work emphasises, in one way or another, and more directly in some cases, how the notion of conviviality is appropriate to describe and capture interactions and encounters that are informal, affective and performative (Overing and Passes 2000, pp. xiii–xiv) rather than formal and institutional. The possibilities of conviviality as an analytical tool are particularly apparent when we consider how certain artistic spaces of production and reception can be seen as spaces where amicable forms of encounter and ‘thrown togetherness’ can be expressed and flourish. While approaches to conviviality focus almost exclusively on how conviviality is empirically manifested in urban life, there have been some attempts to conceptualise the relation between the arts and conviviality. Notably, Papastergiadis (2012a, b) in his conceptualisation of aesthetic cosmopolitanism is one of the few scholars who has paid attention to the relation between conviviality and contemporary artistic practices. At the heart of his theorisation of aesthetic cosmopolitanism as a process of world-making is a concern with what he calls a cosmopolitan vision of conviviality. As he puts it, ‘cosmopolitan images of conviviality arise not only from a moral imperative, but also from an aesthetic interest in others and difference’ (Papastergiadis 2012a, p. 221). An underlying assumption here is that artistic practices in the contemporary art world represent, as much as they create through the form of images of the world (i.e., world-­ picture making), new ways of ‘living together in times when the perplexity of difference is almost overwhelming’ (italics added for emphasis) (Papastergiadis 2007, p. 150). Conviviality, here, is not just a by-product of the cosmopolitan imagination. For Papastegiadis, it can also be found in the search for alternative sites to produce art and new kinds of social experience in artistic practice. Artists in the contemporary arts scene increasingly propose a range of social strategies for bringing different

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people together as part of their aesthetic vision of the world. These aesthetic and social strategies raise complex questions about the possibility of mutual understanding and modes of spatial affiliation. While Papastergiadis is not specifically concerned with conceptualising conviviality, and often refers to this notion only in passing, his theorisation of aesthetic cosmopolitanism offers a useful lens to think about artistic conviviality. This is because aesthetic cosmopolitanism opens new avenues to think about amicable forms of interaction and convivial encounters beyond the spaces of urban life. Differently from Papastergiadis, Ong and Rovisco (2019) engage more closely with conviviality as a conceptual tool to understand artistic interventions to the forced migration and asylum issues that variably aim for healing, empathy and reflexivity. While they recognise that convivial interventions are vulnerable to accusations of depoliticisation, they also argue that one of the consolations of convivial culture is that this can also open up possibilities for social and political change in moments of crisis (Ong and Rovisco 2019, p. 145). This is one dimension of convivial culture that has not been explored by previous literature and, which, as we shall see, is a crucial feature of artistic conviviality. New forms of artistic collaboration and socially engaged practice in the arts create opportunities for the unheard and the misrepresented to become makers and tellers of their own stories through the medium of art. Convivial culture stems from artistic projects that foster processes of empowerment and agency by enabling participants (i.e., amateur artists) to gain a sense of themselves as acting subjects in the world and by breaking out of damaging binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (see Bassel 2017). As we shall see, convivial culture has the capacity to challenge, even if momentarily and within situated contexts, the unequal distribution of social power that silences the voices of marginalised people. Within the scope of artistic projects, which are more dialogical and collaborative in nature, artists and participants emerge as agents who use aesthetic strategies to perform actual interventions in social and political life as they go on to address a variety of social problems, from gender inequality, migration and citizenship to environmental crisis and gentrification. As Sansi (2015, p. 13) puts it, ‘these projects can question or unveil the hidden reality of these existing relations, but they may also propose unprecedented relations between different actors, generating new alliances and communities’. There is here a point of connection with debates on communication for social change (Tufte 2017) in that artists engaging in new forms of artistic collaboration with marginalised

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communities explicitly seek to use the arts as tool for challenging power relations and social conflict. Artistic conviviality is, here, defined as a distinct mode of social interaction that originates from new forms of collaboration and artistic creation. It can be found in artistic spaces of production and reception where ease in the presence of diversity is actively promoted through cross-cultural encounters and cultural exchange. Yet, artistic conviviality is not just a form of sociality or a mode of social interaction that is observable in the empirical world. It is also a conceptual lens to study precisely the social relationships engendered by certain forms of artistic collaboration and production. This kind of artistic practice is usefully captured by Bourriaud’s influential notion of relational aesthetics, which describes those forms of art where the artist becomes more a mediator—someone who provides situations of exchange and interaction with the audience rather than being simply a creator of objects (see Sansi 2015, p. 11). For Bourriaud, what matters in this kind of aesthetics is how the artwork generates a ‘model of sociability’ (Bourriaud 2002, p. 18) and situations of deep encounter with the audience that creates what Bourriaud calls a ‘friendship culture’ (Bourriaud 2002 cited in Sansi 2015, p.  11). Relational art as well as socially engaged art (Harvie 2013), and dialogical and collaborative art (Kester 2011), suggest that the art is a social practice that goes beyond representation and that the value of art is in the social relationships and participation enabled by the artwork. Socially engaged art involves collaborations and co-creation and delegation to amateur participants (particularly members of the audience) (see Harvie 2013, p.  36) often in non-traditional artistic sites (e.g., neighbourhoods, decayed urban sites). If we accept that relational art actively creates and seeks opportunities for encountering and celebrating diversity, then, it is easy to see how this kind of artistic practice can constitute an important site for convivial relations. Admittedly, while one of the risks here involved is orchestrating artificial forms of contact that can be oppressive for marginalised groups and minorities that suffer racism and discrimination (see Valentine 2008), I argue that collaborative art is capable of creating spaces of encounter and provide opportunities for contact and cross-cultural exchange amongst social groups that otherwise would rarely have opportunity to encounter each other in everyday life. Artistic conviviality is, therefore, an apt conceptual tool to study the convivial culture that characterises artistic projects and interventions that use art to foster the recognition (Honneth 1992) and inclusion of groups

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who suffer from marginality and misrecognition. This convivial culture is not one where ethnic, religious or racial differences are rendered unremarkable, but one that pursues social change (particularly in relation to inequalities of voice and participation) and citizen engagement through artistic forms of communication. The artistic responses to the crisis of forced migration investigated by Ong and Rovisco (2019) are a good example of artistic projects where convivial socialities of various kinds can emerge and be nurtured. Participatory arts projects in drama and photography and digital storytelling projects with marginalised groups, such as forced migrants, are also an important terrain for probing the possibilities of artistic conviviality. Through their participation in such projects, marginalised groups not only gain access to the public representation of themselves (and others) by entering into conversation with others (Rovisco 2014), but also have an opportunity to exercise civil and communication rights and become active citizens (Tacchi 2009; Salazar 2010). While calling for a more committed political listening from key institutions to ensure that voice matters, Dreher (2012, p. 160) insightfully notes how digital storytelling is used ‘within culturally diverse communities as a means to “talk back” to racist, stereotyped representations found within mainstream media and as a strategy for empowerment through “finding a voice”’. Artistic conviviality is also a useful conceptual tool to study artistic projects and interventions that use the model of the theatre of the oppressed as a tool for social change (Boal 2008; Freire 2017). Freire’s (2017) ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ is significant here not only because his ideas on a ‘liberating pedagogy’ deeply influenced Boal’s work, but also because they are both concerned with how participatory forms of communication, which emphasise critical dialogue amongst equals, challenge unjust power relations. Boal’s model employs, for example, peacebuilding techniques to build bridges between polarised groups (Alon 2011) with a variety of social backgrounds, including groups such as prisoners, people with addictions, homeless populations, asylum-seekers and refugees. All in all, artistic conviviality can be used as a conceptual tool to investigate those artistic projects that use art as tool for action in the real world by shifting the focus from what art represents (in terms of images in figurative or symbolic form) to what art does (Sansi 2015, p. 65). This shift of focus in understanding art purely as representation to understanding art in terms of action and effects is consequential for how art and aesthetics are increasingly seen as being political. For Rancière (2004), in particular, art is

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political not just because it might represent political issues, but because it tries to bring art and reach out to people who would normally access arts institutions such as a museum or a theatre. Art and aesthetics have the capacity to mobilise through processes of sensory affect and free play (Tello 2016, p. 28) a critical engagement with the conditions of a more interconnected world, including injustices and global inequalities as well as experiences of displacement and migration (Bennett 2007; Meskimmon 2010; Tello 2016; Serafini 2018). As noted by Harvie (2013, p. 5), socially engaged art audiences have the opportunity to immerse themselves in a shared environment where they are required to experience the artwork in relation not only to itself, but also in relation to each other. In addition, it is important to recognise that much contemporary arts practice (which is not restricted to collaborative art) has the capacity to create, through what Rancière calls ‘fictionalisation’, alternative or impossible scenarios that reveal what remains elusive in the real world (Tello 2016, pp. 144–146). As Rancière (2008 cited in Tello 2016, p.  144) puts it, fictionalisation ‘does not mean telling stories … it means constructing another sense of reality, another set of connections between spaces and times, between words and visual forms, between a here and an elsewhere, and a now and a then’. Notably, the fictionalisation of living with difference is an important dimension of artistic interventions that use the creative imagination to create the possibility of new modes of togetherness in the real world. By creating figurative images and alternative scenarios and imaginaries for living with difference, such projects can be said to be convivial in nature by explicitly disavowing experiences of racism, oppression and segregation in the real world and by inviting audiences to imagine the possibility of better ways of living together with difference. These are projects where those involved often attempt to create and find commonalities between each other and foster socialities, which can be more reflexive and more sustained, than those casual and positive encounters that characterise convivial encounters in urban spaces. Furthermore, the images of conviviality such projects convey, as well as the amicable forms of interaction they enable, open up avenues for social and political change. This is because the convivial culture here engendered is often linked to struggles for political solidarity understood as a political project for building social bonds between specific groups of people (e.g., artists, audiences, amateur participants, marginalised groups) for specific political goals (e.g., struggles

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against the injustice and oppression affecting marginalised and oppressed groups) (Karagiannis 2007; Oosterlynck et al. 2016; Siapera 2019). In conclusion, artistic conviviality is a mode of interaction that rarely entails the banal and routine interactions that characterise the politics of living with difference in urban contexts. Rather, as I have argued here, convivial interactions are actively sought and nurtured in those traditional and non-traditional artistic spaces where artists create situations for active social encounters. We have also seen that artistic conviviality is a useful conceptual tool to capture the dynamics of entanglements and engagements of people and political solidarity initiatives, as well as political struggles against social injustice and separatism, which are characteristic of certain forms of collaborative art in the contemporary world.

