The duality of development: recasting participatory communication for development using structuration theory
Keywords:
Structuration theory, Anthony Giddens, Paulo Freire, par-ticipatory communication, development communicationAbstract
Development communication scholarship lacks a well grounded theoretical foundation to research and implement social change initiatives. Although, the models of development communication keep changing, due to political restructuring, limitations of the earlier approaches or to account for new knowledge, participatory communication has held forte for over two decades. This paper argues that participatory communication for development can benefit from structuration theory to understand how people can negotiate social change within the existing institutional structure that they operate in. It is proposed that structuration theory provides us the language to recast main concepts in participatory communication such as conscientization, empowerment and power with constructs such as knowledgeable agents, dialectic of control and power and domination to help understand the process of social change.
References
ARNST, R. (1996). Participatory approaches to research process. In J. Servaes, T.L.
JACOBSON, AND S. A. WHITE (Eds.), Participatory communication for social change (pp. 109-126). New Delhi: Sage.
Chambers, R. (1983). Rural development: Putting the last first. Essex, England: Pearson Education Longman.
DIAZ-BORDENAVE, J. (1976). Communication of agricultural innovations in Latin America. Communication Research, 3(2), 135-154.
FIGUEROA, M. E., KINCAID, D. L., RANI, M., & LEWIS, G. (2002). Communication for social change: An integrated model for measuring the process and its outcomes. New York: The Communication for Social Change Working Paper Series No. 1, The Rockefeller Foundation.
FREIRE, P. (1998). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M.R. Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. (Original work published 1970)
GIDDENS, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and contradiction in social analysis. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
GIDDENS, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration.Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
GIDDENS, A. (1991). Self identity and modernity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Greenwood, D. (1999).Action research: From practice to writing in an international action research development program. Amsterdam; PA: John Benjamins.
HUESCA, R. (2001). Participatory approaches to communication for development. In W.B
GUDYKUNST & B. MODY (Eds.), Handbook of international and intercultural communication (2nd ed., pp. 499-517). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
JACOBSON, T.L. (1996). Development communication theory in the ‘wake’ of positivism. In J. Servaes, T.L. Jacobson, and S. A. White (Eds.), Participatory communication for social change (pp. 67-81). New Delhi: Sage.
JACOBSON, T.L. (2002). Participatory communication for social change: The relevance of the theory of communicative action. In W.B. Gudykunts (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, 27 (pp. 87-123). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
JACOBSON, T.L., & SERVAES, J., (Eds.). (1999). Theoretical approaches to participatory communication. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
MELKOTE, S.R. (2000) Reinventing development support communication to account for power and control in development. In Redeveloping communication for social change: Theory, practice and power (K. G. Wilkins (Ed.), pp. 39-54). Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield.
MELKOTE, S.R., & STEEVES, H.L. (2001). Communication for development in the third world: Theory and practice for empowerment, (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Sage.
MODY, B. (2002). International communication. In W. B. Gudykunst & B. Mody (Eds.), Handbook of international and intercultural communication (2nd ed., pp. 291-293). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
MINDRY, D. (1999). Nongovernmental organizations, “grassroots,” and the politics of virtue. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 16, pp. 477-491.
PAPA, M., AUWAL, M. A., & SINGHAL, A. (1995). Dialectic of control and emancipation in organizing for social change: A multitheoretic study of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Communication Theory, 5(3), 189-223.
ROGERS, E.M. (1976). Communication and development: The passing of the dominant paradigm. Communication Research, 3(2), 213-240.
ROGERS, E.M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations, (4th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.
SERVAES, J. (1996). Participatory communication research with new social movements: A realistic utopia. In J. Servaes, T.L. Jacobson, and S.A. White (eds.), Participatory communication for social change (pp. 82-109). New Delhi: Sage
SERVAES, J. (1999). Communication for development: One world, multiple cultures. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
SHEFER-ROGERS, C. L., RAO, N., ROGERS, E. M., & WAYANGANKAR, A. (1998). The empowerment of women dairy farmers in India. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 26, 319-337.
STOREY, D. (2000). A discursive perspective on development theory and practice: Reconceptualizing the role of donor agencies. In Redeveloping communication for social change (K.G. Wilkins (Ed.), pp. 103-118). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.
WATERS, J. (2000). Power and praxis in development communication: Discourse and methods. In Redeveloping communication for social change (K.G. Wilkins (Ed.), pp. 89-102) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.
WILKINS, K.G. (2000). Accounting for power in development communication. In Redeveloping communication for social change: Theory, practice and power (K.G. Wilkins (Ed.), pp. 39-54). Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Research & Development provides free access to its content to those who register on the website under the principle that making research freely available to the public supports greater global knowledge sharing.
It runs under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
Neither the submission nor the processing of the articles implies costs for the authors or the institutions of which they are part.
