[FoME] Book "Voice & Matter: Communication, Development & the Cultural Return"

[Christoph Dietz]

Edited by Oscar Hemer and Thomas Tufte. Göteborg: Nordicom, 2016, 266
p.

Download:
http://www.nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/publikationer-hela-pdf/voice_and_matter_communication_development_and_the_cultural_return.pdf


Includes among others:

Africa’s voices versus big data? The value of citizen engagement
through interactive radio
By Sharath Srinivasan, Claudia Abreu Lopes
"We draw on insights from a two-year research project, Politics and
Interactive Media in Africa (PiMA), and the related applied research
pilot, Africa’s Voices, which worked with local radio stations in
eight Sub-Saharan African countries. We examine the social and political
significance of new opportunities for voice, debate and claim-making in
the mediated public sphere that interactive broadcast media enables, and
how an approach to citizen engagement that values pluralism and
inclusivity and is not extractive, might better seize opportunities that
interactive broadcast offers. The chapter critically reappraises what
kinds of engagement count in communication for development, what kinds
of ‘publics’ audiences in interactive shows constitute and how we
should understand the power of these ‘audience-publics’."

The language and voice of the oppressed
By Linje Manyozo
"How should scholars approach study of the processes that characterize
voice production among subaltern groups? The study builds on both
Marxist and non-Marxist frameworks as theoretical trajectories for
conducting class analyses that define how subaltern groups conceive,
produce and consume their own voices. The discussion, a semiotics
analysis in itself, aims to make significant contribution to
communication studies, through demonstrating the fragile, slippery and
class-based politics that are prevalent when marginalized groups use
various art forms, even their bodies, as battlegrounds for contesting
oppressive power relationships."

When and how does voice matter? And how do we know?
By Jo Tacchi
"This chapter seeks to complicate our understanding of voice in
development. It proposes that while it is important to consider not just
voice, and the processes of valuing voice, it is also important to
understand what voice and agency mean in the complexities of everyday
life for populations who are marginalized or disadvantaged. The chapter
draws on research in an Indian slum cluster to illustrate how an
ethnographic approach can help us to appreciate these complexities and
problematize notions of voice. It explores examples of the ways in which
people seek to remain unheard and invisible in official and formal
terms, and suggests ways that we can rethink what voice might mean in
development. While communication for development and social change
cannot simplify complexity, it does provide a way of facilitating
participation in the design of development. It can highlight the
contestations and different perspectives involved, and can draw
attention to the relationships of developers and people in development
contexts."

Save us from saviours: disrupting development narratives of the rescue
and uplift of the ‘Third World woman’
By Andrea Cornwall
"The images used to market development often feature women, as victims
of terrible traditions and disempowering situations, or more commonly
these days as enterprising agents of change, poised to ‘lift’
economies and their families and communities. These images tell a story
of victims and heroines, representing development as a project of uplift
and rescue. This chapter explores the politics of these representations.
It takes as its point of entry a film project that sought to disrupt
these narratives, producing a short film called Save us from Saviours.
Engaging with those often represented as tragic victims and left out of
the story of enterprising entrepreneurs to tell a story about sex work,
collective action and social change, the film speaks to a set of larger
questions about development intervention. Juxtaposing Save us from
Saviours with another film, made at the same time about some of the same
people, which gave rise to a third film, made by the sex workers in
response, the chapter reflects on the complexities of development
communications in an age of global connectivity."

A history of cultural futures: ‘televisual sovereignty’ in
contemporary Australian indigenous media
By Faye Ginsburg
"When the Aboriginal Programs Unit of Australia’s ABC television
began in 1988, every Indigenous person involved was a trainee under the
direction of a Euro-Australian professional. They bore the burden of
collective selfrepresentation in a televisual wasteland virtually devoid
of Indigenous voices. In 2011, Sally Riley (Wiradjuri) became head of
the ABC’s Indigenous Unit, with plans to create innovative work that
comments on our own problems, our own issues. Riley’s projects
demonstrate how far Indigenous tv has come in 25 years; new productions
expand beyond the burden of representation carried by the first
generation, showing the complexities of daily life for diverse
aboriginal subjects and audiences, enlarging the national imaginary
through the local stories they tell. If the neighborhood of Redfern was
known historically as the urban center of aboriginal political action in
Australia, the show Redfern Now, has become an innovative site of
cultural activism both on and off screen."

Gringo trails, gringo tales: storytelling, destination perspectives,
and tourism globalization
By Pegi Vail
"The documentary film, Gringo Trails explores the long-term effects of
tourism globalization on cultures, economies and the environment in the
developing world through the lens of budget backpacker travelers and
their storytelling. This chapter explores the travel narrative to
tourism globalization as it was visualized over a 30-year timespan
through Gringo Trails and traces the effect of the film itself through
it’s journey at international screenings and in press coverage.
Tracking the film’s trajectory from it’s premiere in late 2013
through 2015 and the reactions to it either verbally or in print
provides the catalyst for a discussion on the role of long-term,
ethnographic filmic observation and research in exploring globalization
processes; and, connects media practices to the scholarship on
development, tourism studies, and the anthropology of tourism."

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Dr. Christoph Dietz
CAMECO
Postfach 10 21 04 
D-52021 Aachen, Germany
Tel.: 0049 - 241 - 70 13 12 14
Fax: 0049 - 241 - 70 13 12 33
christoph.dietz at cameco.org 
http://www.cameco.org