References Alon, C. (2011). Non-Violent Struggle as Reconciliation Combatants for Peace: Palestinian and Israeli Polarized Theatre of the Oppressed. Counterpoints  – “Come Closer” Critical Perspectives on Theatre of the Oppressed, 146, 161–172. Amin, A. (2002). Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity. Environment and Planning A, 34, 959–980. Bassel, L. (2017). The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bennett, J. (2007, September 19–21). Migratory Aesthetics: Art and Politics beyond Identity. In M. Bal and M. A. Hernández-Navarro (Eds.) Proceeding of the Second Encuentro Murcia-Amsterdam on Migratory Aesthetics (pp. 450–476). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Boal, A. (2008). Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press. Bourriaud, N. (2002). Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les press du reel. Dreher, T. (2012). A Partial Promise of Voice: Digital Storytelling and the Limit of Listening. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: Quarterly Journal of Media Research and Resources, 142, 157–166. Freire, P. (2017). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Classics. Georgiou, M. (2016). Conviviality Is Not Enough: A Communication Perspective to the City of Difference. Communication, Culture & Critique, 10(2), 261–279. Gilroy, P. (2006). Multiculture in Times of War: An Inaugural Lecture Given at the London School of Economics. Critical Quarterly, 48(4), 27–44. Harvie, J. (2013). Fair Play – Art, Performance and Neoliberalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Honneth, A. (1992). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Jackson, E. (2019). Valuing the Bowling Alley: Contestations over the Preservation of Spaces of Everyday Urban Multiculture in London. The Sociological Review, 67(1), 79–94. Karagiannis, N. (2007). Solidarity Within Europe/Solidarity Without Europe. European Societies, 9(1), 3–21. Kester, K. (2011). The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Durham: Duke University Press. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage. Meskimmon, M. (2010). Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination. London: Routledge. Neal, S., Bennett, K., Cochrane, A., & Mohan, G. (2013). Living Multiculture: Understanding the New Spatial and Social Relations of Ethnicity and Multiculture in England. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 31, 308–323. Nowicka, M., & Vertovec, S. (2014). Introduction-Comparing Convivialities: Dreams and Realities of Living-with-Difference. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(4), 341–356. Ong, J. C., & Rovisco, M. (2019). Conviviality as a Politics of Endurance: The Refugee Emergency and the Consolations of Artistic Intervention. Popular Communication, 17(2), 140–153. Oosterlynck, S., Loopmans, M., Schuermans, N., Vandenabeele, J., & Zemni, S. (2016). Putting Flesh to the Bone: Looking for Solidarity in Diversity, Here and Now. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(5), 764–782. Overing, J., & Passes, A. (Eds.). (2000). The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native South America. London: Routledge. Papastergiadis, N. (2007). Glimpses of Cosmopolitanism in the Hospitality of Art. European Journal of Social Theory, 10(1), 139–152. Papastergiadis, N. (2012a). Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism. In G.  Delanty (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies (pp.  220–232). London: Routledge. Papastergiadis, N. (2012b). Cosmopolitanism and Culture. Cambridge: Polity. Rancière, J. (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics–The Distribution of the Sensible. New York: Continuum. Rovisco, M. (2014). Community Arts, New Media and the Desecuritisation of Migration and Asylum Seeker Issues in the UK. In C. Kinnvall & T. Svensson (Eds.), Bordering Securities: The Governing of Connectivity and Dispersion (pp. 99–116). London: Routledge. Salazar, J. (2010). Digital Stories and Emerging Citizens. Media Practices by Migrant Youth in Western Sydney. 3CMedia Journal of Citizen’s, Community and Third Sector Media, 6 (August). Retrieved from https://www.academia. edu/778829/Digital_stories_and_emerging_citizens_media_practices_by_ migrant_youth_in_Western_Sydney_Australia Accessed on 18 April 2019.

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Sansi, R. (2015). Art, Anthropology and the Gift. London: Bloomsbury. Serafini, P. (2018). Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism. London: Routledge. Shaftoe, H. (2008). Urban Convivial Spaces: Creating Effective Public Places. London: Earthscan. Siapera, E. (2019). Refugee Solidarity in Europe: Shifting the Discourse. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(2), 245–266. https://doi. org/10.1177/1367549418823068. Tacchi, J. (2009). Finding a Voice: Digital Storytelling as Participatory Development in Southeast Asia. In J.  Hartley & K.  McWilliam (Eds.), Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World (pp.  167–175). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Tello, V. (2016). Counter-Memorial Aesthetics – Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art. London: Bloomsbury. Tufte, T. (2017). Communication and Social Change  – A Citizen Perspective. Cambridge: Polity. Valentine, G. (2008). Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounter. Progress in Human Geography, 32, 321–335. Valluvan, S. (2016). Conviviality and Multiculture: A Post-Integration Sociology of Multiethnic Interaction. Young, 24, 204–221.

Dissonance Ana Cristina Suzina

The Power of Information In their anthology of communication for social change, Alfonso Gumucio-­ Dagron and Thomas Tufte say that, for the most part, these initiatives configure communication processes “which allow people themselves to define who they are, what they want and need, and how they will work together to improve their lives” (Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte 2006, p. xiv). For popular communicators in Brazil, these processes reveal the power of information over the emancipation of each citizen.1 In their words, someone who receives qualified and diversified information can develop reflection about oneself, about his/her place in the world and about others and the world (Suzina 2018). In this article, this power is discussed under the concept of dissonance and taken as the starting point of social change, as long as it can trigger a rupture in the comprehension of the world. The text starts with an introductory conceptual note, followed by a discussion of the potential of All translations into English were made by the author

A. C. Suzina (*) Loughborough University London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_13

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popular media to produce dissonance. The concept is, then, presented in two categories, informed by the analysis of the field interviews. The category of critical dissonance refers to a rupture in rational thinking, while the category of solidarity dissonance relates to an effort of building coexistence through communication.

The Concept of Dissonance Luis Felipe Miguel uses the term “polyphony” to describe a situation in which the public debate would include and take into consideration perspectives currently absent from decision-making processes. In this “multiculturalist version” of the habermasian public sphere, “the inclusion itself would produce the legitimacy of decisions and justice” (Miguel 2014, p. 216). The concept of communicative capitalism,2 as described by Jodi Dean (2005), refuses this logic. According to it, the illusion of inclusion based on the enlargement of circulation of information—that Dean defines as the fantasy of participation—is perishing democracy nowadays. As also suggested by Iris Marion Young (2000), a simple inclusion does not improve the quality of deliberation because it does not necessarily mean recognition and integration of marginal voices. In his later writings, Jürgen Habermas considers the inclusion of mass audiences in the public sphere as a mechanism for regulating the power structure in the latter. And although the author keeps his confidence in the “truth-tracking potential of political deliberation” as a resource to “generate legitimacy through a procedure of opinion and will formation” (Habermas 2006, p. 413) he does point out its fragilities. For him, contemporary Western countries display an increasing volume of political communication but this does not refer directly to features of deliberation, such as interaction between participants, collective decision-making or egalitarian exchange of claims and opinions. Recognising the limits of the deliberative model as well as the historical and conflicting character of democracy, Miguel recovers the idea of polyphony in its processual character. The incorporation of marginalised voices is, therefore, not the arriving point of democracy but the starting one of social change and this moment is better defined as dissonance. This polyphony however, as a balanced result of the coexistence of different melodies, would also require to make compatible (although not uniformised) the diverse situated social knowledges, considering that the latter

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communicate to each other through rational debate. A refined awareness of the limitations imposed by the structure of the field to the incorporation of marginalised speeches allows to understand that, before becoming participants of the polyphonic arrangement, they play the role of producing noise, dissonance. (Miguel 2014, p. 223)

Leon Festinger has developed the theory of cognitive dissonance, according to which “two items of information that psychologically do not fit together are said to be in a dissonant relation to each other” (Festinger 1962, p. 93). Analysing the evolution of human behaviour, he affirms that people search for consistency between their actions and their thoughts, and every time they confront dissonant information there is an opportunity for changing opinions and beliefs. His definition highlights, therefore, the possibility of change coming from informational inputs, which is consistent with the perspective of Brazilian popular communicators. For Festinger, however, the change is frequently directed towards an accommodation, meaning the elimination of dissonance to approximate new inputs of old and certain structures of action and thinking. Analysing popular media under the concept of dissonance accentuates the challenges confronted in this field, as long as popular communicators are proposing a break of consistency to audiences naturally searching for certainty. They are actually proposing the reconfiguration or even the replacement of the consistency, which leads to a kind of dynamic that goes beyond the informational level. Once we had an illusion, a dream that if we could make a video, something like this, to diffuse in the prime time, and everybody would want to watch our video and not the novela… It worked one single time. But at least you diffuse another video on another time and people get it. It is hard but you create progressively these bubbles of new ways of thinking that someday can at least mess things up. (Popular communicator in the Amazon region 2015)

In this sense, the importance of dissonance is to open the way to change through the introduction of alternative and marginal meanings within an ongoing tension between the established forms of exclusion and the forces fighting for the plurality of perspectives. This reflection recognises the importance of changing world visions as a way to achieve social change.

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Producing Dissonance Through Popular Media Cicilia Peruzzo defines popular communication as the “space for democratic expression”, characterised by the emergence of new channels where marginalised social groups can expose their ideas and claims, based on grassroot information and participation (Peruzzo 1998, p. 126). It “takes part in the manifestation of the conflict between social classes in the field of interests and hegemony” (Peruzzo 1998, p. 126). Popular communicators express this idea under a great variety of understandings and applications, that are associated with the objectives of popular media and with the kind of change they believe they are capable of—and wish to—produce in society. At this point, it is important to make a distinction between alternative and dissonant information. All popular media productions can be considered alternative at some point, as they concretely represent an alternative view of facts, coming from a different structure of ownership and different editorial options and approaches. However, the adjective “alternative” has never been enough to classify media practices coming from the marginal sectors and the literature is abundant in derivations such as “citizen media”, referring to its roots in non-commercial and non-governmental entrepreneurships (Rodriguez 2001) or “radical media”, highlighting its character of contentious editorial approaches (Downing 2001, 2016). These definitions put the political action and the social agency in the centre of the process (Rodriguez et al. 2014; Peruzzo 2008). Digital disruption has complexified this situation. It has blurred the borders between mass media and the so-called alternative media, providing better access to technologies for marginal groups and enlarging their potential for reaching massive audiences. However, if popular media initiatives can virtually incorporate models and reach large audiences as mainstream media do, there is still an important distinction between alternative and dissonant information. It is the disturbing character of dissonance as a factor of change (Festinger 1962). The particularity of the alternative information that can be classified as dissonant is that it has a clear purpose of breaking consistency (Festinger 1962). It is a communication that seeks to trigger a new consistency that includes the perspective of marginalised groups. It can be characterised, therefore, as a dissonance in content (what consistency) and in format (built by whom). There is, however, a typology of dissonance that can be

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developed taking popular media as a reference: it may be classified as critical dissonance and solidarity dissonance (Suzina 2018).

Critical Dissonance The possibility of using virtual platforms to largely diffuse content that, before, would exclusively circulate in community or social movement territories increases the opportunities of reaching larger audiences even through mainstream media. There is, however, an interesting particularity in this trend. In his conceptualisation of a media movement, Silvio Waisbord describes three categories. The first search for reforms in media policies, the second concentrates efforts on the autonomous development of media outlets, and the third is what he calls Civic Media Advocacy that follows the institutional rules of mainstream media (Waisbord 2008). It means that social actors basically assimilate the norms of what is news in order to produce content that can be absorbed by regular mainstream media outlets. The interference caused by the enlargement of visibility allowed by virtual platforms breaks this pattern, as it is the language of the social actors that is reverberated. It is what a communicator from the Landless Workers Movement (Portuguese acronym: MST) has described as developing and diffusing their own narrative. According to him, one of the premises of this action is to “construct narratives before mainstream media do it”, as in this example: It was the discussion about the transgenic eucalyptus in Brazil... Women members of MST of São Paulo occupied a Suzano site and destroyed all the plant nursery of transgenic eucalyptus and we made a video with our narrative. (…) When Globo arrived there, we were not there anymore. In Jornal Nacional, they announced that MST’s women had invaded and destroyed a plant nursery of transgenic species. (…) While he is speaking, the images show the messages of agitation and propaganda: “transgenic = poison = death”. This is our narrative confronting what he is saying. (Popular communicator from MST 2015)

For this communicator, the most important result of this kind of action is the possibility of generating controversy or dissonance. As long as mainstream media expose their narratives, audiences may have the option of contrasting the different information provided. He recognises the risk of negative edits made by mainstream media, but still take it as an advantage.

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“They will speak bad things about us anyway… We know that occupying land is dangerous and uncertain, but we occupy them”, he concludes. Therefore, the media logic could be understood as this spirit of taking advantage of new channels to provide contrasting information. Under the concept of critical dissonance, controversy becomes part of a complex process of change embedded in the struggle around meanings (Hall 2013). Popular communicators defend the right to appropriate media channels and logics because of their centrality in the representational system. This perspective reinforces that they are looking for more than freedom of expression. The more they get to open opportunities for dialogue, the more there is a possibility to interfere in the shared understandings that guide the interpretation of the world and the organisation of society. The critical dissonance is therefore based upon a kind of information ecology, as defined by Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O’Day. They describe it as “a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment” (Nardi and O’Day 2000). In this concept, the technology is the platform from where each human practice is developed, continually evolving, highly influenced by local inputs. In the context of critical dissonance, parity of participation (Fraser 2010) is achieved by the composition of a system where information is produced and diffused by different actors who enjoy individually the same level of credibility and recognition. Just as each kind of technology makes sense according to the context where it is applied, each media outlet has its importance because it integrates a frame-designing process that guides the constitution and the permanent transformation of the social order.

Solidarity Dissonance In 2013, in Nova Olinda, Ceará, a popular communicator told me that, when they started to operate a community television from the local NGO Fundação Casa Grande, they achieved huge success. According to him, “people started to see themselves”. In 2014, the community newspaper Voz do Lapenna, in São Miguel Paulista, São Paulo, was struggling to achieve the same. One of its communicators explained that they had decided to turn the publication into a source of education and elucidation about public policies, rights, and other important information for the community:

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People started to complain because they did not see themselves anymore in the newspaper. Then, we started to think about solutions to answer to this demand. People like the newspaper, they want to receive it. We see it when we go out to distribute it in the streets—because it is distributed by hand— and the pile is finished before we get to the end of the street. People feel represented, they learn, but they want to see themselves. The newspaper is more legitimate the more we do it with the dwellers and not to them. (Popular communicator, São Miguel Paulista 2014)

The solidarity dissonance is also about availability and diversity of information, but the main concern is the recognition of informants as who they are, as equals in the plenitude of their difference. Jelena Vasiljević discusses weather solidarity may have a political character (Vasiljević 2016). She recalls approaches that establish solidarity as an act taking place between actors with similar goals in parallel to more recent ones that place solidarity as a compensation to alleviate the consequences of capitalist and neoliberal forms of governance. However, none of these conceptions are charged with a transformative character. Establishing a distinction between solidarity and charity, Vasiljević advances an understanding of solidarity as a social action that implies a principle of equality. It means the recognition of others as equals and/or the recognition of their rights independent of identified differences. Following this idea, in the solidarity dissonance, the concern is to preserve and highlight the diversity of identities and experiences creating reciprocity and solidarity among the different. Popular communicators insist on the importance of establishing a situation of statutory symmetry among citizens despite the places where they live, their culture, or their origins. In this sense, coexistence precedes information. All voices matter because all beings matter. In order to make dissonance useful for social change, it is necessary to go beyond the critical thinking, there must be communicative action besides informational content, there must be solidarity as an engagement towards the interlocutor. The association between solidarity and dissonance may represent a paradox, but the former is necessary to recognise the unjust situations depicted by dissonant information and to impulse change. Jodi Dean starts one of her reflections about communicative capitalism asking a question about why a lot of information is not enough to trigger some transformations (Dean 2005). The lack of solidarity may be the answer.

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In this sense, it is appropriate to recover the concept of meaningful mobility developed by Jo Tacchi, particularly in its dimension of cognitive determinism (Tacchi 2014). She highlights the role of this dimension in the work of researchers studying the use of technologies in development projects, challenging the way questions and analytical categories are framed and the reflections that come from these frames. In the context of solidarity dissonance, cognitive determinism is also an important dimension. The claim of popular communicators for other meanings for social groups and mobilisations requires renewed editorial frames that go beyond the traditional information values. Solidarity dissonance is about the value of construction of knowledges. This perspective can be analysed in two ways. The first is developed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and is about the abyssal lines as a system of visible and invisible distinctions (Sousa Santos 2007). The second draws on the concept of interculturality of Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, where wisdom is more important than knowledge (Fornet-Betancourt 2001) and, consequently, than the accumulation or circulation of information. In both approaches, there is a reference to coexistence. Abyssal lines divide the world reality between the constructed ideas of existent and nonexistent. The nonexistent is made invisible, it is excluded for not following the rules of the existent, the regulated, the normalised. Sousa Santos argues that there is no possibility for “co-presence” as long as there are established abyssal lines, because those on the other side cannot be included and, therefore, “there is no possibility for solidarity” (Sousa Santos 2007). The criticism of this exclusionary epistemological model is also at the centre of the concept of intercultural philosophy, formulated by Raúl Fornet-Betancourt. For him, the intercultural knowledge is about contradictions and conflict, about seeing the other as an author and not just as an object of authorised narratives. The solidary dissonance challenges the domination by one single model of rationality and the judgement of different kinds of knowledge from one single world vision. The concept of solidarity dissonance recovers the importance of social perspectives and, therefore, of the position of the speaker in the public debate. Within it, giving voice is not enough because the uniformisation of the deliberative debate focuses on the formation of consensus and does not make place for solidarity. Coexistence is about recognising the difference and even the fragility of the other and taking their experiences and thoughts as valid for the debate and for the organisation of society.

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Fornet-Betancourt talks about a cultural polyphony that obliges us to reconsider evidence from the past, the present, and the future, taking into consideration other forms of wisdom. The intercultural philosophy does not look for uniformisation but aims to establish a permanent dialogue between diverse forms of knowledge that can help each other to live better. In the case of popular media, the enlargement of opportunities of expression is important and necessary, but solidarity will come from the identification of the diversity as a source of wisdom, from what Sousa Santos describes as “cognitive justice” (Sousa Santos 2007). It is a movement that seeks to renew the configuration of the “epistemological cartography” (Sousa Santos 2007, p. 52), “from these ‘places that reveal the truth’ and their own voices, charged with alternative memories considered so far as peripheral” (Fornet-Betancourt 2001, p. 27).

Notes 1. This observation is made upon 55 interviews with communicators leading media initiatives within 17 social movements, NGOs, and community associations in six Brazilian regions, from 2013 to 2017, within a doctoral research that I defended in 2018 at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. 2. Jodi Dean explains that “The notion of communicative capitalism conceptualises the commonplace idea that the market, today, is the site of democratic aspirations, indeed, the mechanism by which the will of the demos manifests itself” (Dean 2005, pp.54–55). It is animated by three main fantasies, that are the abundance, the activity/participation, and the wholeness.

References Dean, J. (2005). Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics. Culture Politics, 1(1), 51–74. Downing, J. D. H. (2001). Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Downing, J. D. H. (2016). Personal Reflections on 50 Years of Radical Media. Journal of Alternative and Community Media, 1, 7–9. Festinger, L. (1962). Cognitive Dissonance. Scientifican American, 4(207), 93–106. Fornet-Betancourt, R. (2001). La philosophie interculturelle. Penser autrement le monde. Bilbao: Editorial Desclée de Brouwer.

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Fraser, N. (2010). Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World. In N. Fraser (Ed.), Scales of Justice. Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (pp. 12–29). New York: Columbia University Press. Gumucio-Dagron, A., & Tufte, T. (2006). Communication for Social Change. Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings. South Orange: Communication for Social Change Consortium. Habermas, J. (2006). Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research. Communication Theory, 16, 411–426. Hall, S. (2013). The Work of Representation. In S. Hall, J. Evans, & S. Nixon (Eds.), Representation (pp. 1–59). London: SAGE. Miguel, L.  F. (2014). Democracia e Representação. Territórios em Disputa. São Paulo: Editora Unesp. Nardi, B. A., & O’Day, V. L. (2000). Information Ecologies. Using Technology with Heart. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Peruzzo, C.  M. K. (1998). Comunicação nos Movimentos Populares. Petrópolis: Vozes. Peruzzo, C.  M. K. (2008). Conceitos de comunicação popular, alternativa e comunitária revisitados. Reelaborações no setor. Palabra Clave, 2(11). Rodriguez, C. (2001). Fissures in the Mediascape. An International Study of citizen’s Media. Cresskill: Hampton Press. Rodriguez, C., Ferron, B., & Shamas, K. (2014). Four Challenges in the Field of Alternative, Radical and Citizens’ Media Research. Media, Culture and Society, 1–17. de Sousa Santos, B. (2007). Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges. Review, 1(XXX), 45–89. Suzina, A. C. (2018). Popular Media and Political Asymmetries in the Brazilian Democracy in Times of Digital Disruption. Louvain-la-Neuve: Université catholique de Louvain. Tacchi, J. (2014). Being Meaningfully Mobile: Mobile Phones and Development. In J.  Servaes (Ed.), Technological Determinism and Social (pp.  105–124). Lanham: Lexington Books. Vasiljević, J. (2016). The Possibilities and Constraints of Engaging Solidarity in Citizenship. Filozofija I Društvo, 2(XXVII), 373–386. Waisbord, S. (2008). Bridging the Divide Between the Press and Civic Society. Civic Media Advocacy as “Media Movement” in Latin America. In Plenary II.  International Panel on Global Divides (pp.  105–116). Stockholm: Nordicom Review. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pain in Communication for Social Change Colin Chasi

Introduction Communication for social change is a humanitarian project that uses socially accepted styles of preventing and ameliorating pain. At its root, its object is to educate or change how people interact in the world in ways that end or reduce practices that induce or manifest in illness, poverty, uncleanliness, marginalisation and other afflictions that evidence and produce pain. Humanitarian reform has historically aimed at reducing unnecessary pain and death in societies, finding pain unacceptable and obscene (Halttunen 1995, p. 330). It is possible that well-meaning communication for social change can, wittingly or otherwise, produce harmful implications, consequences, incidents and norms of pain and of its social uses. Thus, it is concerning to think that pain has yet to become the object of the direct attentions of both scholars and practitioners in this field.

C. Chasi (*) University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_14

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Why Pain Matters for Communication for Social Change Failure to study pain as a foremost interest of communication for social change may seem reasonable if the view is that it is possible to stave off and generally deal with pain by working on its determinants and symptoms, such as poverty, racial injustice and gender inequity. At the same time, because pain raises such a vast range of concerns, and because it does this from a wide range of medical, social, cultural and other perspectives, it may appear to be a concept that lacks the precision to be of practical or scholarly use. Yet, there is ample evidence that scholars in other fields, such as Feinberg (1989) with regards to law, Bendelow and Williams (1995) to do with health and Morris (1991) who has worked on culture, have made pain a serious scholarly concern. This suggests that pain is a sharp enough conceptual category to enable useful insights to be drawn to inform the scholarship and practice of communication for social change. For the purposes of this chapter, drawing on Melzack and Wall (1988, p. 161), it is viable to say that pain represents a bracket of sensory, affective and evaluative experiences that signify many diverse experiences which can and often do have different causes. Pain is found wherever there are losses to the capacity for living well. It is found whenever there is an attack on the capacity for achieving common conceptual grounds. There is pain wherever unjust limits and denials are imposed on the capacity of individuals to exercise existential choice. There is pain wherever people’s freedom and its corollary, development, are limited. Wherever and whenever a person loses something that is a concern to her, violence is inflicted (Gordon 1996, pp. 304–305). And pain visits people wherever violence is inflicted. Inevitably, bodily engagements with the world determine that human lives will always be vulnerable and painful (Russon 2016, p. 188). For this reason, pessimists, emblematically represented by nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (2004), argue that human life is marred by pain to such a degree that is better to never be born. Communication for social change is in contrast a rather optimistic praxis in that it seeks to mediate in human existence in ways that ameliorate and remove unnecessary pain, which sometimes is associated with death. When communicating about pain, we risk degrading and demeaning ourselves and others if we fail to reckon with the ways in which communication works in cultural and social terrains whose ontologies give varied experiences and responses to pain (Siby and Jung 2016, p.  5). In this

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sense, Susan Sontag (2003, p. 6) is insightful when she says, it is baneful to assume a “we” when dealing with the pain of others. Communication for social change practitioners and scholars ought to bear in mind that all pain does is in part due to its unsharability or resistance to language (Scarry 1985, p. 4). The more extreme in intensity and in duration the pain is, the more it shatters our ability to share the experience (Ferber 2016, p. 5). At the same time the more excruciating the pain is, the more efforts to publicly describe and define it can seem gratuitous and therefore forbidden and grotesque (cf. Halttunen 1995; Sontag 2003). This does not mean that it is not possible for those who do not experience a pain to take the option of solidarity with those who experience that pain. Indeed, the option of solidarity involves acts of recognising the dignity and worth that the other demands by virtue of that person’s inalienable unique humanity (cf. Guttierrez 1993). Solidarity requires choosing to commune with others in a language that ironically lets the other speak their truths. Communication and pain utilise and arise in terms of many of the same myths and metaphors. Among these, the transmission of communication and pain have been spoken of mythically as occurring through movements and passages of humours (cf., Bourke 2014, p. 71). Among its metaphors, communication is discussed as a process of transmitting messages through channels. Likewise, pain often gets cast as a biological or neural process whereby signals run through bodily channels to be decoded in the brain. Given this contiguity, and recalling both that myths have consequences (Mannheim 1936) and that metaphors shape how we live (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), we should think about how communication for social change says a great deal about how who gets what, from whom, where, when and how. In different ways, both communication and pain are meaningful, symbolic and expressive. Meaningful communicative acts take place wherever disturbances in one realm are transmitted into states or actions in another (Sperber and Wilson 1995; Grice 1957; Searcy and Nowicki 2005) so that it can be seen that any act of communication involves a measure of violent disruption in the state of another. However, among humans, an intentional source of a communicative act can generally be discerned even if the symbolic intentions of the speaker may themselves be difficult to discern. With pain, it is generally not always clear what the source is. But communicative acts are mainly assessed in terms of the intentional meanings of sources and in terms of how these intentions are symbolically coded, this is not the case when addressing pain. Even when the intentions of a source

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of pain are relatively easy to discern, pain tends to distort, damage and destroy the conditions for symbolic sharing of meaning. Communication entails processes by which meanings are shared on common conceptual grounds. Talk of communication entrains a semblance of communing that is vitiated by pain, which is in some part quintessentially incommunicable (Scarry 1985). Perhaps because the subjective experiences of pain are opaque, when dealing with pain, much attention goes to thinking about its expressive and therefore social qualities (Moscoso 2012). Much attention also goes to how pain shapes norms, by influencing those who bear it directly and how others react to it (cf. Adler 1999/2000). This explains in some part why pain has such an important role in how societies have historically meted out punishments in ways that have evolved to constantly address not only how just deserts are served upon perpetrators of harms but also to correct, improve, attain and maintain desired social norms while attacking, diminishing and ending those which are undesirable. Over millennia pain has been fundamental to how humans have created, maintained, policed, enforced and defended communities. Pain is applied and communicated as both a deterrent and a punishment when people seek, instantiate, maintain and safeguard law and order and individual as well as collective well-being. Something of this is recognisable in how the English word, “pain”, has etymological roots in the Latin poena, which translates as “punishment”. In one important instance, pain is at work in how violence gives birth simultaneously to the law and to the state. The law gives the state monopoly powers to prescribe punishments in ways that organise modern societies as we know them (Bastiat 2001/1850; Cover 1986). At the same time the sovereignty of state actors is a measure of the extents to which they can expose the bare bodies of others to pain, for instance by waging war, in ways that discipline how bodies appear, interact and die (cf. Agamben 2015). Under the weight of humanitarian shaming of traditional public displays of pain and social theatres of public punishment, pain has fallen back onto staged private and interior spheres of cruelty, furtive voyeurism, illicit private fantasies and hidden obsessions (cf. Halttunen 1995, p.  334). Given this, it may appear that pain and death have receded over time (cf. Pinker 2012; Shoemaker 2004). This appearance is worth thinking about for it is in this context that communication for social change has appeared as an important humanitarian project.

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At the very least, the intellectual history of Western humanitarian sensibility goes back to late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Latitudinarian divines who argued that it is human nature to be sympathetic (Halttunen 1995, p.  304). It is arguably from the roots of this humanitarian sensibility that a politics of pity emerged with what has come to be known as the human rights tradition. With growing normalisation of humanitarian sensibilities in the Western world, and in countries under the influence of Western countries, the second half of the eighteenth century saw a dramatic drop in the use of a wide range of corporal punishments (Shoemaker 2004). One of the main ways in which this has happened is through the emergence of the prison as a way to deal with those who infringe upon social prescripts. Instead of inflicting pain on the body of perpetrators, to exact punishment, modern societies increasingly put people in prisons. Corporal punishments are displaced by the symbolic and practical excommunication that is meted out to those who are condemned to serve prison sentences. Taking into account its multivalent and ambiguous nature, pain is being dealt out in different ways so that, for example, instead of conducting public floggings and public executions, we now imprison people in ways that inflict less visceral forms of pain, and in ways that inflict pain out of public sight (Geltner 2014). The prison is an important example of how pain is communicatively deployed under conditions of modernity in reductionist and fragmenting fashions that dislocate individuals from the violence and pain they are implicated in. The prison is a bureaucratic apparatus in a justice system that, under modernity, separates judges who set terms of sentences and put down orders for executions from prison officials who carry out these orders. Prisons serve to dislocate the decision to inflict painful punishment and the execution of such punishment. By “excommunicating” prisoners and conducting executions behind closed doors, prisons also function to take the horror of punishments away from the view of the publics whose needs for punishments and deterrents are served by penal services but who increasingly frown upon displays of pain. The upshot is that the bureaucratic system that modernity birthed is a social structure that takes semblances of blameworthiness and of moral agency away from individuals, with consequences that, for instance, enabled the bureaucratic execution of the holocaust (MacIntyre 1999). Further, and quite difficult to see, is how pain and communication are ironically, paradoxically, complexly, confusedly and seemingly irrevocably interwoven as modern orders are executed.

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Part of what is confusing and complex about it is that, from inception, modernity in the West has been accompanied by enunciations and developments of humanitarian ideals that reject features such as slavery, colonialism, paternalism and later on sexism and apartheid. Yet these same features are fundamental to how modernity has been made (cf. Mbembe 2017; de Sousa Santos 2014; Dubow 2006). It should not be surprising that modernity is a contradictory project in this way. Modernity is an epochal phase in which people and modes of production are confusedly industrialised, massified, individualised, colonised and alienated even as they are organised into larger school, city, state and other bureaucratised arrangements that are marked by new forms of structural and cultural violence and lived pain. The scramble for, partitioning of, and colonisation of Africa only took shape in the last half of the nineteenth century. What is instructive about colonialism, at least under British rule, following the Sepoy Uprising against colonial rule in India in 1857, is how innovations by Sir Henry Maine produced methods of indirect rule that defined, controlled and effectively gained epistemic mastery over those who colonialism learnt to define as natives (see Mamdani). The move from direct and sometimes brutal public suppression to indirect rule also was a move towards communicative bureaucratic practices of public administration. Thus, one makes a mistake, if one sees the absence of public flogging and noosing under significant parts of British colonialism as sufficient to show that needless pain and death were no longer being used to produce daily norms. Routinely the consent of masses was manufactured by communicative means, such as through the domination of language (see Wa Thiong’o 1987), even as pain and death issued forth from arrangements that have continued to spew harms into postcolonial times (cf. Mbembe 2017; de Sousa Santos 2014). Drawing on Michel Foucault, Steven Pinker (2012) has argued it was the increasing confidence in human technical, scientific and bureaucratic abilities to control pain and the world in general that piloted Western societies towards less public and openly violent and vulgar uses of pain towards more effective practices of knowledge-power that include the prison as a form of “epistemological dominance”. But people rework histories and ongoing experiences in ways that frequently undervalue pain or that diminish its relevance to how they prospectively map out actions (cf. Kahneman, p. 378; Seligman et al. 2016). Thus, communication for social change foundationally calls for people to be conscientised. At bottom, it

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appeals for people to stop the flow and corruption of symbolic and other soporifics and prophylactics that lull pains while harms carry on regardless. Communication for social change makes the call to conscientisation in the belief that when people awaken to what pains and potentially painfully kills them, they will be able to do something about such causes of harms. Further, it aims to enable people to do something about their needs, in ways that increasingly ameliorate, overcome and uproot pains and their causes to allow people to advance towards more perfect individual and collective lives. Insofar as communication for social change assumes aspects of the historical mantle of modernisation theories and practices, there is need to be concerned that it takes forward rationalist ideas about pain which bear traces of modernist and colonial practices. This is disturbing because, whatever positive claims one can make about them, these processes are associated with terrible epistemicides and genocides in many guises.

Pain Has Implications for Practices of Communication for Social Change To speak now of implications of pain for practices of communication for social change can create the terrible impression that the conceptual matters discussed above are not of practical relevance. Yet words create social worlds, they schematise action-possibilities, forming moral and ethical frameworks and are therefore indelibly acts of practice. It is valuable to appreciate that research and theory on the implications of pain entail formal and informal theories that are of eminent practical relevance. Among innumerable topics that can be examined, it can be worthwhile to study how pain accounts for the ways in which postcolonial experiences zombify people in ways that alienate them from experiences of pain. What are the conditions that turn people away from their concernful interests in such ways that, with denial of their choice and freedom, they end up living a “dead existence”? By asking questions like this in our daily research, we can advance the kind of literature that was stoked by Fanon (1967, pp.  3–17), particularly in a chapter of Towards an African Revolution which is titled “The North African Syndrome”. There Fanon highlights how colonialism inflicts unspeakable and difficult to locate pain on black bodies. He concludes the chapter by arguing that living in materially, structurally, medically and psychologically harmful settings dehumanises

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both colonisers and colonised in ways that can only end when there is a commitment to love that is realised in reclaiming the self and others as beings that merit living dignified lives. These questions have been taken up in diverse ways in black existential thought which is “premised upon concerns of freedom, anguish, responsibility, embodied agency, sociality and liberation” (Gordon 1997, pp. 3–4). Such questions have also been taken up by postcolonial scholars, liberation theologians and decolonial thinkers without convincingly, to use language made fabulously relevant for current purposes by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1993), “moving the centre” and “re-centring” communication for social change research to focus on the pain that, in any event, should be our main concern. Failure to address pain surely should be studied insofar as pain impinges upon how societies and their members countenance pleasure in a world in which pain is an inevitable part. This is of particular conceptual interest among, for example, Bantu-speaking Africans who are said to believe in cosmic harmony being the natural order of existence. More generally, this issue is important because it showcases that we cannot take for granted that all cultures understand and approach pain in the same ways. New and better understandings of the roles and forms of pain in different contexts may even reveal how some well-meaning communication regarding pain, which does not conceptualise pain appropriately, may even have been generating undesired consequences by promoting harmful underlying belief systems (cf. Chasi 2011). It cannot be easy for people who live under inordinately violent terms to regain agency even as they live with and in pain. To understand how people may do this requires asking, at least, about the relationship between pain and suffering. This in turn demands exploring the roles of people’s beliefs, including their religious beliefs, in enabling or disabling them from assuming agency over pain and its causes. When approaching such matters, there are lessons to learn from interrogating situated people’s theodicies regarding their deities in a world in which pain is unjustly distributed (Bendelow and Williams 1995; Jones 1998). We should be careful to avoid creating the impression that research on pain should focus on apparently abnormal, discordant, disreputable or contentious conceptual categories and issues. Consider then how honour, which on its face is a most desirable social good, has historically produced and reproduced through violent and painful practices such as the duel and honour murders of women and men who have sex outside of wedlock. Broadly speaking, how individuals in many societies acquire, promote and

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defend honour has traditionally involved violence and pain in ways that communication for social change must constantly renegotiate. There is cause to think about how honour can be socially granted, restored and maintained without the unnecessary meting out of pain. Kwame Anthony Appiah (2011) gives us the idea that communication can be applied to shame those who abuse violence and pain to conform to more socially acceptable human rights practices which tend increasingly to denounce unnecessary violence and pain. Communication for social change can ask questions about how insights into the relationship between honour and pain can open the way to more humanising ways of dealing with the shame, stigma and pain that accompany a wide array of topics, such as those do with HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and the abuse of drugs.

Conclusion Communication for social change seeks to use social measures to reduce, remove and ultimately eliminate unnecessary pain in human lives. In other words, the problem of communication for social change is of transforming circumstances, practices and sense-making in ways that are conducive to ameliorating, controlling or ending the pain that makes life brutish and that dooms it to inevitable death. Communication for social change seeks to do this by raising awareness of pain or of its causes, by building capacities for dealing with pain and its causes, by enabling people to prevent pain and its causes. The failure of scholarship in the field to address pain as its central concern means that practitioners and theorists have often been working without considering how the underlying issue of pain shapes, shrouds, directs and even misdirects communication efforts.

References Adler, M.  D. (1999/2000). Expressive Theories of Law: A Sceptical Overview. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 148, 1363–1501. Agamben, G. (2015). Civil War as a Political Paradigm. Homo Sacer II. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Appiah, K. A. (2011). The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Bastiat, F. (2001 [1850]). Bastiat’s the Law. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

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Bendelow, G. A., & Williams, S. J. (1995). Transcending the Dualisms: Towards a Sociology of Pain. Sociology of Health and Illness., 17(2), 139–165. Bourke, J. (2014). The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chasi, C. T. (2011). Hard Words: On Communication on HIV/AIDS. Johannesburg: Real African Publishers. Cover, R. M. (1986). Violence and the Word. Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 2708. Dubow, S. (2006). A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820–2000. Oxford: Oxford University. Fanon, F. (1967). Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays (H. Chevalier, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. Feinberg, J. (1989). Harm to Self: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (Volume Three). New York: Oxford University. Ferber, I. (2016). Pain as yardstick: Jean Améry. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy  – Revue de la Philosophie Française et de Langue Française, XXIV(3), 3–16. Geltner, G. (2014). Flogging Others: Corporal Punishment and Cultural Identity from Antiquity to the Present. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gordon, L. R. (1996). Fanon’s Tragic Revolutionary Violence. In L. R. Gordon, T.  D. Sharpley-Whiting, & R.  T. White (Eds.), Fanon: A Critical Reader (pp. 297–308). Cambridge: Blackwell. Gordon, L. R. (1997). Introduction: Black Existential Philosophy. In L. R. Gordon (Ed.), Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (pp. 1–9). London: Routledge. Grice, H. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review, 66(3), 377–388. Guttierrez, G. (1993). A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation. New York: Orbis. Halttunen, K. (1995). Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in Anglo-­ American Culture. American Historical Review, 100(2), 303–334. Jones, W. R. (1998). Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology. Boston: Beacon Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MacIntyre, A. (1999). Social Structures and their Threats to Moral Agency. Philosophy, 74, 311–329. Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mbembe, A. (2017). Critique of Black Reason (L. Dubois, Trans.). London: Duke University. Melzack, R., & Wall, P. (1988). The Challenge of Pain. Harmonsdsworth: Penguin. Morris, D. (1991). The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moscoso, J. (2012). Pain: A Cultural History. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Pinker, S. (2012). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Penguin. Russon, J. (2016). Self and Suffering in Buddhism and Phenomenology: Existential Pain, Compassion and the Problems of Institutional Healthcare. In K. G. Siby & P. G. Jung (Eds.), Cultural Ontology of the Self in Pain (pp. 181–196). New Delhi: Springer. Scarry, E. (1985). The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schopenhauer, A. (2004). On the Sufferings of the World. In D. Benatar (Ed.), Life, Death & Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions (pp. 393–402). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Searcy, W.  A., & Nowicki, S. (2005). The Evolution of Animal Communication Reliability and Deception in Signalling Systems. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Seligman, M. E. P., Railton, P., Baumeister, R. F., & Sripada, C. (2016). Homo Prospectus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shoemaker, K. (2004). The Problem of Pain in Punishment: Historical Perspectives. In A. Sarat (Ed.), Pain, Death, and the Law (pp. 15–42). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Siby, K. G., & Jung, P. G. (2016). Introduction. In K. G. Siby & P. G. Jung (Eds.), Cultural Ontology of the Self in Pain (pp. 1–24). New Delhi: Springer. Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others (Vol. 201, p.  127). New York: Picador. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Cambridge: Blackwell. de Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London: Routledge. Wa Thiong’o, N. (1987). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Wa Thiong’o, N. (1993). Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. Nairobi: EAEP.

Disappearance Florencia Enghel

What Is the Problem? That strategic communicative interventions in the functioning of human affairs can and must play a role in tackling social problems is a central tenet of communication for development/social change.1 Starting from that principle, the expression communication for development/social change refers here to a three-dimensional object that encompasses: (1) an academic field of study, (2) a more or less professional practice and (3) an institutional project. By “more or less professional practice”, I mean the practical work carried out on the ground or in intermediary organizations (typically non-­ governmental or other non-profit organizations) by workers who tend to freelance rather than be employed regularly and whose training and education vary. By “institutional project”, I mean the governance structures— national, bilateral, regional and multilateral—that set the wider agendas and establish the rules of the game that frame the practice of communication for development/social change. Each of these three dimensions has specific characteristics and a distinct scope. But they also interact with each other in ways that are enabled and constrained by their differential power, and their goals may coincide or compete (Enghel 2015).

F. Enghel (*) Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden © The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_15

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Over the years, the academic field of study has been marked by a strong concern with identifying the achievement of tangible results on the ground and generally devoted to demonstrating usefulness and building normative models, paying scant attention to the contextual conditions in which the practice has taken place (Waisbord 2008; Chakravartty 2009; Thomas and van de Fliert 2014; Enghel 2015; Ferron and Guevara 2017). Calls to attend to the institutional arrangements made in Western countries and multilateral fora that enable and constrain the conditions of possibility of the practice have been issued, but not heeded (Ngomba 2013; Enghel 2015). Instead, repeated and never settled discussions about what communication for development/social change is or should be, and one-off studies of discrete initiatives, have prevailed over efforts to research the standing over time of communication for development/social change as a practice and an institutional project (Wilkins 2009; Enghel 2014; Ferron and Guevara 2017). More specifically, the fact that communication for development/social change once existed as a clear-cut institutional approach within specific types of organizations, and no longer does, remains unattended. As I will argue and illustrate throughout this chapter, the notion of disappearance is useful to address this blind spot.2

How Does Communication for Development/ Social Change Disappear? I started thinking about this notion years ago, out of a concern with the material dismantling of organizational spaces that were once dedicated to communication for development/social change and ceased to exist in ways that seemed rather sudden. Within the academic field of study, those disappearances tended to be taken for granted or explained away rather than questioned as potential indicators of shifts in the practice and institutional project (Enghel 2013, 2015). As a corrective to this shortcoming, in this chapter I put forward, unpack and illustrate a definition of disappearance in three senses: as observable fact, as conceptual lens and as path dependence. Disappearance as Observable Fact The first meaning refers to observable facts that speak of the instability, rather than the sustainability, of the practice and the project of communication for development/social change. In this sense, disappearance refers

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to the process by which the operations of an organization (or organizational unit) specifically devoted to communication for development/social change are discontinued, with potential repercussions across dimensions. Relatedly, disappearance refers more widely to the process by which communication for development/social change ceases to be implemented regularly in the absence of supportive infrastructures. While the first type of process alludes to single events that appear to take place rather rapidly,3 the second one hints at a more structural shift, which may or may not be incremental but in any case merits longitudinal analysis. One empirical example of the first type is the dismantling of the World Bank’s (WB) Development Communication Division (DevComm) sometime towards the end of 2010. Created in 1998, DevComm was “devoted specifically to mainstreaming communication in Bank operations and upstreaming it in the development agenda” (World Bank 2007, p. xxv; Mefalopulos 2008). Its stated task was to support “the Bank’s mission of reducing poverty by providing clients with strategic communication advice and tools they need to develop and implement successful projects and pro-­ poor reform efforts”.4 The Division understood communication instrumentally, favoured a behavioural approach to the production of social change that turned a blind eye to politics, and may have served to distract from contradictions between the WB’s pro-participation discourses and its manipulative practices (Rush 2009; Enghel 2013). But, despite these arguably problematic qualities, while it lasted it also called increasing attention to communication as a valuable component of international development intervention within and beyond the WB.5 By 2003, the Division had 17 professional staff members working across four expertise areas.6 Between 2004 and 2006, in the process of organizing the First World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD), to which I return later in this chapter, it contributed to spotlighting communication as a significant issue in the WB’s agenda. In 2007, it commissioned a study aimed at demonstrating the presumed positive impact of communication on development activities, that explicitly sought to influence research approaches within the field and succeeded by gaining traction among academics despite its methodological deficiencies (Inagaki 2007; see Enghel 2014 for a discussion of uncritical adoption). In 2008, the Division was said to be “consolidating and strengthening its core of activities” (Mefalopulos 2008, p. xix). However, in 2009 its activities started to wane.7 By 2012, when I could no longer locate the Division’s subpage in the WB’s website, I emailed a prominent WB DevComm member to ask

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what was going on. Surprisingly, s/he replied that s/he had no clue and asked me to contact a WB officer so they could look into it (personal communication). In turn, the WB officer to which I was redirected gave me a polite but cryptic answer, which referred to the subpage only without clarifying the fate of the Division: s/he informed me that, unfortunately, the DevComm page was no longer available (personal communication). This told me that the WB had decided to shut down its DevComm Division without announcing the decision. In line with that institutional silence, the closure was not publicly discussed by scholars in the field of communication for development/social change despite the fact that a significant number of them had collaborated with the Division as expert consultants over the years, and neither its causes nor its consequences were researched. A different empirical example of the first type of disappearance as observable fact is the closure of Panos London in 2013. Established in 1987, and registered as a charity in the UK, this organization operated during 26 years with the goal of fostering sustainable and equitable development through voice, dialogue, media and ICTs.8 Unlike the WB, Panos did not hide the decision from public view. Instead, it announced it soberly seven months in advance of closure, in July 2012, via a press release posted to the organization’s website where Birgitte Jallov, then Chair of the board of trustees, explained that it had been taken in the context of a shift among donors towards supporting operations in developing countries and an “extremely competitive funding environment” (Panos 2012). This was not the first time that the organization had faced challenging financial conditions. In 2010, income had fallen 15% compared to 2009 due to changes in funding for international development as a whole and for communication for development in particular, forcing the organization to close departments and reduce staff (Panos 2010, 2011). But in 2012 further downsizing was not an option. Having evaluated foreseeable scenarios, trustees decided that they should “manage the organization’s closure responsibly rather than risk a sudden closure” (Panos 2012). The fact that the closure was announced led a few members of the wider community of communication for development/social change stakeholders to react publicly. James Deane, a former Panos director, wrote a blog post entitled “In memoriam” for The Communication Initiative Network (CI) in December 2012, which gathered some comments from readers expressing surprise and sadness (Deane 2012). Panos moreover published a selection of messages from former staff and

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associates in its website.9 But, despite the fact that a short-lived public conversation about the impending loss preceded the closure, the causes and consequences of this disappearance haven’t been researched either. Studies could still be undertaken, however, since the online archive makes it possible to retrieve significant data regarding funding flows, programmatic priorities and reported outcomes over the years, as well as contact details for potential interviewees. Unlike DevComm’s webpage, which was discontinued by the WB, Panos’ site continues to exist, thus allowing its potential use as a knowledge resource and preserving the organization’s history (Fig. 1). A search of scholarly literature published since 2012 referring to Panos London’s closure leads to only two references—one corresponding to prior work of mine (Enghel 2013) and one to Narae Choi’s review of Displaced: the Human Cost of Development and Resettlement, a book derived from Panos London’s oral testimony programme, which characterizes the organization’s demise as “another disheartening reminder of how difficult it is to ensure that the voices of marginalised people are heard” (Choi 2013; see also Chambers 2012 for a discussion of the impossibility of voice within the WB). Choi’s remark speaks of the second type

Fig. 1  Snapshot from the Panos website homepage. (Source: http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/)

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of process defined as the disappearance of communication for development/social change as observable fact at the start of this section, that is, the process by which a certain form of the practice ceases to take place over time in the absence of supportive institutional infrastructures. In this sense, disappearance refers not to discrete cases of dismantling such as those exemplified by the WB’s DevComm Division or Panos London, but to a more systemic phenomenon that points at the potential failure of communication for development/social change as a wide-reaching transformative project in the absence of long-lasting institutional support for the deployment of the practice. While the WB’s DevComm Division and Panos London constitute examples of a different order, with the former pertaining to the institutional project dimension and the latter to the practice dimension, they both illustrate closure and point at communication for development/social change as institutionally and practically unsustainable over time. Disappearance as Conceptual Lens The second meaning refers to a blind spot in academic studies, namely the lack of systematic attention to the shrinking institutional spaces and resources for communication for development/social change, and the invisibility that presumably ensues from this inattention: because the problem is barely studied empirically, academics also tend to ignore it analytically.10 In this sense, disappearance is the process by which the scholarly study of communication for development/social change, understood as the cumulative product of research produced over the years within the field at large, does not account for diminishing conditions of possibility for ethically sound and participatory forms of the practice within the institutional project. Let me illustrate this meaning, in the first place, via a counterexample. In a study of communication for development/social change in Spain, Víctor Marí (2016) seeks to account for the institutional project as a significant research variable. By reviewing academic literature and documents produced by non-governmental and governmental organizations, he charts the emergence and institutionalization of the field over a period of 20 years. According to his analysis, the surge in research projects and academic publications observed in Spain between 2003 and 2011 does not represent a boom. Instead, it points to the field’s impending implosion as a likely future. Marí notes that in Spain communication for development/

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social change was put into practice by NGOs starting in the late 1980s, while the various government agencies in charge of international cooperation and aid generally disregarded it as a policy issue. In his view, the risk of implosion arises from a context of weak institutionalization, such that conditions are not in place for the practice or its scholarly study to subsist in the long term. Although Marí’s study pays limited empirical attention to communication for development/social change’s institutional dimension, it brings it to the fore from an analytical perspective, thus making a significant contribution. If, building on his work, similar studies were produced to chart the internal trajectory of communication for development/ social change e.g.  in other European countries, it would be possible to compare empirical detail about the state of institutionalization across the region (Ferron and Guevara 2017). The comparison would then serve to distinguish between possible and probable futures for the practice and the institutional project (Urry 2016, p. 13). A straightforward example of the failure to account for the shrinking of institutional spaces derives from the above-mentioned WCCD, which was held in Rome, Italy, in October 2006. Convened by the WB’s DevComm Division, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Communication for Development Group,11 and The Communication Initiative Network (CI),12 the WCCD “brought together for the first time more than 800 communication professionals engaged in development initiatives, policy- and decision-making, NGOs, community representatives, and academics from around the world to discuss how to mainstream development communication into development policies and practice”13. As part of the preparatory work towards the WCCD, a worldwide call for paper proposals was circulated, and an ad hoc Scientific Committee14 “composed of 23 academicians and practitioners in the field of Communication for Development, selected on the basis of their contribution to the theory and practice of the discipline”, was established in order to evaluate them (World Bank 2007, p. xxi). A total of 137 full papers from 43 countries were invited to the WCCD at the expense of the conveners. This wasn’t the Committee’s only task. During the event, it presented the background study “Communication for development making a difference”, which would later be published as an appendix of the WCCD’s proceedings in a version edited by WB, FAO and CI representatives15 (World Bank 2007). According to the study, “communication for development is brought about by people who are involved in participatory communication processes that facilitate a sharing of knowledge in order to

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effect positive development change” (World Bank 2007, p. 212). As I’ve discussed in detail elsewhere based on my own attendance as one of the authors whose paper was accepted, the WCCD’s setup was far from participatory, and its main output, The Rome Consensus,16 resulted from negotiations held behind the scenes that precluded dialogue with attendees (Enghel 2011). The troublesome circumstances were compounded by the fact that the WCCD’s website was discontinued soon after the event took place, quashing access to the various knowledge resources produced in the run-up. And, given the dismantling of the WB’s DevComm Division, there was never a Second World Congress. The WCCD’s Scientific Committee, however, remained silent rather than take a stand to voice constructive critique, if not grave concerns, regarding the event’s shortcomings and its dismaying aftermath. The question is: why? Bill Schwarz remarked in 2006, reflecting on disciplinarity within media and communication studies, that “all institutional forms of knowledge allow some things to be said more readily than others. [...] All academic disciplines, whether we’re conscious of it or not, contain elements that, within the norms they have generated, are unspeakable” (Schwarz 2006, p. 22). More recently, Benjamin Ferron and Erica Guevara (2017, p. 49, 51) have called attention to the fact that scholars in the field of communication for development/social change tend to occupy spaces both within and outside academia, crossing boundaries towards the practice and the institutional project. This, in turn, makes it difficult for them to achieve the necessary proper distance from their object of study. As well argued by Ferron and Guevara (2017), adopting a critical perspective regarding the roles that we play as scholars in specific institutional scenarios would allow us to tackle the problems that communication for development/social change faces from a renewed perspective (2017, p. 50). To put it provokingly: we must “do reflexivity” about our acts of positioning vis-à-vis the practice and the project, so that the specificity of the academic dimension won’t disappear (Dean 2017). Disappearance as Path Dependence The third and last meaning refers to disappearance as the historical process by which communication for development/social change, understood as the strategic and systematic use of mediated communication to advance justice across scales via ethically sound, participatory and democratizing practices, peaked in the late 1990s as an ideal to which institutions paid lip

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service, but since then may have started vanishing away as a sustained— that is, materially and politically supported—aspiration of the global governance system. In this case, prior scholarly work serves as an indicator, raising questions for further research. In 2008, drawing on his experience in health communication, Silvio Waisbord analysed how international aid institutions discouraged the adoption of participatory communication, stating: “The institutionalization of participatory communication is at a crossroads. [...] Opportunities vary across agencies and governments as well as across specific social sectors. It is not obvious what route is most suitable” (Waisbord 2008, p. 519). In his view, the viability of participation within the institutional project depended on academics and practitioners: “It behoves researchers and practitioners to seriously consider the prospects and strategies for broadening the understanding of communication in international development” (Waisbord 2008, p. 519). In 2009, Paula Chakravartty challenged Waisbord’s analysis when, in a condensed account of the field’s history, she noted that a focus on participation may have inadvertently been part of the problem that the proposed notion of disappearance seeks to pinpoint, rather than of the solution: In the 1950s and 1960s, social scientists based [...] at U.S. universities would travel, advise, and train policy makers and a future generation of media researchers across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, on how best to accelerate modernization based on already outdated theories of social change applied to “traditional” societies. During the 1970s and 1980s, critical media scholars along with activists effectively challenged the motivations behind the paternalistic discourse of development with its ahistorical assumptions and imperial ambitions. Responding to these critiques, practitioners in [...] development communication began to solicit involvement from grassroots organizations and encourage community participation to justify more humble goals of localised social change. This newfound humility or self-reflection among conscious [...] practitioners and organizations was taking place just as the steady pace of liberalization and c­ ommercialization of new and old media systems began to change the terms of both institutional politics and everyday cultural practice across post–Cold War market societies. (Chakravartty 2009, p. 38)

In 2012, Emile Mc Anany further suggested that there was a link between the encouragement of participatory communication within the institutional project as from the late 1980s and the advent of neoliberal

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policies that led to the privatization of public services and a free-market approach to aid allocations. In his view, institutional discourses in favour of participatory communication rose to cover for a change in funding priorities (McAnany 2012, pp. 90–91). What Chakravartty (2009) identified as an autocritical effort of practitioners to respond to the undemocratic aspects of modernization approaches, undertaken somewhat unaware of shifts in the wider context, was, in McAnany’s view, co-opted by development agencies to downplay a major operational restructuring.17 Taken together, the views of Chakravartty (2009) and McAnany (2012) indicate that justice-driven, ethical and participatory communication for development/social change as a major systemic approach may have been disappearing for years, against Waisbord’s proposition from 2008 that academics and practitioners could set institutions straight if they only tried hard enough. Whether we are in the presence of path dependence, that is, a tendency of institutions resulting from their structural properties and dispositions, is an empirical question meriting investigation.

Why Define an Absence? In recent years, the “astonishing acceleration both in the scale of development projects based on information and communication technologies and in its symbolic significance in promising a painless transition to modernity” that Chakravartty (2009, p. 37) warned us about has become apparent. International development has changed in terms of institutional stakeholders, priorities, funding rationales and operations, including its de facto privatization, its fast digitalization and the heavy promotion of the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals, which mostly ignore communication as a right of citizens and treat it instead as a matter of business infrastructure (Enghel and Noske-Turner 2018). In parallel, the political economy and forms of delivery of global media continue to undergo marked transformations (Flew 2018). These changes, combined, may have rendered moot the conditions of possibility for justice-driven, ethically sound and participatory communication for development/social change championed in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Enghel and Wilkins 2012; Thomas and van de Fliert 2014). By proposing attention to the various forms of its disappearance, I am not claiming to have identified the end of communication for development/ social change’s history. Instead, I want to call attention to the fact that “it is in the analysis of the real practices subsumed by development that more

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specific recognitions are necessary and possible” (Williams 1983, p. 104), and thus contribute “an extra edge of consciousness” (Williams 1983, p. 24) to the difficult task of redefining the positioning of this particular approach to righting the world’s wrongs in the scheme of things, and to democratizing its future.

Notes 1. There are continuities and discontinuities, as well as similarities and differences, in existing conceptualizations of communication for development and communication for social change (see Enghel 2013, 2014; Wilkins 2009 for discussions). For the purpose of this book chapter, I am more interested in their continuities and similarities than their discontinuities and differences, and therefore consider them jointly. 2. I am grateful to Pradip Thomas and Karin Wilkins for their thoughtful input on a draft version of this text, which informed my thinking at a crucial point in the writing process. 3. This may be because certain institutional processes are hidden from view as they unfold, and/or not discussed publicly once they become evident. 4. Direct quote retrieved from https://web.archive.org/ web/20041010121807/http://www.worldbank.org/developmentcommunications/ (Accessed January 29, 2019). 5. The fact that the WB’s DevComm Division makes for a contentious example of the materialization of communication for development/social change as institutional project allows me to clarify that taking into account its disappearance as an observable fact is not necessarily akin to regretting its demise. Neither sympathy nor disapproval vis-à-vis a given object of study should guide scholarly decisions about what merits investigation. 6. See https://web.archive.org/web/20041011024923/http://www. worldbank.org/developmentcommunications/who%20we%20are/ who2nlevel.htm (Accessed January 29, 2019). 7. Partly because I had participated as a junior researcher in the WCCD in 2006, and partly for teaching purposes, I monitored DevComm’s activities over the years, and thus noticed this shift. 8. Retrieved from http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/our-work/ (Accessed January 29, 2019). 9. See http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/2012/12/20/tributes-topanos-london/ (Accessed January 30, 2019). 10. There are of course exceptions. I discuss some of them in the next section of this chapter. For a very recent example, see elements of the study by Scott, Wright and Bunce (2018) on the state of humanitarian journalism.

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11. In 2006, FAO’s Communication for Development Group was located in the Research and Extension Unit within the Natural Resources and Environment Department (World Bank 2007, p. xxiv). According to Gumucio-Dagron (2007), “immediately after the WCCD, FAO bureaucrats decided to make the Communication for Development Unit, which had already been downgraded since 1995, ‘disappear’”. 12. The CI’s stated mission is to “convene the communication and media development, social and behavioural change community for more effective local, national, and international development action”. See http://www. comminit.com/global/category/sites/global (Accessed January 30, 2019). 13. See https://www.lifegate.com/businesses/team/lucia-grenna (Accessed April 17, 2020). 14. Chaired by Jan Servaes. 15. See World Bank (2007, p.  209) for a list of members of the Scientific Committee (pages xxi–xxiii) and of authors of the background study. The reference to the review and editing process is not where the authors are listed, but on page 8, note 1. 16. See http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTDEVCOMMENG/ Resources/RomeConsensus07.pdf 17. In hindsight, this may have been the case with DevComm and the WCCD.

References Chakravartty, P. (2009). Modernization Redux? Cultural Studies & Development. Television & New Media, 10(1), 37–39. Chambers, R. (2012). ‘Voices of the Poor’ and Beyond: Lessons from the Past, Agenda for the Future. The Hague: International Institute of Social Studies. Choi, N. (2013). Book Review of Displaced: The Human Cost of Development and Resettlement. Journal of Refugee Studies, 26(4), 604–605. https://doi. org/10.1093/jrs/fet037. Dean, J. (2017). Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction. Bristol: Policy Press. Deane, J. (2012). In Memoriam. The Communication Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.comminit.com/policy-blogs/content/memoriam-panos-london Enghel, F. (2011, July 13–17). The World Congress on Communication for Development: ‘A Worldwide Conversation’ Gone Missing. Paper Accepted for Presentation at the IAMCR 2011 Conference, Istanbul, Turkey. Enghel, F. (2013). Communication, Development and Social Change: Future Alternatives. In K.  Wilkins, J.  Straubhaar, & S.  Kumar (Eds.), Global Communication/New Agendas in Communication. New York: Routledge. Enghel, F. (2014). Video Letters, Mediation and (Proper) Distance: A Qualitative Study of International Development Communication in Practice. Karlstad:

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Karlstad University Press. Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:n bn:se:kau:diva-34448 Enghel, F. (2015). Towards a Political Economy of Communication in Development? Nordicom Review 36 [Special Issue]. Retrieved from http:// nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/kapitel-pdf/nordicom_review_36_2015_ special_issue_pp._11-24.pdf Enghel, F., & Noske-Turner, J. (2018). Communication in International Development: Towards Theorizing across Hybrid Practices. In F.  Enghel & J. Noske-Turner (Eds.), Communication in International Development: Doing Good or Looking Good? London: Routledge. Enghel, F., & Wilkins, K. (2012). Mobilizing Communication Globally: For What and for Whom? Nordicom Review, Special Issue, 9–14. Ferron, B., & Guevara, E. (2017). Sociología política de la ‘comunicación para el cambio social’: pistas para un cambio de enfoque. Commons/Revista de Comunicación y Ciudadanía Digital, 6(1), 45–62. Retrieved from https:// revistas.uca.es/index.php/cayp/article/view/3303. Flew, T. (2018). Understanding Global Media (2nd ed.). London: Red Globe Press. Gumucio-Dagron, A. (2007). Are We Communicating Development? Glocal Times, 7 (February). Retrieved from https://glocaltimes.mah.se/index.php/ gt/article/view/108 Inagaki, N. (2007). Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development: Recent Trends in Empirical Research. Washington: The World Bank. Marí Sáez, V. (2016). Communication, Development, and Social Change in Spain: A Field Between Institutionalization and Implosion. The International Communication Gazette, 78(5), 469–486. https://doi. org/10.1177/1748048516633616. McAnany, E. (2012). Saving the World: A Brief History of Communication for Development and Social Change. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Mefalopulos, P. (2008). Development Communication Handbook: Broadening the Boundaries of Communication. Washington: The World Bank. Ngomba, T. (2013). Comprehending Social Change in an Era of Austerity: Reflections from a Communication Perspective. Glocal Times, 19 (September). Retrieved from https://ojs.mau.se/index.php/glocaltimes/article/view/243 Panos. (2011). Annual Review 2010. Retrieved from http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/annual-reviews/annual-review-and-trustee-report-2010/ Panos. (2011). Trustees Report and Financial Statements 2011. Retrieved from http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/annual-reviews/ trustee-report-2011/ Panos. (2012). Panos London to close but the work goes on. Retrieved from http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/press-releases/ panos-london-to-close-but-the-work-goes-on/

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Rush, J. (2009). Sugar Coating, or the Manufacture of Community Support. Glocal Times, 13 (November). Retrieved from https://ojs.mau.se/index.php/ glocaltimes/article/view/190/185 Schwarz, B. (2006). The ‘Poetics’ of Communication. In J. Curran & D. Morley (Eds.), Media and Cultural Theory (pp. 19–29). London: Routledge. Scott, M., Bunce, M., & Wright, K. (2018). The State of Humanitarian Journalism. Norwich: University of East Anglia. Thomas, P., & van de Fliert, E. (2014). Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change: The Basis for a Renewal. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Urry, J. (2016). What Is the Future? Cambridge: Polity. Waisbord, S. (2008). The Institutional Challenges of Participatory Communication in International Aid. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 14(4), 505–522. Wilkins, K. (2009). What’s in a Name? Problematizing Communication’s Shift from Development to Social Change. Glocal Times, 13 (September). Retrieved from https://ojs.mau.se/index.php/glocaltimes/article/view/185 Williams, R. (1983). Keywords: A Vocabulary of Society and Culture. New  York: Oxford University Press. World Bank. (2007). World Congress on Communication for Development: Lessons, Challenges and the Way Forward. Washington: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.

Index1

A Aadhaar, 32, 33 Accountability downward accountability, 47–49, 71n1 upward accountability, 67, 71n1 ActionAid, 48 Adaptive, 77 Advocacy, 8, 41, 53–58, 71n5 Aesthetics, 34, 137–141 Affect, 76, 82, 90, 100, 127, 141 Agency, 7, 8, 10, 11, 32, 35, 39, 41, 43–45, 47, 55, 58–60, 64, 65, 69, 70, 71n5, 87, 91–92, 95, 101–104, 106, 117, 126, 129, 138, 148, 159, 162, 173, 175, 176 Alternative information, 148 Apartheid, 21, 130, 160 Appadurai, A., 29, 126 Arab Spring, 23, 109

Arendt, H., 36n2, 111, 118, 119 Artificial Intelligence (AI), 31–33, 35, 36 B Big data, 31, 33 Black Lives Matter, 20 Brazil, 13, 111, 118, 119, 145, 149 Buddhism, 66 C Capabilities, 76, 82 Castells, M., 23 Chakravartty, P., 168, 175, 176 Chambers, R., 45, 66, 105, 171 Citizen media, 148

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Tacchi, T. Tufte (eds.), Communicating for Change, Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5

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182 

INDEX

Citizenship activist citizenship, 110, 112, 113, 119 acts of citizenship, 10, 109–113, 115, 118–120 citizen engagement, 1, 2, 33, 110, 119, 140 citizenship studies, 24 outrage(ous) citizenship, 6, 17–25 Civic engagement, 137 Cognitive determinism, 101, 105–107, 152 Cognitive justice, 7, 12, 30, 31, 34–36, 36n1, 69, 153 Collective action, 6, 22, 117 Colonialism, 129, 160, 161 Communication communication intervention, 64, 69 communication process, 6, 22, 41, 42, 46, 63, 81, 145 communicative capitalism, 146, 151, 153n2 communicative development, 7, 8, 39–49 health communication, 46, 47, 175 interpersonal communication, 43, 79–81 mass communication, 43 political communication, 146 programme communication, 39 strategic communication, 8, 56, 65, 169 Communication and development ComDev, 40, 128, 130 communication and social change (CSC), 1, 2, 5, 6, 39, 40, 64, 70, 102 communication for development (C4D), 1–3, 9–11, 13, 39–45, 47, 48, 65, 67–70, 71n5, 75, 77–79, 81, 83, 85–96, 101–104, 106, 107, 124, 128, 167–170, 172–174, 176, 177n1, 177n5

communication for social change (CFSC), 1, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 19, 22–24, 39, 46, 63–71, 86–89, 92, 95, 96, 101, 117, 138, 145, 155–163 DevCom, 40, 43 development communication, 2, 39–49, 173, 175 development communication programmes, 75 development support communication, 39 Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), 85–86 Community development, 2, 80 Community radio, 63 Conflict, 3, 12, 41, 91, 126–128, 136, 139, 148, 152 Conscientisation, 161 Consensus, 6, 12, 41, 66, 127, 152 Content creation, 92, 93 Context, 3, 4, 8–10, 13, 23, 24, 29, 30, 36, 41, 43, 44, 47, 49, 54, 55, 57–59, 66, 67, 69, 79–81, 85–96, 99, 103, 117, 119, 123, 124, 127, 138, 142, 150, 152, 158, 162, 170, 173, 176 Context-aware computing context-awareness, 85 context-responsiveness, 9 context-sensitivity, 85 Conviviality, 11, 12, 123–130, 135–142 Cosmopolitanism, 11, 123–130, 136–138 Creolisation, 11, 123–130, 131n2, 131n6 Critical dissonance, 12, 146, 149–150 Critical engagement, 8, 58, 141 Critical inquiry, 53, 56–58, 60

 INDEX 

Cultural cultural encounters, 90 cultural hybridity, 90 cultural minority, 89, 92 D Data fetishism, 31 Datafied, 32, 34–36 Deliberation, 31, 44, 146 deliberative development, 44 Democracy, 7, 19, 29–36, 127, 129, 146 democratic participation, 68 Development cultural turn in development, 88 development as liberation, 69 development industry, 55, 77 human development, 69 international development, 2, 10, 64, 69, 88, 100, 105, 106, 116, 169, 170, 175, 176, 178n12 post-development, 11, 124, 130n1 strategic development, 53, 54 Dialogue dialogic communication, 56–59, 81 dialogic inquiry, 56–58 Digital digital disruption, 6, 148 digital media, 6, 18, 24, 113, 119 Digital storytelling, 140 Disappearance, 7, 12, 13, 167–177 Dissonance, 7, 12, 34, 145–153 Dramaturgy, 10, 109–120 E Emancipation, 36, 145 social emancipation, 69 Empowerment, 11, 48, 53, 58, 63, 65, 66, 81, 138, 140 Epistemology, 2, 9, 13, 56, 69

183

F Fictionalisation, 141 Fraser, C., 42, 43, 45 Freire, P., 7, 42, 45, 55, 57, 69, 81, 140 Fundação Casa Grande, 150 G Gender gender discrimination, 63 gender empowerment, 63 Gezi Park, 114, 115, 117 Gezi uprising, 109, 112, 118 Gilroy, P., 123, 124, 126, 135, 136 Global capitalism, 54, 78 Globalisation, 7, 11, 30, 77, 107, 124–127, 131n4 Global risk, 127 Glocal, 111–112 Grassroots movements, 33 Gumucio-Dagron, A., 2, 39, 40, 42, 49, 145, 178n11 H Habermas, J., 146 Honour, 162, 163 Human rights interventions, 67 I Impact evaluation, 67, 71 Inclusion, 1, 12, 30, 48, 56, 58, 60, 110–112, 139, 146 India, 13, 32, 63, 126, 160 Indigenous knowledge, 82, 105 Indignados, 3 Information ecology, 150 Institutional listening, 6, 7, 29–36, 68 Intangible outcomes, 7–9, 63–71, 75 Intercultural philosophy, 152, 153 Intervention design methodology, 88

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INDEX

J Justice, 3, 4, 6–8, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, 23, 30, 31, 33–36, 36n1, 53–60, 68, 69, 71, 109, 114, 115, 146, 159, 174 social justice, 8, 11, 19, 53–60, 68, 69, 71, 109, 114, 115 K Knowledge, 6, 7, 30, 36, 36n1, 40, 57, 59, 66–69, 76, 77, 81–83, 93, 102–107, 146, 152, 153, 171, 173, 174 L Landless Workers Movement (MST), 149 Latin America, 23, 111, 126, 175 Liberating pedagogy, 140 Listening, 7, 8, 29–36, 41, 44, 47, 49, 53, 57, 58, 68, 71, 81, 82, 116, 140 M Machine learning, 91 Margin marginalised groups, 11, 43, 68, 136, 139–141, 148 marginalised people, 12, 138, 171 marginal subject, 29 marginal voices, 30, 146 minority voice, 92, 93 Meaningful mobility, 7, 8, 10, 99–107, 152 Mediation, 25, 85, 117, 119, 120 Modernity, 11, 126, 129, 159, 160, 176 Multiculturalism, 123, 130, 136 Multidisciplinarity, 24

O Occupy Wall Street, 23 Outrage, 6, 17–21, 23–25, 118 P Pain, 12, 13, 155–163 Participation, 1, 2 participatory action research, 93, 94, 96 participatory development, 41, 45, 56, 101 participatory inquiry, 87, 89 participatory media, 93 participatory paradigm, 70 participatory technology, 86 Peacebuilding, 140 Pedagogy, 81, 140 Performance, 91, 103, 110, 113, 116, 118 Phenomenological thinking, 89 Political political capital, 55 political protests, 55 political voice, 30, 31 Polyphony, 146, 153 Popular communicators, 12, 145, 147–152 Popular media, 12, 146–149, 153 Postcolonial, 29, 43, 69, 126, 160–162 Privatisation, 55, 176 Public sphere, 30, 33, 34, 114, 131n4, 146 Q Qualitative research, 65, 67, 94 Quantification, 59, 65, 66, 103, 105 Quebral, N., 7, 40, 43, 44

 INDEX 

R Radical media, 148 Reflexivity, 11, 92–96, 138, 174 Refugees, 21, 127, 129, 140 Relation, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9–12, 23, 48, 67, 78–82, 87, 93, 99, 100, 105, 107, 126, 130, 131n5, 136–141, 147 Responsive architecture, 85 Rights, 6, 7, 10, 18, 19, 23, 29–31, 33, 35, 36, 36n1, 48, 54, 67, 68, 71, 71n1, 104, 110–113, 115, 118, 140, 150, 151, 159, 163, 176 Rome Consensus, The, 174 Rome World Congress on Communication for Development, 39 S Sina Weibo, 18, 22, 23 Social action, 64, 151 Social capital, 80 Social change, 1–6, 8–10, 12–14, 23, 41, 43–46, 53–56, 63–71, 75–82, 86–88, 92, 94–96, 99, 101–104, 107, 109–120, 123, 128, 138, 140, 145–147, 151, 155–163, 167–170, 172–176, 177n1, 177n5 social change communication, 68, 69 Social entrepreneurship, 79, 80 Social injustice, 23, 142 Social media, 1, 6, 18, 21, 25, 33, 35, 110, 115, 117, 118, 131n4 Social movements, 1, 2, 10, 14, 23, 24, 40, 55, 80, 110, 111, 113–119, 149, 153n1 Social uprising, 109–111, 115, 118–120

185

Solidarity, 12, 63, 67, 115, 127, 129, 137, 141, 142, 146, 149–153, 157 solidarity dissonance, 12, 146, 149–153 Sousa Santos, B. de, 68, 69, 152, 153, 160 Storytelling, 118–119 Surveillance surveillance apparatus, 34 surveillance capitalism, 36 surveillance systems, 34 T Tangible outcomes, 69, 70 Technological mediation, 85 Technology, 18, 19, 23, 31, 33, 35, 66, 85, 86, 91, 92, 96, 100, 104, 107, 113, 148, 150, 152, 176 technology design, 85, 92 Theatre of the oppressed, 12, 63, 140 Theory strong theory, 76, 77, 80, 82 weak theory, 76–80, 82 Transparency, 43, 48, 59, 60, 67 U United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 40, 46, 69, 71n5 V Voice, 1, 3, 12, 21, 23, 30, 31, 35, 41, 46, 55, 57, 58, 60, 68, 71, 86, 91, 93, 117, 138, 140, 146, 151–153, 170, 171, 174

186 

INDEX

W Waisbord, S., 40, 46, 47, 55, 57, 149, 168, 175, 176 Wellbeing, 65, 66, 82 World Bank (WB), 40, 42, 65, 70, 169–174, 177n5

World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD), 39, 169, 173, 174, 177n7, 178n11, 178n17